Aside from Doyle and Zeff’s pathetic attempts to pry, I found my time at the Bodhi Tree passing without issue or good fortune. We trained, drilled, and sparred against the dummies or sometimes each other in Doyle’s class. The most notable of them was the sky battle I had with Urshure, who ended up being the first opponent since Grandpa Lich or perhaps Sergeant Velasco that I had to work to defeat. Through our exercises in Zeff’s classes, it was easy to see the rapid progression of the party’s hold over mana and the elements. Consequently serving to intensify Zeff and Doyle’s inquires about my tomes, frustratingly so. Still, I was able to make the most of the lessons and filled out page after page of spells in my grimoire.
Olga’s class, on the other hand, was no different than before. Yet it was the only class that brought about any sense of change with each passing day. Every time I entered the classroom, I found myself excited to see how my mycelium was doing. After four weeks, the fungus had colonized the entire bed of grain and from that, I was able to use it as a sort of seed to colonize batches of the growing medium. Not only that, but my bonsai were thriving in my room as well. Not to mention, the entire party managed to procure a veritable bounty of provisions over the course of the last five weeks. I hunted, foraged, or collected anything that caught my interest and fought all manner of beasts in the process. But none with any magical capabilities, as Peter was still reluctant to move deeper into the wilds.
Surprisingly, we saw few- if any duels take place during that time. Not that I cared enough to spectate them in the first place. As my off time was split between training Peter, talking to my friends once every blue moon, and developing an impressive collection of augmented reality apps in my Eternal Eye- which turned out to be quite the addicting process.
I already had three before. ‘Sic Script,’ for the Classes and their paths. ‘Legions,’ for the guild that had yet to be. And ‘BluLine,’ for conceptual enchantments. On top of that, I designed a program to classify, rank, and organize my undead before I copied and merged the ‘Legions’ program with it and toiled for days to figure out why, when, and how an undead minion would be promoted and what that would entail. With that done, I made a new app to list the professionals or individuals I needed in my undying employ, 'GetHelp.' The first on the list was the bard and artificer for necrotic and nefarious ends. But on top of that, I needed to kill and raise a few prominent doctors or witches to have the surgeon generals I aimed for. And so too did I need a head chef, chief laborer, and a general crafter. Among other things.
With that done, I was able to finalize the ‘Shade Palace.’ Both an app that covered the undead and a physical place to be. The latter was designed as a mix between a university and a boot camp for undead of all types. With their longevity, they’d devote as much time as necessary to develop the skills they didn’t have in life. And upon graduating, they’d be assigned to a unit to provide them with skilled labor. Taking the burden of cooking, fortifying, and repairing infrastructure or equipment off of the legionaries and their allies.
The completion of the Shade Palace app served as the start of my miniature obsession with my Eternal Eye. Any time I found myself free of any tasks, I looked back on my relatively short second life to find any instances that could’ve been facilitated by the usage of an app. ‘What 2 Do’ was the start of that endeavor. Wherein I added my goals and aspirations to my friends' and followers’ dreams, then categorized them based on location before I rearranged them by priority. Naturally, that moved me to design ‘SpellHell’ shortly after. A visual aid meant to facilitate the design of a spell from any affinity imaginable. ‘Terranaut’ came shortly after, which was an evolution of the system I used to carve out Hill Base. Only, it was refitted to facilitate the design of large-scale infrastructure and contained features that encompassed everything from furnishings and landscaping to wildlife sustainment and terraforming.
The next pair came a few days later. When Els off-handedly asked me how much stuff I had stored away in my Shadow Pocket. After giving him a vague answer, I took a quick measurement of my Pocket with the surrounding darkness, made some calculations, and designed the ‘Peek Pocket’ to give me a quick, but accurate readout of everything I’ve hoarded over the last decade or so. Instead of lumping everything in the same app though, I took my clothes, weapons, and equipment off the list and added it to another app, ‘Re: Armed.’ But still, the app was laughably empty. So I made some modifications to have it list the weapons and tools I wished to make in the future and made a sub-program to conceptualize them down to the atomic scale.
