I'm Jack

"We are in the 11th grade of the academy. I think they said we had to assemble at the VR block, in Room number 83 of VR building number 92." Ava stated.

"That's a whole lot of VR buildings and rooms" Jack sighed as he walked along with Ava and Max.

Jack had light brown hair with almond-shaped blue eyes, and a rather ordinary physique which some would even go to the extent of calling skinny. Therefore, he was more of an afterthought in the minds of most people who glanced based on his group of three, despite him being in the front.

The reason? Simple, Max and Ava were just…

Well, Max was a head shorter than Jack, with short black hair, slightly dark skin, and pitch-black eyes. What made his stand out was just how buff he was. For reference, let's just say that Max had enough muscle on his back to prevent his elbows from ever coming into contact with the rest of his body, and his chest put most females to so much shame that there was even an attempted suicide. What his parents had fed him was a complete mystery to Jack and Ava.

Ava, on the other hand, was a slender girl who was a head taller than Jack, with long platinum hair which almost reached her waist, and bright platinum-coloured eyes which seemed curious about the world around her.

These two, no matter what clothes they were wearing, always managed to stick out like a sore thumb, making Jack blend in with other extras even more.

…

"Alright listen up! I will be your temporary instructor for today. Your job is simple. Use the equal levelled characters in a VR simulation of Tether, to fight everyone in your class at least once, and then, a leader will be selected for the class based on combat ability, and then a vice-captain will also be selected based on the same. The selection will be conducted in a king-of-the-ring format, with the players getting anywhere between 10-15 minutes of break between each battle, based on how long their opponent takes to complete. Once your numbers are reduced to 10, there will only be a single battle every 10 minutes of finishing the previous one, until the leader and vice-leader are picked."

"You should know that this type of competition within the entire class will happen once every month, so your position as the leader and vice leaders are not fixed. Alright, everyone, get into the VR capsules which had been provided for you all. These VR capsules are set to access only the local network, and you will be unable to connect to Tether through these. MOVE!"

The instructor who was about 35 years of age yelled as all the students immediately scrambled for the VR capsules.

Jack too got into one of the capsules and began wondering as it synced with his mind.

He needed players. If he wanted to establish a guild, he would need players. He could not rely on NPCs for an army for the very simple reason that NPCs took too long to become strong, and once they died, it was the end for them.

On the other hand, a player would only lose a single item at random and a single level for every death.

This system was changed a few times as the updates kept flowing in and ultimately settled at the player losing their most valuable item in their inventory, as well as a level. They would also receive death protection which made them immune to all player attacks for the next 5 minutes, and a -200% exp penalty for the next 2 days.

Anyways, he needed a guild. Not an insanely large one where no one had any loyalty, but instead Jack needed one where he had complete control over the players. The best solution for this issue was to recruit players in real life and then make them play the game. Alternatively, he could recruit the players online, and then coerce them, or simply kidnap them in real life and make them live near him.

Well, since he was here at the academy, from where countless future elites of Tether were born, Jack thought it might be better to just search for people here itself, and make the guild with them. Of course, he could not just bring in random people, and he would screen them not only skill-wise, but also personality-wise.

Well, in order to do any of that, he would first need to gain some sort of position, and an opportunity was just handed to him on a golden platter.

Once inside, Jack immediately chose the mage class and chose the staff which greatly boosted his mana regeneration. That way, while fighting people, he would not easily run out of mana and become defenceless.

His first opponent was a boy with deep blonde hair and a smug look on his face. Clearly, after seeing how sickly Jack looked, his confidence in winning the battle greatly increased.

"Did you know, dragons had two sets of p*n*ses in case one breaks off during you know what."

"…"

Jack did not wait for the blonde boy who was about his own age to counter his argument as he immediately threw three icicles he had been preparing while engaging in conversation. All the students were given Lv 10 avatars to control, with their stats being equally distributed in all stats, unlike the characters the players had in the game.

However, this also made many things not possible in the game possible here. As soon as Jack threw the icicles, he also began charging toward the blonde kid from right behind them. The blond kid did not expect this, and after blocking the icicles with his staff, he faced a punch to his face from Jack, before an earth spike impales his feet, making it impossible to move.

