“Is it better or worse to get caught cheating?”

Written plain on the board, Dorain quietly suppressed a sigh. He already knew that today’s class would be about some bullshit topic that he couldn’t care less about. 

The question was so stupid that Dorian actually did a double-take. Without a doubt, it was better not to get caught cheating. There wasn’t a single scenario that Dorian could conceivably think of that would be better when someone was caught cheating. 

God damn, maybe it was a mistake to take this ethics class... Dorian thought.

But his quarter-life crisis was quickly interrupted by Professor Horus. 

“All right class, now a quick note before today’s...”

As soon as his professor began talking, Dorian felt his mind instantly start wandering. He couldn’t focus on what his professor was yapping about, much less remember whatever nonsensical topics the past couple of lectures were about. 

How’d Professor Horus end up teaching this class anyway? Wasn’t he supposed to be the greatest genius of the 7th century? How’d he, out of all the people in the Eastern Empire, end up doing the grunt work of teaching an ethics class?

Dorian mentally shook his head. 

I guess this is what happens when you don’t work hard and rely on pure talent. Glad I’ll never let myself slip that far... 

He closed his eyes and focused on his heart. There, he could focus on each heartbeat, the blood flowing in and out. And every now and then, he could sense a trickle of golden Ichor flowing out and filling his body with energy. 

Now this is something worth spending time on, Dorian thought to himself, Something that’ll actually be useful to me in the future, unlike whatever Horus is yapping about now. 

***

10 minutes had barely managed to crawl by, and Dorian was already on the verge of going insane. As a chronic lecture skipper, he wasn’t used to having to pay attention to boring topics for more than 15 minutes at a time. 

Dorian glanced at the glass clock in the front of the room, surprisingly able to see his own reflection, albeit a bit blurry due to the distance.

After checking out his appearance for a handful of seconds, the reality of the situation hit Dorian.

No fucking way we have another 2 and a half hours left, Dorian groaned internally.

So he began looking for something, anything, to relieve him of his boredom. He scanned the room, looking for his friends, praying that they hadn’t chosen to skip class today. 

Dorian saw a few familiar faces, Faust’s rigid and emotionless expression, his gloomy roommate Khon’s ever-present eye bags, and Cain, who always managed to make Dorian’s skin crawl whenever he made eye contact with him for too long.

What are the odds... I’d imagine there’s a higher chance that I ascend to become immortal today than all three of those guys showing up to lecture today. 

“And with that, everybody please take out your pens for today's quiz. Again, don’t worry too much about the grade. The important thing is to demonstrate what you know, so you’ll know what to study for later.”

Out of all the things Professor Horus could have said, this was probably amongst the top 5 that Dorian dreaded hearing. 

The first probably was that he was getting expelled after being caught cheating on the last test. The second being that he was caught cheating on the homework...

Maybe I should pay more attention in class... I’m sure that my morality could definitely benefit from this class. Clinging onto scholarship money by cheating definitely isn’t a sustainable strategy. Or is it, Dorian thought?

Either way, he needed to maintain an 85 GPA to keep going to school for free. How he managed to keep it up until this point, Dorian wasn’t sure. But if there were any certainties in this world, it was that Dorian wouldn’t be attending by paying out of pocket. 

A light tap on the shoulder brought Dorian’s focus back into reality. A slightly annoyed and impatient classmate waved a stack of quizzes in his hands, clearly waiting for Dorian to take the quizzes from her.

“My bad,” Dorian mumbled, as he took the stack of quizzes, selected one from the top, and passed the rest of the stack to the person behind him. Dorian couldn’t tell if he was embarrassed or turned on by the girl’s annoyance at him.

This will be the reason why I fail out of school. I have a quiz I’m about to fail and I’m still stuck thinking about some random girl who was passing a quiz back to me. Ok maybe an extremely pretty girl who passed the quizzes back to me.

Dorian lightly slapped his face with both hands, in an effort to bring his attention back to a problem he could solve, passing this quiz.

Focus, focus. Just get through this quiz and everything’ll be fine. 

Dorian closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and then took a look at the quiz.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Only to be greeted by a plethora of questions that might as well have been in a foreign language. 

Dorian squinted his eyes, Wait a minute. This actually is in a foreign language. 

Dorian didn’t know if he should break out laughing or start crying. This was the kind of exam where he literally could not cheat. That was how far behind he was in the class. Without being literate in whatever language this was, copying a free response question word for word was surely academic suicide.

Alright, deep breaths now. Let’s start by classifying what type of language this is, and then we can go from there.

***

God damn, I’m cooked beyond belief, Dorian thought to himself.

It had been around thirty minutes since the quiz had first started, and Dorian hadn’t answered a single question. The best he could do was pinpoint that the language at least had an alphabet and was likely used sometime in the early 3rd century to the last 4th century. Probably an offshoot from the Southern Continent’s “Official” language. Or whatever they called their chicken scratch of a language.

Dorian had yet to try taking peeks at other student’s quizzes. After all, Horus was widely known for his vision. Yet as time continued to pass, the idea of cheating only grew more and more enticing to Dorian.

According to Dorian’s observations, Horus clearly did not give a single fuck about teaching a class full of young and immature adults in the middle of a random town in the Eastern Empire. Instead, he seemed significantly more focused on reading a book he had, one without a legible title apparently.

So theoretically, the odds of me being caught by a teacher who’s currently engrossed in a book has to be near zero right? 

