Chapter Text
Su Bei stood outside the Different Space among his classmates, absentmindedly fiddling with a gear in one hand while they waited for Meng Huai. Under the hot sun, the minutes seemed to stretch lazily before passing by one drop of sweat at a time. Idle chatter floated between the scattered students before a loud voice cut through the haze.
“I can’t take this anymore!” Qi Huang complained, dropping her head on Ai Baozhu’s shoulder. “My grade won’t matter if I die of heat stroke! Teacher, I’ll see you on the other side…”
Ai Baozhu turned her head to fix Qi Huang with a needle-like glare and an even sharper smile. “Qi Huang, since I don’t want to send you flying with my domain, remove your sweaty forehead from my shoulder. Right now.”
“So cruel Baozhu,” Qi Huang scolded even as she hastily straightened up. The only thing worse than being hot and sweaty was being hot, sweaty, and covered in dirt.
Sensing a chance to stir the pot, Li Shu chimed in with fake concern. “Have you been feeling ill Qi Huang? Surely a fire-type ability user would have better heat tolerance than the rest of us, there definitely must be something wrong! Let’s send Meng Huai a message that you’re ill and I’ll escort you back.”
“There’s something wrong with your head!” Qi Huang’s face darkened at the provocation. “Besides, if it wasn’t for that little trick you pulled, it would have just been you doing an extra assignment instead of dragging the whole class out here! Once we get in that Different Space I’ll…!”
“You'll do what,” Meng Huai finally made his appearance, cutting off the exchange. “You brats haven’t made enough trouble? Still not satisfied?”
Cowed by Meng Huai’s stormy expression, Qi Huang, Li Shu, and the innocently implicated Ai Baozhu quickly shut their mouths and backed up a few steps, letting their gathering classmates shield them from view.
Looking supremely annoyed, Meng Huai made his announcement to the class. “Listen up! No fooling around and no getting injured. I already have to do extra work grading your performance for this punishment, if I have to file an injury report on top of that I’m giving you all zeroes, got it?” Meng Huai tapped his foot impatiently, looking at them like they were the ones who were late. “Now, line up to go in.”
Raising his hand with a lazy grin, Su Bei couldn’t resist piping up. “Teacher, if you don’t want to grade, don’t force yourself. Let’s all head back together directly.”
Instead of acknowledging his good will, Meng Huai locked his glare onto Su Bei’s face. “Dream on. And that reminds me, no rigging anything excessively or ditching your partner. I don’t care if it’s more efficient, this is a punishment, not a formal assignment. If I see you coasting through on someone else’s effort, you’ll be sparring with me during your free periods instead.
Su Bei held up his hands in surrender and shrugged over his shoulder towards the rest of the class, as if to say “Well, I tried!”.
Class S hardened their hearts at the sight. Whoever ended up stuck with Su Bei was definitely going to get caught in the crossfire of Meng Huai’s wrath.
“The Different Space will drop you at a random spawn point in groups of two when you enter.” Meng Huai continued his instructions looking down at his watch. “Bring back two Kindling Fruits per group and return by sunset or you’ll have to find your own way back to campus.”
Zhao Xiaoyu raised her hand cautiously, “Teacher Meng, what’s a Kindling Fruit?”
He scoffed in reply, cold demeanor refusing to crumble for anyone. “Figure it out yourselves. Last one there by the time I count to five is getting an alternate assignment.” Meng Huai cracked his knuckles and began the countdown, “One…”
With Meng Huai’s sour mood, Class S could guess that whatever waited after the countdown would be much worse than picking fruit in a Different Space. Immediately, Si Zhaohua and Qi Huang took off flying towards the gate, quickly gaining ground over their landlocked classmates.
Slow on the uptake, Mo Xiaotian didn’t leave in a rush and turned to joke with Zhao Xiaoyu next to him. “Xiaoyu, you should’ve used [Happiness] on him! Maybe he would have given us some more hints!”
Zhao Xiaoyu didn’t dignify him with a response, letting the dust she was kicking up as she darted past answer for her.
“Three…!”
Mo Xiaotian finally sensed danger as a bit of sadistic glee slipped into Meng Huai’s tone and scrambled to catch up. “Ah, guys wait! Hey! Teacher, count properly!!”
Many of the students had already slipped through the entrance, leaving the stragglers to start playing dirty. Lan Subing, the closest of the remaining students, sported a malicious grin as an idea came to mind.
“Li Shu, it’s only right that you take responsibility for your actions, understand?” She pulled down her mask, revealing her wicked expression to Li Shu’s horrified eyes. Desperation soon filled them as he tried in vain to reach the entrance before [Word Spirit] activated.
“[Freeze]!”
Li Shu went crashing to the ground as his body locked up. “Shiii— !”
One by one the rest of Class S disappeared into the Different Space laughing while Meng Huai loomed behind him, leaving Li Shu to his fate.
Su Bei deftly rolled to his feet after being spat out of a spawn point six feet in the air. Mentally patting himself on the back for sticking the landing while simultaneously cursing out the Different Space’s randomized drop points, Su Bei glanced around for his partner. He didn’t have to wait long before an ice ramp crackled past him and deposited a disheveled Jiang Tianming stumbling to his feet across from him.
