I Awakened the World's Worst Class, Then Became Unstoppable

Chapter 2: The Starter Package

The bell rang, and the crowd around Ethan's desk scattered like roaches when the light comes on. Even after Awakening, even with their futures etched into their souls, nobody wanted to be late for the last day of classes.

Ethan sat where he was, staring at the small yellow package icon in his inventory, while the room filled with the scrape of chairs and the murmur of voices comparing Classes and ranks and which Combat Academy scout had handed them a card.

The door opened, and David Guo walked in.

Forty-something, upright, with a military-short haircut and a voice that carried to the back row without straining. Their homeroom teacher. His Class was Teacher—A-rank, which was why he'd been assigned to the senior class at one of the city's top high schools. In this world, Teacher wasn't just a job title. It was a Class, with its own talents and obligations. A Teacher who abused students didn't get fired. They got their Class stripped, and a Class-stripped person didn't survive long outside the walls.

So Mr. Guo was fair. He was also, Ethan knew, disappointed.

The man's gaze swept the room and paused on Ethan for half a second too long. Something flickered behind his eyes—pity, maybe, or the particular grief of a teacher who'd watched his best student hit a wall he couldn't study his way over. Ethan had the highest academic scores in Class 9. Top five in the school. Mr. Guo had told him, more than once, that any B-rank-or-above combat Class would've guaranteed him a scholarship at the best Combat Academy in the Federation.

Instead: Farmer. E-rank.

Mr. Guo didn't say anything about it. He climbed to the front of the room and started talking about next steps, and Ethan tuned him out about thirty seconds in.

Combat Classes—any rank, E through S—got automatic admission to a Combat Academy. The curriculum was brutal, the mortality rate during training was not zero, but graduates walked into positions with the military, the city guard, or the corporate security firms. Money. Status. Power.

Support and production Classes got recruited directly. Chefs by restaurant conglomerates. Drivers by logistics companies. Security by the wall garrisons. Their skills were maxed at Awakening—no training needed, just deployment.

Ethan wasn't listening. He was staring at the yellow package.

Open, he thought.

The package dissolved into white light. Four items materialized in his inventory space, and a notification rolled across his vision:

Starter Gift Package opened. You received:

- Common Vegetable Seeds ×10

- Spirit Cabbage Seeds ×1 (Uncommon)

- Common Soil Plot ×1 m²

- Growth Nutrient (Basic) ×10

Ethan examined each one.

The Common Soil Plot, when deployed, would create a one-square-meter patch of arable soil—genuinely arable, unlike the dead dirt outside. Basic quality, no bonuses, but it was soil that could grow things. In a world where soil was a controlled resource, that was nothing to sneeze at.

The Growth Nutrient would shave twenty-four hours off a crop's maturity time. One bottle per square meter, no stacking. He'd briefly wondered if he could dump all ten at once and i***a-harvest, but the system had already anticipated that particular exploit.

The seeds spoke for themselves. Ten common, one uncommon.

He was still cataloging when Mr. Guo's voice finally registered. "—and that covers the enrollment timelines. Any questions?"

Silence. The kids in the room were too busy vibrating with their own futures to ask questions.

Mr. Guo looked at them, and a small, genuine smile touched his face. "Then class is dismissed. Ethan—stay a moment. The rest of you, go home. Congratulations, all of you."

The room erupted into motion. Backpacks zipped. Chairs scraped. Felix caught Ethan's eye on the way out, jerked his thumb toward the door—you want me to wait?—and Ethan shook his head. Felix shrugged and left.

Ethan followed Mr. Guo to the office. It was small, cluttered with papers and a single potted plant that looked like it was barely hanging on (ironic, given the conversation they were about to have). Mr. Guo sat behind his desk, gestured for Ethan to sit, and sighed.

"Ethan," he said. "I know your Class and talent rank aren't what you hoped for. But don't give up. There's an old saying—three hundred and sixty trades, and every one has its master. Farmer is unheard of, yes. But unheard of doesn't mean worthless. You might find a path nobody's walked before."

