The day had come, Nicholas's first class would start today at 9am. He himself had woken up at 5am though.It had become a routine for him to wake up at this hour due the time he worked, a few times a week he would coach himself to jog to the gym in the city's center to lift some weights and swim a bit if he didn't have work just to burn time. He wasn't overly eager to do it but not everything in life had to be a joy, regardless his efforts showed results and his health was better due to it.

Today was one of those days, he had gone to the gym and was riding a bus back to his apartment. The bus was full with people going on about their day so he had to stand. He still had two hours until he had to be at the university so he was thinking on ways to burn time.

"Did I need something from the store? Think I ran out of ground beef and.. oh yea that burned lamp in the kitchen..."

While he was absent-mindedly thinking and holding on, a man knocked him into the window he was standing next to while trying to move further into the bus.

"Oh, sorry my bad." the person apologized.

Nicholas took a moment to get a hold of himself and to reply.

"It's okay, I was in my own world there."

But The passing person had his back towards him already, the guy seemed to be a in a hurry for a seat that opened up. The whole notion of rushing for a seat in a completely full bus was a bit silly to Nicholas, but he didn't really care that much and went back in to his thoughts.

"Now where was I? Ground beef, kitchen lamp.."

A younger passenger nudged him.

"Dude you just got tackled by Wymer."

Nicholas's was confused as to what he meant. He took a look at the guy that had pushed him. The person was sitting facing away from him so he couldn't see much other than that he was wearing a red collar shirt and had short blond hair. It didn't really help him understand who this Wymer was.

"Who?" he asked

"Dude! Are you serious? That guy is on the tv like every week." The kid was raising his voice in shock.

Nicholas took a moment to think about what he had seen on television recently. News, weather, news about LoI and then he placed the name, a person in LoI had recently explored a new dungeon which had an unique monster in it, he couldn't really remember the details but he did remember that the characters name was Wymer.

Meanwhile, while Nicholas and the kid were talking about him, Wymer could hear both of them loud and clear. He could see most of the bus looking at him in awe. He loved every moment of the attention he got, specially when the kid told Nicholas off for not recognizing him.

"Oh that guy, so what about it? He apologized so it's okay" Nicholas said nonchalantly not making a big deal out of it.

The child froze in shock. This person just got tackled by one of the most famous LoI players and he didn't even show a smidgen of care. He was obviously out of the celebrity hype culture.

That didn't compare to what Wymer felt, it was as if all of his pride and fame had been poured down the dumpster, outside he didn't seem moved but internally he was screaming.

The rest of the ride was silent for Nicholas as he tried to figure out what he needed from the store. The child had stopped caring over what had happened to him and just kept being ecstatic over Wymer with his other friends. Nicholas dropped off at the store on the way and walked the rest of the way home.

As the time hit 8:30 he was already at the university, he knew where he needed to be but he didn't know where the room was so he took a moment to consult a map on the wall.

The university was quite big, it had 3 floors of class rooms and some more specific rooms for computers and workshops not to mention a whole library and its own cafeteria. The building itself had originally been housing other study groups such as Mechanics, IT and marketing, but with the recent addition of Virtual technology studies the whole building had had few rooms remodeled for advanced Link usage. Other than that it seemed like a usual university building.

Nicholas explored for a few minutes on the way to his class room, seeing some students disassembling computers while some students were having a group meeting in a empty class room.

With some spare time he arrived at the class room, which was mostly empty, but he wasn't actually the first person there. A tall blond guy wearing a red collar shirt was sitting at the back row fiddling with his phone until he noticed Nicholas entering the room. He was a handsome guy with sparkling blue eyes and you could tell he was probably brought up in a wealthy family, his facial features made him seem like he had some french heritage.

This was of course "Wymer" from the bus, he had come to the class room early. Wanting to be early and to bolster his ego by being the first person people saw when they entered the room.

Nicholas entered the room.

