The man in the black armour invited the students to gather together in a small group at the end of the long table. When the students had done so and quieted down, he adjusted his glasses slightly, before leaning back into his chair a bit.

  Above the man was a torch with a black flame — pitch black. It looked like it wasn’t supposed to even be a fire. The mans rugged black armour continued to grab the attention of the students, as the blue lines going across it seemingly pulsated.

  “Alright, let’s now start with the introductions,” The man said, before standing up from his seat. Immediately, following his lead, all the other individuals who were sitting around the table stood up, turning to look at the students or simply throwing their gazes over at them. Then, the man in the rugged armour cleared his throat a bit with a cough, before smiling and placing his right hand onto his chest, while moving his left behind him. “I am Oscar von Gradsil — The Strongest Dragon Knight in the kingdom.”

  When he introduced himself, some of the students began whispering amongst themselves. Dragon Knight? Was it something rare? I don’t know – but it sounds impressive! Maybe the black armour is reminiscent of a dragon? That would make sense! — These were just some of the quiet gossip that spread across the students. While some gossiped, others remained silent and the four students that had stood up for Jack simply looked a bit nervous.

  “You’ve already one of my treasured friends, Alicia, when she summoned you here. In our kingdom, she’s the strongest Saintess.” The man explained, turning the attention from him over to Alicia, who was standing there proudly, while having a face that was an obvious attempt at appearing humble. She looked at Oscar with a gentle expression. “My, Oscar, there is no need to needlessly praise me～”

  Despite her tone and expression appearing to be that of a humble and pure maiden, who could do no harm – the students had already seen that it was fake, after the entire incident with Jack and her blatantly threatening them if they said anything about what had happened in that hall. However, despite recognising that Alicias ‘pure’ maiden display right now was most definitely a farce, all of them remained silent. Oscar then turned his attention over to Andrius.

  “And you also seem to have already met Andrius – our kingdom's strongest Tamer.” The Dragon Knight reintroduced Andrius. The man looked at Oscar with a genuine smile, before letting loose a laugh. “Should have seen their faces when I approached. They looked like rookies who had just encountered their first Great Bear.” Oscar smiled at Andrius’ light hearted remark, before looking at the students again.

  Some of the students eyed Oscar with both — fright and hate.

  It seemed like because of the entire incident in the hall and Alicia saying that the ‘Tamer’ class wasn’t helpful in the fight they were summoned here to help with, had created an impression in the students.

  Oscar cleared his throat again, placing his arms behind his back. “In this hall, around the table are the Great Heroes of the living creatures.” Oscar announced. Then, the dimly lit torches suddenly intensified in strength, before igniting giant chandeliers above them all. The chandeliers lit up the entire room, making it easy to see all of the individuals standing around the table.

  Upon seeing them, the students froze up a bit.

  Every individual around the table — looked like they meant business. All of them had this strong, intimidating presence to them, as well as this overwhelming and almost suffocating aura leaking off of them.

  Gossip then broke out again.

  Great Heroes? What does that mean? Are they similar to celebrities? I think it’s more like they’re like high ranking politicians…

  Aihara looked slightly nervous at first, however after examining the individuals she saw, she eased up a bit. Despite their scary and frankly intimidating auras – the individuals themselves didn’t look like bad people — and Oscar had called them all ‘Great Heroes’ of the living, so they most likely acted as guardians.

  “For the longest time, we’ve been the only hope for all of the living beings of this world in the war against the Revenant Monarch and his army of the dead. However, recently, his forces have increased in strength and managed to take over the border Kingdom of Luria. Since we’re unable to push back the army on our own any longer, we were forced to resort to a spell that would allow us to summon individuals from another world, in order to train them and have them fight by our side.”

  Oscar began his explanation, 3D map of the entire world on the long table as he did. The map showcased the entire world — with one side, being green and lush; The Living Side.

  And the other side, one closer to Oscar, was grey and gloom – with a grim appearance; The Territories destroyed and taken over by the Revenant Monarch. At the center of the map, was a large, round structure, whose walls sprawled up high, inside them, a temple; The Great Labyrinth.

  The most dangerous and the largest dungeon in the world. A territory that was unable to be conquered by either the living or the dead.

  The Students mostly looked at the map in disbelief and with amazement. Even Aihara and her three companions couldn’t help but marvel at how incredible the world looked from the map.

  “This is a showcase of how the world looks like right now – of course, it’s not a full representation, but it’s as much as we can show you.” Oscar explained. “Feel free to take a closer look.”

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  The Students pushed one another aside, just trying to look a bit more closely at the amazing map. Even though Oscar said it wasn’t the full detailed version of it, the map was incredibly detailed. It felt like if they placed their fingers on it, they’d be able to feel the texture of the ground and the terrain of the world.

  After they finished gawking at the map, Kida stepped forward, with a slight nervous yet serious expression. “Why us though? Why couldn’t you just find people from this world to train?”

  “A great question!” Oscar said, his enthusiasm great and smile wide. It was as if he had been waiting for at least one of the students to ask this exact question. “It’s simple. Because training people of this world would take too long. We are limited in ways that prevent us from getting as powerful as we possibly could – that’s why the ‘Hero’ system was created.”

  “Hero System?” Kida asked, tilting his head to the side. Oscar kept a wide smile, placing his arms behind his back. “The windows that Alicia taught you to open when you arrived in this world.”

