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Head of the Class: A LitRPG Adventure (System Apocalypse: Liberty Book 1), page 1
Head of the Class
System Apocalypse: Liberty
Book 1
by
Tao Wong and Jason J. Willis
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Head of the Class
Copyright © 2024 Tao Wong and Jason J. Willis. All Rights reserved.
Copyright © 2024 Sarah Anderson Cover Designer
Copyright © 2024 Polar Engine Cover Artwork
Published by Starlit Publishing
PO Box 30035
High Park PO
Toronto, ON
M6P 3K0
Canada
www.starlitpublishing.com
Ebook ISBN: 9781778552120
Paperback ISBN: 9781778552137
Hardcover ISBN: 9781778552144
Books in The System Apocalypse Universe
System Apocalypse – Liberty
Head of the Class
Dropout
Main Storyline
Life in the North
System Apocalypse – Relentless
A Fist Full of Credits
System Apocalypse: Australia
Town Under
System Apocalypse: Kismet
Fool’s Play
Anthologies & Shorts
System Apocalypse Short Story Anthology Volume 1
System Apocalypse Short Story Anthology Volume 2
Valentines in an Apocalypse
A New Script
Daily Jobs, Coffee and an Awfully Big Adventure
Adventures in Clothing
Questing for Titles
Blue Screens of Death
My Grandmother’s Tea Club
The Great Black Sea
Growing Up – Apocalypse Style
Interdimensional Window SHOPping
A Game of Koopash (Newsletter exclusive)
Lana’s story (Newsletter exclusive)
Debts and Dances (Newsletter exclusive)
A Tense Meeting (Newsletter exclusive)
Comic Series
The System Apocalypse Comics (7 Issues)
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Epilogue
Chapter 1
Caleb
I’d like to blame the explosion for interrupting my class’s lesson. But what really derailed things was Aul K’Unn Tek. It was always Aul. Even the porous walls shaking and crystal lights flickering would have been a relatively short delay, without his questions.
We were used to the ship being attacked; it had happened at least once a week since the Voloids had landed. The four-armed, gray hexapods had practically guaranteed that when they’d landed their spaceship in a prime dungeon location. The only real threat had been when a pair of giant black bears with goat heads had tried to eat the thrusters. Even then, a blast of blazing rocket fuel to the face had persuaded them to find a less spicy meal.
As an elementary school teacher, the Squaw Lake Bird Watchers Society had sounded like a great place to bring my class. So I had gone alone to scout it out as a potential field trip location, expecting to see some mallards and loons.
As a vegetarian, I had been nearly as horrified by the antlered heads on display in the main lodge as I was by the announcement that it was about to become a post-apocalyptic dungeon. I’d played enough RPGs and MMOs to know what a dungeon was, and I knew it was the last place I wanted to be standing during an apocalypse. Ignoring the rest of the messages, I’d run as fast as my couch-potato legs could carry me on a dirt road that still hid a few frozen spots, even in early April.
The white-tailed deer bounding into my field of vision by the time the countdown ended had made me smile. Distracted by its unusual size and fanged maw, I’d missed the spaceship behind the row of trees.
The Voloid Matriarch, E’Kklon Vekk, had appeared like Predator from the movies, yanking me from the path of the deer monster and into the safety of her ship, where I had been her guest, or prisoner, ever since.
“Teacher, teach,” she’d intoned with a high, resonant voice. Then she’d tossed me into a room with small children.
Other than attending intermittent hunts, that had been my job for the last two years while the rest of the world had gone to shit.
Even before the apocalypse, I’d prided myself on being able to handle disruptive students. Now, I had honest-to-God superpowers to up my game. None of that helped with Aul; he was my kryptonite. He was a genuinely curious child asking thought-provoking questions that entirely disrupted the lesson plan I’d laid out the night before.
“Caleb will not protect hive, is truth?” was the question Aul had asked me. His voice was deep and resonant.
More chirps, clicks, and buzzes flew at me from the rest of the class than they had for any other topic, with the possible exception of when he’d asked if I was a slave. I had answered with an honest, if uncertain, “Maybe.”
“I will protect any sentients in danger,” I said, “but I’m bad at fighting.”
