What kind of isekai adventure involves going to school?!

  “Come on, Kai! It’s not as bad as it sounds!” pouted Sheila as she led the young man down the winding hallways of TOAL headquarters to their dreaded destination.

  He’d returned to his guest room to shower and put on a fresh change of clothes that looked and felt like something he’d get back home. A modern cotton weave felt like high quality bed sheets against his skin. But the comforting surprise was followed up with a less than comforting demand.

  “I don’t care, this is not what I signed up for!” Kai pouted even harder.

  “Well you’re not going to be able to do anything unless you do go. And everyone else does it too!”

  “Yeah, but they get to go on their adventures first, and I just got here!”

  “You got here yesterday, and you didn’t complain about it then. You know you don’t really have a choice in this, right? Like back on Earth, we’re going to make sure you go to school, whether you like it or not. And you will like it! That’s not a demand, by the way, I think you really will like it.”

  “But I don’t want to! I was at school when I got portalled over here, and you’re making me go back!”

  “Trust me, Kai. It’s nowhere near as bad as back home. The others and I made sure of that.”

  The two finally arrived at a sizable room. Past the wooden door was a carpeted space with about a dozen desks and chairs laid out in a grid-like pattern, with a whiteboard attached to the wall they faced. The open walls were plastered with several laminated posters that displayed all sorts of information in colorful, child-friendly formats.

  Several larger chairs at the back housed a trio of armed and armored guards, looking around the room with incredibly bored expressions. The desks likewise housed a trio of young children, much younger than Kai in fact. They appeared to all be in middle school.

  At the front of the room next to the white board was a lady who looked to be in her late 20s or early 30s, with long, brown hair and an air of authority despite her apparent youth and stature compared to the much more intimidating guards.

  The woman looked away from the children she’d been glaring at and brightened when she saw the two standing in the doorway. “There’s my favorite student! Come on in and grab a chair, we’re just about to start.”

  The other kids looked at the young man with a bored sneer at the compliment. Kai already knew what they were thinking, just like with his classmates back home. That he was the teacher’s pet. And the worst part was, he didn’t even remember what he did to get that title in the first place!

  “Have fun, Kai!” exclaimed Sheila as she turned to leave. “I’ll be back to pick you up once class is over, or have someone else do it if I’m too busy. And there’s no printed schedule for you yet, I’ll have to write it down for you the next time we meet.”

  Kai waved at Sheila as she turned the corner and closed the door behind her. He still felt somewhat frustrated by his predicament, but being called the teacher’s “favorite student” did help soothe his bitterness at least somewhat.

  He slowly shuffled across the soft carpeted floor towards an open seat in the center-right of the arrangement, and plopped himself down in the colorful chair. Looking around him, he regarded his fellow students; literally a bunch of children who looked like they belonged in middle school. Maybe someone made a mistake putting him in the same class as them? Maybe he’d been the one to make it by coming here?

  “Alright everyone, welcome to TOAL and the Multiverse 101,” began the woman in a firm voice as she looked over her pupils. “My name is Hannah Neal, and you’ll call me Ms. Neal. I’d show you a video, but it’s still being edited so you’ll all have to settle for me teaching it to you directly. Any questions?”

  “Yeah, I have one,” replied Kai, throwing his hand halfway into the air.

  “Shoot.”

  “Sheila didn’t really fill me in on what ‘school’ here entails, so are you just going to be talking about TOAL here, or anything else?”

  “Good question!” replied Hannah. “I’d hand you the syllabus right now, but I wasn’t able to print them out.”

  “You too?” asked Kai. “Sheila couldn’t get me a schedule for my day either. Something wrong with the printers here?”

  “Yeah,” replied the teacher with a sigh. “Apparently someone had enough and smashed every last one in the printer room with a baseball bat! They even left the murder weapon at the scene of the crime. It was covered in toner and everything.”

  “Honestly, I’m not surprised,” shrugged Kai. “Wait, how did you even get printers here? Do you scavenge them from Earth or something?”

  “Nah, we build them. We’ve got a ton of engineers who just knock these things out with the help of magic to fill in the gaps.”

  “And they still chose to make them as badly as they are back home?”

  “Apparently,” she said with a shrug. “But hopefully this’ll motivate them to make some that are actually decent. Now, about the syllabus. This includes you three, so listen up.”

  The three kids lazily looked up at her, gracing their teacher with just enough attention to take in her next few sentences.

