I felt excited. It was my first day of school. No owls flew with letters back and forth but it was an actual magic school. I couldn’t see the tall spires from my bedroom window because my room faced the wrong side of the city. Once the royal castle was visible from there. Alas, the castle was destroyed by a petty lich.
I took my time dressing up. I put on living silk socks and underwear, then looked at the uniform on the bed. I decided to wear a skirt today, one of the three interchangeable pieces of garment in the official uniform. Skirt or trousers, cloak or muffler were the first two. The third was the sash to cinch around the waist. They rotated between blue, yellow, red, orange, and green. You could tell the year of a student by their sash. Ours was blue, the ones before us orange, then green and yellow. Red was out of season but the new students next year would wear that color as yellow rotated out. The year after that yellow would come back but green would sit on the bench. And so on.
I could put the uniform on instantly but I wanted to feel the fabric run over my skin, tug the straps of my boots, hear the rustling of the cloth as I cinched my blue sash over the robes. The flapping of the cloak as I tossed it over my shoulders. Looking at myself in the mirror, I applied light makeup by adjusting the color of my skin. Once I was happy with what I saw in the mirror, I took my backpack with my books and stationery and climbed down.
“Good morning, father,” I beamed proudly.
“Good morning, daughter of mine,” Helger grinned. I used a burst of speed to catch him by surprise and kiss his rugged cheek. “Watch it!” He started.
I giggled as I slung my pack over the backrest and took my seat on the table. “Get used to it, dad.”
The [Blacksmith] grunted and dropped his butt on his chair. “We’ll talk about it later. Eat your food, you’ll need the energy,” he sighed then puffed his chest. “Big day at school, right?”
“Aye, sir!”
“Try to stay out of trouble,” he advised half-heartedly. Was he showing a lack of faith in me?
“Don’t you worry, old man! I’ll make sure to get dragged into at least two fights today, one of them with royalty,” I replied as if I was commenting on the weather.
He ignored my joke. Staring at my stomach underneath the table, he prayed, “Miss fairy, keep my daughter safe, please.”
I snorted the rest of my breakfast and washed all of it with a horn of mead. “Underage drinking” is not a concept in dwarven society. After all, even piss-ale is safer than water.
And since four days ago I was officially an adult by all measures. I should’ve picked {Traceless Period} back when I was Apricot. No Buscopan, no ibuprofen, no pads. Just a notification. Best Perk ever. But the [Death Princess] wasn’t right on the head and didn’t give two shits about her periods. All she cared about was keeping her family safe. Despite any criticism, her contribution to our, my, shared story was epic.
With my pack slung over my shoulder, I skipped across a still sleepy Windemere. Not many students commuted to the Academy, most of them lived in the dorms. That’s one of the reasons the institution was so keen on expanding until it spilled out the city walls. They needed all kinds of facilities for their residents. Kitchens, living spaces, latrines, etcetera, as well as the usual classrooms, laboratories, and training fields.
Learning magic required a lot of space. Magical mishaps weren’t usually fatal but humiliating in most situations. Most of them were destructive to the practitioner’s surroundings nonetheless.
“Papers, please!” A guard at the gate stopped me. “Welcome, miss. I know you’re eager to get your first day started, and the enthusiasm in your eyes is endearing. However, we must verify you’re a student here. If you’ll come through this gate every day, I’ll make sure the guards on duty know of you and don’t inconvenience you further.”
Polite! I liked him. “No problem at all. May I fetch them from my pack? Here you go, sir.”
He read the documents and returned them. “Have a good day, miss.”
“Likewise!” I said from three steps away, waved, and pressed forward.
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Probably lost, I stopped in the corridors to let a group of two armored knights and one mage walk past, escorting a human girl with silky black hair that reached past her thighs.
Stolen novel; please report.
> [Princess] Level 78 female human [Royal Wizard]
Wow! A real princess! The mage glared at me and I waved back. Then I was but road dust to him. I looked at the signs posted and found my classroom was in the same direction as Her Highness Silkenhairs.
More students joined the flow and I found myself pressed in an ocean of tall bodies. I wasn’t that short but the Academy had too many tall fellows. At least everyone kept a proper tail distance from the one in front of them, as was the polite thing to do.
We entered an open-air amphitheater. The [Princess] climbed to a set of balconies reserved for nobility while I found a seat in the front row. The seats were adapted for tailed creatures. The backrest had a U-shaped indent until past the middle, and you’d swing from the side to let your tail dangling from the back. All around me, the overeager kids chatted and chattered non-stop. I knew nobody yet so I spent my time brushing my tail on my lap.
