Chapter 3

Haha! The volunteer application numbers for the New Capital Gate Art Institute have hit a new low, basically doomed. Earlier, an art school student kept complaining to me about AI-generated art lacking soul, and now I just want to see his expression.

Heh heh! The fire department major is also doomed; with poor skills you can't even beat machines, a infantryman with a flamethrower can match a whole class of fire mages, at best you could be a cook with some prospects, being a barbecue man purely running on love, you know what I mean, Aomo? The job prospects for alchemy and armored driving majors are fantastic—those companies and anti-terror units are scrambling to hire.

His rapid speech, gloating tone, and endless chatter made this youth seem out of place with Xiao Yu outside the classroom; he appeared confident of victory, like a top student, not someone ruined by the senior-year placement exam, and later slacking off in the mock exams as a poor student.

As he put it: 'Aomo, as long as you're prepared, the mask of suffering won't find you.'

What preparation? Preparing to repeat a year!

As a legal transmigrant, upon first entering school he gets one free chance to repeat a year—that's his reliance!

For other native students the days before the college entrance exam are especially stressful, but for him it's just having an entire school year left to mess around and still succeed!!

But the Aomo he speaks of isn't a transmigrant; a transmigrant Aomo should feel college entrance pressure, yet the reality is... he just did a quick skim of the air, realized that on a drizzly day one should laze around, and so he's lazily browsing the forum.

Even when his friend asked, he kept his head down and replied coldly: 'Alchemy burns money, armored driving needs armor to fit, space department still has some prospects, time department gets struck by lightning, stop obsessing over magic—go to Polytechnic University.'

Even doing research at the Polytechnic can't beat those robots! The planet-cutting machine in the recent news was from the Intelligent Machinery Research Team—feels so outdated.

Then go take the horse trainer exam,' Aomo said offhandedly, his fingers long and strong as they slid the light screen, joints distinct, suitable for picking up an instrument to ruin, 'It's in the same city, after graduation you can go straight to Central Tressen.'

Others call that a trainer!' his friend corrected.

I think 'Trainer' should be translated as 'horse trainer' according to reality,' Aomo said, slightly impatient, 'You're not a transmigrant, so why fuss over this?'

It's because I'm a transmigrant that I care! I've played at being a horse girl before!' his friend shouted, pulling up the Gaoyue Prize website on his phone and waving it in Aomo's face, 'Look! I'm VIP3 now, so active!'

You're a gambler, right? Then why not apply for the horse trainer major?

Forget it... just a small bet.

Oh, Lord Ye's love of horses,' 'Nonsense! I've thought about it, not urgent, we'll talk next year! And compared to that, why do you locals so naturally accept something as absurd as horse girls?!'

Absurd? Beast-eared, tailed creatures fill the streets; I think their build makes more sense than a centaur's. And what ancient thing can't be accepted...' Aomo said irritably, then suddenly remembered something, turning to look at the only transmigrant with similar features—black hair, brown eyes—and asked, 'Haven't you finished the sophomore history textbook?'

Uh... I've read two units, feels like... not as good as inserting crystal elements.

Then you need to insert them too, you extreme conservative,' Aomo said, glancing at his phone, fell silent, then wearily wiped his face, 'Fine, I'll add a bit—you'll ask sooner or later. First, the transmigrant concept: crossing from another world into this one, beings arriving from other realms are never just humans—giant beasts, plants, even pure objects—' 'Wait! skip!'

... Bi Ze.' Aomo took a deep breath, thinking if he had a student like that he'd want to pull off a floating ten-cut.

Too bad he's not a teacher; he's just a third-year student at Border Gate High School.

Moreover, unlike Bi Ze, who can rely on the Transmigrants' Rights Act to naturally repeat a year, he is a lifelong native, lacking that other's free-thinking mindset and thick-skinned indifference to coffee shop patrons' gazes, so he restrained his blood pressure and patiently waited for the other's continuation.

Hai hai hai,' he raised his hand in a military salute, speaking like a lord; Bi Ze's reaction left Aomo speechless, he somewhat apologetically responded to the onlookers' attention, then lowered his hand and lifted the coffee in front of him, also hearing him continue, 'I am a transmigrant, and I still understand the transmigrant concept.'

Then...' he took a light sip of the coffee before him, Aomo asked, 'Transmigrants have existed since ancient times, you know that?'

I know,' Bi Ze nodded, 'Every history class refreshes my worldview, especially that Earth has been unified and called the Holy Terra Federation—there really is no emperor here?'

You're going off-topic.' Aomo's face remained expressionless.

I was just joking.' Bi Ze said seriously.

Aomo then acted as if the earlier interruption never happened, continuing the topic: 'Since you know transmigrants have existed since ancient times, what do you want to guess?'

Guess the first transmigrant horse girl to arrive?

No, I said before, transmigrants aren't limited to humans.

?

"In fact," seeing he seemed completely clueless, Aomo lifted his dead‑fish eyes and announced the answer: "In the Star Alliance calendar, before 1278 years, that is... 1891 years ago, at that time the Holy Terra Federation was still called the Earth Human Federation, but it was already on the eve of civilizational unification; that year, thirty‑six transmigrants were recorded in history, and your answer accounts for three of them."

"......" Knowing Aomo was about to reveal the answer, Bi Ze held his breath and focused; it seemed he truly was the so‑called horse‑girl player.

"They call themselves the three goddesses."

"I'm super!"

"Star Alliance year 612, June 4, Sunday, Holy Terra Federation border gate area."

