Chapter 18: Math and bigots
Felix Sythias’ POV (continued):
The rest of the weekend passed without much happening. Alex and I went to visit the library again on Sunday, and we talked about the book we’d both read: At the end of the rainbow. Alex still clearly found it uncomfortable to talk about, but he insisted and pushed through. We had both enjoyed the book, though we had slightly different opinions about the ending.
We decided that we’d had fun reading the same book, so we wanted to do it again. This time Alex got to pick the book. After some hesitation, he also chose a gay romance, but a more lighthearted one. It wasn’t really my thing, as I preferred stories a little more grounded, but it was Alex’s. And that was kind of the point, wasn’t it? To read what the other would enjoy and thus get to know each other better.
I also grabbed a few other books, though. I enjoyed going to the library, but the trek to and from the place took up so much time now that I couldn’t fly. It wasn’t really worth it for just one book. So I made sure to have enough books for at least two weeks. Granted, that wasn't actually all that many books, since we’d be busy with classes, but the point stood.
When we got back to the dorms, we found they’d posted the class schedules to our doors. Each room had a small, locked box on the wall next to the door for mail, which is where they’d put them. When we got to my room, we were surprised to find Alex’s schedule also in my mailbox. Apparently Jade, the janitor, had noticed we had been sharing a room. I absentmindedly wondered what she thought of that as I unlocked the door.
Alex sat down in his chair and read through his schedule, which laid in his lap. I really had to get a table at some point. In hindsight, it was really useful, and I felt stupid for saying to dad that I wouldn’t need one. I’d thought I would only really use it for eating, and I could do that outside. But having one for Alex to use, and to eat in private, would be great. Maybe I could ‘loan’ a table from outside. I’d ask Jade later.
I sat down and looked through my schedule. It was a simple design, with a grid on the front, and a list of explanations of the abbreviations and such on the back.
Day/Period
First
Second
Third
Fourth
Monday
Mundane Physics
Math
AerCom
FunMag
Tuesday
Biology
History
AdvEle
UnCaMe
Wednesday
Combat
Combat
FunMag
BaLiMa
Thursday
Math
Mundane Physics
UnCaMe
AerCom
Friday
History
Biology
BaLiMa
AdvEle
The schedule was simple. Each day was divided into four periods, with each period lasting ninety minutes. The mornings were devoted to basic classes such as math, while the afternoon classes were the ones you chose yourself.
These morning classes only had one purpose: to make sure everyone had the same baseline of knowledge. I would share these classes with everyone in the dorm, and only the people in the dorm. The afternoon classes would have more mixing going on with the other dorm-groups, though, so that was nice.
Luckily, these classes weren’t entirely mandatory. You could test out of them if your knowledge was sufficient and I would definitely be doing that for most of the classes, leaving me with a lot of extra time to dedicate to the afternoon classes.
The afternoon classes were a lot more fun, but also a lot more work. They were the ones with the long names, so they were abbreviated on the schedule. AerCom was Aerial Combat, UnCaMe was Unconventional Casting Media, etc.
Looking at the schedule, Friday was going to be a strenuous day it seemed, with two classes on learning new affinities. But I could almost certainly test out of history and biology, so at least I would have time beforehand to finish any remaining homework.
“Is your schedule any good?” I asked Alex.
“I have three heavily theory focused classes in a row on Tuesday, other than that it’s fine. You?”
I told him about Friday. “But at least I can test out of the morning classes,” I finished.
“Ah, I don’t think I can do that. I’m not good at biology or history. I can maybe test out of math, but we hardly had any books on the other topics,” he said, “All I know is what I was taught by word of mouth, and I know for a fact at least some of it was wrong. For example, until a few months ago I thought the Fall of the Arkayan was only two hundred years ago. I felt so dumb when someone corrected me.”
“Yeah, that’s part of what the classes are for; to correct misconceptions like that. If you ever need extra help with something, don’t be afraid to ask for help. I might not be an expert, but I can explain the basics just fine.”
He smiled. “Thanks, I’ll probably take you up for that.”
We spent the rest of the afternoon reading. I read one of the books I’d gotten earlier, while Alex decided to try to get a head start on mundane physics, the first class we had the next day. Tiki joined us too at some point, though she left after dinner.
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The alarm sounded, and I woke up with a start. I’d forgotten I’d set it the day before so I would wake up on time. I’d slept without it for almost a week and had gotten used to waking up when I wanted to rather than when I had to. Damned thing. I had a feeling I was going to hate the little bugger.
I crawled out of bed and rubbed my eyes to get the sleep out of them. It wasn’t very successful. Maybe a shower would help? I had enough time for one, anyway. The first class started at nine, and it was only seven, so we had an hour and a half before we had to leave.
I stretched my muscles before climbing down, not wanting to fall because of a cramp. Down on the floor, Alex was just finishing putting on his underwear. My mind wandered to what was hidden underneath the thin layer of cloth and I shook my head to get rid of the intrusive thoughts. Alex buttoned the tail-strap closed and turned to me.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Good morning,” he said, “Excited for the classes?”
