The next day was the first-year orientation. The six boys rode the shuttle three stations away to a big lecture hall, where over four thousand children were seated.
“Out of the four thousand of you sitting in the room today, eight years from now, only 125 will remain,” an old man spoke harshly from the stage. In front of him was a glowing box, which seemed to amplify his voice throughout the room.
The crowd was solemn, picking up on the atmosphere. They were all well aware - Gemini Academy was not only the best formations school, but also the most competitive and cutthroat! Only the very best were kept, and those who couldn’t keep up were cut. They all knew the strict rules - at the end of each year would be an enormously important assessment, in which each student was ranked according to their score. At the end of the second, fourth, and then every subsequent year up to seventh, years, the bottom half of that ranking would be cut and forced to leave the school. Thus, after eight years, only the remaining 125 students would truly graduate, becoming legendary figures in the formations world!
Countless legendary figures had come from those graduating classes of 125. Kordiner, Loran, Stroth… many household names, extremely familiar to those noble families due to their extraordinary accomplishments, had originally come from that graduating class of 125. It was the greatest honor, the most prestigious of labels. If one graduated amongst that final class of 125, then that meant that you had potential to be one of the top formations experts in all of the entire world!
The old man currently speaking was the headmaster, named Varale Stinula, nicknamed ‘Stinger.’ Emmet would later find out that he was well-known for how harsh his speeches were - there would seldom be a speech he gave where he didn’t mention how students needed to buckle up and work or they would be left behind. However, he did have the chops to back it up - fifty years prior, he had been part of the graduating class of 125. Although there were some better-known names that had came from that year, it was still incredibly impressive - no doubt, he had tremendous skills in formations.
Listening to Stinger’s speech, many couldn’t help but be a bit spooked. They knew how famous the Gemini Academy was for being cutthroat, but for the headmaster to begin his statements with something like that, it was intense! Each student had a feeling that come assessment time, there would be no time to breath. One would have to compete with all their might to not get cut. Most students didn’t have any delusions. They might have been geniuses in their home towns, but this was the Gemini Academy they were talking about! Every person here was a total genius, or there was no way they would be able to be here. To compete with geniuses with similar levels of intellect… that would no doubt be difficult!
After ‘Stinger’ finished speaking, the principal of student matters, a middle-aged woman named Shei Horinger, came up to properly welcome the first-years. She introduced all of the resources on campus, including the ten massive libraries, all with large parts of distinct content, the four famous enormous forging stations, and the countless cafeteries, academic buildings, study spaces, etc. scattered all throughout the school.
She also introduced a new campus-wide system, called ‘points.’ These points were stored in each student’s ID card and were used as a universal currency. Everything costed points - building materials, textbooks, borrowing books from the library, shuttle rides, even food! The six boys paled when they realized that they had actually already spent 3 points each on the shuttle ride over. Those would be precious!
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All students started out with only 1000 points (200 for squires), and it carried over year by year. It was like real money - they could use it to trade, buy, sell, and even gamble. If students ran low and desperately needed points on short notice, they could go to the admissions offices to borrow some, but with high interest.
Luckily, the ways to earn points were also plentiful, and few ended up desperate enough to resort to loaning. Firstly, there was a monthly bulletin that listed tasks put up by teachers, fellow students, and even outside civilians that the students could complete to earn points. Second, there were on-campus job positions, ranging from low-end menial work to intricate formations design, that could earn a student a steady income. Finally, if one performed well enough in their classes, they would receive benefits just from their grades. At the end of each semester, for the first and second year level courses, a C earned a student 100 points, a B 300, and an A 1000! No points were awarded to any below that. Needless to say, classes were extremely competitive. Since grades were often curved according to the class average, many would try to sabotage their fellow students to gain an advantage.
The idea of this system was not only to motivate students to strive higher and continuously compete, but to also promote innovation. If students didn’t learn to cut corners and efficiently go out and earn points, they would inevitably run out. That was why the school charged points for even things like the shuttle - they wanted to implicitly encourage students to build their own kind of transportation vehicle. In the end, 1000 was a purposely low number. If a student didn’t earn any extra points, they would likely run out in just a few months just from daily necessities. Not to mention, if you wanted to forge something, like a high-tier formation, 1000 points wasn’t even enough to provide for even the smallest amounts of high-grade materials!
The woman ended her talk with a reminder to look over the hundreds of courses listed in the booklets they had received and sign up for classes. The following week would be a trial week, and students could feel free to shop for classes, but the courses moved fast and if you moved too slow, you could find yourself left behind.
The orientation ending, the boys quickly rushed to sign up for classes. They already knew what they wanted, and just hoped that there was enough room. Luckily, all of them managed to get what they wanted - Tauruk signed up for Introduction to Formations, Essentials of Debugging, and Fundamental Algorithms in Formations. In fact, three classes was already considered a lot. These classes were no ordinary classes - each were expected to be extremely difficult and would assign up to tens of hours of work each week.
Emmet didn’t sign up for any classes. In fact, he wasn’t an actual student, so he wasn’t able to. However, he could accompany Tauruk in his classes to learn alongside him. In fact, there wasn’t really an attendance for classes, and the school was pretty free-form in general, so he would likely be able to sit in on any class going on, although he couldn’t take the exams.
The six boys decided to walk home. They already had an idea of how important points were - they couldn’t afford to already start spending on comfort aspects like the shuttle. On the walk back, they not only saw countless upperclassmen travel around on various glowing transportation contraptions, but were even approached by some unscrupulous upperclassmen trying to take advantage of their juniors’ inexperience and offer shiny but useless items in exchange for points. This further convinced them that they needed to treasure their points as much as possible.
When they finally returned to their dorm room, each was much more motivated to study and work on their formations craft. After a brief discussion with each other, the four students split up and began to preview the material for their classes.