Leo Auston, an extra. Not exactly what I expected. He has no real affinity, or rather, his affinity is so weak it barely qualifies as one. And as strange as it sounds, I have no idea how I know this. The knowledge is just there, with no recollection of where it came from.
My biggest concern right now is what happens when I use up my final respawn. Will I return home? Will this world glitch and collapse around me? Or will I simply cease to exist? I sincerely hope it's not the latter.
The classroom was completely silent as everyone tried to absorb every word the professor said. No one wanted to fail. Here, students were graded on both intellectual and physical exams, and like workers, we received credits based on our performance. But that wasn't my main concern. I still had no idea how I had died.
I remembered waking up in this classroom, disoriented and confused, but I had managed to keep my composure long enough to assess the situation. I had transmigrated, that much I'd figured out, and into a game, which was another confirmed fact. Beyond that, I was completely lost. I had no idea what to do or how to move forward. I was staring blankly at the teacher, still turning everything over in my head, when a sudden ding pulled me back to reality, followed by a pop-up screen.
The realization that I was living in a world where the respawn timer could hit zero and kill me for real was genuinely horrifying. Anxiety settled in my chest, and as soon as the bell rang to signal the end of class, I made my way to the cafeteria.
The food display was enormous, and I was starving. I ate quickly, mentally running through my next steps at the same time. Just as I finished, another bell signaled the end of lunch, and I headed back to class. That's when it hit me, a sharp, excruciating pain in my stomach.
A few students gave me odd looks as they pointed me toward the restroom. I was almost at the door when someone knocked me to the ground. Before I could react, I felt a violent stab in my back, and then there was nothing.
I never saw my attacker.
Sigh.
Ding. Ding. Ding.
Wait. It's lunchtime again.
I stood up and was about to head for the exit when a hand caught my wrist.
"Hey, Leo, can I borrow your notebook? I didn't copy anything from class," Jayden said, scratching the back of his head.
"Sure," I replied, and handed it over. The notebook was partially filled with the real Leo's notes from before I took over his body, but that didn't matter right now. What mattered was that I was looking directly at the protagonist. Just looking at his face irritated me.
He had the typical protagonist look, blond hair, blue eyes, and a level of attractiveness that didn't seem entirely fair. His uniform barely contained his physique.
What a cheat.
I didn't know what I looked like, but I had a feeling I was completely average. Why would an extra like me be anything else?
I remembered this moment. He had asked to borrow my notebook before, and I had handed it over just like this, and nothing worth noting had happened afterward. I stretched across from my seat a few rows up and flicked the notebook onto his desk, then pulled my bag over my shoulder and headed for the exit, climbing the steps to the top of the theater-style classroom. The layout was built to hold up to a thousand students at once, which made it efficient but also easy to get lost in. Once I was out, I stopped in the hallway and looked outside.
Everything looked the same as before. Most students were rushing toward the training grounds for what they probably assumed would be a routine emergency session.
Then came the announcement. Today was the augmented reality exam. Panic moved through the students almost immediately, and understandably so. This exam carried the highest point allocations of any assessment, which meant even the top-ranked student could drop to the bottom if they weren't careful.
But I had bigger concerns. The cafeteria was out of the question. The sudden stomach pain and my mysterious attacker couldn't have been a coincidence, and taken together, it pointed to something deliberate. I needed to find the safest place in the facility, somewhere that made an ambush difficult.
The dormitory was the obvious choice.