The moment the screen flickered and finalized the rankings, the courtyard went dead silent. Minoru Mineta stared at the bottom of the list where his name sat in bold letters. He instantly started panicking, his entire body shaking violently as he dropped to his knees. He began biting his nails raw, tears streaming down his face as he realized his dream of popular high school hero fame was ending on his very first morning.
Aizawa, meanwhile, stared down at his clipboard, fully prepared to make the boy pack his things and leave. To be entirely honest, Mineta hadn’t been a complete failure; he had actually done the best out of the entire class during the side-to-side jumps exercise thanks to the sticky grape orbs on his head. Still, the underground hero walked up to the front of the anxious crowd and adjusted his scarf, his tired eyes narrowing. After a few more seconds, he decided to give the kid another chance. After all, with Gray’s Training Dimension, he would see if the kid actually put in the work. If he didn’t see any improvement, he would kick him out.
"By the way, I was lying about the expulsion," Aizawa told everyone. "It was just a logical deception to force you all to draw out your peak potential."
The entire class let out a synchronized scream of absolute shock and relief. Right on cue, Momo Yaoyorozu crossed her arms and sighed, looking around at her frantic peers. "Honestly, you guys should have figured that out on your own. It was pretty obvious that it was just a ruse to make us do our best."
"Yeah... right," Denki Kaminari muttered, rubbing the back of his neck while still sweating from the stress.
While the rest of the class began to relax, Aizawa didn’t let the tension evaporate completely. He turned on his heel and walked straight back over to the now-relieved Mineta, who was still on the grass. The teacher’s shadow loomed heavily over the tiny student.
"Don’t get too comfortable, though," Aizawa continued, his voice dropping into a whisper that cut straight through Mineta’s relief. "If I deem you’re only wasting our time here, or if you keep going down this path of being a pervert instead of focusing on your training, I will kick you out. Not only from the hero course, but from this academy altogether. Do I make myself clear?"
Mineta frantically nodded his head up and down, saluting in pure terror as he squeaked out an understanding.
From his spot on the bench, Gray watched the entire scene play out with a faint smirk. He reached over, gently patting Eri’s head as she watched the colorful class pack up their gear. The first hurdle of the school year was officially cleared, but Gray knew keeping these kids from breaking under the upcoming storms would take much more than standard high school fitness drills.
As the students left, Gray stood up, with Eri right behind him. They walked around the vast school campus for a while longer, taking in the clean, futuristic air of UA before eventually heading back to their designated staff quarters.
Once inside the quiet safety of their room, Gray pulled up his system interface and started doing some more math. He checked the clock and noticed his next passive income upgrade wouldn’t be available until 11:00 PM. He meticulously ran the numbers and decided that immediately after securing that next tier, he would purchase the next four gold multipliers in a row to bring his total multiplier to a solid 1.70x.
The rest of the day went by smoothly without a single hitch. By the afternoon, the local day-students had already gone home for the evening. Seeing the massive glass buildings completely empty and the entire property fall into peaceful quiet, Gray decided to use the free time to have a thorough talk with Principal Nezu. Apparently, his training help was considered completely "optional," based on what he had overheard from Aizawa during Class 1-A’s evaluation, but so far he hadn’t been given any official guidelines or schedule for it. He turned to Eri and asked her if she wanted to tag along for the walk, but she simply shook her head softly, murmuring that she would rather stay behind and watch TV.
Leaving her comfortable in the room, Gray stepped outside and started walking towards the main administration building. He had kept a close lookout at the practice fields, wondering if Vlad King would bring the freshman kids from Class 1-B out to do the exact same Quirk Apprehension Test, but he didn’t see any movement. Apparently, Aizawa was a bit more ruthless and severe in his teaching methods than the other hero.
Arriving at the principal’s top-floor office, Gray found the heavy door open. A few of the prominent UA teachers were already gathered inside, speaking quietly around the desk.
"Ah, great timing!" Nezu called out, his dark eyes instantly lighting up as he spotted Gray in the doorway. "I was just about to call you over to the office anyway. This saves us some time." The principal took a slow sip from his teacup and leaned forward. "I heard you went out and watched Aizawa give his class their evaluation earlier today."
Gray nodded calmly, leaning against the doorframe with his hands in his pockets. "Yeah. I wanted to see the future of hero society with my own eyes."
"And?" Nezu continued, tilting his head with an amused expression. "What did you think of our new heroes in training?"
"Eh," Gray shrugged casually, his face neutral. "They’re barely out of middle school, so it’s still way too early to tell."
Nezu let out a small chuckle, nodding in agreement. "As for the primary reason why I wanted to speak with you today..." The principal stood up from his high chair and slid a thick, official envelope across the polished wood towards Gray. "In there, you will find all of the active classes’ information, along with what your official title is going to be from now on. The extra training sessions will be strictly optional, since we obviously can’t force our students into your pocket dimension. But for those who are genuinely willing to participate, I wanted to ask exactly how many students you could comfortably accommodate inside the void at once..."
Gray took the envelope and scanned the contents for a few quiet minutes before looking back up at the principal. "There is no physical limit on how many people I can take in there with me. All I really need are individuals who are actually willing to put in the work. If anyone tries to treat it like playtime, or doesn’t take the training seriously, I simply will not take them back there a second time. As long as they don’t disrupt or bother my own personal training, I don’t mind helping out."
