"Trash! Know your place!"
The shout burst out like thunder.
Fifty students yelled together, their voices crashing into one another.
The voices rose together, fell together, and returned after a short pause. Four seconds. Shout. Four seconds. Shout.
The timing was so precise that it felt rehearsed.
Student #4 shouted along with them.
"Yeah! Know your place!"
But the scream didn't belong to him. Something else controlled his vocal cords, using them like a speaker system. He had no idea why he was shouting. He didn't even know who he was shouting at.
His body moved like a meat puppet, and somewhere far away, an invisible hand controlled the strings.
Fifty students formed a perfect circle. Same uniform. Same vacant expression. Same repetitive animation of fists pumping in the air.
At the center of it all, Lance Wind, the textbook definition of a 'Trash Young Master,' ground his polished leather heel into a crying boy's fingers.
"A commoner thinks he can breathe my air?"
"Yeah! Breathe his air!" The words escaped Student #4's mouth automatically.
"Trash!"
"Trash!"
His head bobbed up and down like a broken toy. The motion felt completely disconnected from his will, as if someone else was moving his neck for him.
Then something changed.
BEEP.
The sensation struck directly inside his head.
Calling it a sound would be wrong.
There was no direction to it. It did not come from the air or from any voice. It felt like a sharp vibration tearing through his thoughts.
This was the sensation of puppet strings snapping one by one in the back of his neck.
A strange pressure built up behind his eyes.
[SYSTEM WARNING!]
The words appeared clearly, occupying his awareness.
[Critical Logic Failure... Logic processors overheating.]
The chanting voices around him began to stretch, their rhythm breaking apart.
[Rebooting Consciousness...]
Student #4's entire body locked up.
His mouth hung open mid-jeer, a thin line of drool pooling at the corner of his lip.
The student beside him kept screaming, his eyes glazed over with that terrifying, glassy stare that belonged to something not quite human.
"Go home, loser!"
Student #4 tried to force his jaw closed. The effort felt like trying to lift a car with his bare hands.
"Go h... guh?!"
The broken sound startled him.
Inside his head, unfamiliar information scrolled past at terrifying speed.
[Transferring data... 98%... 99%...]
Suddenly, a voice sliced through the scene like a blade cutting silk.
"Let him go."
Every head in the crowd turned in perfect synchronization. Student #4 felt invisible hands seize his neck muscles, forcing his gaze toward the entrance against his will.
Leo Crimson stepped into view, and the world itself seemed to bend around him. Light fell across his face at the perfect angle, as if the sun had repositioned itself just to highlight his jawline.
He looked like someone had taken every protagonist trope and compressed them into a single person. Red hair that defied the laws of gravity. Determined eyes that carried the weight of some tragic backstory.
Student #4 felt a strange pressure in his chest as music swelled faintly in his mind. Slow, heroic notes filled the air, heavy with meaning.
The crowd gasped on cue, their reactions perfectly timed.
"Who dat?!"
"It's the genius!!"
"Wow, so cool!"
Student #4's mouth tried to follow along with the script. The autopilot system fought for control, making his jaw jerk up and down like a malfunctioning machine.
"So... cool..."
"So... hero... ic..."
"Go save the poor ki... URGH!!"
Pain shot through his mouth. He'd bitten his tongue very hard. His tongue throbbed as a metallic taste spread across it.
His vision swam, but the pain grounded him in a way nothing else had.
[Model: Student_Male_04_Var2]
[Lore Injection: COMPLETE]
SNAP.
The static filling his head vanished in an instant. The blurriness clouding his vision cleared into terrifying 4K Ultra HD.
He could smell the heat radiating from crackling magic in the air. He could feel cold sweat sliding down his spine.
He could feel the cheap, itchy polyester of his academy uniform chafing against his neck.
He blinked, and for the first time in his existence, those eyelids felt like they belonged to him.
He was awake.
'Where is this place?'
