Chapter 53
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The next day, we were given an itinerary for our lesson. The first would be the sword skill test, reading, writing, magic, mathematics, and basic etiquette. Lithe told us that we could take the test immediately to pass the lesson but doing so would deprive us of our chances to make friends, so she was firmly against it.
However, Lily was determined to blaze through her lessons so that she would get charged less for the tuition fee. She came to the classroom with the determination of a soldier trying to fight a one-million-gold debt.
The academy was like a campus instead of a school. We came into the assigned lesson called swordsmanship one. The class was held outdoors as only ten students were loitering about, with one bulky mercenary look tailfolk heading this program.
"Alright, we already had orientation two months ago, but we had a sudden new student joining our ranks. Let us welcome Lord Lily from Edenthal Region. May the moon bless her during lessons as she may use her knowledge for the better good of life!"
The lesson was so basic that even Luigi should be able to pass this lesson without any problem. It consisted of holding swords, maintaining your blades, and basic swings. Lhorne and the shopkeeper had already taught us about weapon maintenance.
"Well, this is pretty basic. Do you want to take an exam?" The tailfolk mercenary was lenient, and we passed in an instant. Apparently, some tailfolk merchants and other commoners had trouble maintaining their swords, and some female tailfolk apparently had a hard time swinging the sword correctly. Hence, they took their time learning this.
"The next class was reading and writing," I muttered. We had free time until the afternoon before taking the class. While I enjoyed reading, apparently, Lily was not. She could not read a single letter, so I needed to spell out each letter to her. The class was full of tailfolk and several elves. There must be over 100 people here. More than five assistant teachers are present in the class to help the lead teachers.
"Shiro…"
"This is your name. And this is a greeting that says 'hello, my name is….'" I answered her with my language skills. Ever since we arrived.
"Hm…. I heard you were a slave before being blessed. I didn't expect that you could read albeit slowly." The elven teacher muttered. Lily couldn't read. She just parrotted everything I said to her regarding this reading lesson.
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"Well, I think a few weeks of learning to read until you are fluent will be enough." She said while correcting her glasses. She then looked toward the rest of the classes. "Even slaves could learn. I hope this will motivate you to improve yourself regardless of status."
Lily then spent her time reading while whining. She managed to memorize the alphabet by the end of the day. It was arduous as I had to cover the paper with my tail while she wrote the alphabet below it.
The next day, we were roasted by our writing teachers. She said that while our letters are eligible, the squiggly lines made it unprofessional, and we need to practice harder. Lily was also slow at writing things, as I had to spell them for her. Just a paragraph required more than five minutes of writing.
"See you tomorrow Lord Lily."
"See you, Miss Lithanie!" Lily waved her goodbye as she went to her next class. She was positively brimming with energy now that the topic of magic had come up.
"Greeting class. My name is Lithe. Apart from being the headmaster, I also teach magic. Most elves who graduate from the academy could also use elemental magic. Lord Edelweiss was a graduate from here, and she is a master of magic." She gave a short bow and gave a speech before starting the lesson. The lesson was something that Rhander had already taught us.
Lily immediately lost interest as the lesson contained no practical lesson. And thus, two weeks passed by as I relived my college trauma in another world.
"Shiro…. school is boring!" Lily walked dejectedly like a robot with a blank look.
"I understand. But this is a skill that you will need when managing the city."
"But you can do it for me, right, Shiro? There is no need for me to learn it!"
"Sure, I could do it for you. But then the leader would be me, right? And I am just a tail. It would be weird to have a tail writing? And even if I could share a telepathic image with you, your body didn't have any practice, that your writing was messy."
"I know. I just wanted to complain…." She sat down in the school cafeteria while dejected. As the only lord candidate attending this school, I thought we would be popular, but nobody came and greeted us. Everyone was taking their distance and only doing light greetings to us. I heard that making connections was necessary for a lord. If this continued, we would not have any retainer when we move on to Hoeth after graduation.
As soon as I wondered about it, a tailfolk came to me.
"Hello. You are Lord Lily, right? My name is Lina. I am Lala's cousin. We were both under Lord Rhander's patronage." Lina greeted us.
"Ah, is the fact that no one greeted me but gave a lot of gazes of curiosity, is that?" Lily asked openly. Her suspicions were then confirmed by Lina.
"Well, yeah. We would like to serve under you but feared our lord might not take it well and thus avoided you. As for the elves, they might be confused about serving a tailfolk in the elven country." She said.
That explained a lot. In this case, We needed to be proactive here. We should ask their lord or the elves directly instead of waiting for them. Our reputation should be stellar as we were hailed as heroes. Although not all elves looked upon us in a positive light, some of them should, just like Lhorne did.