Mom and Dad had, according to the various pictures up around the house, not changed one bit in the last century.

  Mom shared Derek’s raven black hair, tall but not overly so, wearing her usual “motherly kindergarten teacher” clothes even outside of work, while Derek’s father had blond hair that he shared with Tanja and Viktoria, was as handsome as most of the people he shared the stage with, and usually wore random and somewhat crazy stuff, as if he’d just walked out wearing the costumes he’d had on while performing at the opera. Which, in this case, was a loose white shirt and leather vest combined with cargo shorts that were about as close as being dressed as an Age of Sail-era pirate as one could without putting on an actual costume.

  “So, I hear you’re ready to head out into the world!” Dad declared, voice booming. He could dial that down when at home, and almost always did, but right now, he clearly did not want to.

  “Yeah, I got the [System],” Derek said, waving a hand to cause the [System] window offering his [Class] to both appear and be visible to his parents.

  “Hey, congratulations!” a familiar voice yelled from behind him, the speaker appearing in front of him in a blur a mere second later, wings made of countless knives still spread wide from when she’d used them to fly here from wherever she’d been previously.

  His older sister promptly wrapped him in a crushing hug that pinned his arms to his sides, spinning around so quickly the centrifugal force actually lifted his feet a good meter off the ground while her wings snapped shut with a clatter like an entire crate of knives getting dropped.

  “Tanja,” Dad sighed, and she put Derek back down a moment later, after having slowed down to the point where releasing him wouldn’t send him flying.

  “Oh, he’s fine,” Tanja said, patting him on the head while she threw their father a bright smile, as though absolutely nothing had happened … which would have been easier to believe if her long blonde hair hadn’t still been in the process of falling back down into a more normal position, her entire hairdo having practically exploded at some point during her travels.

  Derek’s other sister, Tanja’s twin, made her entrance at that, in a way that was, well, quite her.

  Whereas Tanja had simply flown, and their parents had used the fast travel System the way he had, Viktoria teleported in a rather more spectacular manner, her own wings tearing a hole in space only a few meters from where the rest of them were standing, phantasmas feathers, each of which was inscribed with its own spell diagram, ready for anything that might come her way, glowing with inner light.

  And then they swept outwards, leaving a gaping rip in reality hanging there … and then she stepped through, her wings, almost tenderly, brushing the edges of the gateway back together, causing the portal to vanish as though it had never been, her wings disappearing at the same time.

  So. Those were his sisters. The valkyries. The ones Isaac had trained because they’d actually met him, and something about that had given them an absurd degree of power, or, at the very least, the basis for gaining said power.

  But for all that they’d had advantages, he hadn’t, Derek was going to benefit from over a century of improvements made to the education system. Beyond that, enough elbow grease would hopefully close the remaining gap.

  Viktoria swept in and gave him a quick hug before stepping back and glancing at the [System] window still hanging in the air next to him.

  “That’s a rare [Class], isn’t it? You taking it?” she asked.

  “No, I’ll try for something better,” Derek told her with a challenging grin.

  “So, which academy are you going to?” Mom asked. “Akashik Academy is so close to home …”

  “Bad idea,” Tanja said. “When Isaac was there, he was making sure that Viktoria and I didn’t get any special treatment, but I don’t think that would work nowadays.”

  “New York?” Viktoria offered. “It’s great for magic, and by the time I go back to teaching, you’ll have graduated.”

  “How about we have this argument over dinner,” Dad suggested, heading into the kitchen, then called over his shoulder, “And if you want any control over what we’re eating, you’re going to have to come help.”

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  Derek snorted. In other words, if they wanted anything other than broccoli, rice, and chicken, they’d have to work for it.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll rein him in,” Mom said, following him. “You kids have fun.”

  While their parents were busy in the kitchen, Derek, Tanja, and Viktoria wound up discussing schools.

  There were thousands of academies that one could go to if one wanted to improve one’s starter [Class], or grow in a relatively safe environment.

  They’d take you basically the moment your System unlocked, and you had at least the possibility of suddenly starting to grow exponentially stronger, even if most people tended to wait a long time to select their [Class]. At least as long as you were of a reasonable age, a handful of people had gotten System access at five or six and were, for obvious reasons, unsuitable for the traditional academy experience.

