Chapter 3.1: Wake Up, It’s Time for School, Part 1

“Wake up!” Julian shouted at me as I leaped out of my sheets. “It’s time for school!”

“You have got to stop doing that,” I muttered as I squinted my eyes at him.

“Nope. New tradition, starting yesterday. Sorry pal, I don’t make the rules.”

“Yes, you do,” I muttered. “You can go on without me. I’ll be out in a second.” As Julian exited the room, I quickly got dressed and grabbed the grimoire out from under my bed. I stuffed the threads into a pouch, and placed them back under the bed, while moving the grimoire into my dresser. Finally, I opened my suitcase, pulled out a light blue potion, and took a small sip, sloshing the liquid in my mouth for a minute before spitting it out the window. “Ugh. I hate mint.” Finally, I was ready to head out.

“God, finally, you’re out. That took forever,” Julian groaned as I opened the door. His mouth quirked up before he added, “I suppose I must leave a lady to her musings.”

I rolled my eyes. “Oh, please, I wasn’t doing makeup. And if I had been, you would have been awestruck by my beauty the moment I opened the door,” I said, flipping my hair with a “hmph!”

Julian laughed and we started walking to our respective first periods. It was mostly the same path, but eventually we diverged – he had a private tutoring session, probably on using Royal mana, with Professor Seaver Royal, an esteemed healer of the Royal family. Pays to be a Royal.

My first period was Enchanting, with Professor Andsware Bryce. I was quite excited – he was an archmage, a mage capable of casting the highest tiers of magic. His tale was an inspiring one, as well. He was unfortunate enough to have his core placed in a pool of the oddest of esoteric attunements – when he cast an evocation spell, a star-shaped hole would appear in nearby wood. For all intents and purposes, it was useless, and it would be a long time before he could expand his reach into the Aether to draw unattuned mana. In the year he spent experimenting with his mana, which he called Starcarve mana, he discovered that its mana crystals were uniquely hard. He became a mage of great renown, spewing impossibly tough mana crystals at opponents that shredded their shields and an overwhelming defense that even Decimation mana had a tough time tearing through. When he was finally able to grasp unattuned mana, he became a monster on the battlefield.

Granted, I had no aspirations to be a battlemage, and while being a weaponsmith was enticing, it wasn’t my goal. Regardless, I was incredibly excited to learn from the archmage.

[break]

I regretted being so excited to learn from Professor Andsware Bryce. He was a great teacher, but… these were the basics.

“I know many of you have already had souls for a year, and are more than prepared to dip right into the fun stuff, but Academy policy requires that I spend the first week focusing on spellcasting to accommodate those of you who may be a bit behind,” the professor explained. It was left unsaid that “those of you who may be a bit behind” were wealthy students who bought their way in. I may have been from a wealthy family, but at least I passed the entry tests. “To start with, I’ll go over Flowform-casting, as their enchantment counterpart is what we’ll be focusing on this year.” Andsware walked up to the chalkboard looming behind him and grabbed a piece of chalk, then drew a circle on the board. From the circle, he drew several curved lines outward, attaching a tip to each so that they became arrows. “This is a Flowform,” he said. “Mana travels in a circle, inducing Change, while exiting along predetermined pathways. It isn’t quite as efficient as other forms of spellcasting, but it’ll usually get the job done, and it allows you to cast spells without memorizing a complicated sequence of runes. You only have to memorize one shape,” he tapped the circle, “per spell. Its enchantment form– well, to get into that, we’ll have to get into properties of unattuned mana. We’ll have to do that next week instead.”

The student next to me groaned. “A whole week of this? I thought this was an enchanting class,” he murmured.

“So did I,” I chuckled quietly. “Balmung Decimation, of House Decimation,” I introduced myself as I stuck my hand out.

The boy smiled, shaking my hand. “Sherwin Decimation, of the same.”

We continued to chat quietly as Andsware continued to go over what was review to us. Finally, the class ended, and he left us with a closing statement. “Alright class, time to leave. I know we weren’t really able to get into it–” he stopped, muttering something about “buy-ins”, thinking we couldn’t hear, “–but you’ll want to start expanding your reach into the Aether until you can touch upon unattuned mana, if you can’t already. Considering you’ve all had souls for a year, if you’ve been following proper protocol, you should either be close or already touching upon unattuned mana. If you’re neither, see me after class and we can talk about your options.” I knew in my head that anyone actually interested in enchanting would have done nothing but expand their reach for months until they touched upon unattuned mana – you needed it in order to activate Flowform enchantments.

“My next class is combat. You?” I asked Sherwin.

“Spellcasting. See you at lunch?” Sherwin replied.

“Sure thing.”

[break]

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

When I entered the room for my combat class, I was pleasantly surprised to see Dohtor there. When I had met her, she had seemed older than us, so I hadn’t expected to see her in any of my classes. “It’s a pleasure to see you again, honored Royal.”

“And you, Balmung. And please, no titles – they can get tiring,” she responded.

I smiled. “What are you doing in beginner’s combat? Aren’t you a…” I paused, not totally sure how to phrase the question without seeming rude. “...not freshman?”

She laughed, “I’m a senior. I’m the teacher’s assistant for this class. And since it’s combat… well, that basically means I get to sit around and watch a bunch of kids beat each other up.”

