My Bothersome Life

Accumulating Points

I tussled and kept on moving around due to the sharp straws that kept on poking my back. I frowned as I struggled to find a good position where I could continuously sleep without waking due to my stiff neck from not having a pillow.

I finally began to sleep deeply when I used Luke as a pillow. I'm sorry Luke!

I stretched my arms to find it was 4:30AM when I looked at rusty ancient clock to get ready for breakfast. I diligently put my uniform on and shook Luke aggressively to wake him up to devise a strategy to get ourselves out of here as soon as possible.

Luke momentarily appeared astonishingly surprised that I got up earlier than him as he quickly followed me in getting ready for breakfast. Before Luke went to grab his school bag on the wooden hanger, I grabbed his wrist, "I think it's time to make a strategy to make our living space more liveable."

When we first got our insane schedules, we also got the schedule for exams. Christopher explained we had go through an orientation test before we entered into the class that suited our levels. Meaning that the school was trying to test out our initial levels upon entering the school and how it compared to others. In fine print, the handout said that if the student and the partner received a score that was higher than the top pair already enrolled, we would collect 10 000 points. However, if Luke and I manage to get last place, we would unfortunately get minus points.

Glancing at the small fine print earlier in the day yesterday, I analyzed if Luke and I got last place, we would get -10 000 points.  However, if we were in the upper middle, we would collect 5000 points.

What I was aiming for was the upper middle of the class. I knew that it would be probably almost impossible to get better scores than the top pair that have enrolled into this brutal schedule since the age of two. However, Luke was a very capable person who spent most of his spare time studying like he didn't know how else to spend his life. Plus, I had my memories from my past life that could help out a little in addition to the "cheats" given by God.

I grinned as I focused all my energy into getting 5000 points per subject to finally live in a decent housing area (well at least middle class)!

I was a person who suffered through the SATs for four years straight! How hard could the initiation tests be?

After I shared everything I had in mind to Luke with the exclusion of my reincarnation, Luke nodded which meant that he agreed.

The first class that we had a test for was history. Since, I had just come from a different world just over a week ago, I had to cram all the content within my brain for an exam I wrote three days ago.

Thankfully, most of the history in the third district was similar with the one from my former life while excluding the minor details in dates and important figures.

History was all about memorization. I could have used the dimensional library that I got from God, but I didn't want to use that gift anymore since Luke was already cramming all the history into me anyways.

However, since I could barely sleep last night before using Luke as a pillow, I ended up pulling out a history book from the dimensional library to put me to sleep.

Surprisingly, the history book was like a light novel! This world was split into six different districts, where each one would represent a different era in time. The vague summary was that the first district was the futuristic era where people had hover cars and robots to do most of their work for them with their huge mana. The second district was the science era where people were just starting to develop a new world where they would discover the existence of magic from science. The third district was where I came from, which was the technology era, where people started to develop smartphones and laptops. The fourth district was the industrial revolution era where people just started to develop new technologies. The fifth district was the Victorian era where people were ruled by the monarchy. Lastly, the sixth district was the time where people just started to live in civilizations with other people.

I didn't get to the part with the fine details, but I felt that the third district and below resembled the history of my old world! Plus, Luke fully crammed the first and second district's details to me (which I thought was pretty much nonsense), but I was on the edge of believing it after reading the light novel like history book.

Christopher led Luke and I to two vacant seats and placed the exam booklet on the desks after we sat down. I soon opened the glowing blue exam booklet and started to write.

After I finished the exam, Christopher announced the results of our combined score, "Not bad! You placed 4th out of six pairs. Which means that you get zero points! Let's move onto the next subject!"

I felt really sorry towards Luke, I really did. But I knew I couldn't memorize the combined history of a new world within three days. I knew I was the person who brought our overall score down. However, this really showed how capable the other four year olds were at this facility from surviving this intense schedule.

The next class was math. Math was the one subject I was confident from my past life with all the countless nights I spent. When Christopher announced the results for this subject, we got first place. Meaning we got 10,000 points! I was almost in tears because my hard work from my past life paid off!

We went down the stairs into the basement for mana training class next as part of the examination series. I pretended to not appear nervous as I wasn't confident with how well I would do in this class because I have never used mana before. However, I have read a lot of manga and light novels and the protagonists almost always gets to use extraordinary magic! Most times, they do this by using their imagination to conquer up a clear image of what kind of magic they want to produce. With the gifts given by God, I planned to do the same.

When Luke and I was led to something called, 'the centre of this never-ending space', Christopher started giving out instructions, "Please produce a small flame in this room."

I closed my eyes and started thinking of a bonfire with its crackling blue flames produced by the oxygen molecules that comes in contact with nitrogen and carbon dioxide. Slowly this would shift the hottest blue flames into slightly milder orange flames graduated from red.  I gathered the tingling feeling of molecules inside my hand and pushed it outwards.

