It took us a few hours to decorate our room.

Iselde's had covered her half of the room with natural landscape paintings. Everywhere I looked, I could see lakes, forests, and mountains. I was surprised that a farmer's daughter liked natural landscapes so much, but it created a nice ambience.

As for me, I hadn’t brought any paintings with me. Instead, I had tried something a bit more odd for my decorations. First, I made a quick trip to one of the nearby stores and bought a little aquarium. I didn’t add any fish to it - what I wanted was the water itself. Then, I added a lot of toy boats and fake fish to the water. Finally, I used some wires to make the boats hover in the air, as if they were flying.

It wasn’t perfect, but it still looked a lot like something from the islands. If I squinted, I could pretend that I was still standing on the shore, watching the flying boats go to hunt fish. It made me feel a bit nostalgic for a home I had lost. Still, looking at it made me happy.

“Why did you make the little boats look like they’re flying? Airships don't look like that,” said Iselde, as she studied my aquarium.

I hesitated for a moment. Should I tell Iselde about the Market? I paused… and then shook my head. I didn’t know Iselde as well as I had known Old Mo and Anise. I cared about Iselde and Vance, but I also didn't think it was a good idea to constantly tell people about the Market. I should only tell people I deeply trusted about our true past.

“It’s from a fantasy novel that Anise made me read,” I lied. “I ended up liking it. The story is about a bunch of fishermen who man flying boats and hunt giant fish.”

“Flying boats and giant fish?” Iselde shrugged. “Sounds weird. But I've never been a big fan of fantasy novels either. Anyway, we should go to dinner. The boys should be ready for us by now."

I nodded, and the two of us left for the cafeteria.

We met up with Felix and Vance, before we grabbed our meals and sat down together, just like we had done during prep school.

Iselde and Vance told us about orientation, and I talked about the research team. Felix talked about both of the research teams he had been invited to join. There wasn't any crucial information passed between us - just friends enjoying each other's company.

The next day, we split apart for our classes… and over the course of the next week I started to feel lonely.

I could only see Felix if we met for dinner or when we went to the prosthetics research team. I could only see Iselde when we were in our room together. Vance only appeared in two of my classes, despite us sharing a major. During The rest of my classes, I was surrounded by strangers. I still made some efforts to get to know new people and be social… but it was harder to make new friends than I expected. People in university were busier, and had less time for hanging out. I still found a few people I got along with, but our friendships didn't develop to the level of closeness I was used to. I got a few drinks and played some board game with my classmates, but I wouldn't desperately miss them once I left this world. Due to lack of time and the business of everyone, my friendship with these people was more shallow than my important relationships.

At the very least, the classes themselves were easier. Medical classes focused on the human body and mundane medicines, so I didn’t have to do any alchemy in class. Without my poor talent in binding essence manipulation dragging me down, I had a much easier time.

The days I helped the research team weren't that difficult, either. My job was to heal researchers when they got too enthusiastic and broke something in their body.

That weekend, I left the university dorm room to visit my mother and Anise, and to work at Dr. Trish’s clinic. I also checked in with Dr. Trish's information about my mother. I'd asked her to check in on my mother once a day, to see if she lapsed into a fit or had any other issues. Since I hadn't been able to remove all of the fizz chunks from my mother's brain, I always worried that she would have a stroke or other problems. Luckily, nothing had happened.

The next month at university passed in much the same way. The only notable occurrence was Dr. Trish and Marcus. Three weeks after I entered university, Marcus proposed to Dr. Trish, and she agreed. After that, Dr. Trish started planning her wedding, and had less time to focus on other things. She also asked all of the workers at her clinic if they wanted to come once the wedding began. Since I liked Dr. Trish and Marcus, I was happy to say yes. It would be several more months before the wedding happened, but I was looking forward to it.

The only other thing that we really focused on was clubs. Felix ended up joining the Alchemy club and having a great time with it. Iselde joined him, while Vance joined the fencing club, much to no one’s surprise.

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I ended up trying out a few different clubs, but didn’t find one that really spoke to me. The Tea club had tasty drinks and snacks, but I didn’t love tea - I just enjoyed drinking a nice pot of tea from time to time. The music club was more focused on instruments, and while there was some crossover between singing and playing instruments, it wasn’t as much as I had been hoping for when I tried out the club.

For some reason, Anise had encouraged me to join the cheerleading club, and Sallia had egged me on for a few days, which resulted in me constantly sending them pictures of me frowning at them using the friendship bracelets. I was not wearing a skirt that short.

Unfortunately, the two of them seemed to find the whole situation hilarious, and kept teasing me with their own images of what they thought I would look like in a cheerleading uniform. The images looked good… but I wasn’t doing it!

A month after I enrolled in the university, I encountered something far more worrying.

“They've left Verne?” I asked, looking at the newspaper Felix had brought me.

“It seems so. The worldstriders are spreading,” said Felix as he frowned with worry. “I was hoping that they would keep beating up Verne.”

“Me too,” I said as I shuddered.

Originally, we had predicted that the worldstriders would rip away a chunk of Verne’s territory, and then settle down for a while. After all, they had just escaped from the pocket dimension. I had hoped they would be weakened, or wouldn't want to expand. And for the past few months, they had seemed pretty content to rampage through Verne and ignore the rest of the world. This had been ideal for us. If the Worldstriders spent a bunch of time rampaging through Verne, they wouldn’t get anywhere near us. They would also give other nations a chance to study their unique biology and invent countermeasures. Then, in a decade, the worldstriders would no longer be a threat. They would either form a small nation or disappear into history textbooks.

Unfortunately, the worldstriders appeared to have realized that time was against them. As a result, they had spread to the east and expanded the war. They had also sent out a few diplomats to other nations, with the explicit goal of pissing everyone off. The worldstrider diplomats had claimed that the mountains of the continent were theirs. Anyone who objected would find themselves at war with the worldstriders.

Almost every country on this continent had at least a few mountain ranges in their territory. Even Enallia, which was mostly a frozen tundra, had a mountain range that encompassed a third of their western border.

“Do you think they’re trying to provoke the rest of the continent?” asked Felix, as we read about the incendiary diplomatic message.

I frowned.

That… made a twisted sort of sense. The worldstriders knew that it was possible to develop countermeasures against them. They had lost the war against the Zelyrians, after all. But after fighting the Vernese, they should also know that they were very hard to hurt right now. What if they wanted to take advantage of this and hamstring anti-worldstrider research? If they crushed all nearby nations, and then assassinated the relevant research personnel... they might be able to stifle any threats to their species in the cradle. It was a very risky way to approach diplomacy, but I could see it working if the stars aligned. If things went really well for the worldstriders, they might even create a new hegemonic empire within a few decades.

When I reached that point in my thoughts, I grew alarmed. I contacted Anise, and then shared my guess with Felix and Anise via friendship bracelet.

Felix said.

she said. Anise sounded uncertain of herself.

I said encouragingly.

Anise fell silent, until Felix cut back in.

Felix sounded incredibly reluctant.

I said.

Felix hesitated for a moment.

said Anise.

I nodded in agreement.

said Felix reluctantly.

I said.

It wasn’t time yet… but if the situation escalated any further, we would be ready.