The students assembled in the corridor and started murmuring amongst themselves. The noise of their chit-chat echoed in the background.
"You're a pet system, right? What exactly did you do in the portal?"
"I helped my host take care of his pet," one of the students spoke as he rolled his eyes and wrinkled his nose, "It was a bad experience."
"Huh? Why? Wasn't it just taking care of your dog?"
"It was an insect! A giant, ugly-looking insect!" the student made a vomiting gesture as he shook his head, "I had a hard time controlling myself there."
"I got lucky, I guess," said another girl with black hair tied above her head. "I had to sell healing potions to the host during the war. That's it."
"I'm so jealous of you, I got the job to feed the host," a boy sighed as he said, "It's a good thing my host didn't die of overeating."
"Don't you think someone's missing here?"
"Oh yeah, that boy, Shane isn't here," a girl snickered as she remembered Ed calling him by that name. It wasn't necessary to use their system numbers. It was similar to the official names everyone had, but for unofficial purposes, everyone would usually use their past life's names. "He had it coming."
Just then, someone kicked her calf, making her yell, "Hey, who dared to kick me?"
"I did!" Tess glared at the girl as she waved her hair behind her and said, "If you dare to say another word about my brother, I'll kick your a**."
"Why shouldn't I say anything? He's simply a freak in our system world," said the girl, and the others also nodded, "Everyone knows that it's difficult to survive in this place without cosmic energy. He's basically a mortal! Even if you did, you would end up living in the desert area!"
Orient was already a poor continent, and the poorest area where the lower level systems rented houses for a hundred Crana a week was in the desert that was situated between the Imperium Institute and the Castle of the Queen of Orient, Luna. So if a person wasn't doing well and couldn't level up, he wouldn't be able to grab more opportunities for entering the portal itself.
These people would be forced to enter dangerous dungeons for tiny bits of money. Some of them even lost their lives in the process, just for the sake of living in the worst conditions of life. After entering this world for a few days, every one of the students had figured out how important it was to level up and earn money through the livestreams.
It was just that since everyone had a livestream, it was even more difficult to attract the attention of the viewers. The situation was basically like YouTube where everyone could go live, but only rarely, fortunate people could trend.
Was there another way to earn money? Of course, there was! A system could either take up the job and get a regular salary and a regular amount of experience points after passing through different worlds, but for this, they would have to pay a little money to enter the portal every time. So the poor people would still find it difficult to even glance at the virtual portals. What to speak of entering worlds?
That was why most of the below-average system families living in the Orient would usually depend on killing monsters and hunting for treasures in dungeons to earn scrap. Since Shane was found to have no energy in his veins, they all assumed that he might end up facing the worst-case scenario. None of them knew about the fact that only his world was in severe difficulty.
Tess flared in anger as she glared at the group of students standing in front of her. She felt someone's hands on her shoulders as a familiar cold voice spoke, "Ignore them. These people are useless."
"You're right, Frank," Tess took a deep breath and turned toward the cold boy standing behind her, "Let's go wait for him."
Just as they were discussing, Ed walked out of the portal room with his hands crossed behind his back. He glanced at the students in the corridor and said, "You can go and rest. Class is dismissed."
Tess bit her lips anxiously. Her brother was still inside. How could she calm down? "Where's Shane?"
"He's not coming back anytime soon," Dirt answered for his boss as he pulled up Shane's data on his screen and said, "He failed his assignment, and he was sent to the punishment world to spend four days. Remember what I told you about how ten days in the system world equals one day outside?
"So don't expect him to come out anytime soon," Dirt closed the window and said, "Don't worry. He can survive. I suggest you all take your time resting because you will have two exams in the future, I would suggest you use the remaining free chances to study for the two of your exams because the final test will take place in the real world, though it's still in a few days-"
"What Dirt means is that," Ed took a deep breath and waved his robot to stop the latter from speaking anymore, "You should go back and rest. Focus on your exams while we take care of the rest. The first exam will be hard."
Everyone murmured and made fun of Shane for a while before wandering off to the dorms. Only Tess and Frank still stood at that place without moving.
Ed sighed and said, "See, I care about Shane too. So go back and rest. I'll stay here."
Tess's eyes moistened, but she didn't cry. She took a deep breath and nodded as Frank patted her shoulders and dragged her away. When everyone was gone, Ed's expression became serious as he glanced back at the room and asked, "Did you track the person who did this?"
"It was…." Dirt hesitated before speaking, "Luna."
Ed sneered, "So my brother is really after Shane. Very good. They must have figured out that he can use dark cosmic energy despite having it blocked. We have to find a way to unlock his powers so that he can at least fight monsters and find himself a weapon."
Dirt was surprised when he heard this, "Didn't you say he can still use his powers?"
Ed shook his head and walked inside the virtual portal, "Not to his fullest extent. Whoever locked it, we have no idea if that person was a friend or an enemy. To be on the safe side, we have to unlock it. In any case, Shane won't have to take the attribute test again. So his secret won't be out."
"Can Shane really survive that?"
"He will have to," Ed stared at the portal with a cold face, "Otherwise, he wouldn't be my disciple."
Read 𝓁atest chapters at fr(e)ewebnov𝒆l.com Only