10 Weeks later
For napping in a busy place, you gained 1 [Catboy] experience.
Victor yawned. When he had convinced his mom to not hire tutors to homeschool him and send him to college instead, he hadn’t expected it to be so boring.
Of course, he didn’t need to visit all the classes. He just needed to hand in the paper at the end of the semester, like everyone else. But Waverly was obsessed with attending classes, and it wasn’t like he had anything else to do, so he kept her company.
He just wished the seats in this damn auditorium were more comfortable. They clearly weren’t made for naps.
He sat back upright and stretched, flicking his ears to get them limber again. To his side, Waverly was furiously scribbling notes and cross-referencing books.
“Yo,” he whispered, grumpily rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand.
Waverly nodded. “Mhm?”
“I still don’t get it,” Victor muttered, “You know all this stuff already. Why do we keep coming to these lectures?”
“Because, like, what if I missed something?” Waverly said, still racing her pen across the paper at speeds that made Victor wonder why neither had caught fire yet. Somehow, she had neat handwriting, too, which was something he appreciated.
“I’m pretty sure you didn’t,” Victor said. “I learn twice as much from going over your notes with you than I learn in class.”
“Because, like, you are always napping, when—“
“Is there a problem, Mr. Von Katzer? Miss Bloodhowl?” The professor was a bit of a walking stereotype, but Victor didn’t really mind. He knew his stuff. Now if he would just let Victor sleep in peace and not wake him up all the time…
“No, Sir,” Victor said.
“No, Sir,” Waverly said, still writing.
“Well, in that case, can either of you tell me why most careers stall out in the mid-thirties?” The Dark Elf smiled. “Just to go over the basics at the end of the Semester, what do you think?”
Before Victor could even take a breath, Waverly had already taken charge.
“Because, like, you see the Law of Diminishing experience states that experience triggers decay at about a rate of 5 to 15% of their current value with each use, and at some point, people usually run out of experience triggers.”
The Dark Elf professor sat on his desk, putting his hands on his knee. Despite his relaxed stance, Victor knew he was going for some sort of ambush. He was a Dark Elf, it was how they gained most of their experience. Nobody held it against them, especially not if they managed to stab you in the back in a nice way.
Waverly, though… the girl didn’t have a single politically motivated bone in her body. Victor just hoped she’d be alright.
“Alright, but then why don’t people just get more triggers?” the professor asked, still smiling. There was an obvious trap in that one, but Victor didn’t think it was the one the Dark Elf was going for.
“Well, most people learn their triggers from their parents, but there’s always the Libri Virtutis et Laudis, too, right? Even though they just list all the most common ones and sometimes I feel like they are really misleading about the mindset you need to be in to activate the trigger. But anyway, so the rarer a trigger is the more XP it gives you, right? So families usually keep the triggers they learn secret to give their kids the best chance of success.” Waverly’s tail was swishing by now. She was on a roll, and nothing would stop her.
“But that kinda means that nobody knows all the triggers you need to get one class to the maximum level, right? But like, so, instead of hoarding all the triggers, it would be way better if we all shared our knowledge and got everyone as high up as we could.”
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And there was the trap. Victor sighed. Waverly either heard that, or she realized she had jumped straight into it herself, because her tail stopped wagging.
Professor Solereap sighed with contentment as the infernal light of a level-up enveloped him. “Thank you, Ms. Bloodhowl, for being so predictable. You netted me an entire level in [Professor] over this last semester.”
“You’re welcome,” Waverly said, ears drooping. “Can I…”
“Oh yes, of course,” Professor Solereap said. “I got my level, you are free to correct yourself.” That was actually pretty decent of him, Victor thought. He could have twisted the knife and sneered, which would probably have given him a bunch XP more. But perhaps the Dark Elf had long since exhausted that trigger.
So Waverly took a deep breath and began to patch up her statement while the other students snickered. To Victor, it was obvious she didn’t believe a word of what she said, but it was probably important for her to prove that she knew the textbook answer.
“But if we did that,” Waverly droned on, “Then we’d have a few problems. Eighty-point-five percent of Hell’s economy runs on Dungeon Tourism, and fighting Heroes in a dungeon is still the way most of us are earning our income.”
She took a deep breath as if to steel her nerves, and went on. “If we all maxed out all of our classes, the Dungeon cores would, like, probably overheat from trying to keep everyone’s levels equal with their own, or we would just have overfilled max level dungeons, and not enough people to fill the lower level ones, which would probably kinda suck for new players because they, like, would have no way to level up, which would mean they’d just quit instead of playing and we’d lose our share of the market.”
