“Good Morning Students!” Professor Cyrus said. He waited for a moment in the silence, then repeated himself frustrated.
“I SAID, Good Morning Students.”
This time the rest of the students, except for me chimed back,
“Good Morning Professor Cyrus.” they all said in monotoned unison. Julia scoffed at it and Krista giggled. I saw Xavier roll his eyes and I wasn’t sure if that was directed to his present company or his own father.
“Ah ha very good. It’s lovely to see you all so bright eyed and bushy tailed.” He said practically beaming. Professor Dos shot him a dirty look at the Bushy tailed comment. “Ah sorry, Dos. I meant I hope you’re all feeling refreshed and ready for the festivities today. For those of you who had your first night’s sleep here, you’d have been introduced to your new best friends here, The Guide and the QuarterMaster system. No doubt your heads will be swimming with questions and information, but that will all have to wait. Firstly we have to welcome a special student here in our midsts, August, if you wouldn’t mind joining me up here.” He said gesturing to a spot next to where he stood up at the bar. I cautiously got up and wandered over there conscious of all the eyes in the room being on me. I made brief eye contact with Xavier who just stared intensely with the same blue gray eyes his father had. He was clearly sizing me up.
“This is August Adams. Now August is not like the rest of us. He’s just only discovered all this magic is real. So I’d like us all to take extra care of him and if he asks any questions about anything, while it may be second nature to you, He’s experiencing it for the first time. And who knows, He’s seeing everything in a fresh light, what you make take for granted every day may be revealed again for what it truly is, Magical.” I looked around the room. Octavia was hanging on his every word and nodding like she agreed. The three at the table were largely unimpressed and ignoring him. The other student at the bar, Luca, looked a little green around the gills and I noticed the string from his cup was dangling free with no frog on the end.
“Thank you, August, you can sit back down now.” The Professor said tapping me on the back. “Now. Professor Dos will go around and calibrate your Emblems for full activation of the QuarterMaster system. That includes even you three Legacies. The system has undergone an emergency, uh, Patch over night. This usually happens before each school year commences. It removes any unforeseen exploits or interactions. When I first came here the way the system was providing potions was patched because it kept forgetting to give you the cork stopper. It wouldn’t count them as contained vessel without one so you could only store them in your quickslots and not your inventory. The demand for bottle stoppers was never higher. Nevertheless, those kinds of things have been resolved now, but you still all need a reinstall. Take out your Emblems and present them to Dos if you don’t mind.” I did as ordered and removed the card from my sleeve. Dos went around the room tapping each card and then with his wand he looked to be tweaking something invisible in the air in front of him. He started with Xavier and when the student slid the card into his sleeve I noticed his eyes flash briefly. He immediately began swiping in the air in front of him, clearly accessing his User Interface. Eventually after completing everyone else’s Dos came over to me. The tall Hellhound looked at me and snorted.
“Did you get my apology present?” He said quietly.
“Yes, And I accept professor.” I said smirking. He sighed and tapped on the card I was holding out for him. “Anything I need to know before I slot that thing in?” I asked as he tinkered away.
“Don’t screw with the User Settings. You can very easily change the whole thing into a different language without meaning to. If you do, you’ll start speaking that language too, but the system won’t let you read or understand the language. While it makes for an amazing prank, I don’t recommend it. Unless you can find someone who speaks the language, it’s a bitch to figure out how to navigate and change it back.” Dos said with an air of someone speaking from experience.
“Duly noted.” I said. The Hellhound did a final swish of their wand and tapped the card a final time. It vibrated slightly in my hand and felt a little warm to the touch.
“All done. Good luck.” He said as he moved off and went to stand next to Professor Cyrus. I looked at the card. Other than the new warmth it didn’t seem like anything at changed. That was until I slid the card into my arm sleeve. A rush of windows sprung up all at once covering one another and bombarding me with too much info. I recoiled slightly as I nearly fell out of my chair. I instinctually did the motion The Guide did last night to close all the windows and they went away. The first thing I noticed was everyone in the room now had text hovering above their head that showed their names underlined. I could only see their first names, except for Xavier who had his name listed as ‘X. Cyrus.’ If i focused on that name text a small symbol of an ‘i’ in a circle appeared at the end of it. I mentally tried to examine it and a window popped up displaying a rundown of his stats.
NAME: Xavier Cyrus
AGE: 19
SPECIES: Human*
HEIGHT: 180 cm
WEIGHT: 79kg
LVL: 04
JOB: Initiate Magi*
CURRENT STATS -
HP - 255
MP - 100
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Strength - 8 (+5)
Intellect - 15 (+6)
Awareness - 4 (+2)
Endurance - 5 (+2)
Dexterity - 5 (+2)
I looked at the stats on the Professor’s son. I noticed a couple things that caught my attention immediately. Two of the entries held asterisks. I thought I remembered something about The Guide mentioning the one related to their Job Class and as soon as I thought of it that section updated.
JOB: Initiate Magi - (Legacy benefits applied)
Wow. So revealing is sometimes as simple as thinking about the info if you’ve already been told it? That would be handy in the future. Next I zeroed in on the entry for ‘species’. Why did Human have an asterisk? I tried to focus on the word, but nothing changed. I popped up my own stat window to check against his. It looked exactly the same as previously except for my weight.
