Reborn in another world as a Hermaphrodite

As the students began disappearing in front of him, it soon arrived for Alex's turn as the light engulfed him.

"Good luck!"

The sudden mysterious voice made him turn around, only to see a completely new environment around him.

He was no longer on the school campus. In fact, he was in the middle of an endless span of grass fields.

There was only a dirt path ahead of him, seemingly leading somewhere.

"Ahem. Sorry about that. We only had a few days to set this up. Please follow the dirt path until you arrive at the station."

Principal Klaus's voice appeared once again as Alex began walking forward.

After walking for almost ten minutes, he finally saw the building in the distance.

It was a long race track. A trace track that was so long that it cut straight through the horizon.

"Hello! I'm your test tracker."

"Woah!"

A small orb of light with a robotic voice suddenly appeared on the right, making Alex flinch a little as it started talking again.

"Please wait here as other contestant arrive at their starting line."

"Okay..."

As Alex waited at the entrance, there was nothing much he could do other than wait for the race to begin.

But after waiting for what felt like ten minutes, he was starting to get a little annoyed.

"How long do I have to wait for?"

The orb of light doesn't answer back, causing Alex to start examining the track once again.

Just like what he had seen before, it was just a flat track made of some sort of extremely small, compacted, bouncy balls.

It was the same one that the school used. Thinking back, it was starting to remind him of the material used to track back on Earth.

Plastic. A material that is extremely flexible and has almost an infinite number of uses.

Yet this world seems to have zero invention for it. Or at least it isn't used at a mass adoption level.

"All contestants are now ready. Reach the end to win the contest! You may start as soon as the gate opens."

As Alex snapped his attention back to the moment, he started stretching out his body to warm up his arms.

"You may begin."

The moment the gate opened, Alex immediately started at full speed, running forward to get a head start.

To his surprise, hundreds of people appeared out of thin air. Fully surrounding him as if he were being thrown into a marathon.

Turning his head to the back, he saw that what was supposed to be a single entrance was now thousands of entrances left and right.

Everyone was running on the same field, with barely any visibility, as all the taller people arrived at the front of the pack.

"Crap!"

Just as Alex tried to slow down, the person behind him was starting to speed up instead.

It was almost going to be a disaster until he suddenly noticed their body ran straight through him.

"Huh?"

As Alex looked to the person who had now passed him, his brain finally realized no one could actually run into each other.

There were no hitboxes, no interaction. Everyone was just a very realistic-looking hologram, allowing everyone to see how others are doing.

Still, he didn't change up his strategy, opting to continue slowing down.

Ten minutes later...

Half of the school was now ahead of Alex. Some were so far up that they started to disappear out of sight.

The people near him all looked awfully familiar, until he realized they were all just holograms of his classmates.

They were all choosing to run just as slowly as he was. Or in other words, pacing themselves.

Ahead of them was another group of students, all running at almost the same pace.

The only outliers were the people at the very front, who considered this a speed race rather than an endurance test.

"You're one-third of the way there!"

As the light orb started talking again, Alex quickly noticed that almost everyone who had once disappeared was re-emerging.

Those in front finally realized it was a turtle race—a test of endurance as time continued to tick.

Soon, the ten minutes had become twenty minutes as Alex had now reached the middle of the pack.

The students who were once in front of Alex were now in the back as they slowed down more and more.

However, to Alex's surprise, those in the very front were nowhere near what he had imagined with the slowdown.

They were all just full steam ahead, despite feeling what had been at least two miles of running nonstop.

"You're two-thirds of the way there!"

The voice immediately set off an alarm, forcing Alex to speed up much faster than before.

Within seconds, everyone around him started speeding up as well—even those who were far, far back.

Everyone on the track knew it was the final stretch, the last few hundred steps that could determine the score.

"Jesus, how are they going so fast!"

As Alex saw the finish line in the distance, everyone at the front was still maintaining a rapid pace.

For a second, the thought of just letting it go popped up.

The strain on his leg was starting to itch in his mind. Their towering height was fermenting a seed of jealousy inside him.

It was a straight-up unfair advantage that he had no way of beating.

Not a single person in the front was below five feet tall, despite everyone mostly being of a similar age.

"It's just the first test——"

Just as Alex was about to slow down, gathering his energy for the next test, a hologram zipped right past him.

The wind flipped a bent bunny ear backward as the short, stocky figure dashed ahead, standing out awkwardly against the others.

Before disappearing into the distance, the figure turned its head.

"Camille——"

Despite being unable to hear each other at all, Alex could immediately recognize what she was saying with her hand waving goodbye.

"You ain't beating me!"

---

"How are the students doing?"

As Principal Klaus stood at the back of a blackboard, maintaining a projection, all the teachers were sitting down in chairs before it.

The projection was no other than the race itself, with all of the school's students participating in it.

All of the students were labeled in different colors, with all of them in the front being blue.

"Going perfectly smooth."

A middle-aged man with a full beard pointed out, seemingly very happy as he looked towards the front of the student groups.

"So many people are so far back... Are people that weak nowadays?"

A much older teacher grumpily murmured, his face looking the polar opposite as he spent his attention at the back.

"Running seems a little unfair for a test like this. Some of the taller students are two or three years older——"

Just before a young woman could finish talking, the middle-aged man immediately interrupted her.

"Are you saying the archmage is wrong, Amy?"

"Of course not."

Several of the younger teachers wanted to join in with Amy's argument, but the middle-aged man's question shut it all off.

"So pointless of a race. Could have been spent on studying actual mage material."

As a middle-aged woman chimed in, not a single teacher responded to her at all.

Meanwhile, most of the other teachers were starting to lose interest as some of them took out some sort of device from their pockets.

"Ahem, whose student is in the front right now?" Principal Klaus curiously asked, unable to see the projection himself.

"Falkland's students are in the front." An older teacher answered.

Principal Klaus's face didn't seem surprised at all, almost as if it was an expected result.

"Hey, look! Two red dots are catching up."

As one of the teachers pointed out, all of the teachers turned their attention back to the race itself.

"Which class are the red dots in?" The old teacher curiously asked.

"Amy, it's your class, right?"

Amy nodded, but her face looked a little confused. Based on the blurry projection, she couldn't tell who the students were exactly.

"Luqing, can you tell who those two are?"

"Camille and Alex."

"Klaus, can you make your damn projection more clear?" The older teacher complained.

"I'm trying——"

As soon as the old teacher threw a blue crystal at the Principal, the projection immediately became crystal clear.

All of the students could even see the expression on the students' faces as the projection showed from the finish line.

"Camile... Alex...?"

Amy looked a little shocked despite already being told who the two students were.

Given her body condition, she had fully expected Camille to be in front. But Alex was a complete wildcard.

She had always viewed him as a good student who looked a little more feminine compared to his peers.

"That kid is really putting everything on the line or something?"

The middle-aged man murmured as he watched one of the red dots break past his class's monopoly in the front.

Amy didn't answer back. Her eyes were more focused on her students, who were running as hard as they could.

Sweat and tears were rolling down each of their faces. Their clothes all soaked up, yet not a single one had given up.

Everyone was running like their lives depended on it—not just her class but the entire school.