When I opened my eyes, I saw the surprised faces of both Christopher and Luke. The room that used to be never ending turned into a medium twenty metered square room with white walls and floors. Their faces looked like their jaws would drop to the floor while they kept on staring at me for a few minutes due to their shock. Maybe this was the result of the unlimited MP that I got from God? Even though I never actually saw the flame, maybe the result of the flame destroyed the never-ending room I concluded.

To break the awkward silence, I asked, "So how many points did we end up getting?"

Christopher quickly regained his composure and replied, "10,000 points."

After that big event, nothing eventful happened afterwards for the remaining subjects. In the end, Luke and I got 40,000 points as some of the minor details in the exam was different from my past life. I sighed as it looked like we still had a long way to go.

When we got back to our medieval like room, I noticed a sleek tablet on the floor that shined in its uncivilized space. I grabbed the tablet while the screen displayed:

[Would you like to upgrade your room?]

I pressed [Yes] almost immediately with no hesitation as the screen changed afterwards. I was impressed at the variety of options in the upgrades as I quickly became depressed how I would never be able to afford some of them.

The screen first asked if we would want to move to the upper floors, or if we wanted to stay in the basement. It cost 20,000 points to move to the second floor, where we would get a decent bathroom that resembled mine from my previous world. Without any hesitation, I pressed [yes] due to the horrible stench and miserable dull grey walls I couldn't stand. There was no way I could stay in the room where it resembled a prison than a livable living space.

The tablet starting shining in bright blue light as it synthesized a room key on top of the tablet that floated lightly in the air.

I grabbed all my stuff (which was only my school bag and uniforms) and made Luke carry his own as I went to the second floor. It was obvious the key was to be used on the second floor and I didn't want to stay in this awful unit any longer.

I dragged Luke along the way while I ran up the modern looking stairs created with sturdy metal that appeared greatly incompatible with the rusty undeveloped area in the basement.

I used the room key to get inside to find a ten-metered square room that was absolutely empty with a bathroom that was shown in the tablet.

I sighed as I forgot about the bedding and only thought about the room. At this rate, it wasn't that much better than the basement except for the modern bathroom. I glanced at Luke for help while I passed him the tablet to make the decision of what we should do for the remaining points.

I sat beside Luke while putting our stuff onto the glazed wooden floor as he went over all the options of how we could use the 20,000 points. It cost 10 000 points to buy one bed with the framing, pillows, blanket with a mattress that was the standard size for one person. However, it cost only 5000 points to buy the mattress (with the mattress cover included) of a king-sized bed. Since we were unfortunately poor with points, we ended up buying the mattress, so that we didn't have to sleep on the floor.

The room was absolutely empty except for the mattress that suddenly appeared in the middle of the room after the tablet started shining again. I swore to myself that I would study harder to get a decent bed and apologized to Luke within my heart that I wasn't as capable as him for the time being.

Fortunately, this empty room had two closets, but it was also absolutely empty. I picked up the stuff I had on floor and placed them inside the looming closet staring back at me. I stretched my arms as I found myself dirty with dust as I moved into the new room.

'Maybe I should take a bath,' I started to get ready to take a bath.

However, I soon realized the only clothes I had was my uniforms, which meant that I would have no clothes to change into afterwards.

I instantly swiped through more options in the tablet to discover I could use using 100 points to buy one cheap piece of underwear and pyjamas with the remaining 10,000 points. I sighed with relief as the other necessities weren't as expensive as the furniture.

Once I finished buying more cheap stuff in the tablet, I passed the tablet to Luke so he could buy stuff for himself as well. It seemed like Luke decided to buy the same things while I couldn't look at how we ended up using all the 40,000 points in one day!

There was one week until our next examination so the school can see how well we've adapted after a week. Until then, we would have to survive on these bare conditions! This was the first time I was thankful for exams.

At least I got to sleep in for tomorrow because it was the weekend started from tomorrow like my previous life. After taking a blissful shower, I flopped onto the bed and fell asleep.

Well at least that was the ideal situation that I was planned to be in, but I couldn't sleep. I was too anxious about getting enough points that I caught Luke after his shower and dragged him into the study room in the library.

After making Luke sit down while I passed his backpack in front of the table, I went out of the room to pull out some books from the dimensional library based on the content on the exams that we had today. I nonchalantly went back inside the study room to slam a huge pile of books on the table. Eventually, the pile of books resembled Luke's height. Fortunately, Luke looked way too tired to ask where I got these books from and just grabbed a book to start reading.

I ended up choosing a book from the pile while sitting down and took a sheet of paper and a pencil out of my backpack. I was still not used to the highly-developed ways of the studying tools in the first district as I preferred to study using the old-fashioned way.

The study room fell into a silent atmosphere for the next twelve hours, until I fell asleep while reading as the world around me faded into black.