Study hard even in another world!

After the weekend, Wang Ning was once again swamped.

In order to prepare for the month-end tests and to avoid the “Bad Ending” of being expelled for poor grades, she wished she could split her time in two. When she wasn’t in class, she was holed up in the library.

Wang Ning was frantically cramming and grinding for experience in the library.

After reading for who knows how long, she struggled to prop herself up.

Her peripheral vision caught the mountain of test papers, problem sets, and books piled beside her… for a moment, she felt like she was back in her third year of high school, fighting for her life.

‘Why? After surviving the most difficult trial of Earth Online, why do I have to continue this sunless life after transmigrating to another world?!’

She felt as if she had entered a terrifying cycle.

And at the end of the cycle, was more cramming.

In the game, she could just click a few buttons to increase her intelligence, but in reality, she had to actually weld this knowledge into her brain.

Not only that, but to her right was another stack of books on this world’s religions and history.

Even though this body possessed memories of this world, they were mostly vague and would only surface when she encountered something related.

She had scraped by the initial quiz at the start of the semester thanks to her original memories and Boli An’s great mercy, but for all the new knowledge she had to learn after that, she was on her own.

—Plus, in order not to put herself in a passive position, besides cramming and reading, Wang Ning had to re-learn certain things about this world.

“Is this question A or B? Whatever, I’ll just pick C.” Wang Ning held her pen, her eyes blurring from the calculations.

Of all the subjects, the most difficult was Magitech Number Theory.

How difficult was it? Even the mathematical symbols looked impossibly out of her league.

“Ahhh—” Wang Ning slammed her head onto the desk, her eyes staring blankly.

‘This isn’t working. This is too inefficient.’

‘How am I supposed to learn from books thicker than my will to live in the shortest amount of time?!’

Her phone buzzed.

[Asleep (Status: Dreaming): You still at the library?]

Wang Ning’s chin was resting on the desk. She held her phone with both arms stretched out and slowly typed a reply.

[WNN (Status: Playing Dead): mhm]

[WNN (Status: Playing Dead): so scary, i dreamed i was beaten up by a bunch of number theory symbols last night (crying my eyes out jpg.)]

Wang Ning watched the ellipsis bubble pop up and down on the other end of the chat. Then, a message appeared from the candy jar avatar.

[Asleep (Status: Dreaming): All this stuff, you still need to go to the library every day to learn it?]

Wang Ning expressionlessly placed her phone face down on the desk.

‘Hah.’

‘You’re so great. You’re so amazing. You’re number one.’

Taking a deep breath, she picked up her phone again.

Wang Ning saw her own sour-lemon face reflected on the screen and silently put it back down.

[Asleep (Status: Dreaming): Forget it. I can send you the test papers for this month’s exam. Or do you need the answers?]

She typed very slowly, frequently deleting and retyping, making it easy to imagine the casual, lazy state of the person on the other end.

Wang Ning: ‘?’

[But you have to…]

[WNN (Status: Breaking Down): okay i get it just go away]

‘How did you slip through the cracks of the legal education system?!’

Wang Ning gave up on asking Boli An for help. She thought about who else she could study with.

‘Xiao?’

Wang Ning had asked her before. Xiao had been a huge help with subjects like “Strategic Analysis and Guidance” and “Nightmare Beast Weakness Analysis,” making Wang Ning feel so confident she suspected she could go straight to the battlefield and be a commander.

‘…Just kidding. A weakling like me would just be cannon fodder.’

But recently, Xiao had gotten even busier. Wang Ning looked at their chat history; their last conversation was a week ago.

Before, no matter how busy Xiao was, she would always find time to reply to Wang Ning’s messages. Once, Wang Ning even received a reply from her at 3 a.m.

[Xiao: Go to sleep early. I’ll explain the rest of the lesson to you tomorrow.]

But that “tomorrow” had yet to arrive.

Wang Ning wondered about Xiao’s mission. Xiao had said the mission was very easy, that her daily routine was just drinking tea and “chatting” with people, and the only risk was paying attention to a few patients with unstable mental conditions.

But an inexplicable sense of unease still lingered in Wang Ning’s heart. The endings in the game all made her anxious.

In the end, Wang Ning could only send Xiao a message.

[WNN (Status: Praying): Hope your mission goes smoothly. Stay safe.]

Letting out a breath, Wang Ning felt a little more relaxed. Then she saw the remaining problems she hadn’t finished and put on her mask of suffering again, resigning herself to continue cramming.

“Excuse me… is anyone sitting next to you?” A very soft voice entered her ear. Wang Ning thought she was hearing things.

She looked up at the person and her eyes widened.

The girl was holding a few books. She had short, slightly curly, light-grey hair and wore a pair of large, black-framed glasses that made it almost impossible to see her eyes behind the lenses. Her entire demeanor was one of isolation and depression, like a plant that had grown in a dark corner its whole life.

Noticing Wang Ning’s gaze, she pursed her lips and quickly added in a low voice, “I’m sorry, last time I—”

But before she could finish, she saw the person looking up at her break into a smile. Her moon-white hair was tied up in a bun that wouldn’t get in the way of reading. She tilted her head slightly, her blue eyes bright, as dazzling as the moon reflected in the deep sea.

“No one’s here,” Chloe heard the reply.

It was the expected answer. After all, someone like Student Wang Ning…

But why, at that moment of hearing the reply, did her heart not feel the calm she had anticipated? Or rather, she felt an almost instantaneous sense of fear and unease. Her mind had no pre-planned reaction and could only stand there rigidly under Wang Ning’s gaze.

—She felt like a sea creature that had been dragged up from the depths, swimming out of the darkness, cowering from the sudden sunlight.