I woke up on one of the 4 beds in the room. The room was needlessly extravagant. The bed sheets and curtains were made of the finest silk and the furniture were adorned precious stones. It seemed more like a 5 star hotel than a dorm.
Oh right, this is a mansion.
I looked around to see my roommates. Legion was snoring away on the bed in front of me while Ical was buried in a bundle of blankets on the bed diagonal from mine. Glave’s bed, the one next to mine, was empty.
He had been out the whole night, finishing his job. Who knew what that skeleton mask was doing.
I leaped out of my bed and glanced at the clock next to me. It was still 7 o’ clock. I had plenty of time to get ready for class. Then went into the bathroom to prepare myself.
While brushing my teeth, Glave came back. It was as if he just walked straight out of a horror movie. His whole outfit was splattered with blood and his hair was practically red. It was like someone poured buckets upon buckets of blood on him.
Glave noticed me and gave an awkward smile as I stared at him in shock.
“Good morning.” he murmured, walking into the bathroom. I continued to stare at him, my jaws hanging open, my toothbrush falling out.
It was when he started taking off his mask that I shifted my attention from the blood to his face. One thing I noticed about the mask was that there were no straps binding itself to his head. As if the hand was intentionally grabbing onto his face.
When the mask went off, I noticed Glave had charming features and a rather handsome face. His eyes looked less intimidating and his smile was more geniune.
Poor man...He might have been popular without the mask…
What I didn’t know was that Glave with the mask was already pretty famous in the Mansion.
“Why do you wear that mask?” I heard asked him.
Glave looked thoughtfully and replied,
“For one thing, this is my default outfit. The clothes I wore when I first came to the mansion.”
I looked at his outfit. I thought my school uniform was troublesome to wear but Glave’s clothing was even more inconvenient. On top of the mask and overly long robe he had to wear a few accessories, like the ring on his thumb and very hard looking slippers.
“And also, the mask feels very important to me. I don’t get why but I feel comfortable when it’s near me.” Glave shrugged.
I kind of understood the feeling. Like there was something missing. Something very important…
“Care to wake those them up up? I need to finish cleaning up but let’s get breakfast together.” Glave said with a smile, gesturing the sleeping Legion and Ical.
I walked out of the bathroom, not sure which one I should wake first. I could wake Ical first and let him deal with Legion but… Ical seemed like a night owl. He also appeared to be the dangerous type to wake up unnaturally…
I decided to wake Legion up. I went up to his bed. The blankets were thrown askew and the bed creaked wearily whenever he shifted his weight.
He sure has a bad sleeping posture, I thought to myself.
At first, I wasn’t sure how to wake the giant up. I resorted to poking his stomach with a stick I saw lying on the floor. When the stick came in contact with his stomach, he flinched, but went on sleeping. The snoring stopped though.
I tried using the stick to slap his arm. It brought some interesting results. Legion rolled around and hid his arm under a pillow.
Somewhat interested, I poked his cheek with the stick repeatedly, staying in a safe distance of course. This action made him wake up. Well, not directly, but it resulted in a success.
Because of a certain annoying thing in his face, he started rolling more to avoid it. The rolling became a swinging, then,
-Bam!-
Legion fell off the bed on my side. Luckily, I was in a safe enough distance however the stick broke in half.
Legion groaned loudly and stared at me. He blinked stupidly for a few seconds, then finally realizing who I was, he said in a loud voice,
“G’D MORN’IN, WUE!!!”
It’s Rue… Well that was one down, one more to go.
I heard the bathroom door click open and Glave appeared wearing casual attire. He still had the mask on, now clean of blood. He was now wearing a black long sleeved shirt and a white pants. He was also carrying an orange satchel, which was undoubtedly carrying his clothes.
“Ah, Legion you’re awake.” Glave spoke seeing Legion.
Legion grinned, “Should I wake Icky up?’
Icky? Is that his nickname? That is a horrible name. I feel so bad for him.(Not really)
“Go ahead.”Glave said amusingly.
“IT’S TIME TO WAKE UP!!!” Legion boomed.
However loud Legion was it only resulted in Ical crawling further into his bed cover and blankets
“Hey! Wake up! We’re GONNA have breakfast without you~” Legion teased unsuccessfully.
Possibly no one else could hear, but I could hear a few barely audible insults coming from the mattress. I swear I heard Ical say something along the lines of ‘I hope you get diarrhea and die’. Yup, you can’t mess with Ical.
Glave sighed, “Let’s go, Ical never ate breakfast before anyways.”
Legion happily agreed. And so we left Ical behind for breakfast.
…
The Dining Hall looked smaller than yesterday, possibly from all the people gathered here. I was still amazed by the amount of people present so I asked Glave,
“Do you know how much people are in this Mansion?”
Glave thought for a moment and replied,
“I’m not so sure, but I guess around 1-2 thousand? You can check the records later.”
I nodded, taking a closer look at my surroundings. The Dining Hall was actually a very beautiful room. Unlike last night, there were a lot more colorful tables and chairs. Light poured in from the huge glass windows that was covered last night and the pleasant aroma of breakfast drifted through the air. I could feel my stomach grumbled as I watched the large plates of bacon and eggs.
I noticed there were several lines for food. The lines were labeled with stars from 1-10. Legion explained to me,
“The more stars, the better food.”
Glave added, “Since you just came, you can only get 1 starred food. Don’t worry, if you work a bit harder, you’ll get a chance for better food.”
I must have looked obviously displeased but I guess every society had a ladder to climb. I noticed Glave and Legion were both holding on to something. When I looked closer, I saw that it was a meal ticket. There were also stars indicated on the ticket. I silently counted.
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9…
9 Stars! And to prove my assumptions correct, they lined up at the star 9 line. Sulkily, I lined up at the the single starred line.
