Romance. Harem. Power fantasy.
The labels meant nothing to her. Cordelia wasn't a reader, she didn't have the patience for ink and paper when she could read a person's jugular or the twitch of a trigger finger instead.
To her, words were fluff.
"What am I even supposed to do here?" she muttered, the silence of the room mocking her.
For the first time in two lives, the weight of the unknown felt heavier than a blade.
Stripped of her title, her weapons, and her world, she was adrift.
Her entire existence had been a binary loop: Liquidate the target. Provide for her brother. Kill. Earn. Repeat.
Without a contract to fulfill or a mouth to feed, Cordelia was more than just a useless character in a webnovel. She was a weapon with no one left to pull the trigger.
╔════════════════════╗
SYSTEM MISSION
╚════════════════════╝
Mission: Teach your assigned section
Objective: Complete first day.
Difficulty: 4/5
Reward: EXP +150
Time Limit: School period
[Accept Mission?]
╚════════════════════╝
Her finger ghosted over the [DECLINE] button. The glowing screen shattered into pixels and vanished.
"I'm resigning," she muttered to the empty room. "Effective immediately."
A classroom was a battlefield she had no interest in conquering, especially not in a body this fragile.
She could barely lift a heavy book, let alone a room full of rowdy students.
Besides, who did this floating box think it was, bossing her around like a common mercenary?
As she turned back toward the bed, a high-pitched wail tore through the air.
"NOOOOO! YOU CAN'T!"
"What in the—?!" Cordelia spun around.
Hovering there was a girl, petite, translucent, and glowing with the same light as the system window.
She stood barely five feet tall, with straight, ink-black hair and blunt bangs. Curiously, while she appeared to be wearing nothing at all, her details were censored by a convenient, pixelated blur.
"Don't you care about EXP? Or survival? Or literally anything?!" the specter shrieked.
"No," Cordelia, replied flatly. "Wait, should I care?"
It was official: she was tragically illiterate when it came to the tropes of modern fiction.
"Don't you want anything?!"
"Do I want anything...?"
She didn't want for much and she certainly didn't want to spend her days babysitting a classroom of entitled brats. But then, a dormant memory flared to life, widening her eyes.
***
"Big sis, when are you actually going to live a normal life?"
"What are you talking about?" she'd snorted, cleaning the grime off a tactical knife. "Normal life?"
They were holed up in another nameless, cramped apartment. Their lives were a series of packed suitcases and midnight departures, the price of her blood-stained career.
"Yeah," her brother said, leaning against the peeling wallpaper. He looked tired. "I just wish you could... actually live, you know?"
***
Live, huh?
The word tasted foreign.
She had been an instrument of death for so long she'd forgotten that life could be anything other than a countdown to the next hit.
If this world was a "normal" one, maybe this was the one contract she couldn't afford to fail.
Suddenly, a roar of activity erupted outside.
Lithia strode to the window and threw the shutters wide.
A gust of wind caught her as she winced, squinting as the morning sun hammered against the horizon, but as her vision cleared, her breath stopped.
Massive, six-winged avian beasts spiraled through the clouds, their feathers lighting up like liquid gold.
In the streets, creatures that looked like a cross between a stag and a lion pulled ornate, floating carriages, their hooves sparking with pale blue mana as they trotted.
Crowds of people were surging like a river toward the north.
"Where is everyone going...?" she muttered, her assassin instincts tracing the flow of the crowd.
"Toward West Trinity Academy," the specter said. "Your place of employment. The premier Magic Academy of the Zideus Continent."
"...Normal life, huh?"
This was definitely far from normal.