original

For Now

Tác giả: Auren02

Chương 1: Prologue

(Cross POV)

Wonderful. Just great. This is totally what I wanted. It's good. Really good because now I can end my miserable life even faster.

But why Cross? Why are you having these kinds of thoughts?

I'll tell you, me. Currently, I am in my present world. No. Scratch that. I woke up in a copy of my original world. Why do I say it's a copy one might ask? First of all, there is a video game status thing right in front of me. That's the most glaring evidence. Two, I spotted huge buildings that have never been in my city before. Lastly, I have the memories of the of my other self, and not only do I have parents that are not abusive, I even have a little sister.

So why would I not accept this reality and be happy? The answer lies in the memories I inherited about the rest of the world. Apparently, we have creatures of all kinds on Earth. That's kind of wrong. There are many dimension openings that contain all kinds of unique creatures. Dragons, Elves, Undead, Liches, Zombies, Vampires, Three-headed Dogs, Werewolves, and many more. Recently, one or two creatures have come out of their home to give us a very kind visit. A visit that took the lives of millions in a span of two days.

How do we humans resist these creatures? We use the system. Everyone possesses one and they all start with one skill or more. Some are very strong while others are very weak. Some are combat-related while others are supportive or useful. My skill, Holy Aura, falls on the category of weak support. What it does is summon the inner aura that is of the Holy attribute to heal others and me. It doesn't necessarily heal, but rather it enhances the regenerative abilities of a person temporarily when it touches them.

Why this skill is considered weak is due to the fact it can not heal quickly and it can only work on person at a time. The Healing skill not only heals quickly, but it can help groups and it has the added bonus of using up less mana. Compared to other healers, I was one of the worst ones. That is why I will most likely never find a party to join and become a normal person with a normal job. Something that I was very fine with. That was my original desire in the first place. That and getting as far away from my family as possible.

I could go on the combat path, but my attributes and my lack of combat skills prevent me from doing that. Unlike me, my genius little sister was born with the Sword Aura and Wind Physique skills. When Sword Aura is active, an invisible aura comes out of the body and coats it. If the opponent and his or her weapon are weaker than the Sword Aura, they will get shredded. It can also be applied to a sword to make it sharper and even shoot out Sword Beams and Sword Waves. While the Sword Aura skill's damage might be lower with long-ranged attacks compared to the real Sword Beams and the Sword Waves skills, it gives the user versatility with attack range.

Her Wind Physique skill gives her both a passive ability and an active ability. The passive ability gives her a bonus of 20 agility to start with and it will only get better as it levels up. On the other hand, the active ability lets her become one with the wind itself. By doing this, she can essentially teleport as long there is wind and is completely undetectable by any of the senses. Did I forget to mention the temporary 20 points bonus to her agility attribute when it is active?

It's so unfair and I think my other self could agree to that. After all, he was compared to his sister ever since she displayed her skills. I guess no matter what Earth I am on, I will always have a bad relationship with my parents.

Whatever. Time to wake up before that old bi**h comes shouting in my room about breakfast.

...

Nevermind. I totally forgot that I'm on a different Earth. Woo-hoo!

Wait a minute, this family is quite loaded. I can probably eat a decent breakfast for once. Oh, it's so nice to be in an upper-middle-class family. Who the hell said that money can't bring you happiness??

Going to the clean bathroom to wash my hands and face, I went into the kitchen to see it very orderly and neat. It even smells good. Okay. I'm being a little weird, but seeing this from the perspective of a poor person justifies my abnormal behavior. Expecting a near-empty fridge, I found myself dazzled at the options I have for breakfast. However, I will still have to go with old reliable. Eggs.

The years I lived in poverty taught me to appreciate everything that I have. Especially with food. Since my previous household always had an abundance of eggs due to cheap they were, it was the main dish most of the time. Now that I'm having eggs as an option rather than as a choice for survival, I felt strange. I couldn't quite describe the feeling.

With me waking up early today, I could eat and then leave for my combat classes. A good son would make food for the rest of his family and then leave, but I'm not one and I'll never be one so I did my own dishes and made sure that the kitchen looked exactly as I entered it. Hopefully, the smell goes away fast enough so that I don't get a lecture about family and how I am a disappointment compared to my little sister, again.

