The first thing Alice did was scan her status sheet, or Echo, as methodically as she could. If what Narum had said was true, they would have trainers down below that’d help them with their point allocation, and given that she currently had just about zero idea of how she could acquire more spells or skills, she figured that they’d probably help with that too.
As everyone started to chatter up amongst themselves, Alice followed behind, Julian slightly in front of her. He had a spring to his step that wasn’t there before, and a small smile graced his lips as he silently mouthed something from his Echo. With a glance backwards, he motioned Alice to speed up as he did the same, the rest of the outworlders already filtering out of the massive, empty hall.
“Come on! I really want to see what I can learn here. Not many opportunities to learn magic when we were back home, right?”
Alice closed her Echo, and nodded, this time smiling herself despite the crowd around them draining her of any will to interact. As dour and gloomy as groups of people made her, Julian’s enthusiasm for a new world filled with possibilities still managed to worm its way into her mood.
Together, they made their way downwards through a set of massive stairs cut from some kind of stone, all of the steps almost polished to a mirror. The sober white shoes she just noticed everyone else was also wearing didn’t leave a single scruff mark or stain on them.
The polish and delicate finish permeated the whole building, even when they found their way into another double set of doors, this pair even bigger than the ones they came from, and blown wide open.
Stepping into what she could only assume was the ground floor of the government Hall of Mistfall, she almost couldn’t keep up with the amount of people passing through. The ground floor itself was a massive rectangle made with the same polished white-ish stone with accents of gold that had before, but this time, there were various stalls built into the right wall that led to what almost appeared to be university classrooms. The left one was filled with what appeared to be some form of clerks handling some paperwork, counting strange glowing coins, and generally doing low-level grunt work she expected any nation would have heaps of.
Squinting her eyes, Alice noticed a discrepancy; there were too many rooms that were much too big to fit in this building, even with its prodigious size. Tugging at Julian’s sleeve to catch his attention, she pointed at two of the different ‘classrooms’ to the right, pointing out the strange spatial anomaly, which only made his eyes gleam with an almost manic energy. “There!” He almost shouted as he pointed towards one of the stalls that had a bright, eye-catching floating sign with the words ‘Runic Aspirants here!’. Almost without waiting for her, Julian sprinted towards it while waving back at Alice. “See you later!”
Alice was halfway through extending her hand to try and catch him when he zoomed out of her range, and she shrugged half heartedly as she muttered. “I don’t even know where I’m staying…”
Scanning the different signs, she saw almost all of the outworlders picking and entering different stalls, all of them with eye-catching or bright, showy signs that advertised what, supposedly, they’d find inside.
Alice went one by one, trying to find one that appealed to her to no avail. From ‘wondrous alchemy’ to ‘runic smithing’, passing through ‘heirs of fire gather here!’.
None of it called to her, and as indecision gnawed at her heart, and she gnawed on her nails, she noticed one of the stalls she hadn’t seen before, this one without an illusory sign plastered all over its front. All it had was a simple, austere wooden sign that read ‘Ether Introduction and Survival Basics’.
Intrigued, she noticed that there was no one near it, everyone else enraptured by the fabulous displays and flashy designs.
Hesitantly approaching, she noticed that as the rest of them, this stall didn’t have a door, being little else than a hole in the wall where some chairs and tables were placed, with a bigger chair and table at the back end of the room. Seated upon said table, was a middle aged woman leaning towards the older side, some white hairs already standing out from the mane of pure onyx hair she carried in a tight bun. The woman glanced at her with her one good eye as she took a drag from the small, wooden pipe she carried with one hand, her other eye covered with a gray-ish patch made of some unknown hide.
She wore clothes she didn’t expect a teacher of a magical world to wear, instead wearing a sort of combat fatigue made out of various patches of fur and hide, all of it covered by plates of a blueish-black metal protecting important parts and a multitude of belts with seemingly endless small pouches.
As Alice came into the room and the woman glanced at her, seemingly dismissing her out of hand, her gaze suddenly snapped back to her with an uncanny swiftness that raised the hairs on the back of her neck. “A Pain Acolyte, huh?”
Alice stopped, and thought of turning around and leaving, but if she could see her class, then who else could too?
“Everyone,” answered the woman as if she had been reading her mind, and as Alice looked at her as one might look a venomous cobra, she rolled her eye so hard Alice feared it might fall out of her skull. “No, I’m not. It’s just common sense if you know what to look for. And, the answer is everyone.” She motioned to herself, and then to Alice. “Just focus on me, and on looking ‘through’ me really hard. With time, it’ll become a natural reflex.”
Alice did so, and was greeted with another prompt.
Name: Marie Greenfield
Tier: [?]
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
Identity: Full Metal Sergeant
Level: [?]
The unknown Tier and Level put her ill at ease, but she took one of the seats closer to her nonetheless. No need to appear needlessly rude to the lady with the hidden level.
Marie smiled, stored the pipe after letting the ash fall into one of her pouches, and turned towards Alice, giving her the full of her attention. “So, a little bird has come to my windowsill, seeking some guidance, yes?” At Alice’s nod of confirmation, Marie leaned back, getting comfortable. “So, what do you want to learn about in specific?”