I laughed. “Sounds great,” I said, knowing full-well I was probably going to be one of the kids getting beaten up. I gave her a farewell, and began making my way to Julian once I had spotted him. We were all standing, as there were no seats.

“Hey, Bal!” he exclaimed when he saw me. “Looks like we’ve got combat class together. Wanna be sparring partners?”

“With your Royal mana? No, I’m a poor enough combatant as is.”

“Oh, c’mon, I’ll go easy on you. I’ll only use one arm!”

“Alright class, you’ll be dividing into groups of two,” Professor Benswick Resilience abruptly instructed. “Don’t get excited, though – I’m choosing the groups for you. Once you find your partner, you will meet on your assigned mat. When I say, ‘begin,’ you will begin physical combat – no magic. We can begin magical combat next week or the week after, depending on how you lot do this week. If you step out of the mat, or touch the ground with any part of your body other than your hands or feet, your opponent gets a point. You will be graded weekly, and your points will be graded out of 100 for your grade.” I paled. There was no way I was getting 100 points, even by the end of the week. Combat wasn’t my specialty. “And don’t worry about holding back – feel free to go all out. There’s a reason the combat class periods overlap with the Advanced Healing course periods.” I nearly fainted. “Those of you with Royal mana, please come to me now. Those of you who wish to prove yourself against a Royal mage, please come to me now.” That made sense – Royal mana users had an astounding advantage because their bodies’ strength was passively enhanced, rather than actively.

After that, he started calling out names and numbers. He quickly got to my name. “Balmung Decimation, Bysen Broga. Mat 11.” Bysen Broga – I recalled the name. She was one of the commoner prodigies, of combat if I remembered correctly, that had been accepted by the academy.

He continued to list names and numbers as I made my way to Mat 11, and I spotted another girl making her way to the same mat. Finally, we both reached it. Just as Professor Benswick shouted “Begin!” I extended my hand and introduced myself. “Balmung Decimation, of House D–”

I was lying flat on my back sooner than I could have reacted. “Sorry,” Bysen grunted. “Force of habit.” Something in the dry tone of her voice told me that it definitely wasn’t an accident. “One point to me, though.”

This was going to be a tough period.

[break]

I was happy to be able to say that I had actually learned a lot that period – like, how many broken bones a novice healer could heal at once. Here’s a hint: it isn’t three. Professor Benswick said that the following day, and each day after, partner assignments would be made based on the point values of the previous day. I had never been so thankful for anything in my life.

The pain was gone by the time I made it to the Dining Hall for lunch. I was lucky enough that the combat classroom was closer than any of the others to the Dining Hall, as I was one of the first in line to pick up food.

I found a comfortable seat at one of the tables near the line and sat after I’d gotten my food. I saw Julian begin to approach me, but he was stopped by a tall guy who I recognized from my enchanting class and a short girl who I recalled being Julian’s combat partner, who beckoned him to sit with them instead. He shrugged at me, and I shrugged back. He waved at me as he started making his way to the pair, whose table quickly started filling up with others the moment Julian sat down.

I began eating my meal – a noodle dish with a side of beansprouts – as I noticed Sherwin and my cousin making their way toward me, Linn waving excessively. “Heya Bal! Sitting alone, I see,” she smiled smugly as she gestured toward Sherwin. “Well don’t worry, because I brought company.”

“He was going to sit with me anyways,” I chortled. “Hey, Sherwin. Lovely to see you again.”

“And you,” he replied.

“Oh, you already know each other! Great,” Linn exclaimed.

“How was spellcasting?” I asked.

“It was alright, I had Professor Andsware again. He seems so passionate, but it was still just the basics. We did get to go a bit into crystallization spells toward the end, though, which seemed to cheer him up,” Sherwin replied.

“Sherwin’s lying. It wasn’t alright, it was so boring. Props to Professor Andsware for not making it deathly boring, but the basics are still the basics. They’re only awe-inspiring when you’re starting out,” Linn groaned. “I still don’t get why we have to spend a week on the basics.”

“It’s because of the buy-ins,” Sherwin replied. “Lots of wealthy merchants who don’t know anything about magic themselves buy their kids a soul, but were too lazy to educate themselves using books and the like, or even to hire a tutor. Then, when their kids fail the entrance exams, they get all appalled and demand that their kid be accepted. Albinus Academy will still accept people who failed the exams, if the parents can pay a hefty fine.”

“Yeah, but we’re only spending a week on the basics. That’s hardly enough time to catch up to a year’s worth of learning,” I said. “I’m with Linn on this, it makes no sense; why not just have beginner classes?”

“Hence the high dropout rate. Three-fourths of the first-year dropouts are buy-ins. The school gets the money, and doesn’t need to spend anything on more instructors for beginner classes. And, to be frank, needing to have beginner classes would tarnish the academy’s reputation somewhat. Instead, the high dropout rates make the coursework seem more rigorous than it really is – though the academy is still leagues better than most other schools. Just less so than it might seem,” Sherwin explained.

“You know a lot about this, huh,” Linn questioned.

“Yeah, my mom works here. She’s an enchanting professor, though she specializes in locomotion,” Sherwin said. “She teaches juniors and seniors.”

We continued to chat until eventually, it was time for third period.