Cael wasn’t sure what to think about the cafeteria food.

Despite the drake telling him what would be technically edible, nothing seemed to strike him as good. It was all fine, but it was lacking something important that Cael couldn't pinpoint.

He’d filled his plate with a bit of everything the drake said wouldn’t taste awful or outright harm him. Even so, it was all just okay at best.

In the end, he’d settled for grabbing something that looked like a massive pear and walking out.

Tar had insisted that he tour the campus instead of sticking around the cafeteria any longer.

The elemental’s logic was that since he’d had to run around the rest of the campus on his own, the least they could do was follow him around and see the most important bits.

He wasn’t even sure if he’d get around to eating the fruit. Everything in the cafeteria was kind of a wash as far as he was concerned. Not to mention he wasn’t even hungry anymore.

Despite only having a small amount of each of the edible foods, the sheer quantity of options quickly filled his stomach.

Basically, the idea of just walking around was fine for Cael. The smell of food in the cafeteria was beginning to make him queasy and he really did need to do a proper tour of the place while he could.

“Yeah, okay. What am I supposed to be looking at?”

Tar’s most recent stop on the guided tour involved stopping in the middle of a hall on the second lowest level of the main educational building.

The level seemed to be all the things that you might want to have tucked away. As they’d wandered around coming up to this point, Tar had pointed out several rooms he’d only described as ‘summoning pits’ and a few storage rooms for magical monster parts.

This floor was noticeably smaller than any of the ones above it.

Additionally, the only level below was the actual dungeons he’d been in for a stint at the beginning of his stay at Mereo.

Tar reported that the dungeons spanned the length of several buildings, including but not limited to the labs where Balbenda had dragged him after his said stint in said dungeons.

‘This is the easiest entrance to the system of secret passages across the school.’

“The what?”

‘The secret passages, keep up.’

‘Yes. More specifically, this is the closest point in the system to a weird saferoom of sorts buried somewhere below the dungeons.’

Tar sent him images of the secret room’s layout.

“Is it really that safe if you can just waltz into it whenever you want and take pictures?”

‘Well, it’s not on right now.’ Once again, Cael could feel the elemental rolling his eyes. ‘Obviously, it’s a lot more secure when it’s actually being used for security purposes, but if it’s always on, then it’s a waste of energy.’

“Fair point, but you’re showing me this, why?”

‘Well, if something happens, I’d hope you’d be able to run here on your own while the two of us cover your escape.’

Cael blinked.

“You expect me to just leave you two behind?”

‘Well, yeah. As long as we’re connected to your soul as we are, we’re basically immortal.’

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Cael didn’t really have anything to say about that. While he didn’t like the idea of just letting the elementals get hurt for him, Tar was supposedly right. As long as their real souls were hidden away within his own, they’d be technically fine.

‘Anyway, after thinking about it, I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to just wave your student bracelet at the wall.’

Cael shrugged and tried it out, using [Mana Sight] to see what Tar meant.

Under the scrutiny of [Mana Sight], the mechanism became apparent. It was almost familiar. Like a lock without a key. Cael couldn’t tell what exactly the key was supposed to look like until the bracelet got close enough to properly interact with the lock.

It quickly grew apparent that he’d been lugging the key around for the past day.

“What am I looking at, guys?” Cael thought it almost looked like an aura of mana surrounding his bracelet was thrusting itself headlong toward the gaping hole that was the magic lock.

The different colors of mana seemed to filter through several semi-porous barriers of varying strengths that separated the streams of mana until eventually all that was left was a fractalled and tangled mess of undistinguishable colors that seemed to oscillate between vibrant in hue to nearly transparent.

From there, random segments eventually made their way toward a series of holes that Cael could only assume were mana sensors that would test the incoming streams to see if they met all the specifications to open the lock.

The whole process had barely taken a couple of seconds before it had all disappeared, so Cael couldn’t be sure.

‘Hmm. Well, I guess you didn’t need that explanation after all. That’s exactly how this works.’

‘Almost. This isn’t really a lock.’ Ava helpfully replayed the scene from memory and pointed out the mana mechanism itself. ‘There’s no locking portion. It’s a scanning and recording artifact. They won’t stop you from entering. They just want to have records of who is accessing the passages.’

“Huh.” Cael took a careful step back when the wall started folding in onto itself. [Mana Sight] made it unlikely that something would pop out and surprise him, but it couldn’t hurt to be more cautious going forward.

“Tar, scout for me?”

The cat untangled himself from Cael’s hair and fell to the floor, casting a glance back at Ava and Cael before vanishing into the dark passage.

After a few moments, the elemental slipped back out of the darkness and coalesced back into his more feline form.

‘Yeah, I don’t see anything wrong.’ Without waiting any longer, Tar turned and merged back into the shadows. ‘Follow.’

Even though the path ran perpendicular in either direction, it wasn’t hard to guess which direction he was meant to go. Tar had helpfully begun to map the internals of the passage leading off to the left.

Cael didn’t think it was necessary to map the beginning. The light peeking in through the entrance was able to illuminate the small out-of-place stones and cracks of the passage well enough.

Of course, he’d be wrong to say that, because the moment he’d stepped inside, the stones had slid soundlessly back into place, plunging the space between Mereo’s walls back into complete darkness.

As he wandered deeper into the passages, Cael studied the marks Tar had left behind. Long white lines along either side of him marked the width of the path.

In some places, the ground rose or fell by a few inches, or the path itself shifted slightly to the side like every segment had been an afterthought made completely independent of one another.

The lingering mana inlaid in the matter of the walls should have been enough to allow him a false sense of sight, but the muddy browns and grays were so encompassing around him that they did little to denote changes that Tar’s lines could.

He turned off his [Mana Sight] when the shadowy streak that was Tar slunk back toward him and perched itself on his shoulder.

With the tactile aspect of the familiar bond, it was impossible to mistake Tar for any other shadowy streak he may encounter.

“So, where are we headed?” Cael was conscious of the fact that his voice echoed much deeper into the darkness than Tar could detect.

From his place on Cael’s shoulder, he would estimate that Tar was only able to consistently map as far as a few meters ahead.

‘Next stop was the actual battle arena. I saw some pretty interesting things there when I was exploring yesterday.’

“Oh? Interesting in what way?”

‘Interesting because I think everyone has a lot more fighting experience than you, which makes sense but bodes pretty badly for you. I imagine you being pretty useless in group projects.’

Well, it was a school. He was there to learn, and watching others was probably the first step in that direction since classes wouldn’t start until the next day.

“Did you map the whole underground while I was asleep last night?”

‘Maybe. I can't be sure I found every entrance and section.’

Cael shrugged and began to climb the stairs Tar had started to mark in front of him.

“Well, it means a lot anyway. You're the best, Tar.”

Ava snickered at the noticeable pride that began radiating off of the cat from the compliment.