When I arrived in my morning class, the teacher and a few people that were there gave a long stare in my direction. Just as I was about to ask what's wrong, the teacher got to me first.

"Are you sick or is there an occasion?" Huh? What is she on about?

"Neither. I'm just here for my classes. Is there an issue with me being here?"

"No, not exactly. You don't ever quite show up to your combat classes and I can count how many times you did on one hand." Seriously? My other self ditched classes? Then what was the point of being jealous of others if you didn't give effort in the first place? Now, I have study all his memories. This is ridiculous.

"I see. My apologies then. Is there any way I can still pass this class so that I can take the next level of this class next year?" As for why I'm investing my time in fighting classes is because I don't want to get bullied. It was already bad enough that it happened the first time around, but I'm fourteen again. I will not let this chance go by.

She watched my face for a few seconds in intense silence and answered eventually. "If you get a perfect score on the third, fourth, and the final exams, you will be able to pass this class with a B grade. You missed too much to gain an A." Damn! I must have missed an entire semester to do that. What the hell is the matter with me?!

"All right. Where do I sit? I don't quite remember," I said. Gosh, that's embarrassing to say out loud. She pointed at the front seat that was the closest to the teacher and the door. I nodded and quietly took my spot until more and more people came in. Each one gave me a curious look as they walked passed me. Am I some kind of animal to you people? Quit watching me!

In an effort to ignore the eyes, I took out a textbook from my bag and started reading it. One thing I'll say about that book was that it was fascinating. Learning about the history of dimension opening and the heroes of the past was a pretty good read. It may not have explained why dimensional openings appear, but it did show how humanity evolved and organized themselves to fight these monsters. Looks like my previous history teacher was right. Only through chaos can you achieve peace and only though peace can you achieve chaos.

Once I finished that book, I picked up another book that was about the class I was in. It was interesting to read about how people fought. Whether it was from long distance or short distance, with fists or swords, with magic or arrows, and even poison. Not to mention, training oneself and fighting these monsters were ways to increase attributes.

An average male teenager had 6 Strength, 5 Stamina, 4 Agility, 5 Defence, 5 Constitution, and 3 Magic. A female teenager normally had 4 Strength, 5 Stamina, 6 Agility, 3 Defense. 4 Constitution, and 6 Magic. As for me, I had 3 Strength, 2 Stamina, 3 Agility, 2 Defense. 3 Constitution, and 1 Magic. This was why I found this book to be very crucial to me. Nearly an hour went by when the Teacher, Mrs. Lux, started the class and began talking about the section they were on.

This was where one of my only gifts came into play as I memorized the entire textbook during the lecture. Was the teacher going be pissed off after this? Probably. I could care less about it though. To my surprise, she didn't even look my direction as I went to my next class which was about math. God, I hated this subject. I may have gotten an A, but it took way too much effort to memorize and understand everything.

After I was done with school, I went to the library to sort out the important information. First things first, the attributes. Strength is my physical power, Stamina is my resistance to physical fatigue, Agility is my overall speed, Defense lowers the damage taken, Constitution is my health or HP, and Magic is for skills that require magic to activate like my Holy Aura and my sister's Wind; the higher it is, the more mana one will have. I can gain some attribute points by hitting the Gym and using my Holy Aura but eventually, the benefits stop, and you are forced to hunt monsters to get stronger. Some kills give you an attribute point while others drop attribute crystals to make you stronger. Once you gain a certain threshold of attributes, the monsters and their drops become ineffective and people are forced to go to high-level dimension openings to reach the next level of power.

The next topic was about skills. I can gain skills by either buying skill crystals, killing monsters and using the skill crystals they dropped, or slaying the Boss of the dimension that has a chance to give someone one of its skills directly to someone. I'm going to need a weapon this. A dagger might be useful for speed, but a sword has a longer reach. Maybe I should use both and switch between them for different occasions.

Understanding how the system worked, I thought about my goals. What should I do? Living as an ordinary person seems nice, but fighting monsters is an opportunity to do something I wanted to do as a kid. They were all terrifying, but they had a bounty on their heads. Their corpses and the missions to kill them bring in a lot of income while I could sell their crystals for more money. The path of a monster hunter is the simplest and yet the most difficult.

Screw it. What else do I have to live for? I never had a lover, I never had friends, and I barely had a family. if I die, I die. At least I'll die on my own conditions.