“Good morning,” I said in return, keeping my eyes from wandering down, “And yeah, I am. Mostly. I’ve been looking forward to this for years. It honestly feels a little surreal now that it’s actually happening.”
“Mostly?” he asked.
“I really don’t like the teacher we have for math,” I said. The information had been on the back of the schedule. “I know I can just test out and I will, but I’ll have to endure him for at least one lesson. Aside from that, I just wished I could go under better circumstances. I still haven’t unlocked my System, and at this point I don’t think I’m going to. I’m still holding out hope, but if dad and his archivists still haven't found anything yet, I doubt they ever will. At least I have the increased mana-capacity to look into.”
“Made any progress into that yet?”
“Some. I set up an appointment later this week with a few researchers who will thoroughly inspect my mana pool and share their findings, but other than that I want to figure it out by myself. I’m already dependent on dad and others for the System issue, I don’t want the same for this.”
“I get that. Just be careful you don’t limit yourself too much. It would suck if you never figured it out because you didn’t want to ask for help.”
“I know. If I haven’t made progress before the semester is over, I’ll ask for help,” I said and he smiled and nodded in return.
After that, Alex went to shower down the hall while I showered in my own bathroom. I could just get there through a door in our room. It was a luxury no one else here had, but it was a necessary one since I didn’t fit the other showers. My personal shower was larger and blasted water from more than one side. It was great and relaxing and the only way to take a shower in a reasonable time given my size.
Afterwards, I dried off with magic. Walking back into our room, it seemed I was done before Alex was. While he was gone, I went and grabbed breakfast. Nothing fancy like pancakes this time, just some jerky, bread, and tea.
When I got back, I put it all down on the table I’d commandeered from outside the day before. I was hungry but decided to wait for Alex to be done. Eating food alone was boring, anyway. Alex joined me a few minutes later, and we ate together. We then went to the kitchen and prepared ourselves some lunch. After that, having nothing else to do, we packed our stuff and left fifteen minutes earlier than we really had to.
Outside the dorms were a few second-year students holding signs. They were here to guide us to our first classes. I already knew where we were going, though, so after we picked up Tiki, we all went to the classroom building without a guide. It was the same building they had held all the mentor meetings at. The building was dedicated to the basic and the theory heavy classes. It was a large building meant to house over a thousand students at once, and was thus centrally located for almost a dozen dorm buildings.
Our first class was mundane physics, the most boring kind of physics. And it was the first class for it, too, so the lecture hall was still filled to the brim with almost a hundred students. By my guess, more than half would test out. Especially since it wasn’t all that difficult. The class mainly handled basic topics such as forces, vectors, and gravity. That sort of thing.
It was all things I’d learned years ago, but I knew that wasn’t necessarily the case for the other students. The Connected Worlds were large and spreading information was difficult. There were often cases where students had been taught the wrong thing, or only fed religious texts.
Not that there was necessarily anything wrong with religious texts. They were a great way to teach morals—though it depended on the text itself. The issue was that they tended to only have simplified information, or gave false reasons for natural phenomena. For instance, it might teach that a world was flat, when it simply didn’t work that way.
Inside the classroom, the teacher had us separate into those who wanted to test out, and those who didn’t. The majority obviously chose to try to test out. Why wouldn’t they? These classes were boring and took up valuable time that could otherwise be spent doing homework, or in a lot of cases, partying. I’d never understood why so many came here and then just wasted their time partying, and I didn’t think I ever would.
I said goodbye to Alex and moved to the side of the classroom for testing out. The professor sat us all down and gave us the test. It was more challenging than I expected, but then, it had been a few years since I last had a physics class. I finished the test within what I thought was a reasonable time-frame: I wasn’t the first to finish, but neither was I the last. I handed in the test and took a seat next to Alex, who was struggling to understand an exercise in his textbook. He asked me a question, and I spent the remaining time helping him out.
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We got the results at the end of the class, the professor’s assistants having worked all period long to grade the tests. I had a score of 92%, which was more than sufficient. About half of those who tried testing out failed and now had to follow the class the whole semester long.
After the class, we had a fifteen minute break before the next class started, which was math. Ugh. I enjoyed math as a subject, I really did. Solving the problems always felt great, and there was nothing quite like recognizing math you know in other subjects; like physics and magical theory. But the professor for this class… he made me want to pull my scales out. His name was Kang, and he was awful. I didn’t know what his deal was with me, but he always spouted out nonsense about me getting extra resources. I had often heard him complain that it was because I was the headmaster’s son, but that wasn’t true. And I knew that he knew it wasn’t true.
Any extra resources I received was because it was regulation, such as the extra large room I received at the dorms, or a trade. Every student had a right to adequate accommodation for their species. This meant something different for every species, but for me it meant a larger room, with both horizontal and vertical movement, along with a few smaller details. And I’d subjected myself to research in exchange for extra benefits, such as loosened restrictions on going down to the training grounds, or paid for them myself.