  But in general, someone with full access would have gone through the highly efficient, [Skill]-enhanced modern education system and have all the necessary knowledge to live their life in today’s world.

  Parents stuck their kids in school where they learned the basics in five or six years, then kept learning more and more varied information of lesser importance until they were ready to go to an academy. One of many.

  But there were five big ones.

  The closest was Akashic Academy, founded by Derek’s older brother, Isaac. When Isaac had still been in the solar system, it had largely lived on his reputation and ability to pass along countless rare or even epic [Skills] to his students, but nowadays, its reputation rested on a basis of “solid reliability” backed by a steady stream of extraordinary guest lecturers. Germany’s elites who’d learned from Isaac, Camelot’s knights, and the occasional Korean Hunter … when they weren’t lecturing at their own academy.

  Seoul’s Hunter Academy was, obviously, located in Seoul, the capital of South Korea, and granted its students access to the city’s countless Dungeons, as well as the ludicrous concentration of S-Rankers said Dungeons attracted.

  Then, there were The Boot Camp, located in Antarctica, run by Fenrir Olgerison, one of Isaac’s old companions, which excelled in producing powerful physical fighters, and The Tower, an immense skyscraper in New York that mostly trained magic users.

  And finally, Australia had its Crucible. The various critters that had given the single-nation continent a reputation for being ridiculously dangerous half a century before Derek’s birth might not be able to harm ninety-nine percent of humanity nowadays, but the teaching institution surpassed that ancient reputation in every respect. If you wanted to “toughen up,” that was where you wanted to go.

  Actually, there was also the academy on Olympus Mons, on Mars, but that was just an extension of Isaac’s school, with all the same issues as the main campus in Germany.

  As for where to go, it was a question Derek had answered for himself long ago.

  Antarctica and New York were too specialized, Australia was for insane people, and he really had to go to one of the best schools, didn’t he? Or rather, he wanted to, and he had earned entry to them on his own merit (discounting the family academy, that was, he probably couldn’t fail out of there even if he tried).

  And unless something really jumped out at him, limiting himself to the best ones was likely the best policy.

  Well, Isaac would have probably gone to the Crucible, based on what Derek knew, but that was Isaac. No even remotely normal person would have been able to hold off the world’s first [Raid Boss] for several minutes, beat it within an inch of its life, and, most importantly, survive.

  As much as Derek wanted to think he was that good, that determined, his brother was a product of a different time. One that had produced hard people, who’d climbed to Level 200 by the millions. There was a reason why there were fewer new S-Rankers with each generation despite humanity’s population ceaselessly growing.

  So, go to Seoul or the “family business.” I mean, the answer was obvious, wasn’t it?

  Going local would have been easy, simple, uncomplicated … and would have utterly robbed him of a fair shot at growth. By and large, the Thomas weren’t a family that threw around their influence overly much, a tradition started by Isaac himself, but that didn’t mean Derek didn’t have it, or that the teachers wouldn’t be aware of it.

  Either the teachers would give him way too much slack, which would make it too easy to grow, or they’d go the opposite way, and throw up ridiculous roadblocks that would fuck with his advancement.

  Easier to just move to another continent than to try to navigate that.

  It wasn’t as though the language would be a problem. He was fluent in Korean. As well as French, Spanish, English, Mandarin, and, of course, German.

  Derek might not have the [Omniglot] [Skill] yet, which could only be bought from Level 100 onwards, but modern schools really were effective at teaching. In fact, they could have been even more efficient if it hadn’t been for a bunch of stuffy bureaucrats deciding to limit the number and strength of [Skills] that could be used for fear of damaging the children’s ability to earn naturally.

  Even so, any ten-year-old nowadays would be at least on par with a pre-[System] high school graduate who’d paid attention, and any time past that up until one’s own [System] activation was spent learning whatever was interesting and even remotely useful.

  Point was, Derek was fluent in Korean, had a solid grounding on all standards field of study, including history, mathematics, literature, and multiple STEM fields … within the scope of a standard school curriculum. It was hard not to feel like he knew everything he needed on those topics, but intellectually, he was also fully aware of a little something called the Dunning-Kruger effect. Quite literally, he didn’t know enough to know what he didn’t know.

  “I’m going to Seoul,” he finally announced, just in time to meet Mom and Dad as they came out of the kitchen, carrying heaping plates of food. Steak and potatoes, this time.