The academy didn’t have a campus or so Den told me. They had a small area in the middle of its four buildings; supposedly the campus? Too small though according to Den. To my eyes it was half a kilometer wide but sure Den, small….

The buildings had different colored roofs; all bricks. The one with the tallest tower had a white roof, the other three had Green, Red, And Blue respectively. The black one had cell like rooms with laundry hanging. Probably the dorms. All buildings were brick buildings. Black shiny bricks.

No apparent walls separated the academy from the city, and no guards either. Strange.

Anyway- Den led me inside. I didn’t see many students though. There were like a handful walking about with bags and books. Maybe they’re in class. I mean we did just walk in late morning.

“Do we need to meet anyone?”

“I know one of the teachers,” Den said.

“You sure know a lot of people, Den.”

Den perked his nose with pride and walked with dignity. I had this urge to warn him about watching out for flattery but then didn’t. I mean, he was probably only acting like that because he was trying to impress me. I’d seen him with other kids, and people. He was never like that near them. He really loves her, huh…

We entered the building with the green roof. Four distinct floors. Each with quite a few classrooms. As I expected, students were taking classes. Mostly theory? Every class I saw, were apparently just theory based. Teachers were writing stuff on the blackboard and students were either writing that down or digging their fingers in their respecting books. Some teachers were giving full on lectures about monsters or other stuff. Can’t say I wasn’t interested.

“Do they provide the books or do you have to purchase them separately?” I asked.

Books were really expensive stuff. But I wasn’t sure if that was because some academy was manipulating sales or if paper was just that hard to make.

“They’ll lend you books for a small fee if you can’t buy new copies,” Den said.

Uh-huh.

All the classes I laid my eyes upon had large children. I didn’t see a single one my age. Maybe these were just the more advance rank students. This school didn’t have a year rank system. So instead of saying I was in grade 1, it was more like I was a beginner student with F ranking in all subjects. Yes, they’d gamified the whole system. And if you gained a rank, as in, if you got good in a certain subject, you could take advance classes and move up in rank. So in a sense, even if you spent 10 years here and be Intermediate or Advance or whatever, you could in theory still be stuck in F rank for some subjects if you didn’t possess any talent. This system did have one merit though. Namely, if you were good at something, you were going to excel at it and be rewarded heavily. The opposite scared me though.

“What sort of subjects would I be taking?”

“I actually don’t know.” He gave me the same answer before and I thought he was just joking. Dude was not joking.

Eventually we reached the end of the building, or so I thought but nope, stairs led up. We kept on climbing till we reached the fourth floor and actually, there were kids here who were more my age.

“Classes started last month,” Den said. “So you’ll be a little behind from the regulars.”

So, a transfer student of sorts. I doubt I’d be the center of attention and it’d be utterly hard to make friends but considering I’d be working with children and I’d technically be a noble, it wasn’t going to be that much of a problem. This university was bordered by some countries, so there was always a chance a prince or princess would attend here. But them attending my class was astronomically improbable. Same for high profile nobles. At best maybe some count’s 11th son or something. But in that case, I’d either steer clear of him or suck up to him depending on the circumstances. Nodding to myself calmly, I smiled and with Den, entered a classroom at the far right.

Thirteen benches, twelve students. One teacher. Elf, or rather, a Southerner.

“Denkar,” she said.

Wow… massive. She wore a white shirt, blue sweatpants and a warm smile.

“Chamille,” Den nodded. “I believe I might be a bit late,” he said.

“You are,” she said. The kids meanwhile all just stared without any chatter. Well behaved. She inched closer and although I stared at her face, which wasn’t half bad, I could not unfocus my peripherals from that voluptuous- “And you are?” She picked me up and brought my face even closer to those heavenly, spongy-

Den grabbed me and pulled me away. Phew. Good job Den. “This is Sol. Go on,” he egged.

“Soler A. Barack,” I brought my hand closer to my chest and nodded. Apparently, that was standard Slovian noble man’s bow. “First Son of the Barack family.”

“Chamille Alphanose.” She returned a similar nod but whilst tilting the hem of her skirt, bowing slightly forward.

Did they just… bounce!?

I instinctively gulped. All this time I thought my burning desire for women didn’t exist since I felt nothing while looking at the women close to me. Heck, I didn’t feel like drinking milk either. But gosh did I want to suck them- okay, now, come down. Deep breaths. Calm, calm.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

So they just had to be big, huh? Sigh….

She introduced me to the class and that was it. I was going to return here a week later and start classes along with the kids. “Maybe we could get a drink later?” Chamille said, staring at Den.

“Sure.”

With that, we were on our way back.

“So, I’ll have to climb all these stairs daily?” And on multiple occasions no less?

“Think of it as the next part of your training,” Den said, slowly climbing down the stairs, while I maneuvered him from his shoulder like Remy from the Rat cooking movie.

Once we were down, Den walked toward the black building. That Chamille lady had given us a piece of wood with the western letter ‘Kha’ on it. I had no idea what I was going to do with it but since Den said nothing, I didn’t bother

“Pretty convenient how these buildings are so close.”

“Yes, you can even rent a house from second year onwards,” Den said. “I don’t recommend it though.”

In a sense the housing market here was pretty decent. Things weren’t inherently pricey since most students just return to their home country after graduation. You can either rent or buy those houses for cheap depending on their distance from the university. If you couldn’t afford those, you could always just move to the edge of the city. It would take you hours on foot and at least one whole hour even if you got on a carriage. That was fine though. But considering the costs would add up, especially if you had to build your own house, I didn’t see how that would be profitable unless you knew teleportation or maybe at least had the ability to fly. On that record though, magic itself was pretty rare, and I didn’t really hear much of anything so far about warp or teleportation or even flight skills. Back in the old era, there was some beastmen who did possess flight ability. Half birds, half humans. Harpies came to mind. But harpies were also technically demons. So… maybe some were still out there?

