I slowly pull myself to my feet and see Cat coming towards me.
"Have fun watching?" I ask him.
"I was told that I was fine to watch as long as I do not intervene in anything. I am rather impressed that you managed to do that so fast. Do you plan to stick around and see the rest of your class finish?"
"No." I say. "I want to go wash off some of this mud."
"Follow me little mud monster." Cat says and I do. I feel a hand reaching out to grab me and I move quickly, causing Rex to misstep.
"I did not give you permission to touch me. Back up." I tell him and the helper got between me and Rex.
"Pray tell Cat, by any chance can you become a very large cat and eat him?" I ask as he leads me to a less frequently used bath house. It was used by students that needed to rinse off from an active course before going to their next one.
"Sadly, I have a refined pallet and don't want the indigestion." he tells me and continues to guide me.
When we get there, I tell Cat. "I am just going to rinse off with all of my clothes on. They need it."
"I'll be here."
"You don't have to continue to follow me around."
"You are too interesting not to. And I do not have a party to dungeon dive with anymore. Thus, I have nothing better to do."
"Alright then I shant argue with that."
I turn and make my way into the bathhouse, completely uncertain of what it would be like inside. Needless to say I was rather surprised. It was a very communal space, not even separated by genders. I guess dungeon rules apply here. There was a spell set up to spray you with hot water when you stand in a certain area, and a large vat of soap. Convenient.
I stand under the hot water and watch as chunks of mud and muck wash off. I then walk over to the soap and squirt some into my hands. I scrub EVERYTHING. My hair, my skin, My clothes. Just everything.
I scrub thoroughly for a few minutes then step back into the hot water. Finally feeling clean I realize that I am about to go to class dripping wet. How... Unpleasant. I move to leave out the exit door and see another area set up with a spell. A warm wind spell, why yes I do believe I shall partake.
I move over to that area and am nearly knocked off my feet by how strong the spell is. I look around and see that there is a handlebar to grip onto. I grab onto it and step into the spell’s radius. I was dried very quickly. I only almost slipped a mere three times. But I managed to not fall, which surely would have earned me much embarrassment, I shall count that as a win indeed!
I emerge and see Cat speaking with someone outside the door. It looked to be another member or the Obstacle Courses Galore! class. I think that they were talking about times? When Cat saw me he trounced over and leapt up onto my shoulder.
"Where to next steed?" he asks me.
"Understanding monsters, and if I am to be your method of transport you shall be responsible for feeding me." I inform him and he guides me to the class.
"You smell odd." he decided to tell me.
"Oh dear me, do I? I thought that the soap has a rather pleasant smell to it."
"It does. But not as good as your normal smell. Adventurer’s soap has an almost masking quality, you are almost scentless now, shame."
He leads me to my next class much faster than he had led me to the prior one. We get there and meet up with Kay.
"How was your course Kay?" I ask him, hoping that he wasn't bullied too much.
"It was kind of hard, but a little fun too I think? I am going to enjoy it much more when I learn to use water jet. Then I will go zip zip zoom! Across the waters, a mere blur of movement, instead of slowly slogging through them. How was your course? I don't mean anything mean by it but you seem a bit too clean after a course with a title like ‘Obstacle Courses Galore!’."
"I do know what you mean. I was much too filthy to continue the day in such a manner. Cat led me to a small bath house to get clean."
"She looked like a mud creature. Quite like the muck monsters found on the twelfth floor" Cat tells Kay casually.
"What, a bathhouse, that is not fair. Next time I get Cat, that way he can tell me about all the cool secret things I don’t already know about but should! So, what did you do for your first course?"
“No” Cat replies.
I tell him about the course and being made to run it against Rex. I make sure to add, in a rather humble fashion, that I had taken first place. Kay told me about how they were timed on how fast they could swim across different temperatures of water.
"Do tell, which temperature did you swim faster in?"
"Warm water actually. Not sure why. I wanted to leave the freezing cold water the fastest, but for some reason my body hardly moved."
"I'm sorry. How long were you in the very cold water?"
"They only let us stay in there for three minutes. So however far you got was what counted. Which is odd. I wonder why that is? All the other temperatures we had to swim all the way across."
"You would catch hypothermia and die. Which would be most inconvenient. You look as though your future will be interesting. I don't want to lose someone useful, and it would make this one sad." Cat continued interjecting.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
"Great to see you care so much about me! I mean not as much as Amaya, but that is okay. I mean look at her, so awesome." Kay said, and at first I thought that he was being sarcastic.
It made me a little sad when I realized he wasn't. Cat had pretty much told Kay his only value was what he could offer Cat. I shake my head.
"Let's get some seats."
Kay and I get seats in the front. We decided this was best since we were rather short. Though no one willingly sat directly behind Kay as they couldn't see past his ears, which made Kay rather self-conscious.
"Now then. Let's go around and all say your name and one of your recommended classes." the teacher said. "This will be a good way to break the ice, and also give you some ideas of who is around you. You may even use this information to eventually party up."
'What class should I say?' I ask Zayne. He seemed to have a better understanding of what will cause me to stand out too much and helped guide me away from such behaviors.
'Yes. Indeed. So which should I say?'
'Rogue, fan dancer, enchantress and bard.'
'...'
'I think that I am going to dual class as a rogue and fan dancer.'
"I'm gonna be a mage, but I am not choosing a color. Either the color chooses me or I choose them all!" Kay says, rather proudly. I was a bit surprised that he managed to say so little. I suppose it was my turn next.
"Amaya. Fan dancer." I say, a bit softly. The teacher looks at me as though he wanted to tell me to speak up, but decided against it.
