The first 'block' of classes followed much the same theme as the first three. They took turns clearing them out, John on his own, then Doug, Chester, Jade, and Lily as one group, then Daniel, Marius, and Farah the third. John had been tempted to deny the latter trio the chance to take part, but decided against it. No point antagonising them when their alliance was already a shaky one. And besides, his Aura was going up rapidly, seeming to default to 1000 as the new minimum, and he was working under the assumption that it was because there were some new people here for him to impress.

His Burning Blood Clone saw the waves of monsters passing through about five minutes after they entered the portal, and he had to admit seeing the giant columns of monsters up close, even through slightly blurred vision, was a harrowing experience. None of the blues individually would give him trouble, but there were thousands of them in the wide columns, tumbling and climbing over each other in their haste, barely leaving the slightest gap anything could squeeze through.

On a whim, he had his clone attempt to fight, but its only offensive ability was Heat Vision, and it got torn apart after only taking a few monsters with it. The last thing he saw through its blurry eyes was the mandibles of a giant centipede closing around its face, dozens of other insects swarming around it, and then the connection was gone. He could only be thankful the clone felt no pain.

Returning to only one perspective wasn't as disorienting as splitting his consciousness into two, but it wasn't pleasant, either. It caused a hitch in his step and a brief wave of vertigo that had him worried he'd spew up the meal he'd stuffed down before they'd set out for Watford, but it passed quickly.

More worryingly, the red bar in one corner of his vision remained halved, though it was ever so slowly ticking back up—apparently, letting his clone be destroyed meant that his blood didn't come back to him, or at least it wasn't reabsorbed immediately. That was pretty fucking unnerving. He hadn't felt any adverse effects from having what was implied to be half his blood siphoned away, but he definitely didn't want to risk that bar hitting zero.

Regardless, no one noticed his brief bout of nausea, and so he kept the situation to himself. He felt comfortable in assuming the monster waves would have moved on after killing the only prey in sight, since a small army of giant insects didn't come rushing through the blue portal at the far end of the school corridor. Revealing that fact might have tempted Daniel's trio to leave, and he wanted to keep them around for the Aura gains.

From there on, he leaned heavily into badassery during his turns in the classes. He didn't show everything he had, but he made a point of flexing how easy it was for him to clear out the monstrous students, rotating between doing it as fast as possible and brutally as possible.

Ultimate Shot annihilated any challengers with its wide variety of effects. He got a bit flashy with it, going for no-look shots, leaping trick-shots with spins and flourishes, and even silly stuff such as firing from the hip like a gunslinger. The classrooms ended up looking a bit messy, covered in ice and burning trees.

+2000 Aura

Other times, he relied on Aurora Blade, rushing in close with Accelerate to slice-and-dice and flash-freeze his enemies. He got stylish with it there, too, spinning and flipping around like a ninja, lunging back and forth with elaborate slashes with Duellist's help.

+2000 Aura

Adamant Defence proved impervious to anything that managed to land a hit, almost entirely allowed by him, and retaliated with bolts of crackling lightning that went on to punish anything else in the vicinity that tried its luck.

"Having fun?" Doug asked him after one particularly amusing (at least to John) display where he never removed his hands from his pockets, leaning casually against the wall behind the lectern with a bored expression, even throwing in a yawn for good measure.

John just smirked in reply, making sure he was stood at an angle where Daniel, Marius, and Farah could see it.

+1000 Aura

In the process of building up more and more Aura, he confirmed, to his satisfaction, that he could functionally set himself quests. When he declared that he would clear a class in less than five seconds and then did so, he got a noticeably higher Aura reward (4000) than when he didn't say anything of the sort. He leaned into that, too, discovering he could be fairly loose with his wording as long as it was setting a challenge for himself—or, perhaps more accurately, boasting like a cocky douchebag.

"I'm going to defeat this class with only my fists," he said nonchalantly as he strode into Paranormal Education in 22-B.

"For this one, I'm only using my scythe, no Spells or Skills," he stated casually as he booted down the door of 17-A for Forbidden Alchemy, twirling the scythe in question like it was a parade baton and not a deadly weapon longer than he was tall.

"None of the insects in this class will manage to touch me," he announced with utter relaxation as he made his way to the lectern at the front of 25-A, with 'Cannibalistic Cooking' written on the chalk board behind him.

It worked a charm. He found his Aura soaring into numbers that would have been dizzying a few days ago. The new possibilities opening up his menu with this many points to spend made it hard to focus on what the others were doing during their turns in class.

He vaguely registered that Doug, Lily, Jade, and Chester seemed to be trying out team manoeuvres, working on synergising their attacks and defence in a relatively controlled setting, while Daniel, Marius, and Farah didn't really show anything different to what they had in their first outing, aside from Daniel moving to inspect the monster corpses as they rapidly rotted away. Which he understood. This little alliance was shaky at best, and Watford's death game would have taught them not to trust too freely.

Those thoughts were distant, though. Most of John's mental processing power, boosted by Mind, was devoted to the Aura menu—it was hard for his mind not to wander, when he was faced with a situation where he felt so little actual threat. Ironically, the ever-rising points were presenting him with something of a problem: he was spoiled for choice.

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10k, 20k, 30k, 40k, it just kept rising with every room, and, frankly, he was in a situation where there wasn't really an immediate crisis in front of him to deal with. Slaughtering the classes were as easy as having to attend a Year 1 Maths test, and probably less anxiety-inducing. With no rush pushing him to make a decision, and no challenge to design a new Spell around, specifically, he found himself vacillating over how to spend his points, a bit.