'Who am I?'
He stared down at his hands. They were pale and generic, the hands of a complete nobody. No calluses marked them. No rings adorned them. No defining scars gave them character.
He looked at the crowd again.
They felt wrong now. Their cheers were loud, but their faces were hollow. Their eyes lacked focus, moving together like poorly synchronized puppets.
'Was I doing that too?'
'Was I just a robot five seconds ago?'
His gaze shifted to the center of the circle. Lance Wind stood there in all his blonde-haired, rich, stupid glory. D-Rank flames danced across his fingers, distorting the air around them.
A chill ran down Student #4's spine as recognition hit him.
He knew this person. Lance Wind. The Act 1 Villain. The experience point bag for the protagonist. The character whose sole purpose was getting his ass kicked so the hero could look cool.
He turned his head to the right. Leo Crimson. The Hero. The Protagonist.
Ice flooded Student #4's veins.
He recognized this scene. Those uniforms with their gold trim marking the elite class, the grey rags identifying scholarship students. That clock tower in the background, permanently frozen at 12:00.
Demon Hunter Chronicles.
The realization crashed over him like a wave. Demon Hunter Chronicles. The RPG. That stupid game that had taken over the world... well, not student #4's world, but that other place called Earth.
Millions and millions of players grinding levels, analyzing lore, spending their money on gacha pulls.
And he... he was...
Just an NPC in the Academy Arc.
No name attached to him. No personal goals driving him forward. Just texture. Just a warm body filling a seat so the classroom didn't look empty when players cranked their graphics settings to Ultra.
"Oh no."
The whisper barely escaped his lips, drowned out by the cheering mob.
The Academy Arc had been fun on a screen.
Sitting in front of a large monitor, snacks within reach, it was easy to enjoy. You fought demons, unlocked skills, flirted with characters, and skipped long conversations without guilt.
But living inside it was different.
Here, the academy was a meat grinder.
Terrorist attacks were not random events. They happened on fixed days.
Dungeon breaks appeared in the cafeteria almost every month.
Somewhere in Class 1-A, a hidden Demon King candidate was calmly attending lectures.
Tournaments were held regularly, and "accidents" happened so often that no one even whispered about them anymore.
Sometimes, demons would possess students on purpose, just to give Leo a reason to awaken a new ability.
But standing here now, Student #4 understood something very clearly.
This place was not a game.
It was a meat grinder.
'B-but who am I?'
The thought hit him suddenly, sharper than the fear.
'I must have a name. Everyone has a name.'
Student #4 checked his chest for a name tag. Nothing there.
His heart began to race.
His hands frantically patted down his pockets. No unique items. No letter from home. Just a bit of lint and a sleek black metal student ID card with blank spaces where information should be.
[Name: _______]
[Rank: F-]
The space where a name should be was empty.
Student #4 stared at it for a long time.
He was nobody.
No name.
No class.
No rank worth mentioning.
He wasn't just weak.
He was undefined.
Student #4.
That was all he was.
Cannon fodder.
The kind of character who died in a cutscene to show the villain was serious. The kind of death that didn't get music or dialogue. Just a scream, a flash, and then the story moved on.
'I don't even have a default name?'
'Am I really just Student_04?'
"Die, peasant!" Lance's scream cut through the air.
The script marched forward. Lance hurled a fireball.
Real fire. Screaming, burning death compressed into a sphere. The heat wave slammed into Student #4's face, singeing his eyelashes.
The ball of flame shot straight toward the undeniable protagonist.
Student #4's body locked up.
Part of him knew what was supposed to happen. He was supposed to watch. He was supposed to stand there and react later. His role was to gasp. To shout. To exist quietly in the background.
But another part of him screamed.
MOVE.
His heart pounded so hard it hurt.
WHOOSH.
Motion blurred across his vision.
Leo raised his sword casually, like this was nothing new. The rusty blade came down in a smooth arc.