"I know, Mr. Guo." Ethan kept his voice even. "If that's all, I'd like to head home."

Mr. Guo studied him for a long moment, then nodded. He looked relieved—like he'd been bracing for a breakdown and didn't know what to do with a kid who wasn't having one. "Of course. If you run into trouble—anything—come find me. I mean that."

"Thanks."

Ethan left the office, walked down the empty hallway, and stepped out into the late-afternoon heat.

The Walled City was enormous—the size of an entire province from the old world, layered and zoned and walled off in concentric rings. The Inner District held the corporations, the academies, the people who mattered. The Mid District was everyone else. The Outer District, where Ethan lived, pressed up against the city walls. Cheap rent. Frequent power outages. And, every few months, an Aberration that found a crack in the wall and came through looking for an easy meal.

That was why the rent was a hundred dollars a month.

Ethan knew every inch of the walk home. He'd walked it since he was twelve, when he'd aged out of the orphan system and started renting the cheapest place he could find. The orphanage had been okay—cold, underfunded, but the staff had tried. After that, he'd survived on scholarships and scavenging.

The Outer District was a grid of old single-story houses, each with a tiny yard. Most yards were two or three square meters, just enough for a chair and a drying rack. Ethan's place was at the very back of the row, backed up against a stretch of unused land—two, maybe three acres of bare, dead dirt. His yard was bigger than the others, almost twenty square meters. The house itself was less than twenty: a kitchen nook, a bathroom, a bedroom, a closet-sized living room. The table was warped. The chairs didn't match. Everything he owned, he'd found.

"Ethan! You're back!"

Mrs. Alvarez poked her head over the fence. She'd lived next door for five years, and she always had food questions even though she'd never tasted food. "How'd it go? Any good Class?"

"Farmer," Ethan said.

She blinked. "Like... actual farmer?"

"Actual farmer."

"Huh." She considered this. "Well. You always did have a way with that sad little tomato plant you tried last year. Even if it died."

Ethan almost smiled. "It did die."

"Everything dies out here," she said, not unkindly. "But you kids got options. Us old folks, we're stuck with our D-rank janitor Classes and our nutrient paste. You go make something of yourself, hear?"

Other neighbors were drifting out now—Old Man Chen, who ran a scrap stand; the two girls from the house across the way, both a year younger; Mr. Patel, who worked the night shift at the wall. They'd all known today was Awakening day. They all cared, in the quiet, practical way of people who didn't have much but looked out for each other anyway.

Ethan answered their questions as briefly as he could without being rude. He'd never been good with crowds—small talk made his skin feel too tight—and after a few minutes he excused himself and let himself into his yard.

The yard was clean. Swept. In one corner, a stack of flattened cardboard and glass bottles and scrap metal—things he'd pulled from the dead zone just outside the wall, where scavenger teams didn't bother with the small stuff. The Scavenger Class people bought it by weight; they could break down refuse into raw energy crystals. It wasn't much money, but it paid the rent.

His house key was under a loose brick by the door. He let himself in, kicked off his shoes, and crossed to the kitchen nook—really just a counter with a faucet, a hot plate he'd found in a ditch, and a pot with a crack in the side that he'd sealed with epoxy.

From the cupboard, he pulled a bottle of generic nutrient paste. Gray. Viscous. Tasted like nothing and left a film on his teeth. He drank it in three swallows, capped the bottle, and went back outside.

The sun was low, painting the dead dirt of his yard in orange light. Twenty square meters of nothing. But he had a Soil Plot now. And seeds. And ten bottles of Growth Nutrient.

He stood in the middle of the yard and looked at the space. Some old, stubborn instinct from a world where soil still grew things stirred in him—an excitement he hadn't felt since he was a kid, digging in the orphanage garden and getting told to stop because he was wasting water.

Tomorrow, he was going to plant something.