The building used that of a metropolitan high school, abandoned
the previous year, that was awaiting its demolition. The teaching staff
was largely made up of re-employed teachers who retired from old
age, serving part-time. It was a National Specialization School when
classified under the School Education Law.
It wasn’t as if I couldn’t feel a tinge of unease, conversely, at that
unexpected level of kindness, even as a safety net, but I decided to
enter after consulting Asuna and of course, my family. I never
regretted it even once. It was extremely fun designing and creating
various devices with friends in my Mechatronics course and I could
meet Asuna, Lisbeth, Silica and the rest every day. Even after taking
away points for the compulsory counseling session once a week, I
could still claim it was a fulfilling schooling life.
However, I was unable to attend that school to the end as well.
A year and two months after I entered, it was the 6th of June,
2026. I gained consciousness in another world, the «Underworld», for
some unknown reason. Woken up in the forest near Rulid Village on
the northern edge of the Human World, I cried out with all I could
muster to the venture company, Rath, that should have been
developing and managing this world, but there wasn’t a single reply.
Reluctantly, I set the place with a console that would enable
contact with the other side—the center of the Human World, Central
Centoria, or what was at its core, the towering Central Cathedral of
the Axiom Church, as my goal and set out on a journey From Rulid
with the partner I met in this world, Eugeo.