  “Today is going to be about getting you caught up with what’s going on around here,” Ms. Neal began. “That means showing you what everyone here’s spent years figuring out for themselves and how headquarters as a whole operates.”

  Everyone nodded along, satisfied with her explanation so far. But something deep down, some primal instinct, told them they should be afraid.

  “And after that, we’re going to get you up to speed on any academics you missed out on from back on Earth. That means math, reading, a bit of history, well the relevant parts of it at least, and whatever else you might be interested in!”

  And there it was. Every child in the room groaned out loud, including Kai. Seriously, his first… ish day here, and it was as if he’d never left home to begin with! Maybe he should’ve stuck around with king Reggie?

  “Come on, why do we have to go back to school?!” whined one of the younger kids. He had medium black hair and a plain blue T-shirt on, which highlighted his apparent lack of physical or emotional maturity. “Seriously, we’re all heroes here! We don’t need to learn this stuff!”

  “But you’ve gotta learn what I’m teaching now,” retorted his teacher. “Otherwise you’re gonna walk into a chemical testing site and have your skin be melted off because you couldn’t read any of the warnings. Or maybe you’ll walk into the wrong portal because you didn’t understand the World Ranking System and end up in hell?”

  “There’s no actual hell! That’s just what our parents told us to make us come to church! Right?” asked the second kid. He had blond hair all the way down to his lower neck and sported a green linen shirt and cargo shorts. He looked towards the soldiers at the back of the room before asking again. “Right?”

  “With how so many religions seem to be real out there, there very well could be,” answered his teacher. "But I guarantee that we’ve seen Worlds even worse than that. And you could end up in one if you don’t shut up and listen today.”

  “She’s right,” replied one of the soldiers in a gruff voice. He sounded like he ate a pack of cigarettes with black coffee every morning. Didn’t even bother smoking them, just stuffed them into his mouth and swallowed them whole. “I’ve been to hell personally and came back to tell the tale. And that was only because of the rest of TOAL having my back. Trust me, on your own, you won’t be coming back.”

  The children froze, the probably hyperbolic threats doing their job in cowing the unruly students.

  Kai simply chuckled at how everyone here handled things, and began to feel grateful for having already obtained the teacher’s favor. He’d love to see them deal with the kids from his school, though they would just respond by not showing up. Oh well.

  The soldiers seated in the back of the room simply chuckled to themselves as well.

  “Alrighty, then! Let’s get started.” Hanna Neal cleared her throat and put on her best teacherly smile. “So this is TOAL, The Terran Otherworldly Advocacy League. Here, we’re committed to securing the wellbeing of any Earther who might have the misfortune to… you know what? The spiel Gus gave me sucks. Fuck this.”

  Everyone else in the room chuckled at her sudden outburst, including Kai who was curious what she would follow it up with.

  “Pretty much TOAL finds people from Earth who get summoned by assholes who don’t give a shit about them and only want to use them as cannon fodder, right? And then they rescue them. It’s pretty simple.”

  Everyone nodded along. It really did sound simple.

  “But doing that with the clothes on your back isn’t exactly easy, and there are a lot of Earthers out there, as well as a whole lot of places to look for them. So they built this headquarters as a place to gather together, get stronger, and house any of those Earthers they rescue.”

  “Stronger? Like training, right?” asked the third child. He also had short black hair, but with a pudgier face along with a red polo shirt and faded blue jeans. “What level are all of the soldiers here, anyway? I bet it’s not as high as us!”

  “Zero,” replied Ms. Neal in a total deadpan.

  “Hold on, levels? Like an RPG or video game?” interjected Kai.

  The teacher looked and nodded at him in response. “The same exact kind.”

  “Wait, zero?” asked the blond second kid. “Don’t they train and fight all the time? Those guys in the back definitely don’t look like they’re level zero!”

  “Well, we are,” replied another of those soldiers in the back. “In fact, y’all are too!”

  “What the hell are you talking about?!” exclaimed the first kid, sounding like his pride was wounded with an elephant gun. “I’m level 63! And these two are about the same!”

  The other two nodded vigorously in agreement, sporting deep frowns as they did.

  “Well, it was probably that high where you started out,” began Ms. Neal. “But levels don’t carry over when you travel between Worlds. And at headquarters here, there is no System, so that means we’re all level 0.”

  The childrens’ faces paled as they processed the reality of their weakness, and the true importance of the lesson they were being taught.

  “We earned those levels!” whined the second kid.

