After Jacq’s lesson, we had a break before lunch. There was a main common room for all the students, with a console (the brand I didn’t recognise) which some students were playing. There wasn’t a TV, though, as apparently the entire section of the wall acted as the screen. I went over to the players, the first a guy with fudge brown eyes and short red hair with blue highlights and the second a girl with neon green eyes and long black hair. The game was a fighting game in which the two avatars were featureless blank models with the choice of several set arenas to fight in. The main thing that stood out to me was that unlike other fighting games I’d seen before, the game had somehow been able to colour the avatars in the same colours as their eyes.

“YES!” the girl gloated after having apparently won the fight. “I told you I could counter your shadow walking with my electricity, and it only took me twenty attempts,” The screen showed the guy knocked out next to the girl, most likely from the aforementioned electricity and a poor choice of shadow to emerge from.

“I have to admit putting metal rods next to the shadows was a good technique, though I doubt it would work a second time,” the guy replied. “Those strategy lessons from Dr Keter have paid off.”

“Hey, what are you guys playing?” I asked, as the game clearly wasn’t one I recognised.

“It’s called Mythic Fight Simulator MKIII, or MFS3 for short; the technopath who made it wasn’t very creative at the naming side, but he makes a good fight sim. You want a go?” the guy said, passing the controller to me. “I’m sure Chloe wouldn’t mind a new challenge, though be warned: she’s had extra lessons from Dr Keter.”

“Yeah if you’re offering? Though be warned I’m professionally bad at video games.”

The guy, who introduced himself as Mike, showed me how to channel my aura into the controller so that the game could pick up my particular Legacy. The game apparently did this through the database to get an accurate record of each aura signature’s powers.

I followed Mike’s instructions on how to flow my aura, it was similar to Jacq’s machine only far weaker as it only required a small sample to analyse. The controller flashed purple and an error message showed on the screen.

Mike looked confused, “Huh, I don’t think I’ve seen that error message before. I’d just try again maybe you just did it weird.”

“The analyser in the controller probably just registered both our auras at once, I had half a thought to stop you but I was curious to see how it would react. I’ll just try and stop the device from absorbing my part and it should be fine,” Edward explained, before shutting down some other thoughts I had been starting to form, “and sorry to disappoint but your plan to find out Oliver’s Legacy from this game won’t work as the database only has previous iterations of each Legacy. It’s annoying but the current soul user’s personality changes details of how the Legacy is expressed.”

I flowed my aura again through the controller, though this time it felt more constrained as Edward filtered his aura away from the capture device. No error message appeared this time. My character appeared on screen in lightning blue, poised and ready to fight.

Mike looked relieved “Ok, nice, it seemed to have worked this time. I wonder what the issue had been. Doesn’t actually matter, so what biome do you want?”

“Uh, I don’t know, the mountain range?”

Chloe laughed, “Overheard the electric stuff, did you? Well, I’m not that easy to counter, and now that you are done somehow breaking the game, I can show you the taste of defeat!”

“Please beat her, it would be so funny for all this smack talk to lead to her being defeated by a first year.”

“And? I have already shown that I can beat you, so if… Uh, what was your name?”

“Tom.”

“So if Tom can defeat me then by the transitive rule that means you also are worse than a first year.” She turned back to me, “Uh, no offence, by the way.”

“None taken.”

“Well, we will see won’t we.”

***

The fight went as expected, with me getting my ass handed to me multiple times, as I had almost no control over my speed. There were points where I thought I might have been getting the upper hand but Chloe quickly stopped any of the moves before I could plan any further ahead.

Edward did not help in the slightest, laughing at how easily I was defeated, though he did seem slightly distracted by something at a couple of points. He had claimed that he would have been able to win a few of the matches but claimed that it would be too suspicious if I suddenly became amazing at the game and my avatar changed colours so conveniently he didn’t have to prove his claims.

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Matt, Alex, and Oliver came over to cheer me on, only to switch sides when they saw how badly I was doing. I did, however, win at least three times as I gained a better grasp on the different arenas available and how to counter the lightning, although that could have just been luck or pity wins.

Mike did offer to play any of the others in my team but the only one who took him up on the offer was Alex who wasn't allowed to play due to the nature of his power. Oliver did look curious about how the game integrated Legacies but that interest waned when I told him that it relied on the database. He had thought it would be something like that but had hoped slightly.

