My Genre Is Different From Everyone Else’s - Chapter 1 Part 1
Class changers. These beings were also known as hunters, as they ventured into gates to face off against monsters. While anyone could become a class changer, not everyone had what it took.
Class officials were the ones who evaluated the aspiring class changers.
“You have good talent.”
This meant they were set for life.
“Not too shabby.”
While this meant that they were, quite literally, not too shabby.
“Are you sure you want to change classes? You might want to reconsider.”
If you weren’t prepared to stake your life on becoming a class changer, you had to find another path.
Half a year after the sky collapsed, an era called hell. A time when humanity fought to survive.
I was one of those who fought out of desperation to survive. I wanted to slit the throats of the monsters who had ruined my peaceful life, and I refused to live in constant fear, wondering where I could hide or whether I could find food for the day.
So I finally sneaked out of the ruined school building where I had been precariously hiding and went in search of a class official. The nearest one to me was in a hospital. The healer-type class official there shot me a glance and said, “It seems you’ve come to the wrong place, child.”
The kindness in their rejection only made it all the more wretched. The magic-type class official at the library glanced at me and said, “This doesn’t seem to be the path for you.”
“…Then please, tell me what my path is.”
The class official remained silent at my words. Finally, the first class official ever discovered, a physical-type official, simply told me, “Go back.”
Motherf*cker. Their answer was so half-baked that it seemed as if their sole purpose was to break the record for the fastest refusal.
“Why?!”
The continuous rejections were enough to turn me savage. I grabbed the sword lying next to the class official and pointed it at their throat.
“Is it talent I lack?”
“No. You have plenty of talent.”
“Then why won’t you let me?!”
Their face remained completely calm compared to my frantic state, which infuriated me. I knew that my actions were the furthest thing from a threat to them, but still, this just served to show how thin my patience had become.
If I failed to change classes again, I’d die. The thought continued to gnaw at me, bit by bit.
Perhaps out of pity, or perhaps because they were annoyed, the class official—who usually only talked about changing classes or talked about potential and talent—offered me some advice. Even if that advice was nothing more than utter nonsense.
“You… Let me put this in human terms. You’re not even in the right genre.”
“…What the hell does that mean?!”
In the end, I left the dojo, sobbing at the injustice of it all. While the places where class officials resided were considered safe, you couldn’t stay there for long unless you changed your class to their affiliated type.
I endured and endured until I could endure no more and kicked at the neatly placed swords, knocking them over. I ignored the glares of the class official towards me.
I didn’t have the luxury of worrying about such trivial stares. I had left what I considered a safe zone—something that required risking my life each time I ventured out—and this was the result? I regretted the time I had spent running around all day.
I didn’t know whether to resent my lack of talent, having been rejected by all three class officials in one day, or whether to resent the class official who said I had talent but gave me a nonsensical reason anyway.
Not in the right genre? What the hell did that mean? It wasn’t like I was from another world or anything.
Everyone else was filming a modern fantasy, so why was I the only one in a different genre? My life wasn’t modern fantasy, romance fantasy, or even just fantasy in general. It was genreless. That was why they wouldn’t let me change classes.
It wasn’t like I was searching for a nationality. I bemoaned my situation, forced to find a genre. Where in the world was I supposed to go to find my genre?
“……”
I wasn’t asking for much.
I just wanted to change classes like everyone else, kill monsters, and find my parents. No, I didn’t even need to find them—I just wanted to know if they were dead or alive. I wondered if someone like me, who wasn’t even a class changer, could find them or if they would still be alive by the time I did. The thought brought tears to my eyes.
Maybe it was because I was crying too loudly, or maybe it was just the monster’s act of kindness, its way of telling me, “Your genre is survival!”
I ended up encountering a monster not far from my safety zone—the school where I had been hiding. My luck, which I’d often complained was non-existent, seemed to have decided to run away this time, as even the class changers I’d occasionally glimpsed were nowhere to be seen.
The monster’s red eyes rolled towards me like big marbles. Just the sight of it made my whole body break out in goosebumps.
As I locked eyes with the monster—its black husk, red eyes, and the purple puffs of air it exhaled—I could no longer tell if I was even breathing properly.
This wasn’t how I wanted to check my genre.
A claw, larger than my body, cleaved through the air, coming closer and closer. It felt as if the claw, as it came closer to rip my body apart, was going to crush me completely instead of just slicing me.
But everyone experiences at least one miracle in their life. For me, my first miracle was surviving in hell, even if it was difficult to live like a human being. My second miracle was dodging that claw.
