2. The Entrance Ceremony

Before the academy entrance ceremony, every cadet has their abilities, grades, and potential measured by the evaluation device.

Rest your hand on the iron panel, and three orbs will determine your ranks in Magic, Aura, and Innate Ability.

And, as obvious as it may be...

─Vmmmm....

"Magic F, Aura F, Innate Ability E. E-Class."

"Heh...."

An utterly, hopelessly miserable matchup.

Still, it wasn't all bad. After all, when you first started the game, your initial stats came out exactly like that. The only difference was that on a first playthrough the starting value was 0, which read as F — whereas now it was -99, which read as 0.

Not that it mattered. Since I had no intention of using Magic or Aura anyway, they were stats I could just as well have or not have.

'Plus, my Innate Ability can still awaken.'

Unlike Magic and Aura, which grew steadily or strengthened through fortuitous encounters, an Innate Ability had its own separate trigger for awakening.

So on mid-game playthroughs, I'd deliberately enter with an E-rank ability and chain-awaken it to squeeze out its ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠full potential. Later on I got lazy even with that and switched to a Physical Gift build that just pumped raw stats to obscene levels, but this playthrough, I figured I'd probably go the awakening route.

"That fucking retard actually got into Nova?"

"Weak as shit. Absolute bottom of the barrel."

Right on cue, Geum Taeyang & the gyaru girl behind me started scraping away at what little dignity I had. Not that I gave a damn.

As the old saying goes, when you're feeling blue, there's always King Jijeung's penis to cheer you up. Remembering how, on my way in earlier, an eel had awkwardly poked its head out where it had no business doing so, all I could do was chuckle.

I took my seat in the section assigned to E-rank, and trailing in right behind me came the Geum Taeyang & gyaru combo.

"Magic A, Aura C, Innate Ability B... B-Class."

"Hmm. Not bad, I guess."

"You dumb bitch. Since when is a B something to brag about?"

"Hilarious. Then let's see how amazing you are."

The two of them bickered back and forth. Once the gyaru girl stepped down, Geum Taeyang strode up next.

He placed his hand on the panel with all the confidence in the world.

"Magic F, Aura F, Innate Ability S...?"

"....Haaah?"

'Mm. Tasty.'

I'd never been able to check Geum Taeyang's stats before — not in custom mode, not in sandbox — but apparently, when two of his stats plummet into the abyss, this is the reaction you get.

And as a core player and grizzled veteran, allow me to offer a professional review: with the examiner being a woman, no less, the way the outline of his lower half kept swelling bigger and bigger was a spectacle in its own right. A ♥pathetic excuse♥ of a man in every respect but his ability, fuming in front of the examiner with his silhouette on full display.

If a screenshot function had existed, I'd have wanted to capture it on the spot and share it to the gallery.

"What the... this...!"

".....?"

Glaring, he suddenly shot a look in my direction. What did I even do? We hadn't had a single sparring event or anything yet — we shouldn't even know each other's names at this point.

Geum Taeyang clenched his fist, then slammed it down on the panel and roared.

"Again! Measure it again! There's no way in hell I'm F-rank!"

"The device shows no malfunction. Geum Taeyang. C-Class."

"You fucking piece of shit...!"

Apparently pushed well past his limit, he gathered a violent charge of electricity in his hand and brought it crashing down on the panel. KRA-KOOM — accompanied by the sound of circuits frying, the measuring device gave up the ghost.

And the examiner, watching this unfold...

"Uncooperative conduct. One point deducted. Geum Taeyang. D-Class."

"......You. I'll remember that name."

Grinding his teeth, Geum Taeyang trudged off toward D-Class. He took the very last seat in the row and proceeded to radiate an I am currently fucking furious aura for the remainder of the ceremony.

'Come to think of it — if his ability is electricity...'

Then mine was highly likely to be electricity as well. Geum Taeyang's ability was, more often than not, a superior version of the player's own.

After all, since getting defeated by a male overwhelmingly stronger than yourself and jerking out a hands-free climax is the very foundation of NTR games, this much was reliable intel.

"In a sense, this too is one ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of the devs' schemes...."

Work hard and you can be just like Geum Taeyang! You can awaken the very same ability he has! — they dangle a little preview like that, when the reality is: Without Magic or Aura, what could you possibly do? No matter how far you awaken that ability of yours, you'll only ever be an inferior copy of Geum Taeyang, you know? It was all setup for the second NTR drift.

So throughout the in-game duels with Geum Taeyang, I abused the fact that my ability was a straight upgrade of his — investing in martial arts that required dumping your entire mana pool just to cast, turning one of his signature techniques into a eunuch; or flipping it around and going full King Uija meta, letting myself get NTR'd left and right to completely drain his stamina; or, as mentioned before, turning the whole thing into a gay-ass party and killing him socially. The list went on.

Geum Taeyang is strong.

But human malice was just a little bit stronger.

'Not that I'm planning on any of that this time.'