Eventually, after much contemplation, that app was copied thrice, refit, and renamed accordingly. The first was ‘Re: Moved,’ and was dedicated to the three vehicles currently in my possession and the others I intended to make in the future. Be they scientific or magical in origin. The second was ‘Re: Tamed,’ which served the Menagerie and any other creatures that may join me in the future. Not to conceptualize their capture and containment but to design an environment in which they could freely explore and thrive instead of remaining trapped in my umbral world for years upon years. The last of them was titled ‘Lapland,’ and served as a way to design and render the magical technology I wanted to introduce to the world. And once done, I spent days upon days designing everything from flying cars, space habitats, and spaceships to robots, molecular manufacturing, and nano implants.
For better or for worse, I could only come up with an idea for one other app after that. It was to transfer all the media I’d watched, listened to, or read from my Eternal Eye and place them into an app called ‘RadWorld.’
With my studies and a slew of new toys to play with, the weeks started passing in a blur. Even then, however, I managed to keep a close eye on the progression of my party and made sure to fill out their character cards whenever I had the chance.
As Zakira said, Peter had gone through a big change. Though I still had yet to speak with him as she suggested, I could take a glance and see that Peter was no longer the scrawny, nervous kid I met shortly after our arrival. His head was held high wherever he went- not with pride, but confidence. He spoke louder and articulated his words when speaking to others, and no longer diverted his eyes from whom he was speaking to. Especially me, who he seemed to hold to a much higher degree of respect than anyone else. More so, Peter was no longer the ticking time bomb he was before. Now, Winston was all but invisible to Peter, while Winston was but a shell of his former self. He hardly talked to anyone. He just stayed in the pocket, focused on his lessons, applied himself dutifully, and kept to himself. That made it hard to gauge any changes to his mental state or line of thinking. But I could at least tell that he was lost in deep thought more often than not.
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Els hadn’t changed much. Either physically or mentally. He had a slightly more refined stature and was a bit more open with us- telling us about his past and whatnot. But he was still a stubborn bastard with a hearted sleeve that he tried desperately to hide beneath a tunic of iron. As for Zakira, she was the most unchanged out of any of us. She looked the same, acted the same, and still followed me around eight times out of ten. But her control over mana has skyrocketed her already absurd strength into the exosphere.
That was true for the rest of the party as well. Albeit to a much lesser extent. But more importantly, I was able to spend more time with the other teams and more or less learn what made them all tick. Toni was socially awkward but felt at home enough in the wild to make herself known as a surprisingly capable and confident young woman. Having no particular goals, she was in the ‘try everything once' phase. And thus was an easy mark to recruit into the Legions. Twig and Duke, however, were a bit more complicated. Wherein both were intrigued by my offer, yet neither wanted to submit under another. Although for different reasons. Twig was reluctant to bond with a group outside her village and Duke was reluctant to give up his unbounded freedoms. Rhody, however, was the easiest mark in team one. He essentially asked to be bribed on multiple occasions. And, of course, I assured him I’d comply in due time. After all, an investment of something as meager as gold and a promise of an estate was a small price to pay for a private assassin and master thief.
Team three, on the other hand, was much more peculiar. On one end, there was some sort of fucked up love seesaw among the humans. Scarlett sat in one seat as the unspoken leader of the three, and seemed oblivious to the intentions of those trailing behind her; one of them being Rebecca, in the other seat, who by all accounts was Scarlett’s closest friend. It was obvious in their wordless interaction with each other that they had a history of some sort. Samson, however, sat at the fulcrum and trailed behind them like an abandoned puppy wherever they went. He’d jump in front of them with his axes bared whenever they’d encounter something in the wilds. He fought to liven up their conversations or put his two cents in whenever he could. In my eyes, he was a general orbiter who lived for attention from pretty girls. But Scarlett seemed oblivious to it and Rebecca saw it as a form of comedy.