Saving them indefinitely didn't even cross his mind.

That wasn't to say he did nothing. But even after pimping up his Burning Blood Clone with Ice Breath and Wind Shear—because he used them so little at this point he forgot he even had them—turning the clone into Sanguine Clone at Level 6, plus upgrading Soul Vision and Mana Sense to Level 3, plus all his most useful Skills like Accelerate, Flash Step, and Air Step to Level 5, which altogether cost a hell of a lot of Aura…

… even after all that, he still had 28,000 Aura to work with after a dozen or so classes 'taught'.

That much Aura put alternative possibilities on the table. Namely:

Unlock Armoury Menu: 20,000 Aura

Unlock Crafting Menu: 25,000 Aura

Unlock Market Menu: 50,000 Aura

Unlock Alchemy Menu: 60,000 Aura

Unlock Enchanting Menu: 75,000 Aura

Unlock Portal World Menu: 100,000 Aura

The way he saw it, he had the choice between Armour or Crafting… for now. There was nothing saying he couldn't keep farming as he had been doing in this portal and go for Market, Alchemy, Enchanting, or even Portal World. He even saw a possibility where he could unlock all of them by the time they were done here, if he really, really dedicated himself to farming Aura in each class. The thought was tantalising.

That was the problem here, of course. It was probably a better idea to just go for one of the lower menus now, or even spend Aura on upgrades and worry about menus later, rather than getting ahead of himself and thinking about spending over 100,000 Aura. But he couldn't help himself, trapped in the indecision wrought by his overactive imagination trying to convince him he could aim higher, if he just saved up a bit.

He'd already spent some considerable time mulling over the possibilities presented by those menus, and it felt like that speculation could trap him in an infinite loop, if he wasn't careful.

They're all so fucking tempting… But the more expensive ones seem blatantly better.

Armoury with the weapon upgrades it might give him. The wonders he could build with Crafting. The awesome equipment he could buy in the Market, or the points he could gain from selling to it. The concoctions he could brew with Alchemy. The gear he could upgrade with Enchanting. And… whatever the fuck he'd be able to do with his own Portal World. The possibilities there were too wide to even wrap his head around.

When he'd first seen these options in his menus, they'd seemed like far off things. Unreachable, almost. If someone had told him a few days ago that it would only take him a matter of days to be seriously considering which one to buy… well, first he would've been alarmed that anyone knew about them, and then he wouldn't have believed them, because gaining even 25,000 Aura would've sounded mad back then. A herculean task.

As Doug and co took their turn in another classroom, he forced himself to tamp down on his building anticipation.

Put emotion aside. Work with what you've got in front of you. Right now, you can afford Armoury or Crafting. Are either of those immediately useful?

Having seen how the Outfits menu worked, John was expecting something similar: a place to store and repair weapons. The only non-Spell weapon he had right now was the scythe, unless he counted the shells he got from the turtle monsters back in the bus depot—he wasn't sure the menu would, was the thing.

Crafting, on the other hand, seemed like something he could mess around with more. He had so much crap in his Inventory, over 100kg of random shit he'd looted from the various houses and shops and whatever they'd passed through since he'd unlocked the menus. There was food, but also kitchenware like cutlery, crockery, pots, pans, cooking utensils, along with toiletries, sleeping bags, foldable chairs, bags of coal, and so on. He was a walking supply chest.

Presumably, it would let him mentally piece this random rubbish together, kind of like how his Combine Spell worked, requiring no manual labour or fiddling around and instead letting him shortcut to the end product despite his lack of knowledge or technical skills. It was just a question of whether that would mean nonsensical amalgamations MacGyver-ed together through the power of system fiat, or if stuff would have to be viable mundane items a man could realistically put together without supernatural input. The latter sounded like it'd be a massive waste.

I'd only have to save 18,000 for the Market, the thought crept back in, despite his efforts to focus himself on what was actually available, just like it had the last five times he'd tried to be more objective. It was closely followed by: You don't have to unlock a menu right now. You don't have to unlock anything right now. You're comfortable. The situation is under control, no crisis. You can breeze through this and see how many points you come out the other end with.

In the end, his distraction cost him. Outside of his turns in the classroom, he was off in his own little world, delving through menus and theorising, letting his body move around on autopilot. He'd been relying on the others to tell him what class was next, and it cost him. Somehow, he didn't see it coming.

When Daniel told him 27-B, he thought nothing of it. The man hadn't led him astray so far, and that lulled him into a false sense of security.

He walked casually into the class like he usually did, this time with a declaration that his clone would defeat all the monsters and his real body wouldn't lift a finger. When he reached the lectern, though, the door stayed open. None of the monsters moved. They all stared at him silently, transporting him back to some horrifying memories of standing at the front of a class not too dissimilar to this one. He could hear the echoes of laughter.

It was only when he heard Jade shout, "Hey!" followed by footsteps charging down the corridor, back towards the portal, that he began to understand what was happening, his brain kicking into gear to assemble the pieces of the puzzle.

When a booming voice rumbled through the school, mighty enough to rattle the windows and shake the ground, the final piece fell into place, and he winced.

"TRUANTS?! IN MY SCHOOL?! THE AUDACITY!"

John prepared himself for a fight.

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