An uglier version of professor and magister McCalister walked into the stage and everyone shut their mouths. The resemblance to the mage was striking.
“Greetings, students. I’m Archmagister Tiberius McCalister III, the headmaster. Welcome to Windemere’s Academy of Wizardry and Sorcery.”
He introduced the teaching staff one by one, then droned about Academy regulations, classes, and all those boring things people in love with their own voices liked to say in this kind of event. He spoke of the tradition of the Academy and how it was an essential part of Windemere. The last part of his speech interested me.
“This year, we have the honor of teaching three Royal scions from our esteemed allied nations. Please give them a warm welcome. In alphabetical order, we introduce The fourth Prince of Ekar, His Highness Euric Fairfax.”
Euric was a purebred human. He was about 175cm (5’9’’) tall. Scrawny if compared to the muscle wall from Ekar, Isengar seemed to be the bookish type.
> [Prince] Level 77 male Human [Arcanist].
He probably used {Status Forgery} only to hide his racial profile and pass as pure human. Stupid, I say. He’d recently ranked up. The first few levels were the cheapest. He earned only fourteen million Exp since the rank-up. Probably in Windemere’s underground Dungeon. But he was probably the strongest student of our year, level-wise.
“The sixth prince of Leondirac, His Highness Isengar Leondirac!”
A fellow too tall to be pure human stood in one of the balconies. He had reddish-brown hair and a very wide build.
> Status Forgery pierced.
>
> [Prince] Level 86 male 3/4 Human 1/8 Elf 1/8 werebear [Spell Knight].
I see. The Academy, from what I learned after enrollment, was very strict about ranks. People with high levels usually had already screwed up their Perk and Attribute allocation. It was level, not age that determined if one was unfit to attend classes.
“From our longstanding partners to the north, the fifth princess of Lonid. Her highness Mirina Luwens!”
It was none other than Lady Silkenhairs. The boys were drooling about her figure and I agreed with them. I would love to measure that waspish waist with my hands.
Windemere was at odds with Sadian over trade tariffs in the Uroko gulf. Sadian fancied themselves as the owners of the whole gulf when they were nothing but a glorified gatekeeper nobody hired to the job. I still felt a bitter taste at the way their decadent nobility treated the slaves, especially women. Maybe I should return their auction house, a special gift delivered straight to the throne room, from about a mile above.
What I meant was that by hosting Royalty from Ekar, their blood rivals in the maritime trade industry, the Academy made a bold statement. I felt the rotten stench of backroom political deals.
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After another speech about behavior and what was expected from the students, we were dismissed and ordered to go back to our classrooms. The Royals went first, their well-armed and stonefaced protectors circling them. All of them had the same security detail composition. Two knights and one caster. I didn’t fail to notice all the Royal scions had the same blue sash as me. We were all freshmen.
Sitting in the front row meant I was one of the last to leave the amphitheater. I felt a gaze on me and looked behind me. Tiberius McCalister III was staring straight at me. I curtsied and smiled back. Wyrrentis was next to him so he probably said something about me. I didn’t care, I was here for R&R and maybe to learn something new.
I missed {Crowd Surfer}. The Eleon Perk was perfect for this kind of situation, where people pressed each other to get to their classrooms before the teachers reached them. The Academy building had separate circulation for students and staff. A series of narrow corridors allowed the teachers to reach the classrooms and laboratories without interacting with the students. It was clever and expeditious but I disliked segregation.
Back on Earth, our company had abolished the private executive elevators, forcing the upper management to take the same elevators as the rank-and-file drones such as my former self. That inevitably led to an exchange of information that grounded the managers and made them aware of the company’s zeitgeist. I liked the opportunity to network, too bad I died a month later.
I followed the mass of blue sashes. The classrooms were named after one of the basic elements. Fire, Water, Wind, Earth, Lightning, Light, Darkness, and Ice. Up to eight classes each year, although they never filled everything. They filtered into their rooms and I read the signs until I found mine. Class Light-1.
I entered the classroom and almost bumped into a wall of plate armor. The Royal escorts from before were all in my classroom. The five-by-five configuration had changed and the three parties occupied the first three rows, leaving a gap and two rows of six seats each at the back. The lack of space forced the desks to be joined in pairs. I gave the three Royals a brief curtsy then walked past the guards, earning some glares and scowls. The only empty seat was next to Marisol. I grinned when I saw my former orphanage-mate. She didn’t like to see my face at all. I sauntered to my seat and slid my tail into the U-shaped indent.
“Good morning, miss Marisol. I’m so glad you were the one chosen for the scholarship by the [Saintess],” I decided to be a bitch and drop the bomb before she could.