I slid open the doors of the 1-A classroom at the same early time as usual. The spacious classroom looked just like how it did before with the gentle morning sunlight seeping in through the windows. The empty seats were slightly crooked while the tiling on the floor looked as spotless as a fresh sheet of paper.

Also, as usual, Kristina was sitting in the back of the classroom, leaning on the desk with her arms wrapped around her head. She slightly lifted her face when I walked in and went to the back, placing my bag on the seat next to her.

We exchanged a quick nod and went off to our own devices. Kristina tried to sleep again, and I browsed the internet on my watch.

With a watch accessible at all times, I had gotten more used to web surfing. Apparently, there was another layer hidden over the standard internet that could only be accessed through specific softwares and authorizations, many things were hidden behind this layer called the dark web. It was all fairly out of my understanding, but so was winning against curiosity, so I had been spending the few days before being kidnapped on finding ways to access this dark web.

My eyes shifted to the clock widget at the top of my holographic screen.

Strange, the class was about to begin in a few minutes, but Mr. Claudio wasn't here yet. Did he get pissed because we didn't show up for three days? There was also not a word from the system since I woke up.

When I thought of absences, a strange feeling climbed up my back.

I hadn't opened my messaging app at all. My promise to mom about keeping her updated every day had been broken within a week.

My fingers reluctantly closed the browser tab and moved toward the messaging app when the sound of the door opening pulled it back.

"You guys are here." With a fresh and charming face, as usual, Mr. Claudio slid open the door to the classroom and peeked at us from outside. "Didn't check our timetables, did we?"

Timetables.

There really was a lot to check in on each day when such connectivity had come into play.

Kristina sighed and I closed my watch's screen as we got off of our seats.

"Follow along," Mr. Claudio said. "We're going to the training room."

***

Mr. Claudio guided us down the first floor and led us to a passageway on the opposite side of the one leading to Isabella's class. A giant metal gate stood at the end of the passageway. A small red beam of light spread out from the gate and fell on all three of us before a cloud of steam emerged and the doors opened on their own.

A well-lit white staircase leading further down into the ground revealed itself. I looked around the place, tapping the stairs with my feet and touching the walls with my fingers. Everything here was made of an alloy of magical metals like Uru and Thryptich. Moreover, a coat of magical shields covered the extremely sturdy and conducive walls, making this place undentable for us students, and probably many hunters too.

The expenses gone into building just the staircase had left me surprised, and my feelings only grew in intensity when I saw the enormous room at the end of the staircase. LED lights were laden on the ceiling and the walls, illuminating every last inch of the place that seemed to be as enormous as a giant no matter how far I looked.

The height of the place easily extended up to ten meters while the white floorings and walls stretched up to an entire kilometer in a square. All our classmates stood upright in three files near the staircase, watching Mr. Claudio and us step in.

Zachy and the rest of the top-ten ranked students were right at the front. Noticing me, my bird friend narrowed his eyes, 'your messages!' he mouthed the words. I raised one hand and mouthed back a quick sorry. It was then that I noticed how all the other students had abandoned their blue blazers and were instead in black tracksuits with white lacings.

"Alright!" Mr. Claudio shouted and clapped his hands twice.

"Yes, sir!"

Without a second of hesitation, the students shouted back and broke off into a sprint. Starting from the first file, followed by the second and the third, my classmates took off at a high pace and sprinted around the perimeter of the gigantic training room.

"Um..."

"Right," Mr. Claudio turned to us and said. "The training room's perimeter. Start running, it's only one kilometer so not a big deal."

One kilometer truly wasn't a big deal.

"That's why you have to make a hundred laps, ok?"

Right. Wait—

{HUNDRED!?}

HUNDRED?! Also, this guy was awake all this time!

Mr. Claudio smirked and reached into his pockets, he pulled out a rubber slingshot and some pellets that children play with. He held a tiny pellet against the slingshot and pulled it back, his hands aiming toward the running group of students.

"The rules are simple."

Right there, in the center of the line, one of the students tried to run a bit faster to catch up to the one ahead of him.

A swish of air resounded near our ears as Kristina and I turned toward the student. A pellet had launched out of the slingshot and landed right on the student's thighs.

"Change your pace, and you get pelleted."

The student stumbled, lost his balance, and fell face-first to the ground. Others swerved around him and ignored him naturally as Mr. Claudio loaded the slingshot again. Once again, the pellet sped through the air like a wild bullet and passed between the legs of the running students to hit the first one on his head.

"Stop, and you get pelleted."

"AH!" the student screamed in pain and rolled over from the force of the pellet.

"Oh, complain, and you get pelleted again."

Mr. Claudio cackled and loaded his slingshot once more, hitting him again, and then again, and then again.

"If you don't finish you get pelleted, get running. You only have till the end of this lecture."

What?

What the fuck?

{Host! It's just forty more minutes! RUN!}

"I'll go change," Kristina was about to walk away with an averted gaze when Mr. Claudio grabbed the back of her collar and tossed her on the field.

"Nope, run like that both of you." He loaded the slingshot and pointed it at me this time. Without hesitation, I sprinted away from the mad teacher with my mouth sealed shut.

***

In the end, I could only get to 83 rounds by the end of the first lecture while Kristina got to 92. There were almost fifteen other students who couldn't finish, and nearly all of them had been pelleted at least twice by Mr. Claudio.

He held the ones who couldn't finish back while the others left. I ended up being the last one to get pelleted, and since he was feeling unsatisfied, he went a step beyond and hit me around twenty times. The pelleting ate into the few minutes we had between the lectures for transition and I had to run again all the way to the common lecture hall for Monster Anatomy, which was, again, around 4 km away from the course building.

I was dripping in sweat from head to toe as I dragged my sore body to the back of the hall and took a seat mere seconds before the professor walked in. Though my being an F-Ranked leech had stopped being the talk of the town, I could still hear people call me that as I walked in. It had stopped being sensational, but my reputation hadn't improved a bit.

To my surprise, Zachy Bird was not sitting at the back of the class, but instead, he was in one of the first rows next to Luke Reese and Leone Hendrickson. I wasn't the only one who had been deserted, though, since Kristina was also sitting alone near the back as her usual buddy had been taken by my usual buddy.

Class began before I could catch my breath... and it ended with me heaving all over again.

I couldn't follow more than half of the things being covered. And to none of my surprise, the other three classes went down the same way.

In just three days of missing class, I had been left far, far behind the others.

So this was where truancy gets you.