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A month has passed since our arrival in this world. I wasn’t certain if there existed a rule where a month was 30 days, but Alks informed me that it had been 30 days, so I just phrased it as one month.

Over the past month, my classmates enjoyed their freedom in various ways. While there was training, it proved to be less time-consuming than a typical school schedule.

Furthermore, those who excelled in training were discreetly permitted to visit town. It seemed like a strategy to achieve greater effectiveness in less time.

Despite having a day off every six days, they enjoyed luxurious rooms, high-quality furniture, and a personal maid—something that wasn’t possible before the summon. If the girls wished, they could also bring a butler with them, and there were few complaints nowadays.

And the few complaints that they had were all directed at me.

They manifested in various forms of violence, both physical and non-physical. Regardless, they became fair game, as both the class centerpieces and the kingdom chose to turn a blind eye.

And while leading such a life, the upper rankers in our class had already surpassed the ordinary kingdom’s soldiers in strength.

Yet despite this notable success, there was a considerable amount of dissatisfaction regarding their growth. This discontent stemmed from the fact that, despite their rigorous training, their status only increased by a total of one or two points per day.

Seeing the game-like status go up, made everyone feel like it just wasn’t enough.

Nevertheless, in this world, even an increase of one per day posed a significant threat. With an average of 150, one could be considered among the best in the world.

In terms of total numbers, that amounted to 1050. If we assume that the value increases by one every day, it would take about three years to reach that value, not taking into account the starting point.

While I was uncertain about the number of days in a year here, needing only 1050 days to reach the world’s top was ridiculous.

It was said that in reality, everyone would eventually reach a limit, but it was not difficult to imagine that we, as heroes, had higher limit values than ordinary people.

I mean, my initial Mana was already 300. If I could have made full use of it all, I could have easily become the top Wizard in this world.

However, most of that 300 was taken up by my skill.

But this 300 number, which looked like it was only there for show, was not entirely meaningless.

Kanami Tanzawa, who was in Hirayama’s group, possessed the skill “Charm”. Simply put, it was said to make the opposite sex fall for you. However, it didn’t work on me. I could guess that the reason was my high Mana.

At first I thought that it had something to do with the “Spirit” attribute, but given that I only had 15 in that attribute, there was no way I could’ve resisted it with just that.

Although the “Spirit” seemed to be related to Mana as far as magical training was concerned, the Status didn’t clearly represent what the difference between the two was.

For example, Mana could be related to MP, Magic Attack and Magic Defense that were seen in games.

By seeing my status, you can see just what I worked on this last month.

Looking at everything but my Mana, the total increased by a sum of 60.

If I factored in the Mana, it totaled 110, but the Mana still accounted for 90% of my overall power.

Most of my classmates averaged between 25 and 30, so I alone seemed to show remarkable progress. However, I considered this a rather natural outcome.

After all, I would rise early in the morning for a run, engage in rigorous sword training, attend every magic lesson without fail, endure post-training sparring sessions, and practice magic until the late hours of the night.

While I wasn’t certain about the unusual increase in my Mana, the other stats simply resulted from working two or three times harder than my classmates.

Still, looking at it from the perspective of people in this world, I definitely would be one to envy.

There were surely instances where people trained as hard as me, but couldn’t raise their status at all. Investigating this area might be interesting, but if I had the time for that, I would rather focus on becoming as strong as possible.

In the first 15 days of this life, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t catch up. My classmates made fun of me, I succumbed to violence, and not a day went by without me shedding tears.

However, as the second half of the month unfolded, the tears ceased, and dry laughter began to spill out of my mouth instead. Simultaneously, I became almost oblivious to my surroundings.

If I continued my current efforts, and even if I managed to catch up to them in terms of status, it didn’t necessarily guarantee that I’d win.

After all, my classmates each possessed two skills, excluding translation. With only one skill, I would have to significantly outperform them in terms of status to be able to compete.

In fact, another male classmate of mine, Michihisa Fujiwara was also believed to only have one skill. However, I believed that he surely must have another skill. After all, the name of his skill that appeared was called Stealth.

I wasn’t sure how well he could use this skill, but I believed that he was probably hiding another skill, using the Stealth skill. And I was sure that his other skill must have been the Spy one.

Although I didn’t know the skills of everyone in the class, it seemed like individuals often received skills that were somehow tailored to their characteristics.

Fujiwara, the class’ idol was, to put it bluntly, a people pleaser. Despite not belonging to a group, he still held a position in which he was with everyone. And if it became known that he was a Spy, a commotion would’ve undoubtedly occurred.

The fact that there was still no commotion suggested that he continued to conceal it. In that sense, Fujiwara remained in a neutral position in my mind. And it wasn’t as if he’d bullied me either.

There were a number of my classmates that held a neutral position in my mind, but I didn’t hold any grudges towards them. Neither did I feel any interest in them either. We didn’t interfere with each other. We neither helped or hurt.

But lately, I had been contemplating reaching out to one of the neutrals, even though 9 out of 10 cases they could end up avoiding me.