‘Zayne! I do wish you had informed of this aspect of the class prior to my speaking, or not at all!’
Once everyone was done introducing themselves, he started in on the day's lecture.
"Well then, welcome morning group to understanding monsters. We will go over theories of different species and classifications of monsters, as well as general and specific weaknesses. This will be one of the most important classes you have. If I catch you asleep three times I am booting you to a different time. Morning classes are often smaller, meaning that instructors can give you more attention when it is needed. This is a valuable asset. I hope that none of you lose it by being lazy."
He stares around the room at all of us, eyes not lingering on any in particular. Until he sees Cat.
"Any reason that you are here Cat?"
"I was told that I could attend lectures, and if there is an exam I can help proctor. I am here to be an asset."
The teacher stares for a moment more. "Yes, I see, I do suppose you might be able to manage that. I am glad you are finally moving to grow past the loss of your former guild leader. I will accept your help."
That conversation out of the way he launched into his first lesson.
"I will not waste my time doing an over view of the class. You are learning about monsters. Overview done. Today we will be talking about monsters that you will commonly find on the first floor. Does anyone know what monster is the most common on the first floor?"
Kay throws his hand in the air with an impressive energy.
"Please tell us... Kay was it?"
"Yes sir!"
"Well then. Proceed."
"Slimes!" Kay says proudly.
"Can you be more specific?"
"Oh, you bet I can be more specific. Ahem, on the first floor of the dungeon you can encounter all generic forms of slime. Those being green, red, and blue roughly in an even ratio. Beyond this though you can occasionally run into…"
"Not yellow?" the professor uses the first minor pause to interrupt Kay, to his soon to be dismay it does not work.
"Nope! Well, I think there might be a yellow but if there is than it is the champion of the floor since it has higher physical resistance. You can really only hurt it with water magic or if you are super strong and make it dizzy with a powerful whack! Or if you are fast and you can hit it a lot of times all at once then you will be…"
"Very good Kay." the teacher said, and sounded reasonably impressed.
Kay with his mouth still open slowly closes it and lowers his hand. Whilst muttering ‘I had more to say.’
Cat reached out and bopped him, almost as if to say good job. With the combination of the two praising him Kay practically beamed.
The teacher looks around the room and notices that no one is writing anything down.
"I see. So none of you brought anything to write on. Or perhaps like the little bunny here have already committed it to memory?"
A few people looked down as though embarrassed.
"Enough of that! Here. All of you are getting these blank books to write your notes in. Yes, yes I know how much they cost. But without adventurers this town doesn't exist. So people will occasionally spoil you like this. Don't get used to it! It costs more to replace you because you didn't have everything that you needed to learn."
He then handed a blank book to each of along with ink pens to write with. I thought that they were rather neat. The quills were enchanted to have ink stored within them. This was very pricy things being given us indeed, Kay was practically drooling over the quill.
"Over half of our last graduating class is already dead. Think of that and use these properly. Now then, back to the lecture."
The instructor continued to teach us about the top floor of the dungeon. Apparently it was rather grassy and had a lot of slimes in it. These were low level, slow moving slimes. That is when I first heard about monsters having levels. Goodness, so much I have yet to learn. Kay though, well, he seems to already be greatly informed about all of this already. We shall have to spend many an hour studying together.
When the class ended I felt as though my mind itself was very much bursting with new knowledge. I feel as though it should be giving me a headache, but indeed it wasn't. I felt invigorated. Mayhaps I am quite well suited to this.
"Hey Ami, you seem to be smiling, you are smiling right?"
"Indeed I am."
"Haha, yay. I was right. What are you smiling about? Did I miss a joke. I'd be bummed if I missed a joke. You will tell me what it was though, won't you?"
"Oh indeed I would. But there was no joke. I was simply smiling as I feel that I might be well suited to this."
"Isn't that the reason that you are here? Oh hey, we really haven't talked about the reason that we want to be adventurers. I can go first. I come from a long line of adventurers, some of them pretty powerful as well. Especially with magic. You would think that because my parents died I would be like, oh no I don't want to go into that place, it is an evil family murdering place of deathly death. But nope! Instead I wish to defeat it. And I want to use magic. I wish to burn the monsters, have my wonderful flaming fiery vengeance upon it."
"I felt a calling to be here. And I did not wish to follow in my families line of work."
"What line is that?"
"Well, they are, umm... Artists?"
"Well, that was painfully awkward, you don't want to talk about it right? That's reasonable. I think that eventually you will trust me. You will right?"
"Of course I will. We were fast friends were we not? I feel that as long as our friendships holds and grows you will rightly end up knowing everything about me. And I hope I shall know everything about you as well."
"And as your future guild leader I shall know everything about you both." Cat says, almost possessively.
That makes my heart warm for some reason. I had never had friends my age before. And, well, I don't know how old Cat is, but I can tell that he is not many years older than us. I feel he is likely only about three years our senior from the way he speaks, as well as how he carries himself. Also, Nila is half cat-kin so I have a good understanding of the way they age.
"We have our next class together. Let's get going then, shall we?" Kay says, rather lively.
"Do you know where our next class is?"
"Yes. It is in the same place. This is where lecture classes take place. So get up, walk, stretch, drink some water, whatever. Then sit back down." Cat says.
"Thank you very muchly Cat. I appreciate how kind you are to us." I say, and do as he recommends, walking and stretching out my body. I wasn't sore yet, but I knew that if I did not move around I would end up being sore.
"Hello Kay. I am very glad to have a student like you in the class. I look forward to hearing how much more you know." the teacher says, praising Kay.
“Did you hear that Amaya, somebody told me to talk, more! More talking!”