When the bell went, the score was eighty to four, which probably showed how much I had actually trained with my power (technically only three fights and a few times in between) and how long Chloe likely had in comparison. It was safe to say I had a bit of catching up; most of these people probably went to training schools before they came here as well. Edward did remind me that they were also third years and even those who had had more experience through training schools would have to have been a prodigy or something to stand a chance. Though my team still beat the Legends, so I had that win to my name.

***

The lesson after the break was an interesting one as it wasn’t in a classroom but in the forest on school grounds; wilderness survival. The lesson I hope I don’t have to rely too much on if – no, when - I actually get sent on a proper mission.

The teacher was a tank of a woman called Miss Smallwood, a name which only half suited her, an observation that Edward luckily stopped me relaying out loud as she wasn’t the type of teacher who you joked with. Her stern eyes were ash grey and she had dark short brown hair and had a belt with holsters for knives which were all filled. She showed us what plants were used for, such as food or poison and how to be physically and emotionally invisible, all knowledge she used regularly when on missions.

The lesson was difficult to say the least as I had never had to gather my own food before as I had only ever just bought it from a shop. Nature seemed almost intent on poisoning us, as so many of the edible plants and poisonous ones looked nearly identical, with the distinguishing features being subtle aspects such as small flowers or leaf shape. Annoyingly, the other two members of the Legends, Lilly and Emily, seemed to thrive as nature seemed to be their element. Miss Smallwood took a liking to them as they genuinely seemed interested in what she said, and they seemed to know what they were talking about.

Luckily, the emotional invisibility was far easier to grasp, though it was more theoretical than the more practical plant stuff. It was just more advanced meditation than what most of us were taught as kids, though Cassie had slightly more trouble.

The rest of the lesson went without incident. Miss Smallwood gave us a book of plants to study for the next lesson, and then it was time for lunch. I piled random food onto my plate as I was starving and didn’t have much complaint about how it was solved. I sat down at a table, and my team sat around me. Alex had small bits of machinery floating around him when he sat down, Matthew was seemingly practising different rune combinations (non-explosive, hopefully), and Oliver was reading over notes from Dr Jacq’s and Miss Smallwood’s lessons.

“Sowhatisournextlessonafterlunchthen?” I said between eating, blue sparks flying from my face for some unexplained reason.

Everyone just stared at me.

“What?” I gave them a confused look, as I didn’t know why they were staring while finishing off what I had piled onto my plate (though I still wasn’t really sure what I was eating, I was still hungry and it wasn’t awful).

“Tom, you may have thought you just said words, and they may have been words to you, but you might need to slow down for the rest of us,” Matt explained as it was obvious that I still didn’t understand the cause of the stairs.

That would explain the sparks. I really need to stop accidentally using my power when I didn’t mean to, as that's happened at least twice now.

“I said, what is our next lesson after lunch?” I repeated slowly this time.

“Oh, it’s personal training with Dr Jacq, though I’m not sure how he is going to train us separately considering there are at least twenty four of us and I’m pretty sure the personal training is in separate rooms. Plus, the fact we just had him before lunch.” Alex informed me though for some reason he hadn’t really eaten anything, though I saw he just had multiple cans of something. “We still do have a break before then though and I would like to have a go at MFS3, I want to see if I could do any better against Chloe or whoever is playing.”

“I’m pretty sure that hacking the game to make you win is against the rules,” Oliver remarked to Alex, breaking his plans.

“Come on! That was one time.” Alex complained.

“Yes, the only time we let you play on the company console and you decided to ‘upgrade’ it. I lost all my save files.”

A large thump was heard on the table. Everyone looked over in the direction of the noise, only to see Cassie with a gauntlet. A gauntlet that should have been near impossible to carry, as it was almost as large as Cassie’s torso. The thing looked like it packed enough power to dent tanks and looked rather impressive with a gold design and what looked like pressure valves coming out of it.

Her eyes had a passive glow to them, which explained how she could use the weapon as she did. The weapon covered her entire arm and was practically attached to her shoulder, and she was casually using her knife to cut a bit of food on her plate. She looked up at us and said, “Hey.”

Star sat in the seat next to her, noticed his friend’s gauntlet and said, “Cassie, you forgot to take off Granit again.”

“What?” She asked, “Oh yeah, I’ll take her off later, it’s just that it sort of weighs nothing to me so I kinda forgot that I had her on.”

“What do you guys think of Jacq?” Star asked after sighing, having given up on Cassie.

“He seems alright from what we’ve seen from him; what do you think his personal training style is?” I replied, and as soon as I finished asking, the bell rang, signifying lunch was over.

“Well, I guess we’re going to find out.”