Transmigrated as an Extra: Awakening of The Ex‐Class'-Chapter 38 : Sense of Duty part 1

The journey was much smoother than I had anticipated. Nothing particularly interesting happened, and I was able to arrive safely at the NOVA facilities. During the journey, I didn’t exchange a word with anyone, which only marked the silence that surrounded me. Upon arrival, I went directly to the office of teacher Veronica Glass to report. She, as always, greeted me with a firm look, but the aura around her was very calm.

"I see you’re back. How was your trip?" Her voice, always direct, but without losing its softness, resonated throughout the office.

"Quite pleasant, actually. Nothing particularly exciting happened along the way," I replied, squeezing the backpack I was carrying and running a hand through my hair, still somewhat disheveled. I felt relaxed, but I knew that the weight of what was to come was already beginning to settle in my mind.

Veronica just nodded slowly, evaluating my behavior and the content of my words. His eyes, so deep that they didn’t let any detail escape.

— Well, I’m glad to hear it—he said leaning back in his chair, then he took a step forward, crossing his hands on the desk, and advised: "Don’t relax too much, tranquility is the preamble to the martyrdom that is to come" he said making a face of happiness.

His small, malevolent smile was somewhat tender. On the other hand, the meaning hidden in those words made my skin crawl. What kind of crazy ideas will occur to him for the next classes.

— Now, rest. Classes will start tomorrow first thing in the morning, remember in three weeks it will be dungeon exploration and it will be worth fifty percent of the academic credits. I have hopes for you, don’t disappoint me.

His words were simple, but loaded with a message that I couldn’t ignore. He was practically telling me that if someone failed, they would most likely be expelled.

— It’s okay, teacher. "Thank you for the warning," I replied, though I couldn’t help but feel a mix of emotions. I wanted to tell her what would happen in the test, but I was afraid that by doing so I would alert the demons and cause greater losses. In the end, it was something I had to resolve on my own.

Veronica looked at me, as if sensing something deep inside me. She leaned forward slightly and said:

"Remember, you are not alone and keep in mind that what you learn here is not just the competition. Sometimes, the hardest choices have nothing to do with weapons."

I felt a slight pang in my chest at her words, as if I had touched a nerve.

"I will keep that in mind, teacher," I said, bowing slightly. Then, I turned towards the door.

I wanted to go straight to my room and think more about it but I couldn’t do it. The pressure on my shoulders was much more complex. Without hesitation, I went straight to the training room, to practice some shooting.

The air there smelled of aged wood and iron, and the sound of echoing against empty walls resonated loudly.

On a small shelf were all kinds of weapons from swords, bows, and even modern weapons.

I picked up a pistol, adjusting the grip deftly, and focused on the targets that began to appear in front of me, emerging from the shadows like ghostly figures. First, I fired at ten meters, feeling the familiarity of the weapon. Then, I moved to twenty meters, and the accuracy of my shots began to improve. The last challenge was at fifty meters, a limit my current skill could handle, but just barely. Each shot had to be more accurate than the last.

With my hands slightly numb from all the shooting, I put the pistol aside and began to walk around the field at a gentle trot, feeling my muscles stretch and warm with each step. The wind caressed my face as I kept moving, I knew that endurance was also vital in what was coming, I couldn’t be lazy in training

Then, I approached an old steel sword, which rested in one of the corners of the room. The swing was unfamiliar to me, but I quickly became familiar with it, the sound of the wind as the sword fell became clearer and more precise, repeating the movement over and over again, until my shoulders began to ache from the effort. Still, the sensation of the steel cutting through the air was comforting.

I practiced some simple cuts, the kind I had read about in martial arts novels, first horizontal and then diagonal. Each movement improved as the minutes passed, it felt more fluid and slowly became more natural.

The reason I decided to take up a sword wasn’t just due to the fact of the weapon I had stored in my inventory, although that certainly helped. What truly drove me was the knowledge that, although firearms were effective for me now, they wouldn’t always be enough. I knew that in this world, the scale of power would increase so absurdly that it was impossible for a simple bullet to achieve an effective impact. In fact, I was already seriously thinking about it shortly after arriving here, it’s just that I hadn’t taken the time to get used to it.

But now. As I trained with the sword, every stroke I took, every controlled breath, I felt how I was slowly adapting. It wasn’t just the increase in my physical strength, but something beyond that that I felt controlled me. The contact of the blade with the air, the balance of my body as I moved it, everything had an inexplicable feeling of familiarity, as if I had been doing it all my life.

At some point, I understood that when the time came, if circumstances forced me to fight face to face, and I couldn’t shoot, at least I wouldn’t feel so helpless.

The training reached the point of intensifying, each movement carried with it a power, a fluidity and disconcerting precision. My breathing synchronized with the blows, and my body, faster and faster, seemed to move on its own, as if something external guided it. The metal of the sword vibrated skillfully in the air, cutting the atmosphere with the softness of a whisper, and my legs glided effortlessly, following a rhythm that was no longer entirely mine. I was immersed in a kind of trance, where every gesture seemed unpredictable, every turn of the sword, natural.