The corridor blurred around me as I walked, indistinct shapes and lines streaking past. There was the distint impression of moving downward, a sort of building pressure in your ears like when you go too far underwater. Dungeon 101. One-oh-one. Stupid naming convention, that. Why not just call it 'one?' Or 'beginner' or something? Would make much more sense in my opinion.

I wondered idly what this would entail. Would we be actively delving Dungeons? When? There was only an hour in the class. Would it be mostly theoretical? I would really kill for a course guide. This one was mandatory, which had been quite annoying tryting to slot it into my schedule. Anyway. As far as I knew, Dungeons were essentially holes in the ground that spat out monsters constantly. And honestly, that wasn't very appealing. Why would you make a bunch of teenagers deal with that?

Then again, I suppose you had to increase your Level somehow. And for some inexplicable reason, I doubted most people would be wanting to be experience a Warlock's Skills themselves. Ergo, monsters. Unthinking beasts to be subjected to the sinister powers of newly gifted young adults. Actually, would that work? Unthinking. Thinking was kind of my whole thing, currently. In terms of magic, that is. I suppose I'd have to rely on something else if it didn't. Ah well. I was somewhat decent with a few melee weapons, at least. Nowhere near anyone with a Skill for them, obviously. A preparation taken in case I'd somehow not recieved a desirable Class. And, well, just lookee here.

After an inordinately long travel time -or not, maybe, I'd only done so twice so far,- I came to the entrance. The door was interesting. Different from the last class, at least. It was a perfect square, set into the wall with a straightness that was somehow noticeable, despite nothing else I'd seen appearing to be crooked. The whole thing was a perfectly smooth, matte white material. At its center it bore the title of the course in sharp, blocky letters, and below them, the same words inverted vertically.

I reached out to touch the door, only for it to disappear on contact, blinking away as if it had never existed. There was a short passage through the wall, suggesting the square had in fact been a cube. Odd. Halfway through, the ubiquitous grey bricks were abruptly replaced with more of that flat white material. A sharp dividing line marked the sudden transition. With a healthy amount of caution, I stepped through, receiving an immediate System alert the second I set foot past the boundary.

You are entering a Domain

That was it. Nothing else. Just those short words. How ominous. I hesitate for a moment, then shrugged and plunged valiantly into the white. And I do mean that.

The room beyond -which was sealed off, as the 'door' once again blocked the path,- was also white. Completely. There was no shade, no definition, not even a shadow did I cast. It was almost like the Class selection void. And yet, despite there being no logical reason whatsoever, I could still see objects. The edges of the walls and floors were clear, and I saw the borders of the chairs against them.

They were just as brutally simple as the rest of the room. Tall and equally wide. As if someone had taken a cube and roughly carved it into an almost throne-like shape. Some bore students. Of which there were many. A lot, actually. More than double the number of Black Magic students if I had to guess. More than I'd seen at my arrival, even. Though only a few were recognizable from then. Or maybe they'd all been present? Probably not, but I did need to pay more attention to other people.

It made sense, logically. A class everyone was required to attend would have more attendees than one that a large amount couldn't even take part in. Still... the crowd of strangers made me uneasy. Especially when they all looked at me, near simultaneously, as the only person standing in the void.

With no awkwardness at all, no sir, I quickly took a seat. It was near the back of the grid-like arrangement. Though I found that if I stopped paying attention, all the chairs infront of me faded from view, offering a clear view of the front area. Neat.

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And just in time, too. For it was, thematically, mere moments -several minutes in reality, spent observing particularly interesting peers, such as an orc with wildly, impractically spiked hair, honestly it was quite impressive,- before the bell went off. Was it a bell? It certainly didn't sound like one. More a flat, constant tone of indeterminate origin.