Following that, countless earth spikes impaled him from the ground, until he lost all his hp and died miserably.

Jack sighed after killing his first opponent. He had been using earth spikes, which had the most limited range among all the elemental spikes, but were also the best in terms of mana efficiency, being nearly twice as efficient per spike compared to a flame or ice spike. However, in this single battle, Jack had already lost almost half his mana.

Immediately, Jack sat down on the ground, which would activate the 'rest' status, doubling his mana recovery. Considering this bonus as well as the bonus from the staff he had picked as his weapon of choice, it would take him 10 minutes to fully recover all his mana. The reason for this slowed recovery of mana had to do with the fact that the settings of the battle were made in such a way that mages had a natural advantage. To bring balance, this effect of incredibly slow mana recovery had been added. which meant that as long as he did not go below the halfway mark of his mana, he would be able to recover fully before the next match.

…

The people who were killed were not brought out of the VR, and instead were sent to seats and were given a view of all the ongoing matches. Almost 70% of the players cursed as they likely felt they were all killed unjustly as soon as they appeared.

The second match was against a brown-haired 17-year-old who seemed rather tired after his first battle. He was holding a long sword, meaning that he had likely spent a lot of stamina in the previous round trying to catch up to his enemy before finally beating him. Seeing that his health was full, it could be considered that his opponent was not good at countering, just good at running.

"I'm Jack. You are you and I am me. I am sorry dude; we cannot be together. No homo."

As soon as, the tired player tried to reply, Jack sprang into action. Just like before, he threw an icicle and ran behind it. The opponent was slightly surprised but was able to cut the icicles in half. Unfortunately for him, he had exhausted his stamina to an abysmal level, which prevented him from returning to his guard after the attack. His sword was not touching the ground, and Jack had already closed the distance, dealing a hit to his chin.

Since this person was a head taller than Jack, and clearly a lot more buff, Jack did not try to knock him over with a single punch, and instead went for the chin, to try and confuse his senses with a punch, and it worked. After all, in the virtual world, the stats of all the players were more or less equal.

With a round of earth spikes, this battle was over as well.

The next few battles went along in almost the same manner, with Jack just repeating almost the exact same movements.

However, as soon as he reached the semi-finals, after throwing the icicle, Jack noticed that the person was dodging instead of blocking the attack. A speed-based class or a skilled player, either of the two could accomplish this, and Jack was looking forward to seeing the latter. Up until now, he had not seen anyone worth recruiting.

Jack did not rush behind the icicles since it would only waste his stamina, as the enemy could easily see him.

The enemy also did not launch any attack, and for a few seconds, the two were in a stalemate of simply staring at each other.

Jack looked at the purple-haired girl who seemed to be a little too small to be 17. Her body was incredibly thin, and her height was so short that should would not even reach Jack's shoulders.

{Author's Note: I take no credit or involvement in the creation of whatever the hell I have just created.}

This time, Jack made the first move once more, but instead of attacking her, Jack froze the ground around him. If this girl was reliant on her class of being a rogue, then this should solve the issues in one fell swoop.

The girls finally made her move. She ran straight for Jack, With her short sword in hand, and then leapt into the air. Only, her jump did not contain too much height, and instead, she went almost horizontal.

Then, in a sudden turn of events which seemed to be pieced together as though someone was composing a piece of classic poetry, the girl put the short end of the sword onto the frozen ground, and landed on the flat of the blade, carrying out an insane feat of balance while using her hand to steer. Essentially, she had created ice skates using her blade and balance.

'Hah. Found one' Jack thought to himself as he silently created a small bump on the ground in front of her, causing her to lose her balance and fall onto the ice, where immediately her speed increased, but she lost all control and slid towards Jack, who was waiting for her with a large smile as countless Earth spikes skewered her.

However, just before killing her, Jack made sure she was skewered to the point of not being able to move, and then approached her and whispered in her ear.

"I'm Jack. I would like to have a conversation with you after class. It is something very important regarding Tether."

With that, he killed her, and then quickly sat down. He had wasted nearly 70% of his mana in this fight, and all he could do was hope that the battle between the other semi-finalists would take a few minutes longer than his own so that he could recover all his lost mana.