"19‑year‑old senior high school student Aomo, because his classmate Bi Ze was too blood‑pressure‑raising, ultimately failed to finish a cup of coffee at the café."

"After all, Bi Ze was really too easily startled; even though the staff didn't mention it, the gazes of the surrounding customers were already enough to make him weary."

"Probably just bad luck... As Aomo stepped out of the café, he tugged at his satchel to adjust his balance, then glanced back at his low‑brow friend who was walking while looking at his phone."

"When transmigrants first arrive, being startled by this world is normal. After all, even the local historians, when studying their own history, can't help but imagine 'What if this world had no otherworldly visitors?'—what the original history would be like, what the original world would be like."

"But daydreaming is just daydreaming. Everyone born here, living here, studying that lengthy history, knows how to dialectically view transmigrants, just as the second page of the transmigrants' subject reads: believing that otherworldly visitors can accelerate and enrich civilization's development, or that they will cause civilization to regress and suppress its diversity—this has always been a classic debate topic."

"In the verifiable cosmic records of Earth civilization, the time taken to accumulate the conditions for space exploration is not merely not excellent; it can even be said to be terribly poor."

"The reason is simply that too many otherworldly visitors have interfered."

"The delayed space exploration is both due to the planet's particularities and the result of internal talent struggles because the will has not been unified."

"It's hard to imagine how much of the grand, sweeping and dark, lightless periods of past history were due to the leadership of otherworldly visitors, and even extraterrestrial visitors mixed in, adding further strokes to the painful mask of historians and even history students."

"But at least it's past; the Holy Terra Federation's gaze turned to the stars, and the long‑term talent and tech intense competition resulted that once its civilization began developing toward the universe, that path became a soaring ascent."

"Establishing extraterrestrial relations, exploring habitable planets, constructing the large‑scale fixed‑point jump facility star gates—by this point, most new transmigrants already can't understand this world."

"Especially when seeing the polity and cosmic organization composed of sovereign civilizations: the Star Alliance. Its leading polity is also the Holy Terra Federation, or more formally, the sole permanent‑member federation—Earth can hardly have such a grandiose interstellar work... Transmigrants mostly can't help feeling this way."

"So they need to adapt."

"So the Transmigrants' Rights Act includes arranging for transmigrants to attend school, different ages for different schools, allowing grade retention according to age segment and civil‑evaluation stage, with the purpose of 'Let me see you understand this world before you go out, don't cause trouble!'"

"Each year, quite a few transmigrants are killed by officials, although the statistics are not made public."

"Bi Ze is a transmigrant who has been enrolled for half a year; with the receptivity expected of young people, half a year should have been enough to adapt, but who would have thought that this guy, while shouting 'I'm a horse‑girl player!' on one side, hasn't even figured out the history of horse‑girls in this world?"

"Aomo finds it hard to judge whether this is a case of overlooking the obvious or just laziness, but in his 19 years of life he indeed has only this one peer‑aged friend."

"Here perhaps we should reintroduce him: Aomo Lindun, 19 years old, a literature student."

"A human with half‑latent demon blood, having a pair of irresponsible missing parents, the only true relative is a vampire foster father."

"A vampire in the ethnic sense is not a capitalist."

"In fact, he is still a worker, employed at a private security insurance company, occasionally taking on official cooperative employment; he is indeed an enforcer."

"His foster father is single and has never had children; although he meant to raise Aomo as a child, he truly lacks the capability—if he can't even take care of himself, how could he look after a child?"

"The result is that Aomo was forced to be self‑reliant and self‑strengthening; the greatest help his foster father gave was making Aomo's skills not bad, and establishing the example of 'better not become that slovenly adult,' as well as the ambiguous‑good‑or‑bad early exposure to enforcers, mercenaries, and such gray circles."

However, this kind of contact made Aomo's already poor reputation even worse; originally, due to his parents' situation and his foster father always being late or absent from parent-teacher meetings, Aomo had been surrounded by various rumors since childhood, and even though he was good‑tempered and good‑looking, he could not avoid being ostracized by classmates.

Later, as they grew older, the new classmates' attitudes also became more mature, and there were always some who didn't care about the rumors and were willing to approach him, but Aomo was nonetheless the sort who liked to be on the fringe, enjoying observing people.

Adding to this, the various rumors that were never fully cleared up meant that Aomo's school social circle could always be described as tragic.

Many classmates knew his name, but that was all they did—just knowing his name.

The most frequent interactions were: "Can you let me copy your homework?" or "Can I borrow your notes?" or "Do you know how to solve this problem?"—Aomo's grades had always been near the top of the class, stable enough that otherwise he wouldn't be able to be so lax just days before the college entrance exam.

The person he got along with best could only be Bi Ze, a transfer student he had known for only half a year, and it took this guy's utter social‑butterfly demeanor to become Aomo's friend; at first they practically clung to each other relentlessly, but after getting acquainted they at least had some common topics.

For example, novels, games, even watching horse girl races and all kinds of super dream stuff—Aomo's interests were many and varied, but few people understood them.

When Aomo asked Bi Ze why he was so insistent on getting on good terms with him, Bi Ze's reply was also rather subtle.

"I thought your name and your appearance are far more interesting than those of other classmates—this is what you call investing ahead of time."

……

It's not hard to understand—the ethnic traits of East Blaze District and the naming conventions of West Virtue District mean that those who pay attention to Aomo are certainly not lacking this one.

But this guy really has the most perseverance and is quite odd.

Silently holding onto this weird guy, Aomo headed into the noisy Super Dream Audio-Visual Hall, where the clamor didn't bother him.