It was the last sentiment we shared as individuals from the same world, who had attended the same school, and studied together in the same class.

It was ironic that it wasn’t a friend but a neutral party to whom I could direct my feelings, which seemed to define me in some way.

Surprisingly, that moment arrived rather quickly.

◇◇◇

Morning runs were something that had become a routine for me, even though my status was steadily improving. I just couldn’t do without them.

I had been running since the early morning when only the maids or so were still awake, but on that day, unusually, another presence approached me.

“Hey, Toriyama! You run every day, don’t you?”
“Fumitsuki… What is it? Did you come to make fun of me?”
“N-No…”

The girl, Yume Fumitsuki, shook her head vigorously.

We hardly ever talked, but thinking about it, I believe we had been in the same class many times since elementary school.

She didn’t talk much with anyone but me, and I didn’t know what she usually did. Her behavior struck me as suspicious. Apparently, she wasn’t here to make fun of me, but I didn’t get what her motive was for calling out.

The bullying against me had escalated to the point where some of the girls now even refused to look at me. The fact that there was one that wanted to talk to me like this felt like a miracle.

After all, the girls’ way of bullying was just on a whole new level. When they directly harassed me, it wasn’t through physical violence like punching or kicking, but rather through psychological cruelties such as pouring water on me, hiding my belongings, tearing my clothes, and other means.

Fumitsuki was one of the few girls I still saw as neutral, while most of my other classmates had already lost that title.

The only other neutral girls were Tsukihara, who was surprisingly wise when it came to the girls, and her friend Yamabe. Another one was Tsubaki Someno, who had been wielding a longsword lately. Tsukihara was subtle, while Yamabe and Someno showed unpleasant faces when they saw me, so in a sense only Fumitsuki was the truly neutral one.

Among the boys, there was Fujiwara, Iori Megi, who was often teased about being a girl before we arrived here –though it was likely still going on in this world– and Kuniya Monobe, who always had his face glued to a book. None of the three were interested in me at all.

“If there’s nothing else I’ll be going.”
“U-Um, it’s… I was wondering if I could talk to you.”
“Talk to me? Sure. There’s something I’d like to talk about too.”

This must have been fate. I decided that she’d be the one I’d show my emotions to.

Fortunately, there were no maids with us at this time, so it was convenient to talk privately.

“So, what is it you want to talk about?”
“I saw that your status had gone up quite a bit, Toriyama, so I was just wondering what was going on. But seeing you today I managed to put the pieces together…”
“Is that so?”
“I-I was also worried that you might be overworking yourself, Toriyama…”
“Does it seem like I’m overworking myself?”
“That’s… I’m sorry. Why are you… No, leave it. I’m sorry…”

Fumitsuki said, repeating her words.

First she’d apologized reflexively, while the second was after she had convinced herself of something.

Since the conversation was not going anywhere, I decided to take the lead. After all, I had no obligation to go with her topic.

“You said you saw my Status. Fumitsuki, do you have an appraisal skill of some sort?”
“I do. How did you know? Wait, don’t answer. I already gave myself away. That’s right. I can also see a person’s Skills. My other skill is Jack of All Trades. It’s just like me, it’s ridiculous.”

Fumitsuki laughed in a self-mocking manner. Though I didn’t grasp the specifics of her self-comparison. She may have depicted it negatively, to me just having a skill alone was a good thing.

“What does it do?”
“I can do everything well, but I can’t master anything. In fact, I was able to use magic very quickly, but soon I was overtaken by everyone else. The teachers told me that I was at the level of a normal adventurer.”
“Are Skills included in that?”
“I can’t use special skills like Ichinari’s Hero. However, if it isn’t tied to the Skill I think it’s good.”
“So it’s like, you can’t copy the Hero skill, but you can use the swordsmanship that the Hero uses?”
“Yea, that’s it! It’s something like that! You’re amazing, Toriyama!”

If that was the case, me reaching out might not have been in vain.

Though this all depended on Fumitsuki.

“Then I’d like to bring up what I wanted to talk about. However, before that I want you to promise me not to tell anyone what I’m about to tell you without my permission.”
“That’s…”
“You can probably guess what I’m trying to say given that you can see my Skills.”
“Okay. I won’t tell anyone.”

After she said that, I confirmed that my Skill had been activated before I told Fumitsuki the necessary information.

“If you want to live happily in this world, then you should get in touch with Fujiwara today.”
“Fujiwara, why?”
“He probably has the Spy skill. He should be able to move while hiding at a pretty decent level. I want you to use Jack of All Trades to steal as much of that as you can.”
“I see. Got it.”
“And if you really do trust me then I want you to promise me the following thing.”
“I will.”
“Should I die, I want you to use all the skills available to you to escape from this castle as secretly as possible.”

As I said that, Fumitsuki’s expression, who had been listening to me earnestly up until now, turned slightly confused.

However, I didn’t plan on telling her any more. If she really did trust me then she would do as I told her and use her skills to try and escape from this castle.

Afterwards Fumitsuki tried to stop me to ask something more, but I told her not to approach me anymore and went back to my room.