My Universal Translator Skill was amazing, but these beings were notoriously hard to translate. With patience though, I thought we managed. It helped that Aul did most of the talking, no matter how much I tried to get the rest of the class to join in. Alone, the others would answer. When Aul was present, they deferred to him. I could speculate as to why, but I was a teacher, not an alienologist.
“Aul is confusion.” His mandibles quivered slightly.
“You know I’m a vegetarian, right?”
He tilted his head in a way that my Skill told me meant agreement, though it still didn’t feel right, even after all this time.
“Well, that’s because I value life, especially sentient life. And it’s damn near impossible to tell where to draw the line on what is and is not sentient. Because of that, I won’t attack or kill anyone not attacking me or someone else. But I’m not a pacifist. I will attack those who attack others. I’m just not any good at it. My Class is Teacher. My points and Skills are spent to help me with that. And frankly, I’m too thoughtful for life-or-death reactions. I freeze up when a warrior needs to act without thinking.
“That’s why I picked up Pavise here,” I said, then reached over to knock on the metal head of the robot that had become the most reliable fixture of my life. He wasn’t there. “Wherever he is. He’s big and square and I hide behind him whenever we get attacked out there.”
Pavise was the result of all of my Perks and a love of Star Wars and medieval history. The System had him listed as a shield-bot Protective Companion. I had upgraded his AI over time with about half of my Credits. He and my WWMRD necklace were my only prized possessions in this new world.
“Where are you, buddy?” I sent a qu
“You left me in the hold again. And you’ve been ignoring your notifications. How am I supposed to protect you when you forcibly separate us?”
“The door closes automatically,” I replied. “It’s not my fault. If you’re that worried about it, go first and make sure the path is safe.”
“Alert me before departing and I will.”
Aul’s left mandible was twitching and I realized I’d been incredibly rude, ignoring his questions. “Sorry, Aul. What were you asking?”
“The ship is currently under attack. I should be with you.”
“They’ll take care of it, they always do. Now hush.” I quieted the alerts with a mental nudge.
“Hive hunt. Monsters attack hive. Caleb won’t attack to protect hive? Only carry supplies and heal injured?”
“Yes.”
“Caleb coward?”
“Not really,” I answered. And I knew they knew I was telling the truth. One of my passive Class Skills, Ring of Truth, made it so that anyone I’d never intentionally deceived knew I wasn’t lying. The Skill didn’t force me to tell them everything I knew, a fact that I had made sure to tell them as soon as I knew about it. Trust was essential if you wanted to be a teacher. And I’d never wanted any other job.
“How Caleb not coward?” He tapped low on the center of his chest plate, right underneath the bright red slash he alone shared with the Matriarch. I got a vague impression that this gesture was somehow meaningful.
It might be time to put one of my three remaining Skill points into Universal Translator.
“If the hive was out exploring or gathering, I would fight to protect them, if badly. But the hive goes to where the monsters are to kill the monsters. Even if the monsters attack them first, that’s not self-defense.”
“Monsters attack pack. Monsters attack humans. Monsters attack everyone. Hive no hunt, monsters get stronger and stronger. Monsters kill everyone.”
“Yes.” This one word was weaker, almost trembling.
“Why not self-defense?”
My notifications were flashing, fast. I ignored them.
“I want to say that it’s not self-defense because you can’t know they will attack. And that’s partly true.” Being required to be completely honest was hard, but overall, it was amazing. It was good for the students, and it helped me to understand my own motivations. “But it does seem like almost all the monsters are hostile. Maybe all of them. And I want to say it’s because it’s not the monsters’ fault. They didn’t choose to be monsters. That might also be true. But killing other people because you’re being forced to doesn’t mean they don’t have a right to defend themselves.”
“Why not self-defense?” he said again. His upper hands were crossed now, in challenge.
“Levels,” I finally told him. “Levels and loot.”
He uncrossed his arms.
“The Voloids did not come to Earth to help us. To stop the monsters. They came to Earth for levels and loot. The Voloids aren’t protecting; they’re attacking.”
“Voloids kill monsters.”
“They do,” I agreed.
“Voloids good.”
“Voloids are people,” I replied. “They are good and bad.”
He crossed both sets of his arms. “Matriarch’s Voloids good.”
“Maybe,” I answered. “The Matriarch saved me that first day. But she also kept me here. Sure, she pays me. She gives me Credits, orange Fanta, and veggie lovers pizza. She even gives me every book I ask for. But she never took me back to my people. She never asked if I wanted to stay. She even pretended not to understand when I asked if I was a prisoner.”