Getting NTR'd was the premise of this world, after all, which meant I basically had to date every one of them at least once. Furry-ass parties, gay-ass parties, gyaru-ass parties — every single one required me to actually be in a relationship first, so going down any of those routes would trash my reputation along with everything else.

Hey, when it was just a game, I'd hammer the skip-skip buttons and date no one, girl or otherwise, and it was all fine and dandy. But now that reality had turned into something suspiciously simulation-like, I wasn't quite brave enough to pull that...

"....No. Or am I?"

If I was just the bottom, I'd be borderline safe, no?

After all, a man who insists he's a man makes for a far more appetizing catch than a woman who insists she's a woman.

I spent a moment seriously contemplating my gender identity, then concluded that since nothing of the sort was about to happen right now, I'd shelve the question for later.

And so, once every student had taken their seat in their assigned class...

"We will now begin the entrance ceremony of Nova Academy."

"Mm~"

I glanced around idly for a moment, then grabbed hold of a mop sitting nearby. I had no idea whether it would register as equipment, but there was nothing to lose by trying.

After all, the entrance ceremony is, from time immemorial, the opening act of the game. In the old days it was all orthodox beginnings — the principal's address and whatnot — but people these days are so thoroughly pickled in dopamine that...

"Please. Survive."

"───!?"

A forced battle royale.

When I opened my eyes, I was alone on an uninhabited island.

"Now, let's ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠see...."

First, an inventory of what I had on me. The smartphone in my pocket, the student handbook. And, astonishingly, the mop had been transferred along with me. Given the circumstances, that one item was worth its weight in gold.

I tore off the mop head and shaped the handle into a makeshift spear.

"With this, I can hold my own against something."

The problem was that I knew nothing about spearwork, staffwork, or swordsmanship — though then again, even if I had, there wasn't much I could have done with it at the moment.

'What comes after this is probably...'

The heroines you bump into while exploring. Scenes that basically go, here are our representative heroines — allow us to introduce them. Then, just when you've gotten a little friendly with one of them, out of nowhere pops a monster so absurdly strong there's no answering it.

The so-called defeat event.

And if you fail to overcome it, the suddenly-arriving Geum Taeyang & gyaru take the monster down, join your party, and the NTR narrative flag starts flying — that was the gist of it.

Even on playthroughs where I raised my stats, abilities, and ranks high enough to fell the monster myself──the story would twist it into "fighting that thing drained your HP and MP; you're in danger," and Geum Taeyang and the gyaru would end up joining anyway. The answer was fixed from the start; you were just the one getting dragged through the dirt, should I say.

Either way, the NTR flag went up. The only difference was whether the day-one caressing CG unlocked or not.

"Well.... but for someone at my level..."

I'd already mapped out, ability by ability, exactly which spots were absolute goldmines. So I headed straight for the river. How do I know where the river is, you ask?

It was a path I'd walked dozens — hundreds — of times in-game. Tutorial warps can't be skipped, so I'd ended up with the entire layout memorized cold, entirely against my will.

"Is this the place?"

The riverside that appeared after roughly an hour of walking. I walked right up to it and dipped my hand into the current.

─BZZZT!

"Yep. Electricity."

Current trickling out of my hand. Not overwhelmingly powerful, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠but enough that a few fish floated up to the surface. I gathered them up, twisted the heads off by hand, gutted them, and skewered them on tree branches.

"HP and MP look fine too."

The two stats I'd pumped to monstrous levels, precisely because they weren't shared with Geum Taeyang. On first-playthrough protagonist specs, it wouldn't have been strange for a single use of your Innate Ability to burn through a third of your MP — but the current me could fire off a few thousand shots without breaking a sweat.

'This should make the grind a lot easier, too.'

There were two ways to grow an Innate Ability. First, you had to fill the ability's own proficiency; second, you had to solo-clear a Gate above your rank. And proficiency, as the term implied, was counted purely by number of uses.

─Ding! ♪

"Oh, would you look at that."

I was charging my phone with my Innate Ability. The battery bar crept slowly upward. With my free hand, I grabbed a nearby branch, ran a current through it, and got a fire going. Then I gathered up a decent pile of branches and roasted the fish I'd caught earlier.

'If things had gone the way they were supposed to...'

I'd probably have run into the original heroines around now, and be sitting around chatting cozily with them. And then that very night, I'd get ambushed out of nowhere, spend the whole ordeal half-dead, and cap it off with the Geum Taeyang NTR event — or something to that effect.

Not that, at this point, there was any reason left for me to fall victim to that event. But that didn't mean the event simply wouldn't happen because I stayed away. If I didn't go, the monster would ambush the heroines all on its own. And then Geum Taeyang would defeat it and plant the NTR flag right on schedule.

It was all going to play out exactly as scripted either way — so I decided to deploy my signature move: I refuse to sit through that garbage; I'll live my life my own way.

And then, that night.

"...???"

What on earth happened here?