  Kida looked a bit surprised at first, however then his expression changed to one that was saying ‘I should have expected’. Oscar then adjusted his glasses slightly, looking down at the map, which dematerialised and formed into an imitation of the system window we could access.

  “The Hero System was developed as a way to allow for individuals to gain strength without limits. This was achieved by converting the souls of the monsters an individual would kill into what we call ‘EXP’ – or ‘Essence Xi Points’. These are special points that allow individuals to grow stronger through ‘levelling up’.” As Oscar explained the system to the students, more and more they began to understand how it functioned and why it was developed.

  The ‘Hero System’ was made to allow individuals to grow stronger faster. While they still would require training – the training in this case could occur faster, as the individuals would be able to gain more power and skill the more they levelled up. It also added the benefit of removing the ‘headache’ – As Oscar had called it – of trying to assign a ‘class’ to an individual by going through an assessment. Instead, this system would automatically assign the best suited class to the individual, based on their soul and personality.

  However, there was a flaw with the system.

  “The ‘Hero System’ can only be used by individuals with something called a ‘spark’ inside them.” Oscar's tone turned a bit more gloomy. The students looked confused for a bit, before one of them spoke up. “E-Excuse me, what exactly is a ‘spark’?”

  “A Spark - as we call it - is an anomaly.” Oscar began, before making the imitation of the system window disappear with a wave of his fingers, before forming it into a small flame. “As I said before, the people of this world mostly have limits – which prevent them from becoming stronger at a certain point. However, there is an exception to this rule — people with a ‘spark’. ‘Spark’ can be thought of as essentially the absence of the ‘limiting factor’. Someone who has a ‘spark’ doesn’t have a limit to how strong they can become - essentially making it so that they can grow infinitely stronger.”

  Kida looked sketched out. Based on the explanation given by Oscar, it seemed perfectly reasonable that if this ‘spark’ existed, then surely, they could have just found people in this world with it?

  Right when Kida was about to ask about it, Oscar lifted his hand up – as if having read his mind. “Before you ask — ‘Spark’ is extraordinarily rare to come by. In fact, in this world, the only individuals who have had a spark are basically only the people present in this room. Right now in this world, aside from us the Great Heroes and you, visitors from another world, there is no one else with a ‘spark’.”

  That answered that question. Kida stepped back to the side of Aihana, who eyed him with slight admiration. She was a bit impressed by Kidas brave decision to stand up and ask so many questions — especially during the explanation that Oscar was giving.

  Another student – a tall male with good looks and short, blonde hair - the dream boy of the class, Kagawa Raito spoke up. In the class, Raito was known for his good looks and quiet nature and was extremely popular in the school as ‘Mr.Perfect’. He was good at everything he had ever tried.

  “So we were summoned because we have this ‘spark’?” Oscar nodded.

  “Indeed. It seems like no matter what, otherworlders always have a spark in them. This makes you have a huge advantage in this world – especially when the spark is supplied together with the Hero System.” Oscar then went silent.

  The Students exchanged gazes, almost as if the reality of their situation and what they now were going to be was finally setting in. So, we’re amazing? Sounds like it… That means we’re special right? It has to!

  Aihara eyed the others, while Iwamoto sighed lightly. “Narcissists…”

  Oscar then clapped his hands, shutting up the students and bringing their attention back onto him. “Now then,” Oscar placed his arms behind his back once more, smiling. “It’s time for us to finish up here. Now, depending on your class, you all will be assigned to one of us – to be trained to fight against the Revenant Monarchs forces.”

  The students looked both excited and nervous. It seemed like it was time for them to be taken by the Great Heroes as their ‘disciples’. Oscar then picked up a pile of papers, before throwing them into the air. The pages scattered, before flying into the hands of each of the heroes. On the pages, were the students that matched the specific heroes class.

  “My friends, go ahead and call your students together now.”

  The others didn't say anything to Oscar and simply walked away from the table, before beginning to call out names one by one, calling the students to them. The only heroes that remained at the table were Oscar and Andrius — Andrius having not gotten a page. Oscar looked at Andrius confused.

  “That’s strange…” He then turned to face Alicia. “Alicia, was there not a ‘Tamer’ summoned among the other worlders?”

  The Saintess threw a glance back at Oscar, smiling lightly before turning and looking a bit more remorseful. “Oh, I forgot to mention — unfortunately, there wasn’t anyone with the tamer class summoned.” Oscar looked surprised.

  “That’s… surprising. There should have been at least one individual per class…” The Dragon Knight looked at Andrius, sighing. “My apologies Andrius, but it seems you won’t be able to train anyone.” The large man grinned, laughing lightheartedly.

  “It’s okay Oscar! I just got severely unlucky that there wasn’t a disciple summoned for me. Oh well, it looks like I’ll just train harder to be even stronger for our next confrontation with the Revenant Monarchs army.” Andrius laughed again. Aihara, Kida, Iwamoto and Sasaki looked nervously over at Andrius, before Aihara threw a glance over at Alicia, who looked at Andrius with a sinister grin.

  The young girl could only guess what the ‘Saintess’ was thinking at this time. She most likely was mocking the man, since the only one with the Tamer class – Jack – she called useless and sent away to an unknown location.

  “I wonder if he’s alright…”