It felt as if lightning had struck right next to my ear. The claw hadn’t even grazed me, but my ears were still tingling.
“Gasp, ugh… gasp…”
Laboured breaths forced their way out of my throat. My palms stung, and my knees ached. When I looked up, beyond the monster that filled my field of vision, the black mass we dared not even call the sky looked far too black. It was an endless darkness.
Seizing the opportunity as the monster struggled to free its claw embedded in the ground, I fled. As I ran, a torrent of thoughts raced through my mind.
How far had I run? Was I even running properly? Was it right behind me? Was I really running away?
I wanted to look back, but at the same time, I didn’t. Fear, curiosity, worry, anger, and frustration tugged at my ankles. There was no strength in my legs.
How long had I been running?
Everywhere I looked, the ruined buildings were all the same grey, and the ball of fire hanging above the collapsed sky—once thought to be the sun—was far from humanity’s ally. It was an incomprehensible world, dark yet bright, and bright yet dark. I just kept running.
I ran until my mouth went dry and I couldn’t breathe because of my coughing. I didn’t know where I was. Actually, it didn’t really matter. After all, everything had changed, so the world itself was an alien landscape to me.
Could my luck really be this bad? The class changers I’d glimpsed from time to time were still nowhere to be seen. The more desperately I searched for them, the stronger the thought that boiled inside me.
If only I had changed classes.
If only I could wield a sword, cast magic, or have the ability to heal myself like everybody else.
Tears welled up. I felt wronged and scared. The stark reality of having nothing to protect me was unbearably cruel. The very fact that I was reduced to tears only fueled my anger. I felt suffocated by the wretchedness of this reality, where all I could do was cry.
I ran and ran until I finally tripped. My legs gave out. I wanted to get away from the monster, even if it meant I’d have to crawl. My knees were bruised, and the tips of my nails were broken. My swollen fingertips, dripping with blood, throbbed with sharp pain. Incessant sobs escaped from my mouth.
My movements were powerless; if the monster had been behind me, I would have been dead long ago. Even though I knew the monster wasn’t behind me, I couldn’t stop my futile efforts.
Just when I had no more strength to crawl, just when I would have preferred to die in peace—
I discovered it.
A sky shard. A bright blue fragment of the collapsed sky, a remnant of the barrier that had once shielded us from the strange darkness.
I approached it as if possessed. Despite having heard from a relatively kind class changer that monsters had emerged from such shards two days prior, I still did it anyway.
“…Pretty.”
Words unbefitting of the current situation slipped from my lips. But it was true; the sky shard up close was undeniably beautiful.
Sky shard. True to its name, it contained a piece of the sky. The bright blue of the sky. Wispy, white clouds.
However, the shard I found was a little different from the others. Though it was only about my height and not one of the larger fragments of the sky, the clouds within it contained an array of colours.
Their colours were reminiscent of a serene cotton candy blend—a hue that seemed entirely out of place in this hellish landscape.
I reached out to touch the fragment, expecting it to be hard or impossible to touch. To my surprise, however, my hand passed right through it. No, perhaps “passed through” wasn’t quite right, but in any case, I could feel the clouds inside the shard.
“They said that… monsters emerged from the shards…”
If something could come out of it, perhaps other things could enter as well?
I clenched my fists, feeling a strange sort of softness from the cloud in my grasp. As I gazed up past the tranquil clouds, I saw a grey city devoid of colour welcoming me.
I squeezed my eyes shut. I was tired and didn’t have the confidence to survive without becoming a class changer. It would all come to the same thing anyway.
I gathered the last of my strength and hurled myself into the shard, thinking that it would be better if I just died like this.
But I didn’t die.
When I opened my eyes, I saw a lake shrouded in mist, with massive willows surrounding the water’s edge. Beneath the dense foliage sat a man in a black dopo.
The scene before me resembled an elegant ink and wash painting, brought to life and reborn with colours. The only figure blessed with such hues in this landscape turned his head towards me.
As his eyes, tipped with a peculiar red like the essence of a peach blossom, curved, I realized. Our eyes seemed to have met. I wasn’t dead yet.
The man said, “Hello.”
His greeting was the last thing I heard before losing consciousness.
Storyteller Clementine's Words
I use the volume version of the raws, which means the chapters are longer than usual. The way I personally split chapters may differ from the webnovel version since I split purely based on vibes, pls keep this in mind when reading >.<
pe551
Thank for the chapter