We entered the black roofed building. This was slightly different from the academic building. Namely, instead of medium or large classrooms they had small cell like rooms. “Do I have a roommate?”

“I have no idea.”

There was a guard on the entrance. Upon seeing me and realizing I was new he filled me in on some particular detail. Although the building looked like one coherent building, it wasn’t. there was a wall in the middle, and that divided the two sides. Left was used solely by girls, the right, solely by boys. No mixed dorms. I wasn’t allowed to traverse through the left without being escorted by a girl, and the same for a girl, they couldn’t come into the boy’s dorm without a boy. “Doesn’t that mean a guy could just bring a girl over to his room and-”

The guard knit his brows and frowned. “Son, are you a hero candidate?”

“The hell is that?”

“He’s not,” Den said. “He’s just a bit weird. Read too many books.”

“Ah, book nerds. I see. Oh in that case, you may volunteer at the library, they’re looking for helpers. You could read all the books you want and for free too.”

Yeah, I knew what a library was. But this guy went out of his way to tell me that and also informed me how they were looking for a helper. So, in a sense, he wanted me to work there and thought I was dumb enough to just work as long as I got free books. Well, I kinda was, actually.

“I’ll keep that in mind, sir.”

“Donald.”

“Mr. Donald.”

That said, I finally entered the building. Or I would have if the guard didn’t just run after me and took the wooden plank. “Let’s see 3R5. Oh and don’t bring anyone not affiliated with the university in the dorms. It’s against the rules.”

“Okay,” I said.

And then we entered the building. Yes, for reals this time.

***

3R5 meant, the third floor’s 5th room from the right side. The rooms were mirrored on the other side but separated by metal grills with a door in the middle. Most of the rooms were empty since classes were ongoing. But some didn’t bother going to school. I mean, I’d probably be one of those guys too if I wasn’t pressed for excellence. Oh wait, they’re not pressuring me to be first. They just wanted me to live….

My room didn’t have a lock. It was sandwiched between two other rooms which were larger. Did make me wonder if mine wasn’t a double. It wasn’t. Just a single room with a bed and a table. It had a window but since there was another room behind the window, when I opened it, I just got greeted by my neighbor, a fifth-year Intermediate student. Huh. Weird.

I closed the window, shut the curtains tight and let it all sink in. Okay, since this was a single room, that was good. I didn’t have to worry about a roommate. But it also meant now I had to worry about all sorts of other things. If I had a roommate, they would have filled me in about the university and various other things. But- argh…

“Disappointed? It’s quite small,” Den said, looking around.

“It’s not that small.” Two meters on either side, it was on the smaller side but it wasn’t terribly small for my taste. The thin walls and weird placement of the window was kind of alarming though.

“So, I guess this is it?” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“You’ll leave now?”

Den smiled. “I have a lot of acquaintances here. Figured I’d spend the week catching up.”

“I see.”

“They have a store at the base. It’s on the left side but I’m sure you can find it. Use your money wisely and… well, how about we stay in the inn while-” he paused.

Den seemed to be quite conflicted. He acted calm and cool the whole time but dude was clearly shaken up by the fact that he was leaving a five-year-old in a very unfamiliar territory with the possibility of me being found out and then executed. And I had no idea how any of this worked either. And he knew that.

I smiled. “It’s fine. I need some time to adjust anyway. Why don’t you come visit me tomorrow instead. For now, help me unpack?”

He smiled. “Right. Oh, and we should buy you some toiletries and a mat, and hmm…” we both stared at the bed. “Yeah, we need a mattress too.”

“And a lock,” I said.

“Yes, and a lock.”

Also, the room was utterly dark. So, I guess, Zena’s gift was a godsend.

Den showed me around, or more like we ran around the place figuring out where what was. Den had actually studied here for a year; he told me eventually. But back then he was so displeased with the whole discrimination and mistreatment that he more or less just ran away. Also, a lot had changed about the academy since then and he was pretty young back then so he didn’t remember much so maybe he was just misremembering some things. Upon asking his age, Den told me he was thirty-four this year. I always thought he was twenty-five but oh well.

Come to think about it, wasn’t this world a 10 month-year world? Hmm… heh, I didn’t bother.

We bought some things, decorated our room, my room, and then for the last stop of our journey, I walked Den out of the academy. At the very border where the city started and the academy grounds ended, I stood. “Guess, I’ll see you around?”

“Yeah,” Den said. “Try to get along with the kids. And, well, don’t write to us. We probably won’t be there…”

“I know,” I said. I’d already figured that bit out. “Do write to me though,” I chuckled.

“I will.”

That said, I stood there, and watched Den walk away. “You could just go back to Mom right away, you know.” I yelled. He said he was going to stay here for a week but I doubt he was doing it for his friends and himself. Rather, he just wanted to comfort me. That was why, I couldn’t take up on that kindness. Mom needed him right now. And he needed to be with mom.

“You sure you’ll be fine?”

“I’ll be fine.” And that why- “Good bye Den.”

He lifted his hand and just waved, without looking back. He didn’t tell me how to live, he didn’t tell me how to do anything. He just left everything up to me. Den acknowledged me, even though I was just a child.

And… I didn’t know what to feel about that.