"Perfect," Nezu smiled, his paws clapped together in thorough satisfaction. "I should have a finalized list of interested students ready for you by Friday afternoon."
"Actually, I wanted to speak with you about something else too..." Gray said, his tone shifting as he reached his hand back into his spatial pocket. With a dull metallic thud, he pulled a massive chunk of pure, raw gold ore straight from his system inventory and set it flat on the desk.
Thanks to his max-tier Home Garden continuously running automated harvests in the background, he had grown such a ridiculous surplus of precious metals that he honestly didn’t even know what to do with the raw stacks anymore. When he had first arrived in this universe, he had planned on using the gold to bribe lowlifes or trade for legal under-the-table currency, but now that he was safely inside UA as an official "teacher," he had no use for raw gold anymore. If anything, he wanted to see whether the hyper-intelligent principal could use his government connections to get him something far more practical in exchange.
Nezu reached out and grabbed the chunk of ore off the table, his tiny paws easily lifting the dense weight. "Is this gold?"
Gray nodded casually. "Yeah. I have even more valuable metals. I originally planned on exchanging them for some yen since I need some spending money now that Eri is staying with me." Gray paused for a moment, his expression turning serious. "Speaking of Eri, I wanted to ask if you know of any good psychiatrists for her. She’s been through a lot, and she needs professional help to process everything."
"Hmmm." Nezu turned the gold ore over, examining the glittering, raw mineral under his desk lamp for a bit longer. "I can see why you came to me. If you tried to sell this much unrefined precious metal on the open market, it would cause an immediate uproar and would make a total mess of the national currency for sure. But I’m sure we can come to an amicable agreement. How much more of this do you have?" Before Gray could even open his mouth to answer, Nezu continued, "As for the psychiatrist, I happen to know a few highly trusted professionals who work closely with traumatized youth. I will personally send them Eri’s files and let you know which one would be available to start sessions."
"Thanks," Gray said, leaning back. "As for how much more ore I have, well..." He side-eyed his system inventory, checking the massive, multi-digit numbers stacking up inside. "Let’s just say I could collapse Japan’s economy and currency overnight if I decided to pull it all out at once."
Nezu nodded slowly, not even looking surprised by the absurd statement after witnessing Gray’s power firsthand. "I’ll ask some of my contacts and see if they’re interested in purchasing raw materials directly. Is gold the only mineral you have at your disposal?"
"No, I can get pretty much any metal or mineral they need, as long as it’s not radioactive," Gray said. He had no intention of giving them any really dangerous things, like uranium, that he could easily harvest from his max-level Home Garden.
The other teachers in the room stared at the heavy chunk of gold on the desk, thoroughly bewildered by the man’s casual attitude toward infinite wealth, while Nezu simply slid the ore into his drawer with a knowing smile.
Gray left the office after Nezu told him he would call him once he had some concrete answers from his contacts. The principal emphasized that, for now, he shouldn’t try to sell any precious metals anywhere else, since it would cause headaches if the wrong people found out about his untraceable resources. Gray didn’t mind the wait; he nodded casually and walked back to his quarters.
At 11:00 PM, right after Eri had finally fallen asleep under the warm blankets, Gray sat on the couch and pulled up his glowing system interface to buy the next major upgrade.
[New Upgrade]
(500000 Gold) 24000 Gold/Hour✔
[New Hourly Rate]
72,694 (48,463) Gold/Hour
Gold: 20,431
Still not feeling tired, he booted up the laptop Nezu had lent him and put on a movie to pass the time. He relaxed as the hours ticked by, his passive income steadily filling back up in the background. Exactly two hours after buying the last upgrade, Gray opened the system interface once more and bought the next two multipliers in a row.
[New Upgrades]
(39600 Gold) +0.05x ✔
(69600 Gold) +0.05x ✔
[New Hourly Rate]
77,540 (48,463) Gold/Hour
Gold: 56,619
His newly updated Status Info now looked something like this.
[Status Info]
Name: Gray Ashwood
Age: 23 years old
Race: Saiyan
Gold: 56,619
Gold per hour: 77,540 (48,463)
Gold Multiplier: 1.60x
Time: 1:11 AM
Satisfied that he was finally making some real, substantial gold out of his system again, Gray closed the menu. He leaned back against the pillows, finally letting his eyes close, and dozed off peacefully next to Eri.
What Gray didn’t know was that elsewhere, near Izuku’s house, someone was losing his mind. Katsuki Bakugo paced furiously around his bedroom, his teeth gritted so tightly his jaw ached. He kept slamming a fist against his desk, the small explosions from his palms scorching the wood. He kept yelling over and over again about how he had already been surpassed on day one.
The image of the rankings board kept popping back into his mind, burning itself into his memory. ’4th place? Not even the top three! And that fucking nerd dared to keep his Quirk hidden from me all these years!?’
He couldn’t accept it. The memory of Izuku blurring past him on the 50-meter track, leaving behind nothing but a trail of dust, made his blood boil with pure humiliation.
Down the hall, Katsuki’s mom, Mitsuki Bakugo, finally had enough of the non-stop stomping and shouting. She violently threw his bedroom door open, a vein popping on her forehead as she glared at her explosive son.
"QUIT YOUR WHINING AND GO TO BED, YOU BRAT!" she roared, her voice easily drowning out his anger.
Bakugo flinched, biting his tongue as he slammed his hands into his pockets, still staring holes into his floorboards. The first official day of UA had completely shattered his reality, and the school year was just getting started.
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