I nearly mistook the woman for a statue, she was so still. A towering, muscular figure composed entirely of sharp, hard angles, appearing at the front of room as if she'd always been there. She stood at least a foot taller than me, gazing disapprovingly down at the rows and columns of students, hands placed behind her back. At least, it felt disapproving. Her face was stone cold, unmoving in a neutral expression. Actually, she seemed to not even be breathing. Her chest did not rise nor fall. Nor did she blink. Creepy. Her face was very square-ish, with flat sides and a lot of straight lines. And oddly... symmetrical? Yeah, that was it. Her eyes, narrowed and angled, were a metallic gray. Her hair a waterfall of bright scarlet that cascaded down her back.

She was dressed from collar to greaves in a set of bulky, square plate armor. Her pauldrons were square, her boots were square, all of it was precise mathematical angles. At her hip hung a massive broadsword, at least two hand-spands across and half the length of a man. Its tip was wickedly curved, the back of the blade carved into the shape of a feathered wing. So still was she, though, that I noticed none of this until she spoke, my wandering eyes snapping in her direction.

Inspect failed.

How annoying. And not even the courtesy of allowing it.

"Students," she began. "I am Professor Valen, and you will refer to me exclusively as such." Her tone was aggressive, yet also devoid of emotion. Clipped and staccato, each syllable precisely enunciated in a steady rhythm, without pause. After that brief introduction, she skipped straight to the lecturing.

"Question. What is a Dungeon? This is a question asked by many individuals. And the majority came to roughly the same conclusion." She spoke each sentence in a monotone, neutral voice. As one might when responding to a particularly boring story from a relative or friend. "Answer. A Dungeon is one result of the natural condensation of magic. When specific circumstances are met, the resulting crystalline structure may be imbued with a form of intelligence. The exact causes are unknown. These intelligences typically go on to construct elaborate structures, such as labyrinths or castles, populated by monsters of increasing strength." She paused, presumably giving time to absorb her words.

"Over time, these beasts increase in number, resulting in a spill which can upset the local balance and cause damage to settlements. As such, those with combat capabilities will commonly delve into these Dungeons to reduce the population, preventing a spill. This is a primary source of power and experience for many individuals." Man, did she talk a lot. Though I suppose it was an expansive subject.

"It will likely be such for you, as, you may be aware, the majority of people do not hold those of our shared nature in high esteem. And, being unlikely to recieve much, if any assistance, you will need to be extremely self reliant. You will need to be able to deal with traps, powerful beasts and the like on your own. The purpose of this course is to impart those skills onto you..."

I'm sure you get the picture, and I don't want to transcribe the rest of that. Valen went on to explain, in detail, what we'd be doing in this course. Which could be easily simplified to delving various privately owned Dungeons, especially chosen for this purpose. How do you get a private Dungeon? How much would that cost? A lot, probably. Anyway. We'd apparently be evaluated based on 'individual standards' since each of our capabilities were so different from each other. Which meant I'd have to put in effort instead of coasting along in comparison to inferior peers. Sigh. Never thought I'd miss the days of primary schooling.

This was also supposedly where we'd get the majority of our Levels during our education. Which would go up to twenty-five, by the way. Enough to get a Subclass before they turned us loose on the world. Others would come variously from learning the intricacies of our System-gifted -and otherwise acquired- Skills and attempting to appease Patrons without having to murder people, which was frowned upon. Finally, the most interesting tidbit; tomorrow, we'd enter the first of these Dungeons. Wonderful. Just wonderful.

Despite how long she managed to stretch out the explanation, there was only so much time that could be filled with such basic information. In the end, there were around twenty-ish minutes left, according to a subtle checking of my personal device. Valen judged -and outright told us- that there was no more purpose to her being here. In that rather grating voice of hers, she suggested that we 'take the remaining time to order yourselves in groups of five.' Apparently, we'd only get one party -in the adventuring sense of the word- through the duration of our education. To 'build bonds' or something. Which I found only slightly moronic, seeing as we'd all probably never see each other again once we left the institute.