"Jaden Smith — Class: Beast Tamer. Rank: Rare!"
The teacher in charge of the Awakening Ceremony announced the result across the grand hall.
For a brief moment, the crowd looked surprised, but when they saw who had awakened this class, they fell silent. Then they began to ridicule him.
"Beast Tamer?"
"Rare… but useless."
"What a waste."
Jaden looked blankly at the Awakening platform, staring at the glowing words above the altar as they slowly faded.
Why…?
He had received a Rare class — something most people could only dream of. Yet it wasn't something to celebrate in his situation.
"Why a Beast Tamer…?" he muttered under his breath. "I finally get a rare class, and it has to be this… In my situation, how am I supposed to afford and raise beasts?"
Beast Tamers required enormous wealth. Powerful beasts cost millions of gold coins. Contracts required rare materials. Training demanded resources that only rich families could afford.
Jaden came from a middle-class family. They were not that wealthy.
"What about my cheat, by the way?" Jaden paused for a second, hoping something would happen at the altar.
But nothing happened.
"Go on. Let the next student come," the teacher said.
Jaden nodded and turned away from the altar.
Jaden is special among everyone here. From the moment he was born into this world, he was born with memories of his previous life. The life he had on a planet named Earth. Because of him being an adult in child's body he was different from others.
Others begun to see him as an prodigy when it was just a normal thing for an adult in child's body.
For the first few months, he tried calling out all possible cheat names he could remember from the novels he had read in his past life. Sadly, nothing happened.
"So I'm not getting any standard cheat that all transmigrators receive, huh?"
"I was waiting for this my whole life," Jaden thought as he received his Awakening certificate.
When he was first born into this life, he thought it was just another modern technological world, but that assumption was overturned the next second when his parents used magic. Soon, he learned how people awakened their classes at the Age of Awakening and then ventured into dungeons and rifts to grow stronger.
He trained every day so that he could live a fulfilling life, yet… fate decided otherwise.
He sighed as he walked down the awakening stage.
As he walked back toward his seat, the homeroom teacher approached him.
"Don't worry, Jaden. The academy will sponsor you with one hundred thousand gold coins. If you show results, you may receive more support."
Jaden simply nodded.
One hundred thousand gold coins.
To ordinary students, that was a fortune.
To a Beast Tamer…
It was nothing.
His class room Teacher Sophia watched him leave the stage and sighed softly. She understood the reality better than most.
The starting best-potential beasts alone started at one million gold coins. High-tier beasts were auctioned for even more.
And Beast Tamers had limited contract slots.
Spending one hundred thousand gold coins meant gambling everything on a single low-grade creature — a fatal risk that could destroy everything before it even began.
Jaden walked back to his seat with a helpless smile on his face.
"I guess I'll be falling behind you guys," he said lightly as he sat beside his best friend.
But all he received was silence.
The response he would normally get was no longer there. He looked at his friend, who stared back at him with a neutral expression.
"I'm sorry, Jaden," Max said after a moment. His voice sounded as if he were speaking to a stranger, not his best friend. "My family depends on me. I… I can't afford to help you."
Jaden looked at him carefully. Behind Max's neutral expression, he could clearly see the faint trace of disdain.
He looked at others and they didn't even bothered to acknowledge his presence now.
He simply nodded.
Sigh… To think the kind of cliché scene I used to read in novels would happen to me.
Though… this was somewhat expected.
He remembered clearly how they used to mock low-tier classes, especially non-combat ones.
"Imagine awakening as a Cook."
"Or a Blacksmith."
"Those people are doomed."
They had laughed back then.
Now the same judgment was directed at him.
Such was the reality of this world.
The world he now lived in was called Mystic World. It consisted of a single massive continent that made up forty percent of the planet. The rest was endless sea, filled with unknown dangers.
In Mystic World, every citizen awakened a class at the age of seventeen and became connected to a mysterious System — one that displayed their progress like an MMORPG game.
Combat classes ruled society.
Warriors, Mages, Assassins — they were treated like nobles.
Non-combat classes like Cooks, Tailors, and Scholars were rarely valued unless they were of higher grades, which was a one-in-a-thousand phenomenon, as most non-combat classes were only Uncommon grade at best.
And Beast Tamers… were also powerful and respected classes, but with a catch.
Without money, they were just liabilities.
From the row behind him, another classmate, Ryan, whispered loudly enough for him to hear.
"Rare class, huh? What a waste."
A girl who used to laugh at his jokes avoided eye contact entirely.
Another friend scratched his head awkwardly. "Maybe… maybe you can try supporting roles in a guild?"
The meaning was clear.
You're not worth being friends with any longer.
Jaden leaned back in his chair and ignored them too.
'Such cliche really exist' he thought amused inwardly.
Memories of his past life surfaced again — stories of protagonists abandoned, mocked, underestimated.
He had always thought those scenes were exaggerated.
"Anyway… let's at least check my status screen," he thought.
Ignoring the whispers around him, Jaden focused inward and silently opened his status window.
A translucent blue panel appeared before his eyes.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[ STATUS WINDOW ]
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Name: Jaden Smith
Age: 17
World: Mystic World
Class: Beast Tamer (Rare)
Level: 1
Experience: 0 / 100
HP: 220
MP: 180
Strength: 10
Agility: 12
Vitality: 11
Intelligence: 18
Contract Slots: 0 / 1
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Traits:
• Transcendent (SSS - ???)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Skills:
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
1. Taming (Lv. 1)
Allows the user to subdue and form a bond with a weakened or willing beast.
• Success Rate depends on Intelligence stat and beast resistance.
• Cooldown: 10 minutes on failure.
2. Contract Space (Lv. 1)
Creates a sub-dimensional storage space to house contracted beasts.
• Current Capacity: 1 Beast
• Beasts recover slowly while inside the space.
3. Beast Recovery (Lv. 1)
Gradually restores HP and stamina of contracted beasts.
• Recovery Speed scales with Intelligence and Vitality stat.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
"Everything is the same as I learned in theory… but what is this Trait?" Jaden muttered.
A thought surfaced in his mind.
Is this… my cheat?
He gulped and focused on the Trait, pressing it to expand the information.