"Ah hello, are you here for the virtual reality studies class?"

"Wymer" was shocked internally, he definitely remembered Nicholas from the bus.

"Uhm, yes I'm a first year."

"That means we're going to be classmates, Nicholas Abel. You can call me Nic."

Nicholas went and gave a handshake.

"Andre Bernard."

Andre shook Nicholas's hand with a awkward expression on his face and thought in shock "Does this guy not remember me?

Nicholas wasn't much of a man for small talk so as he had nothing else to say he just took a seat and picked up a book from his backpack while he waited for the whole thing to start, meanwhile Andre tried to not look shocked "He really has no clue...".

Gradually people started entering the room and of course the first few people only noticed Andre who had been on television several times. They gathered around him for autographs and to try and talk to him. This revitalized Andre's spirit after Nicholas had dumped it down twice today already. He took a look at Nicholas every now and then to see if he finally had noticed who he was but the guy wasn't moved by the chatter as he read his book.

Eventually the room was filled and it was almost time for the class to start and that point Professor Baxton finally entered the room which ignited a new set of chatter amongst people.

Once he had put down his backpack he took a quick look around the room and smiled as he said.

"Morning everyone. It's about time to start soon so I'll take a head count to see if we're all here."

He started counting the people in the room. The total number amounted to 19.

"One less than total, I actually already received a notice that the person will be late by a few minutes due to a personal issue so we can probably..."

And precisely at that moment someone knocked on the classrooms door.

"..start."

He opened the door and girl entered the classroom.

"Sorry for interrupting." she said and quickly moved to try and find a seat.

Most of the seats were actually taken but Nicholas noticed that the seat next to him was actually the last one available. He raised his voice enough for it to reach the front.

"There's a seat here."

She hurriedly moved to next to Nicholas and sat down while thanking him.

"Thanks, that was awkward."

"No problem." Nicholas replied

The professor moved back to the front of the class room in the meanwhile.

"Now that we're all here we can start. So again, good morning everyone. Today and tomorrow you have no real classes, but that is by design. We're going to be using them to get you accustomed to the university and getting to know each other."

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He paused and sat at the front desk which had a computer on it.

"So here's a multilayer map of the university, I'll be going through most areas and if you have any questions feel free to raise your hand."

He spent some time going through each floors rooms, including what they were used for, what you were allowed to do in them, if you needed to book the room and the general class rooms. A few simple questions were raised, but overall it seemed everyone got the idea without much hassle.

"Now that that's done we can spend some time getting to know each other a bit, lets start with just standing up and saying our name plus something else."

An awkward but simple way.

"I'll get the ball rolling then. I am Loyd Baxton, I'm a big fan of fantasy books and I'm actually only a scholar in LoI."

There was some gossip over what the professor had said, but it stopped once he started talking again.

"Anyone else like fantasy books?"

Few people raised their hands and he picked a person out of the few and asked them to say their name and if they liked something else.

The process kept going for the rest of the hour and it turned out that they had a nice healthy group of people with different things they like. Most of the people mentioned a lot about LoI and their accomplishments. Especially Andre who was happy to boast about his achievements. Eventually it was Nicholas's turn to introduce himself and he stood up.

"Hello everyone, I'm Nicholas Abel, you can call me Nic. I don't really have much to say about LoI as i only started my first character last week, but my other interests are swimming and team sports."

As much as Andre's accomplishments were leaving people in shock and awe, Nicholas stunned people in a whole new way. People started speculating that he was either poor or he had some other weird reason to be this late with LoI. All of the attention that Nicholas got of course annoyed Andre who was really looking forward to comparing their gaming careers, but what use was there to compare yourself to a person who had only been playing for a few days?

Few more people introduced themselves and after that it was time for scheduled lunch after which they would gather in the same room.

Today's menu was chicken tortilla wraps and Caesar salad.