NAME: August Adams
AGE: 19
SPECIES: Human
HEIGHT: 173cm
WEIGHT: 71kg
LVL: 01
JOB: Initiate Magi
CURRENT STATS -
HP - 125
MP - 10
Strength - 5
Intellect - 3
Awareness - 3
Endurance - 3
Dexterity - 7 (+2)
Hold up, How had I gained 1kg overnight? Was it because I was wearing a shoulder bag that had a copy of the first volume of The Guide? It had to weigh at least 1kg alone. I place the bag down and sure enough the weight stat went back to 70kg.
Another discovery.
I remembered what The Guide had said and immediately took the book equipping it in a quickslot. I felt something change as it applied a +1 to all my stats. I watched as my mp and hp also rose slightly. I also went ahead and tried to equip my wand, but it didn’t allow me to and a huge red warning window covered my whole vision along with an annoying siren noise.
- WARNING! -
THIS IS NOT A SAFE ZONE. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO EQUIP A WEAPON HERE WITHOUT PRIOR AUTHORIZATION.
“Jesus.” I said as I hastily swiped the notification away. My ears still rang slightly as I yelled out, “Hey Professor, Is this not a safe zone?”
“Ah, already trying to equip a weapon, August? Allow me.” Cyrus said as he flipped an invisible switch in the air in front of him. “That should do it. Go ahead.”
Immediately, I was able to equip the wand I’d received from Professor Dos.
- ITEM -
Hopp’s Starter Wand*
Weapon Class - Wand
~A basic Magi’s wand. Perfect for any new Magi to learn the ropes.
+10% MP regeneration speed
+3 Intellect
-1 Strength
Wow, another asterisk. Was I just incredibly lucky? I tried to examine the wand further, but I didn’t notice anything about it that seemed to stick out.
I examined my stats again.
HP - 135
MP - 35
Strength - 5
Intellect - 7 (+4)
Awareness - 4 (+1)
Endurance - 4 (+1)
Dexterity - 8 (+3)
If I was doing the math right it looked like each 1 point I put into intellect added 5 extra MP and each 1 point into endurance added 10 health. Unfortunately the +1 to all stats from The Guide was being cancelled out by the -1 on my wand. I turned my attention back to that asterisk on the wand. I was thinking about how maybe I should go ask Professor Dos about it when a new window popped up into my vision.
- NEW FRIEND REQUEST -
Magi ‘Octavia Q.’ would like to connect.
Accept request?
Two buttons appeared hovering below the window, a green ‘Yes’ and red ‘No’. I shot a glance at Octavia who smiled meekly at me. I smiled back and pressed the Yes option. Suddenly I heard a ping sound and I could see a jumping speech bubble hovering just at the very edge of my peripheral vision. I mentally thought about opening it. It was a chat window and it had a single message from Octavia in it. I heard her voice clearly in my head as I read it as if she was speaking it right there and then.
Octavia Q. - We can communicate here privately at anytime. The only thing that can read these chats are the QuarterMaster and anyone added in the chat room. You can even copy items into the chat and share their info here. :)
I looked at her as she was only a few feet away from me.
“Sorry, I have no idea how to reply to the message Octavia.” I said, slightly embarrassed.
“Oh sorry. You might not have the feature unlocked yet as your rank isn’t assigned. Usually there’s a chat field and a keyboard will pop up. I use a modified interface for it myself. I can show you how to set it up after the exam.” She said smiling.
“Thanks, O. Do you mind if I call you O? Octavia is a little bit of a mouth full.” I said. She squeaked a little.
“You’re giving me a nickname?” She said hiding and blushing again.
“If that’s okay with you? You can call me, Auggy if you like.” I said. Octavia nodded furiously. I heard a ping pop again somewhere in my interface and I noticed her name in the chat had adjusted to just the letter ‘O’.
“I’ve never had a nice nickname before.” She said smiling at me. “You’re very kind, August.” I tilted my head slightly and she noticed my confusion. “Sorry, I think August works better for me. At least for now, but please call me O.” She said softly. She really was beginning to grow on me quite quickly. I was a sucker for the earnest types.
“Alright alright! I trust you’ve had a through play around in your menus. Let’s get down to business shall we?” Professor Cyrus announced. He then made a swish with his wand and several panels on the walls receded revealing glass windows behind. The light of the early morning sun broke in and I squirted as my eyes adjusted from the previously dim light of the bar car to the more radiant version we sat in now. Once they did I saw exactly what I was expecting to see. Almost all of us stood up and moved to one side of the train car attempting to get a good view. The only way to describe it was pure magic. We were cleary crossing some kind of bridge that was high above either a river or lake, but off in the distance sat a building built of impossible architecture. It was a castle, but several spires shot up from behind it’s walls. A few of which seemed to float on their own. The university looked like it was a perfect mixing of medieval and modern. I saw typical castle turrets with windows of black modern steel design. Both Gothic elements to the style perfectly integrated with bizarre ambitious sharp modern angles. It was as if the past and the present were colliding in a single building, but also in perfect harmony. The only one not awed by it was Xavier who still sat at the table with his arms crossed with a sullen expression. I wondered how many times you’d have to have seen this to not be awed by it. I also noticed Professor Cyrus looking at his son. His jaw was clenched. Was that a hint of anger I saw? He noticed me looking and quickly returned to his normal jovial expression.
“Spectacular isn’t it, Students?” He said joining us up at the window. “That will be your new home for the next year. I hope you’re all just as excited as I am!”
He clapped his hands loudly again. “Now, who’s ready for their first exam?”