Sighing at the protagonist’s appearance, Su Bei lamented at the plot points he was about to be subjected to. He didn’t know why he even expected anyone else to show up with both of their dirt poor luck values.
Jiang Tianming eyed Su Bei warily, “I guess I really am this year’s unluckiest soul. You aren’t going to ditch me here right?”
Miffed, Su Bei scoffed at the idea that he was the one bringing trouble to the pair. “If I was going to disappear, you wouldn’t have seen me from the start. Besides, you always manage to get into such interesting situations, how could I miss a free show?”
“You mean you can’t because Meng Huai called you out and you don’t want to get beat up during your free periods, right?” Jiang Tianming smirked towards the shrinking back of his partner as Su Bei resolutely ignored him and trekked deeper into the forest. “Do you even know where we’re supposed to be going?”
“Guess,” Su Bei replied shortly without turning around. Still, he let his classmate catch up to him, if only to see his Destiny Compass easier. To no one’s surprise, Jiang Tianming’s small pointer was completely right-leaning, with the large one unfavorably positioned at “Combat”.
“Jiang Tianming,” Su Bei called, “Spin in a circle slowly.”
Jiang Tianming deadpanned towards Su Bei, “What am I, your dog?” Still, under the force of Su Bei’s unimpressed raised eyebrow he complied with his request. “There, satisfied?”
Su Bei hummed noncommittally, eyes locked on the stubbornly negative Compass pointers. “Well I have good news, it doesn’t matter which direction we go in.”
“What? It can’t be that these fruits we have to find are that widespread?”
“No, your luck is so bad that there are no good options.”
“...” Annoyed, Jiang Tianming went on the offensive. “Isn’t it within your power to change these things? Don’t tell me you’re having performance issues now.”
The snide remark bounced right off of Su Bei’s iron mask of shamelessness. “You’re just too unlucky. It’s more efficient to let you find the trouble and boost my own luck.” He glanced sideways at Jiang Tianming with a grin. “Don’t worry, I’ll be sure to save you once I get bored watching.”
What a sham partnership! Jiang Tianming scowled and strode away from Su Bei towards a nearby tree. “Whatever, just stay here. I’m going to climb up to see if the entrance gate is visible.” Thank god for Meng Huai’s earlier threats or he guaranteed that Su Bei would have dropped him like a hot potato the second he turned his back.
Jiang Tianming nimbly began ascending into the canopy while grumbling to himself, “Wu Mingbai, Lan Subing, I bet you spawned right next to an orchard of these stupid fruits but just come pick me up and I’ll forgive you. Or anyone, anyone else would be fine.”
Unbothered, Su Bei leaned against the base of the tree listening to Jiang Tianming’s voice grow fainter. Making use of the time, he pulled out the Destiny organization notebook to search the database for information on Kindling Fruits. Dozens of entries came back related to different fire-attribute plants, but no exact matches.
Before he could flip through more than a couple pages, Su Bei was forced to snap the notebook shut when something touched his perimeter of Mental Energy. Or rather, several somethings. It seemed that the forest inhabitants had finally noticed them.
“Jiang Tianming! Your trouble has arrived!”
A harried voice called back from the tree tops, “A little– Crap! A little busy here!”
Screeching and fallen leaves cascaded down to the forest floor, swiftly followed by a winged Nightmare Beast corpse crashing through branches.
Su Bei had barely given the lifeless body a second glance before growls echoed out from the brush surrounding him. Glowing eyes lit up the clearing as a mass of wolf-like beasts closed in on his position from all sides.
Su Bei scanned the group, identifying them as mostly low-level nightmare beasts. One Mid-Level beast stood behind them, presumably the leader of the pack. He could deal with them relatively quickly if he linked their compasses… but why would he pass up a perfectly good opportunity? Getting dragged through the protagonist's mess without any rewards would be too cheap! Mind made up, Su Bei got into character and prepared for his performance.
“I’m really too unfortunate today,” Su Bei directed his smirk at the relatively more intelligent eyes of the Mid-Level wolf nightmare beast. “Why don’t you be a good dog and swap with me?”
With a snap of his fingers, Su Bei adjusted the beast’s pointer to the right, then boosted his own luck. If the readers caught onto his wording, he should be able to exchange two pointer’s positions simultaneously in the future. Su Bei patted himself on the back for improvising a buff for himself so quickly and then began shooting out gears towards the snarling monsters.
In the name of conserving Mental Energy for whatever Jiang Tianming was fighting, Su Bei only conjured gears to throw, relinquishing control over them as they left his hands, minus minor adjustments to their flight path. Keeping his smug grin on his face, he ducked and weaved around the lunging wolves, occasionally thinning their numbers with a quick gear throw towards their necks when the opportunity presented itself.
As he dragged out the fight, the Mid-Level nightmare beast’s misfortune became more and more obvious. After watching it trip over tree roots, crash into its minions mid lunge, and get hit by another corpse falling from the trees above, Su Bei decided that he had drawn things out enough. With a thought, all the gears he had thrown out started spinning rapidly in the air behind the remaining beasts. Su Bei held a hand out as if gathering the strings of his Mental Energy and yanked them towards himself all at once, summoning each of his gears to shred a path through the enemies between them.
Su Bei turned toward the tree that Jiang Tianming had scaled with a leisurely grin, bodies hitting the forest floor behind him.
“Now then, where has my lead actor run off to?”