Dorian continued to contemplate and weigh his options for a few more minutes but eventually settled on giving it a single shot. One that he could argue was an honest mistake if things went awry.

Dorian closed his eyes, leaned back, and stretched his arms. While he did, he concentrated every last drop of Ichor in his eyes, trying to enhance his vision as much as he could. 

And as he returned to his “normal test-taking position”, Dorian glanced at the glass clock in the front of the room. 

But this time, instead of staring at his reflection like a narcissist, he decided to “borrow” the answers of the classmate to his right, for inspirational reasons, of course.

And much to Dorian’s dismay, his Ichor control was so poor that he could barely make out whatever his classmate was writing on the quiz. Added to the fact Dorian wasn’t literate in whatever language his classmate was writing in, he gained nothing from this risky maneuver.

God damn, Dorian thought, All that effort and risk, for what? To get a glimpse of a 10-year-old’s first attempt at writing? 

Dorian glanced at Professor Horus again, who was still engrossed in his book.

Well, thank god that Professor Oblivious here didn’t notice at least. If I was caught peeking at another student’s quiz I would hope that I’d get the answers to at least a single question.

***

Yeah, I’m 100% sure now that the black-haired kid sitting in the back row tried cheating, Professor Horus, full name Moses Horus, thought to himself as he continued reading.

He had to give it up, the kid made a valiant effort when it came to cheating, though he doubted that it helped much, as everyone got a different version of the quiz.

Moses had imminently felt something suspicious happening as soon as Dorian began focusing his Ichor onto his eyes. Hell, he even noticed it when the kid stopped paying attention in class and started channeling his Ichor.

Admittedly, it was a bit disrespectful, but in the end, Moses was here just to do his job and nothing more. Everyone here was now responsible for whatever shitty decisions they made, and Moses wasn’t going to make a big fuss over a trial issue like this.

Now the cheating scandal? Maybe, but it was also a lot of paperwork that Moses wasn’t quite ready to put onto himself. After all, he was here to learn and exploit everything he could from this little village library, not to start some petty drama over academic honesty.

And with that minor inconvenience “solved”, Moses went back to reading his book about the history of this village, one that had a decent history that had lasted for around 4 centuries. Which was a surprisingly long time for a village as small as this. 

I would’ve imagined that a village with this kind of history would’ve expanded to be significantly larger, given the fertile land and the mountains surrounding the land. Meh, I guess not.

***

Yeah, I don’t think I got a single question right, Dorian thought to himself as he walked out of his ethics class. 

Once again, he had spent the entire class focusing on anything and everything outside of what his professor was saying. And that had resulted in today’s astronomical disaster of a quiz.

As soon as he left the classroom, Dorian began calculating just how large of an impact this would have on his GPA. After all, he already had a 94 in the class and was close to an 87 overall GPA. So if this were to push him below the edge of an 86 GPA, Dorian would have to begin to reevaluate his life and become a hermit, and study like hell to recover that scholarship before the semester ended. 

While temporarily becoming a hermit and casting away everything outside his studies probably wasn’t going to have a positive impact on Dorian’s already dwindling social life, it did have its upsides. After all, he was attending a decent enough school. Although not globally renowned or prestigious, it was good enough to be recognized by most as a solid school.

Well, hopefully I can graduate and get the degree at least. Would be a damn shame if I worked all these years just to fail out in my first semester...

Dorian’s head was a constant swirl of negative hypotheticals that could result from today’s events as he walked back to his dorm.

“Dorian! Wait a bit,” A voice called out.

Dorian turned around, only to see his favorite sleep-deprived student, Khon. Maybe some eye candy was just what he needed to take his mind off a catastrophic failure.

But I’m still straight though, it can’t be gay to admire how good-looking my friend is, right? It’s just an objective observation, that’s all. 

Dorian was not alone in thinking that his friend Khon was hot. As a 6’3” man with a body that looked like it was chiseled out of stone, Khon had the type of body that had girls turning their heads.

The only downside to Khon’s appearance that one could even reasonably argue would be his face, which while it did match up to the absurdly high standard of the rest of his body, his eyes were constantly droopy and had immense bags underneath. 

“So how’d you feel about that quiz,” Khon asked.

Dorian gave him a shrug. “Not too bad. I only felt like I got half of a question right, so a bit better than usual I guess. What about you?”

Khon scratched the back of his head and gave a hesitant answer. “Well, I didn’t really study all that much, so I don’t think I did all that well.”

Dorian’s face contorted in such a way that could only be described as a mix of disappointment and disbelief. 

“What? That’s genuinely how I felt,” Khon rebutted, “I think I probably failed this one, for real.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anything below a 99 is a certified failure for Mr.Perfect over here. What a shame it’ll be when you get a 94 on this one and drop your grade in the class by 0.3 points.”

“Maybe you should’ve studied a bit more or come to lecture. I wasn’t even sure if you were taking the class halfway through the semester.”

“Yeah, well fuck you too Khon.”

“Yep, I’m guessing I won’t see you next week at lecture?”

Dorian chuckled, “Yeah, you know me a little too well,” he replied as he began walking back into his dorm. 

***

Dorian was greeted with the strong stench of rust. 

God damn, not again. 

Dorian swung open the door to his room, slamming the wooden door hard enough to make the frame shake slightly. 

“All right Cain, you wanna explain why the room smells like shit again?”

An awkward silence followed.