There were few items to choose from. I took eggs, bacon, and toast from the trays and piled it high on my plate. Finished creating my mountain of food, I brought it up to the cashier.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
The cashier lady eyed my tall pile of food warily and commanded,
“Ticket, please.”
I panicked a little. No one told me how to pay for the food.
“Err, I’m new here…” I said meakly.
The lady sighed, and looked at me annoyingly,
“Your ID, please.”
Oh yeah, my ID card. I turned up my pockets, searching for the card as the lady’s gaze turned more and more suspicious.
Found it! I turned my card to the cashier lady. She snatched it from hands and looked at it carefully.
Done with the card, she looked at me with an interrogating gaze. After a full minute of being exposed to the pressure of her gaze, she let me pass.
I let out a deep breath, and hurried to where Glave and Legion were sitting.
“What was with that woman!” I exclaimed reaching the table.
“The cashier lady? Can’t blame her. Many tried to pretend they were new to get free meals.” Glave answered.
I sighed. Then a sudden question popped in my mind.
“How do you get the meal tickets?” I asked eyeing them up and down. *cough* eyeing their food up and down. Glave had a wonderful omelette filled with ham and mushrooms. He also had orange juice to go with it.
Legion had a variety of food for breakfast. There were waffles, turkey, toast, and fresh fruits. Suddenly my toast looked stale and my eggs looked raw. This was the difference between 9 stars and a single star…I bitterly gnawed my teeth against the bacon and ripped up my toast.
“You’ll learn how to get those at your job. Are you doing cleaning?”
I nodded as I picked at my eggs.
“That’s to be expected, everyone does cleaning on their first week. Anyways you’ll learn everything you need to know.”
I scarfed down the rest of the food and was ready to leave for class. When I suddenly remembered or remembered that I forgot to ask something. I looked at them weakly and asked,
“Do you guys know how to get to room 101?”
…
Hallway 5, first room in the corner...here it is! I saw the plate that held the number 101. Turning the door knob I went inside the room. Rather than a classroom, it looked more like a lounge. There were comfortable sofas and thick carpets. In front of the T.V. there was a whiteboard and in front of the whiteboard there was a man with glasses. Presumably the teacher.
Aside from the teacher there were 4 other people, the students. They were all sitting around the sofas. Some were chatting, some were playing games, others were just idly sitting.
I took my seat on a sofa to the side. It was occupied by another girl but there was plenty of room.
The teacher seeing that everyone was present started the lesson.
“Hello everyone. We have a new student today. So I’ll introduce myself again.”
The teacher turned to me and said,
“My name is Soo-Mal. Most of this class covers basic knowledge. For those who has been here for a week would have heard my introduction at least 4 times.”
He chuckled. His words made me think of a question. I raised my hand to ask,
“Excuse me, but how often do people come to the Mansion?”
Soo-Mal’s eyes brightened up at my inquiry.
“Good question. There are no exact time nor pattern in the way newcomers come to the Mansion but in the last 2 years, newcomers have appeared here on an average of 3 per week.”
3? That was a lot...Something was wrong here…
“Umm...How long has the Mansion been around?”
“No one really knows for sure, you can check in on the history classes when you get a chance. But I can see why you asked that. If there were on average of 3 people per week then the how can the Mansion accommodate this many people?”
I nodded. This was exactly what I was thinking of.
The girl next to me made a giggling sound. She had curly blond hair and pink(?) irises. Apparently she was wearing pajamas. I wonder if she came to the Mansion by sleepwalking or if it was her normal outfit…
“Sorry, I wasn’t laughing at you but we had the same lesson two times already.”She whispered to me.
“Oh really? How long have you’ve been here?” I asked back.
She tilted her head to think and replied,
“4 days, I-”
A coughing sound interrupted conversation. I looked up to see the teacher coughing to get our attention. We decided to push our conversation for later.
“As you were asking, how come the Mansion is able to hold this many people is because of two reasons. One, if you had noticed, the Mansion is actually bigger than how it seems from the outside. And two, some people can leave,”
That got my attention. During the time I was here, I was under the impression that we were unable to leave. If leaving was an option, I would choose to leave. I had more important things to do…
“Residents of the Mansion may leave only by a special event, The Hunt. Before I go into detail of that, I want to introduce a new concept. Magic.
Magic? I frowned at the unfamiliar word.
“Yes, we can use magic here. The magic here is only limited to control. For example, I’m a Fire Magician so I can control fire. Fire can appear, expand, or dance in my palm if I wished. Fire is the third most popular magic here. The most important thing to magic is not power nor the rarity of magic but control and a bit of creativity. Every magic is control magic. Healing magic is a bit of a stretch but it’s basically the other side of health magic.”
“Can you show us?” A boy seated in a different sofa asked.
The teacher smiled and replied, “Unfortunately no, as I said yesterday, Mansion rule #1; No Magic on Floors 1 and 2.”
Boooo, the students cried out in return.
“Calm down, you’ll be able to use your own Magic soon.”
Magic sounded really amazing to me but there seemed to be a catch. There’s always a catch. After All, there are no such thing as a free meal.
The teacher continued, “As I mentioned before, there’s an event called The Hunt. During this event, you will most likely be able to unlock your own magical abilities.
Another student raised his hand and asked,
“Ummm, what exactly do you ‘hunt’?”
The teacher hesitated for a moment and answered,
“Traitors.”
------------------------------
World building has always been the hardest part for me to get through but this chapter introduced a ton of awesome things for later chapters.
Things will start picking up in a few chapters(the Hunt) I really like the economic system even though it's pretty inconvenient. I'll start introducing it next chapterXD
Try guessing Rue and other character's magic. Hint: Rue and Glave both have a pretty interesting one~
Thanks for reading~