Professor Kang seemed to think I didn’t deserve those resources, and that others—such as himself—could’ve used it for their projects instead. At least, that was his outward opinion. I felt that there was something else going on behind the scenes, but I wasn’t sure what. Maybe he just hated that I looked a bit like a monster, but that might just be my own bias. In any case, he was very vocal about his opinions, and wasn’t shy to include my shape in his arguments. I hated the man.
In the classroom, I sat down at a table with a test already on it. At least Kang knew how to prepare well.
“Ugh, what’s that smell?” someone next to me asked, “Oh, it’s you.”
I looked over and saw that Alfred had sat down beside me. For fuck’s sake, as if this class wasn’t going to be bad enough. And he couldn’t possibly smell me. Shadows elves had weak noses, and I didn’t even sweat!
“Why are you even taking this test?” he asked, and I ignored him, resisting the urge to pummel him across the classroom, “Actually, what’s even the point of you being here at all? Did you want to waste other people’s time, too? Is just my sister’s time not enough anymore? Or did they run out of tricks to teach you? You mastered fetch, so they’re trying to teach you to count—”
“Shut up!” I yelled-roared at him, my one remaining wing flaring outward and knocking a book and a few loose papers to the ground.
Alfred flinched, and to my surprise, actually listened. I hadn’t meant to yell, or even react at all. But I was not some beast, and I wasn’t going to let him call me that any longer. And I wasn’t wasting anybody’s time.
I took a deep breath and tried to calm down. After this class was over, I was going to report Alfred and have him suspended, I told myself. There would be consequences, so have patience and don’t tear his throat out right at this moment. You aren’t being a coward by restraining yourself.
I took one last deep breath and looked around, only to notice that everyone had turned our way. Alex looked at me with concern, while Tiki looked at Alfred with barely restricted fury and disgust. Professor Kang looked angry too, but he was looking at me.
“Felix Sythias, that is not how we treat our fellow students. We do not yell at each other. You will apologize to Mr. Conad at once!” he said, and I looked at him slack-jawed. I knew he had heard what Alfred had said. He had a high level and he would have enough points in Physical that he must have heard it. Even if he was right about the yelling, why wasn’t he speaking to the person who started this mess? “Well, what are you waiting for? Apologize.”
The professor didn’t like me, I’d known that. But I hadn’t realized just how much he didn’t like me. He was bending the rules and his responsibilities so hard here that he was making a full circle! It was utterly ridiculous. He had to know this wouldn’t end well, right?
“You heard him. Apologize, beast,”
I turned to Alfred and glared at him, not saying a word. The smirking asshole could go hump sand and get it stuck up his dick for all I cared. I wasn’t rising to his taunts.
And I definitely was not going to apologize.
Professor Kang must have realized that too, because he frowned, “You will stay after class,” he said and turned back to help a student. Beside me, Alfred was glaring at me. I flashed my teeth at him, and he cringed backwards. Coward.
No way would I be staying after class. He was abusing his power so hard I couldn’t possibly begin to understand why he thought this was a good idea. I’d report him and he’d be gone by the end of the day; there were too many witnesses. And he could wait for me all he wanted, I wasn’t staying.
I funneled my anger into filling in the test and finished it with a speed I hadn’t thought was possible. After I put the test on the professor’s desk, I went to sit as far away from Alfred and the professor as possible and took up seating in the back corner of the classroom. I would leave as soon as I had the results back, which luckily wouldn’t take too long since I had finished first and an assistant was already checking it.
About ten minutes later the assistant brought the test over, for which I was grateful. That way I didn’t have to walk past Alfred. I read over the test. I scored a neat 98%, only having made a few mistakes where I’d misread a question. There was also a note attached at the bottom of the test written by the assistant. I pulled it off and read it.
Hey, don’t let them get to you! Your test results are amazing no matter what they say. As a bonus, you won’t have to spend any more time with professor douchebag. And I saw some of the answers that asshole of a student put down. Let’s just say you won’t have to worry about running into him during this period anytime soon! Oh, and don’t tell anyone, but I gave you an extra point.
Kind regards,
The assistant.
I smiled at the sweet little note, then folded it up; I would put it in my notebook later. Then I went through the test. The note was right; the count was off by one in my favor. I wasn’t going to say anything, though. I may not like cheating, but it didn’t matter, anyway. Any score above 80% was a pass, and it didn’t really matter if it was 81% or 100%; you passed either way. Still, it was a nice gesture.
I placed the test in the corner of the table and stood up. After making sure I had everything, I walked out the door, ignoring the protests of the professor. I felt bad for just leaving Alex behind like that, but he’d understand. I hoped so, anyway. With a final glance behind me at the door, I began my journey to the local admin office, which was on the top floor. I’d be making such a damning report, they’d both be stuck climbing out of the Depths for the rest of their careers.