The Dark Elf had procured an apple from somewhere and bitten into it.
“Prefifewewy,” he said around a mouthful of apple. He swallowed. “Sorry, I thought you’d go on for a while. So, what do we do instead?”
“We get a second class…” Waverly sighed.
“Yep, and how do we do that? Mr von Katzer?”
The sudden target switch would have surprised Victor if he hadn’t still been relaxed from his nap.
“Get promotions from corporate, graduate from College, enter civil service, or pray to the Old Gods,” Victor said. The Professor raised his eyebrow, waiting for him to elaborate, or perhaps even add to the list, but Victor just smiled and said nothing else.
Ultimately, Professor Solereap realized Victor wouldn’t dig his own grave, smirked, and nodded. “Very true. Well done, Mr. Von Katzer.”
With that, the Dark Elf pushed away from his desk and walked behind it, gathering his things.
“Alright, everyone! That’s how it works. You get an extra class, level it up, and poof, you’ll be running your own dungeon in no time.”
A chuckle ran through the class because it sure as heaven wasn’t as easy as that.
“Anyway,” the professor continued, snapping his book shut. “Thanks, Waverly, Victor, for your answers. As for the rest of you, enjoy the next three months without me, and remember your papers are due in ten weeks, not twelve. No plagiarism, no matter how much XP it gives you. And don’t you dare ask SphinxChat for answers. I can tell! Looking forward to reading your stuff! Now go and enjoy your lecture-free time, and remember it’s not a vacation!”
Everyone was already packing their bags and getting up, but Victor stayed seated. Waverly would take a while to get ready.
“I kinda, like, wonder why they never talk about Character Creation Scrolls in these classes,” she muttered as she kept scribbling notes.
“Character Creation Scrolls?” Victor asked, his ears twitching with curiosity.
“Yeah. Give you a second class, but make you a player character, too?”
Victor considered that for a moment. “Oh, those. They’re illegal, I guess? Don’t want people to learn about them and get dumb ideas?”
“Yeah of course, but like… ah, nevermind.”
Waverly finished her notes with a flourish, and Victor yawned again, crossing his hands behind his neck. “We still on for that thing though, yeah?”
“Yep!” Waverly replied, stacking the small library of books she brought to class with her. Werewolf strength was probably nice to have for that sort of stuff.
Victor would have been envious if he ever brought any books to class. Or pens. Or paper. Or anything, really.
“Should we just go straight after class, or do you have something to do, still?” he asked.
“Look at you being so eager to go!” Waverly said, tail swishing behind her as she packed her stuff.
“Just wondering if I have time for another nap, is all,” Victor said with a grin, and Waverly rolled her eyes.
“Lazy as always,” Professor Solereap said. He just suddenly appeared, sitting leaning on the row of tables before them. Victor could have sworn he teleported, but he couldn’t prove anything, of course.
“What am I going to do with you, Mr. Von Katzer?” the Professor asked with a long sigh.
Victor, still leaning back with his arms crossed behind his head, smiled his favorite smile and said: “Give me a perfect grade and let me graduate early?”
The Professor snorted. “And then it starts snowing in Inferno. If you hadn’t given me perfect answers every time, I would be very worried for you, Mr. Von Katzer. Just remember that being smart only gets you so far. The rest is hard work.”
The Dark Elf nodded at Waverly, “Ms. Bloodhowl here gets it. She’s always prepared, if a bit… meandering. Thanks again for the level. No hard feelings, yeah?”
Waverly shook her head. “No, like, it’s okay. Humiliating people must be one of your more lucrative experience triggers, right?” She smiled her best, most innocent smile.
Professor Solereap laughed. “Nice try!” Then he tipped his nonexistent hat and said: “Looking forward to both of your papers. Let me know if you need a topic.”
And then, he left, normally, in a very normal way, that was so normal, that Victor would have been pretty sure there was some mind trick involved if it hadn’t been so normal, and absolutely not even close to teleportation.
“Yo, Wave,” Victor said.
“Mhm?” Waverly said, nodding vigorously. “Let’s go?”
“Yeah, yeah, let’s go to your thing,” Victor gave in. It was a small sacrifice. Napping was nice, but he liked hanging around with Waverly way more. It was always interesting.
So he still smiled when he said: “But I actually wanted to say: …We survived the first semester!”
“Fuck yeah!” Waverly hollered. “Semester Survival Twinsies!”
They both laughed as they got up.