Explain this."
When Professor Chen tossed my biology answer sheet across his desk — a small cheat note slipped neatly into the middle — I didn't need him to explain anything. I already knew exactly what had happened.
I had been sabotaged.
"Um..."
The problem was figuring out how to say that to him. Professor Chen wasn't the type to entertain cheap coincidences. If anything, the man had spent the better half of his teaching career convinced he had students completely figured out. And I was pretty sure I'd been sitting near the top of his blacklist since day one.
"You know this is malpractice, right?" He said it like a reminder, but it landed more like a verdict. "And you are aware that there are consequences for your actions."
"I understand, Professor," I replied, exhaling slowly. "I'll take full responsibility for this."
"You better."
Full responsibility. Which, in my head, meant going directly to the person who actually did it.
Tyler Wilson. Dickhead. The cheapest bully-boss Silvic High had ever produced.
During the test, he'd tried distracting me first — subtle, but obvious enough that I caught on quickly when he passed a folded note to one of his handymen, the one sitting directly beside me. The smart move, the survival move, was to mind my business. That single skill had carried me through years of this school. Look away. Stay invisible. Let it pass.
Except this time, minding my business was the biggest mistake I'd made.
If I'd known he was planning to frame me, I would have grabbed that handyman by the arm the second the note changed hands. Would have made a scene. Would have made it impossible to pin anything on me.
Well. Too late for that.
But it wasn't too late to do something about it now. Honestly, I was tired. Tired of this whole system. The social hierarchy that Silvic High ran on like it was something to be proud of. High tiers→ Middle tiers→ Low tiers.
A clean little pyramid of power and oppression, with The Order sitting right at the top — four students who'd turned institutional authority into a personal empire. The Jack. The Ace. The Queen. And above all of them, the King.
And beneath all of them — beneath everyone, technically — was me.
Ren Mora. The weakest student in Silvic High. I didn't just rank at the bottom of the low tier. I'd gone further than that. They'd discovered I was weaker than any ranked student — just a regular guy with no abilities, no rank, no place in the system at all. I'd broken the record nobody wanted to break.
It didn't take long after that to become popular in the worst possible way. Students despised me. Used me as a punching bag whenever the opportunity presented itself. Teachers resented me for the simple reason that my existence wasn't exactly doing the school's reputation any favours.
And me? I survived by keeping my head down and counting the days.
Graduation was only a few months away. I could absorb the hits. I could outlast the bullies. I just needed to finish.
At least, that used to be the plan.
Then Tyler, in his reckless, bored hunt for entertainment, slipped a cheat note into my answer slip. Malpractice wasn't just a slap on the wrist at Silvic High. Taken seriously — and Professor Chen always took things seriously — it could mean suspension. And that man had never once shown me anything resembling a soft spot.
***
Class A-3 was noisy when I walked in. It was always noisy. By now I should have been completely numb to it, but somehow the pointlessness of whatever they were shouting about still managed to grate on me.
I scanned the room once.
There he was. Tyler, sitting exactly where he always sat — back of the class, leaning back like he owned the square footage. Like some final-boss genius who'd decided that actually studying was beneath him. Most days I'd clock him sleeping, head down like a man finishing a double shift. Other times he'd just be fixing his hair or checking his reflection in the small mirror he always carried, apparently very invested in making sure he still looked like himself.
Today, his head was resting on the desk, eyes blank, staring at nothing in particular.
Until he saw me coming.
That look — the bored vacancy — shifted immediately. Replaced by something sharper. Interest, maybe. Or amusement. Like I'd just given him something to do.
I stopped in front of him.
"Get up," I said. "You need to explain to Professor Chen that you planted that cheat note in my answer sheet."
"What?" He blinked at me, expression shifting into something that almost looked like genuine confusion. "I don't know what you're talking about."
"Hey, cripple." Cassian — one of Tyler's crew — scraped his chair back and stood, the sound cutting through the surrounding noise. "What do you think you're doing?"
I didn't look at him. My eyes stayed on Tyler.
"Get up," I said again. "I know you did this. Just take responsibility, and I'll let it go. Same as always."
"Hey—"
Cassian grabbed my right shoulder.
I don't entirely know where the reflex came from. But my hand found his arm, gripped it, and sent him stumbling sideways into a locker with more force than I expected.
He caught himself — barely — his boys grabbing him before he went all the way down. And for a second, the entire room went quiet.
I'd hit a nerve.
"You son of a bitch—"
He came at me fast, throwing punches without spacing them out. The first one cracked into my nose — hot, sharp, painful in a way that made my eyes water instantly. The second caught my cheekbone before I'd finished processing the first.
I didn't wait for a third. I ducked, wrapped both arms around his torso, and drove him hard into the nearest locker.
The sound it made was satisfying.
"Argh—"
Hearing him groan lit something up in me. I grabbed his collar, pulled back, and hit him in the nose with everything I had left in my fist. It wasn't a powerful punch — I knew that — but it landed, and that was something. I'd never actually thrown a punch at anyone in this school before.
This is actually kind of refreshing.
Then something slammed into my side and dropped me.
The kick hit like a wall had fallen on me — way harder than I expected, way harder than it had any right to be. Pain flooded through my ribs and I hit the floor and just... stayed there. My body wasn't moving the way I was asking it to.
"That it?" Tyler's voice came from somewhere above me. He was still seated on his desk, watching with that easy smile. "All that behind the sudden confidence?"
I didn't answer.
"Alright, fine." He spread his hands. "You want me to admit I put that cheat note in your answer sheet? Yeah. That was me." The smirk widened. "But what are you actually going to do about it? You're a cripple."
He slid off the desk and walked over, standing above me with that expression — half entertained, half contemptuous.
"And cripples," he said, "don't deserve to exist."
His boot connected with my stomach. The exact spot I'd just been kicked.
Then again. And again.
Each hit was accompanied by a curse, his expression darkening with each one, something vicious replacing the amusement entirely. Like he'd stopped performing and started meaning it.
"Grab him."
Cassian and someone else hoisted me off the floor by both arms, holding me upright while my legs barely cooperated.
Tyler rolled his right fist, and the skin across his knuckles and hand hardened — turned a solid brown, rough-textured, like compacted brick. That was his ability. I still didn't know the technical name for it, but every time he activated it he looked like a construction worker showing off. It wasn't subtle.
The punch came.
I didn't feel the pain exactly. I just felt the world switch off.
Three seconds, maybe. Maybe longer. I was somewhere else — whatever somewhere else means when you're unconscious in a classroom. My vision filled with something strange. A blue field of light, flickering and glitching like a display that hadn't been calibrated properly.
A system.
Which didn't make sense. Systems only appeared under one condition — a second chance. A reset point. And those only happened when—
Wait. I died?
I actually died from a single punch?
[Transmigration Proceeding: Scanning For A New World… (90%)]
Okay. Sure. If I'm picking, I'd prefer a world without any kind of hierarchy. Or one where I'm the strongest from the start. A harem world, honestly, wouldn't be the worst outcome either.
[Error: Transmigration Failed. Returning Back To Former Course]
Yeah. I'm cooked.
***
Extra
Name: Tyler Wilson
Ability: Hardening
Rank: C (Middle Tier)
Fortitude: 4.0
Tier: Middle Tier