  “Technically, the summoning ritual won you most of those levels,” replied the teacher. “Earthers have a tendency to gain levels faster than the natives of a World. Why else would you all get to your 60s in only a few years when it takes most people an entire lifetime to get that strong?”

  “But after everything we did, all of our adventures…” said the first kid.

  “Adventures?” asked Kai out of curiosity. “What kind of adventures did you go on?”

  “Oh, plenty!” beamed the first child. “We went on this huge quest after the three of us were summoned by the Ralen Kingdom to fight against the dread Lich Threobane. Ok, so he was defeated like a thousand years before, but he got away and went to sleep to get back his power. So after he woke up and was destroying the whole place, they brought us to beat him for good!”

  “For real?” asked Kai, incredulously. He felt a green sensation begin to bubble in his gut.

  “Oh yeah!” chimed in the second kid. “We travelled all over the place and saved a ton of people! There were even a bunch of girls who all fell in love with us, but we all thought girls were icky back then, so we told them we didn’t want to be their boyfriends.”

  “Speak for yourself,” replied the third child. “I still think girls are icky!”

  “Because you like boys instead?” teasingly asked the first.

  “Nah, they’re icky like that too, but they’re cool as friends.”

  The three of them chuckled as Kai looked on bewildered. His wide eyes began to narrow as his bafflement at their adventure slowly morphed into envy. Here he was, having been dragged away from home to be some asshole’s throwaway soldier and then once again be denied a real adventure! While these little kids got to experience everything he’d ever wanted. Adoration, heroics, success, and Kai was so close to tasting it for himself, only to be sent to school instead!

  “How about you?” asked the first child. “What kind of adventure did you go on?”

  “Nphmn…” mumbled Kai.

  “Huh, what did you say?”

  “Nothing,” said Kai with a painful sigh. “I didn’t go on an adventure, I just got here from Earth.”

  “Oh… well that’s too bad. Anyway, we all eventually killed that Lich for good! So no 1000 year slumber for him again!”

  The young man took a long, drawn out deep breath, soothing his racing mind enough to be able to listen to the teacher again.

  Speaking of which, Hannah slapped a nearby desk with her hand to get everyone’s attention, before continuing on. “Alright, the next thing I wanted to point out to you today was the World chart I’m sure you noticed plastered on the wall up there, and after that where everything is around TOAL. I don’t want you to accidentally walk into a portal to hell, like I said. And we have our own ranking system just to avoid scenarios like that.”

  The four students looked up at the poster in question, observing the simplistic design of 5 differently colored rows stacked on top of each other with an accompanying smiley or frowny face.

  “We’ve decided to categorize Worlds based on how kind and innocent the place is, from their people to the environment. At the top are Fairytale Worlds, where everyone is super nice and the danger is at a minimum. Sure, a Dark Lord might pop up once a century, but any kid from Earth could take them down with the help of a System. You three got sent to one, in fact.”

  The implications of her last two sentences flew over their heads.

  “Next up are Heroic Worlds. They’re not as good as Fairytales, but are still very much habitable. The people in general are just as nice, but there happen to be a few more assholes around who are willing to make life harder for everyone else. But they’re rare enough that they’re usually on the fringes of society or outside of it altogether.”

  Everyone nodded again.

  “And after that, we’ve got Noblebright.” While the last two categories were denoted by dark and light green with a pair of smiley faces, this one was yellow and contained a face with a horizontal line for its mouth.

  “These Worlds aren’t really that fun. Usually they’re middle of the line when it comes to innocence and morality. Everyone there’s seen and experienced a lot of awful things, but they usually still have hope. And that means there are a lot of both assholes and good people, all just trying to make a life for themselves. Usually after a while, the Worlds can go either way; back towards Heroic or to the next rank.”

  The soldiers in the back of the room looked on and sighed. They had plenty of experience with the next two.

  “Now we have Gilded Worlds. Let me be honest, these places suck. Almost everyone there is an asshole, and only a thin veneer of civility keeps things from crashing down into a slugfest for survival. Though that kind of anarchy usually happens after an army wipes out half a town and takes all of their food. Anyway, this is usually where TOAL deploys their troops the most, since the people from these Worlds tend to abuse summoning rituals more than anyone else.”

  “And I’m guessing that’s where you picked me up from?” asked Kai. “It could’ve been a Fairytale or Heroic World, though,” he thought to himself.