Slash.
The rusty iron blade cut the fireball clean in half. Sparks rained down like fireworks, hissing and sizzling as they struck the cobblestone ground.
Leo stood there with his hair fluttering dramatically in the aftermath wind, looking impossibly cool.
"Stop it, Lance."
The crowd gasped in perfect unison.
"He cut through magic!"
"Is he a genius?"
"Don't you know? That's Leo Crimson! The next SSS ranker!"
"I heard he's already at D-Rank! Can you believe a first-year student is D-Rank already?!"
The student beside Student #4 pumped his fist in the air, spittle flying from his mouth. "So cool!"
Student #4 clamped his mouth shut. His jaw trembled with the effort of staying silent.
'Don't say it. Don't say the scripted line.'
He swallowed the auto-generated dialogue like a bitter pill forcing its way back up his throat.
Leo pointed his sword directly at Lance.
"You fight me, or you fight no one."
Lance's face turned beet red. "You... you scholarship charity case!"
While the Main Characters launched into their monologues, a conversation that would somehow last three full minutes despite them supposedly being in mortal combat, Student #4 looked around at the crowd.
Everyone else stood captivated. The girl to his left trembled with admiration. The guy to his right sweated with excitement.
They all looked real now. Their faces appeared unique instead of copy-pasted.
But they were trapped in the plot. They would watch the fight. They would pick sides. They would get blasted by stray magic attacks.
'I need to leave. Right now.'
He knew the lore. About what was about to happen right now...
In approximately two minutes, Professor Ironwood would arrive on scene and blast everyone with a 'Gale Force' spell to break up the fight.
A scripted event designed to demonstrate the power gap between students and teachers.
Anyone standing within ten meters would get thrown into a wall.
10 HP damage.
For Leo? A scratch. A minor inconvenience barely worth mentioning.
For Student #4?
He checked his internal status screen.
[HP: 15 / 15]
Ten points of damage represented two-thirds of his entire life bar. That meant broken bones. Internal bleeding. A week minimum in the infirmary, and the infirmary was run by a suspicious nurse who was weird by all standards!
'Nope. Absolutely not happening.'
He took a single step backward.
Nobody noticed. Every eye remained glued to the shiny Protagonist. The narrative gravity was pulling them all in like a black hole.
He took another step back.
Then he turned around.
He didn't run. Running draws aggro. Running looks suspicious. Running triggers the 'Chase' AI built into aggressive mobs.
He walked instead. Fast, but controlled. The "I really need to pee" walk. The "I left the stove on at home" walk.
He slipped out of the crowd's edge. He ducked into the cool shadow cast by the armory building, escaping from the oppressive heat of the fire magic.
He leaned his back against the cold brick wall and slid down until he hit the ground, one hand clutching his chest.
His heart hammered against his ribs like a caged bird desperately trying to escape. He gasped for air, suddenly realizing he hadn't taken a full breath in over a minute.
"I'm alive." The words came out as a whisper, his voice cracking. The sound felt foreign in his own ears. "I'm actually alive."
A blue window flickered into existence at the corner of his vision.
[System Error.]
[ID: Student #4]
[Status: Awake]
[Anomaly found! Anomaly found!]
[Attempting to patch...]
[Patch failed!]
[Code Blue: ACTIVATED]
Student #4 had no idea what the hell was happening, but suddenly his entire body felt heavy. This went beyond simple panic. Something else was flooding into him.
The sensation hit like a download bar completing in a single millisecond. Memories of a family he'd never had. Memories of a childhood he'd never lived.
[Name assigned!]
'A name?'
'For me?'
Student #4. The NPC who had somehow woken up. The character created solely to fill a seat and cheer in the background.
He watched the words form themselves in his mind's eye, letter by letter. His heart beat wildly against his chest, so hard he thought his ribs might crack. This was happening. This was really happening.
[Name: Kaizen Renji Asahina]