But even with his faults, Samson had potential. He only had to kill off the brain in his pants to unlock it. Unlike Kaolinite, Slate’s sworn brother.He was far more reserved than the latter but retained the same goals and obsessively competitive nature seen in the other goliaths in our class. And last but not least, there was Urshure. Who, I assumed, had the goal of gaining power from, contacting, or- by some slim chance, gaining an audience with the Multicolored Queen of Dragons. Something that I had a small bit of interest in. The problem was getting the dragonborne to confirm my suspicions before I convinced him to accept my help.
It came with the risk of betrayal, I was aware of that much. He reeked of ulterior motives as much as I did, after all. But that betrayal came with the reward of an undoubtedly-powerful undead. Regardless, I wanted him on my side. And so too did I want to recruit many individuals from the other parties. So I started the final week of the quarter in my office, making character sheets for the other forty members of Class 999. With that done, I fell into a temporary state of relaxation. I still trained in Doyle and Zeff’s classes, but my time after was spent lounging with Zakira and toying with my apps.
The next day was a short class period encompassing Olga's assessment of the plants we grew and divvying out points. A period that spanned a few minutes longer than she claimed it would from her standing slack-jawed at my bonsai. Eventually, however, she gave me 250 points and announced me as the winner of her unspoken competition before we were released. The next days were much the same as the day before. Wherein Doyle and Zeff made vague mentions of the changes we’d be seeing next quarter before releasing us for the day. But as I somewhat expected, Olga’s syllabus was a lot more forthright.
After a congratulatory introduction, she went on to explain that the quarter would be focused on us procuring and coming to understand raw resources. To do so, her first class of the week would begin with us learning how to process and store the animals and plants we’ve hunted and foraged during our outings. And after lunch, we’d relocate to the Bodhi Tree’s mines to stock up on as many ores as we could. Much the same would continue on our second day of class. Only, a fraction of our mornings would be spent learning how to use and identify ores of magical and non-magical natures.
“Lastly.” Olga clasped her hands before us and gave us a warm, knowing smile. “I want to remind you all that tomorrow is the last outing of the quarter. I won’t spoil the surprise for you though, just make sure you’re prepared. And.” She turned at the waist to face me. “Amun, if you’ll give me a moment. The rest of you are dismissed.”
‘Oh, no. Olga! You were supposed to be the chosen one! The one without greed or care for my tomes! Don’t tell me you joined them!’ I groaned. But stood from my desk to approach her all the same. But unlike Doyle or Zeff, her smile only widened with each step closer. Until, eventually, she pulled out a tiny slip of paper and said. “The Headmaster requests your audience. Try not to make him wait.”
Feeling ashamed and somewhat embarrassed, I promptly thanked her and followed the small map to the grand archway within the hub. It had me retrace my steps to the dining hall we drank the sap in and pushed me further past a lounge area on the floor above to arrive at a cubic lobby of polished wood and live plants. Placed along the far wall was a single stone door covered in vines and moss that loosely resembled some strange and unfamiliar landscape. My destination.
With no secretary or assistant to welcome my entry, I approached the door and gave it three quick knocks. Then stepped back in surprise once it split at the seams without delay. Parting like an airlock to reveal a comparatively cramped office.
The room was shaped like a fat cigar standing on end. But rather than tobacco, it was filled with the largest collection of trophies and trinkets that I’ve ever seen, all arranged neatly in display cases and lined in rows on shelves surrounding a comically small desk made for the Headmaster.
Everything about it brought a smile to my face- nearly forced laughter from my lips. But once my eyes settled on the headmaster, any hints of amusement, amiability, or approbation faded into first a mute expression, and then into furrowed brows, squinted eyes, and clenched fists.
“What the fuck is this!?”