Alice thought the question over. Given that she was the instructor, asking her to come up with the topic of her own education had to be some kind of trap or test. Mind made up, Alice gestured towards Marie. “Why don’t you choose what you think is best for me? It’s not like I have an august background regarding the manipulation of whatever Ether is, and I wasn’t exactly an outdoors girl back home, so I don’t think my choice would be the best.”
Marie smiled as if she had won some kind of prize. “Good choice. Unfortunately, these facilities aren’t the best at providing anything but the mere basics to us, and to you. Really, this whole thing is more of a talent-snatching-competition than anything else.”
Alice narrowed her eyes, some pieces of the earlier puzzle clicking into place. “You get bonuses for each student that reaches a certain level or excels in whatever you teach, don’t you?”
Marie’s smile widened, and the gleam of curiosity that had been already present within her eye strengthened. “Smart little bird, aren’t you? Yes, we do get bonuses if any of you brats makes it out into citizenship, and even more as you move through the ranks.”
Alice looked around the completely empty classroom, remembering the plain, painfully unadorned wooden sign. Once she looked back at Marie with one inquisitive eyebrow raised, the older woman just shrugged carelessly. “I don’t really need the bonuses, and I’m doing this because an old coot I have for a friend buggered me into this, so I put in the minimum effort for him to piss off for a while.”
That made some sense if she took it at face value, and seeing that she had no reason not to, Alice nodded, gesturing at Marie to continue.
“The lacking facilities aside, I can pass on some tips and ground rules onto you while we’re here. First off,” she raised one finger for, presumably, each of her points, “there’s a gear store near the exit of the Hall that provides every outworlder with a set of pre-prepared gear of their choice, some currency, and a token that assures that food and rest will be provided for at no cost to your person. Don’t lose the token, or the administration will be annoyed with you, and those bastards can and will make your day to day a living hell if you let them. You’d probably have seen it anyway on your own, but I like to double check everything if possible.
“Second, don’t ever, ever sleep outside at your Tier and Level, much less if you’re inside the Blossom.”
Alice tilted her head slightly to one side, nose scrunched, and Marie elaborated.
“Mistfall is a border city, and as such, to the west is the main road towards one of the Pylon cities, and even further in, our capital, Chain’s Ends. But, to the east lies death. To the east, the Blood Blossom Forest grows, and it’s as awful as it sounds. During the day, it’s almost a normal piece of woodland; some animals, some critters, the rustling of leaves, the sounds of nature in general, except that everything is tinged with an awful shade of carmine and an underlying stench of blood clings to every piece of bark.
“The reason why I’m telling you to not sleep there? The forest is alive, in the most literal fashion of the word. If you stay there the very trees themselves will tear you to pieces. If night falls, hide into a ruin and pray to whatever God you follow that whatever forgotten horror is probably lurking inside isn’t worse than literal man-eating woods.”
Alice paled, a thin sheen of cold sweat coating her brow. She didn’t know what she had been expecting from this world, but definitely not that.
Seeing her expression, Marie eased up a bit on the doom and gloom, relaxing back and smiling despite the earlier atmosphere. “Alternatively, the woods are, effectively, just a forest during the day. Just make sure to count your hours and not stray so far away you can’t make it back in time. It’d be a shame to lose someone interesting like you like that.”
On one hand, the compliment flattered her usually shriveled ego, on the other, man-eating trees.
She’d take what she could.
Marie kept going, apparently on a roll now that she had gotten talking. “Now, I’m not going to teach you anything related to Classing or Ether right now, but something I can tell you besides an obvious method of developing and improving skills like ‘practice practice practice’, is that at your level, a completely clear state of mind is a necessity if you want to attain any kind of skill that isn’t directly related to your Class or Profession.” Marie took a break, apparently thinking over what else to say.
“Ah, yes! You can hide your Identity and Name, but it’s considered a really rude thing to do, and the Guard has methods to bypass that entirely, so don’t do it if you’re in the city. Out in the wild though? Do as you please. Also, here,” said Marie as she produced what appeared to be an almost machine-like perfect colour-coded map of Mistfall in a square of white, smooth paper. Marie’s answer to Alice’s look of almost-incredulity was a shrug and a laugh.
“What, you thought we’d still be shitting on outhouses and writing with chalk on cave walls? No, the wizards didn’t stay in their ivory towers to preserve the aesthetic this time. Also,” she said, tapping the map with her index. “The green sections here are stores and hotels that give freebies to outworlders so you can get acclimatized to the environment and culture around you. The blue zone is where we’re at and the External Affairs Hall, or the Delver’s Hall as everyone else that isn’t a stuck up paper-pusher calls them. These headquarters are where I’ll be staying, so you should pick up a place near it so I don’t have to wait in the morning for you. Don’t go near the red zones.” Preempting Alice’s question, she waved dismissively. “Those are restricted sections like the Artisan’s District, the Guard’s headquarters, and the exits.”
Alice nodded, and gave one last look at the map before folding it up for easier carrying. “Thanks for everything Marie.”
The woman smiled in a way that set her teeth on edge, and something told Alice that she’d regret choosing this secluded spot one way or another. She just knew it.
“Don’t sweat it kid. Now shoo, get some clothes and grab some sleep. Getting your soul shoved into another body can’t be all that easy on the mind.”
Now that she mentioned it, Alice did feel strangely lethargic. With a slow nod, she gave one last thanks to her newfound tutor, and exited the room.
Outwards, and into the city.