It seemed that Harold and I had different opinions on what good news was.

It was nice to know that I would have a few more months to live rather than a few days. I suppose that was good news in a sense.

Before I could ask him anything else, he placed a full sack in front of me.

I was a little afraid to open it, but it didn't seem like I had much of a choice.

"Headmaster, I thought these would help get you started in this new plane."

Looking into the bag, I was shocked to see dozens of monster cores of different quality.

It seemed that Harold had been busy.

Even the smallest one would be worth a fortune. I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

Grabbing one from the sack. I didn't even get a chance to marvel at the core before a burst of energy seemed to flow through me.

Almost on instinct, I brought my tablet from my inventory. Turning it on revealed a new section entirely.

[Store]

I tried to open the store, but a notification appeared on the home screen for the first time.

[Please deposit the item to open the Store.]

I placed the monster core on the tablet. It flashed for a second before it disappeared. While I hadn't been able to tell the quality of the core, I knew that it would be worth quite the sum.

A fortune disappeared in front of my eyes. It was only the plentiful other cores and the new options that kept me from freaking out.

I looked at my tablet to see what changes had occurred.

Pressing on the Store page I was brought to the tablet's store.

There was a button for Deposit on the top right. It had a timer beside it. It seemed that I would only be able to deposit an item once a day.

I had to say, I was getting a little sick of seeing all the timers around the tablet.

It was only the contents of the store that placated me a little.

[Academy Points: 5]

Specialized class(select): 10 AP

Common Teacher: 25 AP

Lesser Time Skip: 50 AP

Mission Hall: 1000 AP

It seemed that I gained an Academy point for every student who graduated a year. With only 5 AP there wasn't much that I could buy at the moment.

I was sure that if I was able to deposit another item, I would have enough to afford at the very least a specialized class.

Harold seemed to be a little on edge with me focusing on the tablet. So he decided to break my focus.

"Headmaster, what would you like me to do with the spoils?"

I knew two things about all of those cores. They were valuable, and I wouldn't have the ability to protect them.

I did take one of the bigger ones into my inventory.

Giving it to my parents would be some form of insurance. While it wouldn't be enough to retire them, I was sure that it was close.

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

"Keep an eye on them for now, once we reach the city I will have a use for them."

He nodded at that. Hefting the sack once again.

I was quite glad that Teacher Harold had been the one I had summoned. He seemed more than competent.

"When do you wish to head for the city? I shall protect you every step of the way."

I hadn't made up my mind about that. It would still be a few days before I would be able to make the full trek in one go.

I could certainly begin the trek and stop off at towns and villages on the way.

"How many towns lie between us and the city."

Harold seemed to think about it for a moment.

"There are two abandoned towns between us and the city. One less than two hours walk away. The other is far closer to the city."

I would have enough time to reach the first town before the end of my time.

While I had quite a bit more time before the invasion of the dread beasts than I had thought, I still didn't want to waste it.

It was only a few minutes into the trek towards the next town that I realised that Harold and I had different opinions about walking speed.

He was quite a bit taller than I was, and with the body of a Grand Knight far faster as well.

He didn't seem too happy about the speed we were taking the trip.

"At our current pace, how long will it take to reach the town?"

He seemed to grimace slightly.

"It will take a day to reach the town, and four days to reach the city."

That made me turn around immediately and return to the small village. I didn't want to leave my spirit body unprotected in the wilderness.

It seemed that it would take a little longer than I thought to get out of the village.

I didn't think with the randomly inclined students I would be able to imbue an Aura Knight of a similar power.

That would be the only way in the short term for my body to reach even close to a similar level to Harold.

I would have to see how imbuing an Aura Adept would affect my body.

There wasn't any spell that I could currently use that would be helpful in the situation either.

Even riding on a golem wouldn't give me nearly enough speed to reach the town in time.

Once I was safely back in the city. Harold went off to scout further around the area.

The five hours had passed far quicker than I had expected. While I would have wanted to do a little more in that time. The opening of the Store was enough for me to be content for the moment.

That along with the haul of monster cores that Harold had managed to collect. I would have to look up the different classifications. I wanted to know exactly what I was dealing with and their relative value.

I practised my earth magic once again to make the small area I was staying in even more secure.

With Harold always close by, I wasn't too worried.

Returning to the real world. I was unsurprised to be met with an empty apartment.

I doubted I would be seeing my family before I went back into the spirit world either.

After a quick breakfast. I focused on pulling the monster core out of my inventory.

Compared to the experience in the spirit world, and using my tablet, it was a far harder process.

It was only thanks to my power as a Mage that I was able to do it at all.

It took nearly two hours of concentrated effort to bring the small monster core out into the real world.

An effort that nearly knocked me out in the process. After recovering for a few moments. I made my way to the computer to begin my research on different monster cores.

It hadn't been something that I had learned in school. This kind of thing would only be taught in later studies.

Fortunately, there were more than enough reference materials online to begin my research.

Monsters had grades of their own, and most didn't even have a core inside of them.

It would only be Rank 3 Beasts that would have the beginning of a core.

From the looks of it, that was what made up the majority of what Harold had found. I had been lucky enough to choose one of the few Rank 4 Beasts he had hunted.

While I had expected the cores to be valuable, I was more than a little shocked at quite how valuable they were.

I had thought I would need a few more to buy out my parent's contracts and retire them. I had been overthinking it.

Two low-ranking alchemists weren't even worth a third of a Rank 3 Core. Never mind anything more potent.

Now I was left with the problem of selling the Core. While there were more than a few anonymous auctions around the city. I couldn't be sure quite how anonymous they were.

I would wait until my parents returned to do anything further. After all, they would surely have ideas of their own about how to deal with it.

I spent the next few hours either exercising or doing some research.

Harold had been able to find out the name of the nearby city. So I had been focusing my research on the city of Darkfair.

There were only a few people who were posting consistently from that region. None of them seemed particularly positive.

It turned out that it was a semi-consistent thing for monster waves to emerge from the oceans and attack the shore. But they hadn't seen a reaction like this in their time in the spirit world.

While Harold seemed to know what was going on, by the reaction of the natives, it was clear that he was not the only one.