In the cafeteria the class was encouraged to sit in the same table, which sort of worked as a lot of people gathered around Andre. Nicholas wasn't too interested in the hassle but sat on the same table regardless, but contrary to popular beliefs not everyone was interested in talking to Andre.

Two people instead drifted to Nicholas. The girl who sat next to Nicholas who was accompanied by an Asian fellow he had only seen in the class room.

"Mind if we sit here?"

"Not at all." Nicholas answered while munching down on his wrap.

"I'm Ken and this is Elle."

"Nicholas, you can call me Nic."

They shook hands and sat down opposite of Nicholas

Ken was about a head shorter than Nicholas, he had short dark hair which had a comb over on his right side. Even though he spoke fluent English his looks had very strong Asian heritage, he had glasses over his brown eyes and he wore a grey hoodie and jeans.

Elle was half a head shorter than Nicholas and even though she obviously had some extra weight on her it didn't make her look less attractive. Her hair was dark shoulder length and unlike Ken and Nicholas she looked the most American of the trio, other than that her eyes were hazel colour and she was wearing a light blue t-shirt and grey pants.

Once they both were seated Ken took a look at the the other side of the table where Andre and most of the class was and asked him.

"Not interested in the Andre circle?"

"Not that much no." Nicholas said bluntly.

"That's a first, you know that guys quite famous right?"

"Yeh I've seen him on tv a few times."

Ken raised his eyebrows.

"Well alright, you yourself are the stranger one in my opinion though." he started eating his own meal.

"And why is that?" Nicholas asked curiously.

"Someone who is at an adult age and only just started playing LoI is bound to look strange don't you think?"

Nicholas couldn't really think of a counter argument so he just agreed.

"I suppose."

It wasn't really the first time someone thought that he was weird for not playing LoI. He had been asked multiple times when he was still working.

"So let me ask you then, why did you delay it for so long?" Ken asked bluntly.

Nicholas explained everything from his parents to him having to study and work one or multiple jobs. Ken of course wasn't expecting his reason to be as serious as that.

"Ohh... Sorry man that's a bit more than I imagined."

"It's alright, but enough about me. Lets get to know you two better."

They chatted for the whole lunch hour. Ken and Elle had worked at the same store during the summer so they were familiar with each other and by surprise they both had enrolled for the university. Ken was really into marketing and making contacts and he actually worked the stock market during some of his free time and in LoI he was a merchant with a goal to become a trade magnate. Elle was really into making clothes and working her own garden, she had started losing weight a year ago and was still going strong with her exercising routines. She also played LoI but she didn't want to talk about her character which was completely fine by them.

They talked a lot about past events in game which Nicholas hadn't heard of before but eagerly soaked in the info. In the end Ken's and Elle's curiosity got the best out of them and they asked

"So what have you been doing in LoI so far Nic?"

"Not that much created my character, requests and jobs, learned some alchemy, hunted wolfs, learned archery and at the moment I'm being taught blacksmithing. After I learn that I'll probably leave my starting town."

You could see it in both of their expressions that it was less exiting than they had thought. Elle wanted to encourage Nicholas a bit.

"You should really move out of your starter town, its a beautiful world with loads of surprises and secrets. Who knows you might even find an ancient relic and become famous."

He had heard and read plenty of stories about people discovering something new and how it had effected their standings in both worlds.

"I'm not in a hurry. Also I would rather work on my own skills before doing that." Nicholas said calmly as he was finishing up his meal.

It was almost time for lunch to be over so they packed up and left for the class room. For the rest of the day they mostly their time signing up for their respective classes and getting to know each other and the professor. At 2pm the professor interrupted everyone.

"Good work everyone. For tomorrow I'm going to ask you to bring the Links you're going to be working with so that we can register them here, otherwise you wont be able to use them in the building. You're also going to get some software, but we can go through that a bit further tomorrow."

And on that note their first day was over. With the rest of the day still open Nicholas was eager to get back in game.