It had taken me nearly a year to realize that there hadn’t been a difficulty in translation.
I kept quiet about the Skill I had picked up at level 31.
Class Trip (Level 3)
Group teleportation Skill
Transports a Teacher, students, and officially recognized chaperones to a location that the Teacher has previously occupied or thoroughly researched.
Max distance 100 miles + 25 miles per Skill Point.
Cost: 125 Mana + 25 for each student or chaperone beyond the first.
I had planned to use this Skill to take myself to the nearest Settlement. Temporarily or permanently, I had not decided.
It had failed spectacularly, just two days prior. The System had informed me that it was not a self-only Skill. In retrospect, that should have been obvious. Because of that, I was as much of a prisoner as ever. I wasn’t about to abduct a child to make my escape.
“Emergency override,” the shield-bot’s voice in my head grew very loud indeed. “The hull has been breached and enemies are entering the ship.”
I tried to stay calm.
“Matriarch no help owed.”
“True.”
“Matriarch good.”
“Saving me was good.”
“Matriarch good,” he insisted. The System let me know that the way his mandible quivered meant he was not as certain as he sounded.
“The attackers are human,” Pavise told me, and the lesson became a lot less rhetorical.
“This ship is blocking the only real way to the best dungeon in the area,” I said. “Look here.”
I activated the first active Skill I had gained from the System—Show and Tell. Images from my trip to what was now the dungeon appeared in the air before the children. Some pictures were of the little town between the two lakes. Others were of the late winter austerity that would bloom into lush, dense greenery later in the year. There were log cabin style buildings, a large campfire, and a boathouse.
The image I expanded though was of the single-lane floating bridge. It crossed the deep marsh from the tiny, overgrown dirt road on one side to the equally overgrown dirt driveway that wound through the hardwoods and pines to the camp on the other. Their train-car-shaped spaceship was settled directly atop the rickety boards that were just wide enough to accommodate a single car tire on each side. The bridge had splintered around the ship and submerged when it couldn’t take the weight.
“This is the one path to the dungeon that wasn’t nearly impassable even before the world went crazy. Blocking that path was clearly the Matriarch’s plan. She wanted the dungeon for her people, and she took it. It didn’t matter to her that someone had owned this place before the System came. It didn’t stop her that taking the dungeon would cost the humans in the area progress and wealth that they would need to survive this new reality. But the Voloid hunters also keep the dungeon monsters from growing and escaping. That helps keep the human settlement safe. The Voloids are good and bad.”
“Show me what’s happening,” I instructed my defender. I held up my hand to get Aul to stop. He didn’t.
“Humans good and bad,” he said. Even his tone said he was angry. That was a trait he had learned from me.
“Yes,” I said. “Wait.”
He didn’t. “Caleb good and bad.” He glared at me.
Then the connection finished, and I was seeing through the central camera that passed for the robot’s eye. The five attackers were already engaged with the majority of the Voloid warriors in the loading bay. The Matriarch was nowhere to be seen.
One of the attackers was an androgynous, short-haired Native American I labeled in my head as Slytherin, due to their snarl, spellcasting, and green robes. My second passive, Relatable, told me that their special interests included fantasy fiction, roleplaying games, and architecture. They tossed out glowing purple dust while they chanted.
Those Voloids hit by the spell dropped their spears and blasters. They stood in apathy while a swarm of blade-legged, steel spiders shredded them like parmesan cheese.
I gagged but couldn’t look away.
The one controlling the spiders was a young white woman. She was dressed in bulky, black leather armor with various tech components. Her chin-length blond hair was shaved on one side, where she had a much better neurological implant than mine. I knew that because it was the custom Dylo-Tek device I’d have bought if I had been able to scrounge together enough Credits.
Her special interests included anarchy, cybertech, and kitten videos. Because of her swarm, and the spikes and blades along her armor, in my mind I labeled her as Edgelord.
The third, clearly the leader, was a rugged black man with skin even darker than mine. He had a shaved head, broad shoulders, and muscles a pro wrestler would’ve killed for. Plates and cybernetics that would look at home in a high-tech, dystopian hellscape covered him here and there.
He’d have been irresistible before the apocalypse. Now, he was terrifying.
