Jiang Yan opened his eyes on a bus filled with high school students, and it took him only a moment to realize that he was back in the past.
They were faces he knew. Every one of them was a classmate, and every one of them was eighteen, and the bus was moving in a direction he remembered. He worked it out before the next stop: this was the day he and his peers graduated high school, and they were on their way to Nanyong Demon Cave Station to awaken their classes.
At this point in time, it was still two and a half years before the city was destroyed.
Twelve years ago, numerous demon cave entrances had suddenly appeared in the human world, and Nanyong Demon Cave was one of them. The monsters that came out of the cave killed humans on a large scale. Humans were forced to enter the cave to launch a counterattack.
But they soon met with a grim realization. Inside the demon world, conventional weapons were useless, because they were disrupted by mana. Soon after that, humanity discovered something else: anyone who reached the age of eighteen and approached a demon cave under its influence would awaken innate skills and gain the power to fight back against the monsters. After several years of battle by the awakened, humans finally contained the demons in the demon caves and began their counterattack into the other world.
Thanks to this, humanity's structure changed. Every eighteen-year-old high school graduate came to a demon cave to awaken a class. Classes were divided into three types: combat, support, and craft. As expected, the combat class sat above everything else, while the support class came right after. The craft class was stuck at the back, and was constantly looked down upon.
In his past life, the class Yan awakened was an F-rank craft class.
There was something different about it, however, because the innate skill that awakened with his class was an overpowered, god-tier skill.
Modify.
It changed a single character in the name of a skill or an item, and by changing that one character it could turn the thing into trash or into treasure. In his past life, the moment he revealed this skill, he was immediately whipped up by the big shots, and they had him modify the names of all kinds of skills and equipment. He helped them turn all sorts of worthless junk into artifacts.
But this also made them fear him. Because of that fear, they put him under a not-so-serious house arrest, restricted his growth, and tried to control him completely.
This went on until one night, when a massive level 96 dragon-type monster walked out of the Nanyong Demon Cave.
It was something that had never happened before. And on the day that it happened, Yan had just reached level 70, barely stepping into the ranks of human powerhouses. Yan felt like someone had decided to use the monster to wipe him out, because they could not control him.
Before dying, Yan had modified his resurrection skill into rebirth.
Which was why he was sitting on a bus, eighteen years old again, with the whole thing still ahead of him.
Now that he had been reborn, Yan understood that the only person he could trust was himself, and he did not plan on telling anyone what he could do in this life. He would protect his family, his friends, and the city, while quietly growing stronger.
Not long after, the bus arrived at the Nanyong City Hunter Association headquarters, where the Awakening Plaza was located.
Some of the students were hyped up, confident that they were going to awaken something cool. Others were scared that they were going to awaken trash classes. Meanwhile, everyone's attention was focused on Yan, who was at the top of the academy in both academics and combat. He had been born with a body full of mana, and because of this, he was considered a genius.
The students were convinced that he was going to awaken a strong combat class.
But the second-ranked student in the school, Yong Hongwei, was jealous of Yan's success, and he believed that Yan was going to come out with a trash class.
The teacher then told Yan that he would be the first to go, so as to give everyone a good start. He was asked to put both hands on the crystal, which would awaken his class panel. The knights called him forward to carry out his awakening procedure, and Yan confidently stepped up.
He was not nervous. He already knew where this was going to end.
The students, and even the teacher, waited patiently for him to awaken a strong combat class. They prayed specifically that it would not be a craft class, which was the trashiest of the three. Hongwei prayed for exactly the opposite.
Yan touched the crystal.
The crystal gave off a bright light before displaying his class, and the class was Tinkerer.
Just as he had expected. An F-rank craft class.
The moment everyone saw it, they freaked out. The teacher held his head in complete shock, wondering how this could have happened, because Yan was a hardworking person. Hongwei and his guys, on the other hand, almost died from laughter, because Yan could not have had it worse. Hongwei was exhilarated. He would finally get to go past Yan, who had always bested him in everything.
One of the knights tried to console Yan.
"The Tinkerer isn't bad," he said. "It's better than the Farmer class." He told him that he could use it to open a shop and make good money repairing gear.
Suddenly, the crystal started reacting again.
That got everyone on their toes, because it meant that he was awakening a second class. The teacher talked about how rare it was to awaken dual classes, because anyone who did was considered a genius among geniuses. He was convinced that the second class would be better than the first.
And just then, the class panel displayed the Farmer class.
It was an F rank, just like the Tinkerer, and everyone was left in complete shock, because the Farmer was even more useless than the Tinkerer. Hongwei almost fell to the ground laughing. He could not believe that he had called it, and that it had come out exactly the way he wanted.
Everyone immediately concluded that Yan was a failure, and words of pity and sympathy started flowing out of their mouths.
But deep down, Yan was rejoicing.
He knew the classes he had awakened were trash. The talent that came with them was an overpowered skill.
As for the Tinkerer and its innate skill, Modify, it was a skill that could change one character in an innate skill name, an equipment name, or an item name. After the modification, the name's owner would gain the corresponding innate skill, equipment, or item matching the new name. If the modification target originated from Yan himself, the success rate was one hundred percent. But if the target's level was higher than his, the success rate was reduced by ten percent per level of difference.
As for the Farmer class and its innate skill, Growth, it increased plant growth speed by one hundred and ten percent. It also revived the target, including Yan himself, and fully restored all injuries, though expended mana could not be restored.
Yan knew that as long as he used the skills wisely, they were going to be his greatest trump card.
He looked at the new student rankings, and he vowed to take first place on both lists. With that, he planned to show everyone what it felt like to live in fear of an F-rank class.