  “On the money!” chimed Ms. Neal. “Now onto our last category, Grimdark. Thank god these places are rare, because they’re utterly horrific. Usually they’re Gilded Worlds where that veneer I was talking about gets completely stripped away and something really bad is happening across the whole world. Something like a worldwide genocide, all out war with invading demons turning the entire planet into a literal hellscape, and what else…”

  “Or Carnicula,” replied one of the soldiers in the back, sounding out the word like “carni-cool-uh.” One of the other guards nudged him on the shoulder. Hard.

  “What’s Carnicula?” asked one of the children.

  “Something really terrible that happened a long time ago that we’re apparently not allowed to talk about because of how nasty it was," said Ms. Neal in a frantic yet forceful sputtering of words. "Just know that discussing it might bring up some really bad memories for some of the people here, so please let’s just leave it at that. Ok? We might cover it later once you get your feet wet and we find someone with enough nerve to talk more about it.”

  “Mmh, fine,” grumbled the same kid. He looked upset, but soon settled down. Even he could read the room and see how big of a deal this was to everyone. But the curiosity still burned within him, within all of them.

  The rest of the lesson continued on, with Hannah listing the basic amenities present in the headquarters and where to find each of them. Various bathrooms, living quarters, the cafeteria, and the medical bay. She also included an incredibly helpful set of instructions on how to read the signs that Kai passed by earlier that day, and how the arrows carved into the metal placards would actually point towards where the destination stamped on them was!

  Eventually, the lesson ran its course and everyone was ready to get out of there, the teacher included.

  “Alright, everyone! That’s it for today’s lecture. There’s not much else I can teach you here that you won’t learn by exploring the place for yourself. Tomorrow, I’ll be taking a look at what each of you knows from back on Earth and coming up with a syllabus for each of you to follow.”

  The three kids groaned again. The first one in particular gave Hannah an accusing stare and demanded an answer to the question burning within him.

  “Oh come on, do we really need to learn anything more? We’re heroes for crying out loud! Everyone we rescued loves us, and we didn’t need to go to school to save the Kingdom then, so why do we have to go now? We can just live off of what they give us for being heroes!”

  Ms. Neal took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She let it out all at once as she delivered an annoyed glare at the young boy in front of her. “That goodwill isn’t going to get you everything, you know. And a bunch of money alone isn’t enough to live a good life. You need to know how to use it too!”

  “Eh, we made a ton of money,” replied the third child. “We’ll just buy a mansion or a castle, fill it with maids to clean up after us, and maybe even a chef who can make us pizza every day!”

  The teacher lifted her finger and opened her mouth to respond, but was interrupted.

  “Oh yeah, that sounds awesome! Maybe have them make tacos on Tuesdays?” opined the second one.

  Ms. Neal was able to get out a sharp stutter this time, but once again had her voice edged out.

  “Oh totally! We can take turns picking what we want them to make us on weekends!” exclaimed the first.

  At that point, her eyes began to grow bleary and she relaxed the muscles in her arm, letting it fall limply to her side. She stared at the three bitterly as she let them continue their conversation unabated.

  Kai looked at the scene, feeling a sense of pity for his teacher. He wasn’t the only one who had to deal with them grandstanding their accomplishments, and the poor lady looked like she had enough of them. He doubted she really wanted to be here either. Maybe just like him, she missed out on her promised adventure too, and has to look after brats all day instead? If Kai were in her shoes, he’d jump in front of the nearest truck to try and get a do-over of his isekai adventure.

  Kai realized he felt more than just remorse; he was overwhelmed with empathy. On second thought, this probably was Ms. Neal’s adventure, or the closest thing she’d get to one. Guiding kids dragged far away from home through the start of their new lives. And she had the misfortune of dealing with a bunch of brats along the way. While Kai could just walk away from these kids, Hannah Neal was stuck with them. He thought he had it bad right now, but she really did have it much worse.

  Kai sighed and turned towards the carefree children. “Hey, what do you three plan to do once that goodwill runs out?” he barked. “They’re not going to be showering you with money once they move on from what you did. There’ll be new threats and new heroes who’ll save the day.”

  “Eh, we’re still strong while over there,” scoffed the first boy. “We can just go adventuring and make money that way! Or retire and buy a farm, I guess. A lot of adventurers do that, you know.”

  “Well, do you know how to calculate the taxes you’ll owe on any found loot?” asked Kai with a cocked eyebrow. “Or if you do buy that farm, do you know how much to sell your produce for to turn a profit? How about reading a lease or property deed to make sure you’re not getting tricked by something in the fine print?”

