“Joanna, what are you making a fuss about?”
The tall, handsome man in front of her frowned slightly, his sharp brows showing clear impatience.
His eyes drifted away, and a trace of guilt flashed across his face, though it was hard to notice.
He lowered his voice and said, “You just need to stay with Kayden for one month. He’ll agree to give us a Silver-tier piece of gear. This is very important for our SAT. I hope you can think about the bigger picture.”
Joanna Lane almost couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
What kind of person could say something so shameless?
Oh, so I already ruined my image for their tiny benefits, and now he wants me to be generous too.
Do they really think I’m a silly pushover?
And SAT is important to them, but it’s just as important to me!
That was because Joanna wasn’t originally from this world. She came from the distant Varuna Galaxy and carried a fully mature soul.
Joanna was reborn into the interstellar age. To expand quickly through space, humanity forced everyone to take combat classes and needed huge population growth. Clones could not bind their souls to the Space Alliance system, so the Alliance paid subsidies to encourage women to give birth, and being single was illegal.
If Joanna failed the SAT, with her talent, she would likely be treated as a breeding tool by powerful figures.
Interstellar humans lived very long lives. Joanna could be forced to give birth until she was 120 years old and had as many as 100 children.
Joanna herself was her mother’s 98th child.
For someone born in the 21st century who believed firmly in staying single and child-free, this was the cruelest curse imaginable.
So, she became an overachiever.
In Grade 10, Joanna awakened as a Summoner and unlocked an S-rank talent. For every monster she killed, she gained 0.01 affinity points.
She was thrilled and believed she would become a powerful Summoner, since affinity points also affected how well contract beasts bonded with their masters.
But she soon learned that being a Summoner cost an insane amount of money. Even the weakest summoning circle for a contract beast cost at least 100,000 Starcoins.
Joanna took out student loans to summon a contract beast, but she failed.
She failed several more times after that, and her debt only kept growing.
With no other choice, she worked desperately at part-time jobs.
At the same time, for the sake of the SAT, she had to train as a Summoner without a beast. She learned combat skills, defense skills, and healing skills to make up for her weakness and avoid dragging the team down.
She never expected that just before the SAT, team leader Lucas Harper would ask her to sacrifice herself to a rich kid named Kayden Wright, all to trade for a Silver-tier piece of gear.
Her gaze shifted to the rest of the team.