  The pubescent trio began to look amongst each other, the second even putting some of his fingernails in his mouth and biting down on them.

  “Hey, we have a ton of levels!” finally shouted the first kid. “We don’t have to worry about any of those things!”

  “Well, how about right now?” asked Kai with a smug grin. “Everyone just said you don’t have any levels here. And what if someone does something to get rid of your levels like with what’s happening now? Then what?”

  “Well… no,” finally admitted their ringleader. “But we’re still strong! We’ve taken down really awful threats, we can take down anyone even without our levels!”

  The other two jumped in with a series of confident nods.

  “Oh please, you’re overly reliant on your levels, I doubt you have any skills yourselves.”

  “In that case, prove it!” shouted the third child. “We could take you on, easily! Even if you are older than us. You’ve never even had a System or levels, so you’ve never had true power like us!”

  Kai’s careful eyes passed over the three as he sized them up. They had puffed up chests and the swagger of braggarts. There was a very good chance that they were telling the truth and would beat his ass so hard that the trauma team would have trouble putting him back together, even with magic!

  He looked over to the soldiers in the back to see what they could’ve been thinking about their argument turning violent. All he could glean however were various looks of excitement and exasperation, along with whispers about money. Those assholes were taking bets! Well, he could at least guarantee that someone’s ass was about to be beat.

  Kai’s eyes narrowed as he took in the last of his surroundings. He’d jumped into fights he knew he’d lose before back home, but only to protect his friends. And right now, he was about to jump into a potential dumpster grease fire for the sake of Ms. Neal. Yeah, it was worth it, if only to protect her adventure.

  With a final glance around the room to take everything else in and a final sigh, he looked towards the three with his most intimidating glare and uttered a single word. “Bet.”

  Before they could register his response, Kai immediately jumped out of his seat, picked up his small chair, and threw it at their ringleader.

  “Ok team, let’s- augh!” shouted the furniture’s victim. He was barely able to get out of his own seat before being struck to the floor.

  “Chon, are you alright?” asked the second kid in response, completely distracted from what truly deserved his attention; the man who threw the chair in the first place.

  Kai let out a scream as he jumped at the blond and kicked him square in the chest, sending him falling to the ground as well.

  “What the hell?!” shouted the third kid. “We didn’t even say start yet!”

  Kai simply let out another howl and performed a running gut punch in response, making the child fall to his knees in pain.

  “Alright, alright! Everyone stop!” shouted their teacher.

  “Ugh,” groaned the first kid. “Ms. Neal, Kai just beat us all up! Aren’t you going to punish him?”

  “Hey, you’re the ones who goaded him into a fight in the first place,” she replied with her arms crossed. “If anything, you got exactly what you had coming to you. Kai was just doing as you all asked!”

  “But we asked for a fight!” exclaimed the second kid. “He just threw a chair at us and used the shock to knock us down!”

  “Yeah, a weakling who’s never had any levels did that to a team of level 63 adventurers,” one of the soldiers in the back chimed in. “No real fight’s ever fair, remember that. And Kai’s obviously been in enough of them to know it for himself.”

  “H-he’s right,” replied the third child. “We got our butts kicked, and we’re supposed to be heroes!”

  “We were all heroes once,” replied the same soldier. “But as Kai said, levels do all of the heavy lifting, so we’ve all learned how to fight without it. Our strongest weapon could probably take out your 1000 year old lich, but that’s only thanks to the mad scientists we’ve got working for us! And the amount of tech and magical knowledge they needed to put it all together is ridiculous. How do you think we learned about them in the first place?”

  “…School?” asked the first kid.

  “Yup!”

  “Hold on,” said the third, getting his friends’ attention. “Did you say magic? Do we get to learn magic here?!”

  “Of course!” chimed in their teacher. “Oh my god, I completely forgot to mention that!”

  “I changed my mind,” said the first child. “If we all get to learn more magic here, I think it’s going to be great! I haven’t been able to cast a single spell since we got here, so I can finally be a wizard again!”

  As the three continued to chat amongst themselves, Hannah Neal turned to face Kai. With a heartfelt smile on her face, she nodded in thanks and whispered, “and that’s why you’re my favorite student.”

  Well, even if Kai wasn’t going to be going on the kind of adventure he expected anytime soon, he’d still be having plenty of fun. Especially if that meant he could continue beating up little kids.