“Hello, Professor Moria,” an older boy says after opening the door. “Is this Kai?”

“Yes. I will be back in two hours to pick him up,” Moria says and then walks away.

“Well, come on in. We’ve been expecting you. You’re in time for lunch.”

I go inside and find myself in a hallway that extends all the way to the left and right. Is this part of the large room…?

“In here,” the boy says and walks forward.

I follow him. I moment I walk into this room, I drop my jaws as I take in the full view of the room. It’s way too spacious! The kitchen space is over twice as big, and there are multiple large round dining tables, bookshelves, and storage space. Most importantly, couches! The place isn’t cramped at all. There’s so much room, I don’t even know what they do with this much space. This part of the place alone has to be at least six times bigger than the basic rooms with bedrooms included. I don’t see the bedrooms here, though.

“Here is the team,” the boy says. At one of the round tables are two other guys and two girls. “I’m Lance, by the way. These guys are—“

“No point introducing anyone he won’t remember,” one of girls says quickly. She stands up and then with one hand flings her long, orange hair behind her into the air. It captivates me as if she casted a magic spell on me. Two small rounded hills appear on her chest as she crosses her arms and smiles, revealing perfectly aligned teeth. My eyes can’t help but stare at her as if I was eating a delicious bowl of soup. “I’m Astrid, top beauty in our year. You’d better remember me.”

“Uh, sure…” I answer, forcing a smile. Her appearance doesn’t match her behavior. Does everyone with orange hair behave like this?

One guy says quickly, “Actually Daisy had the most votes by the end remember? I prefer her anyway she’s got a more mature fi—”

Astrid kicks his chair down and exclaims, “Shut up! She cheated at the last second and everyone changed their votes!”

“Right, I forgot,” Lance says. “You’re checking out other teams too.”

“Lance, give Kai a quick tour of the place while I finish preparing lunch,” the boy from the kitchen says.

“Sure. Come this way, Kai,” he says and walks over to where the couches are on the right.

I follow him.

“This place is really big, and it’s excessive to the point of being a waste of space.”

What’s wrong with more space? This is amazing! Though, there is a lot of empty space, as he says. They should put more stuff here.

“Over here are the bedrooms,” he says and walks into a hallway at the center. There are three doors on the left and the other half on the right. He goes into the first door on the left. “This is my room.”

Ohh. Not as big as I thought it would be. This is only about three times bigger than my current room. There are more bookshelves and chests in here. His own personal couch too!

Moving deeper into the room, I find a tiny kitchen at the corner of the room and then discover that there is more to it.

“There’s a spacious walk-in closet in here,” he says and opens the door, revealing the space inside. This closet alone is already larger than my bedroom plus bathroom combined…

Beyond the kitchen is a square gap with nothing here. I could practice training my weapons here in the convenience of my bedroom. More shelves and storage along the wall. I never thought I would say this, but it’s too much stuff. When am I ever going to need this much storage? There’s a king-sized bed in the corner of the room ahead and a long desk next to it.

“Finally, the bathroom,” he says and goes inside.

I follow him inside. I probably shouldn’t be surprised anymore, but this is insane. There’s another closet, a fancy toilet, a big sink, a washer, a dryer, several drawers, and a swimming pool?

“All this stuff is pretty much useless too, but the hot tub is nice. You can fill it with cold water too if you want. I swim in there sometimes. That’s it for this side.”

“So, if I move in with you guys, where’s my room?”

“Having you join us would be a huge plus, so one of us will move back to our old room, and you can take one of the rooms here,” he says and then walks to the left side of the main room.

This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

There are two equally sized square rooms. Both are for training, similar to the ones in the Academy. The first one with wooden flooring and the next one made entirely of stone. Apparently, this room is magic-proofed. It’s safe to use weaker forms of magic in here without damaging the home.

There’s also a small archery range at the top left end of the main room. The hallway leading left and right I initially saw actually loops around the entire apartment. It’s used as a running course. Everything I could possibly need all in one place. They practically never need to leave their home, except for classes and supplies.

With the tour done, I sit at the table with my potential future team. Considering the kitchen's size and the different appliances they have access to, they should be utilizing some advanced recipes.

“Alright, lunch is served,” one of them says as he brings over several bowls of food.

I frown. What’s this? It looks like a big bowl of raw vegetables. He brings over another one, and it’s full of legumes. Eventually, a total of five bowls and the contents of the last three aren’t that much different in spirit. Very plain and bare. They don’t even have meat.

“Help yourself, Kai. Plenty to go around,” Lance says as he and the others scoop the food onto their plate.

“Uhh…” I interject. “Is this it? Where’s the meat?”

“Meat’s more expensive, so we avoid buying it. We get all the protein we need from these lentils and chickpeas,” Lance says and points to the legume bowl.

“More expensive?” I ask.

“Right, right…you’re only in your second year,” Lance says. “So, starting in the third year, there’s a point system. Instead of receiving tickets for the completion of tasks, we receive points. We can purchase supplies with those points, and some items cost more while others are cheaper. There are competitions and events throughout the year that also offer points as prizes. Food isn’t the only thing you can buy. Furniture, weapons, armor, and pretty much anything you can think of.”

We found the most efficient batch of ingredients to buy that provides us all the necessary nutrients while keeping spending low. There’s a resource management ranking leaderboard for total acquired points that will increase our prestige if we place high by the end of this year. It’s one of the five metrics on our resume when third parties recruit for our fifth year experience.”

So you’re probably wondering, total acquired points, doesn’t that mean it doesn’t matter if we spend the points? Yes, except that we’re not saving for that. We’re one of the smarter groups who did our research. At the end of this year, there’s a tournament event. And you can use your points to gain an advantage during the competition. That ranking is also one of the metrics. There’s an end of the year auction before points become useless too.”

“Also, there’s a total acquired points ranking after the tournament separate from the other resource management ranking. So, you see, points are very precious. Four of the five metrics inherently are tied to them,” Lance explains. “Eat up. It’s actually not bad.”

“Uh-huh…”

“Here Kai, have this,” the cook says and puts a carrot on my plate.

I stare at it without saying anything. This is the worst quality meal I’ve encountered since coming to the Academy. And he said that they’re going to be doing this for the entire year?

“Hey, if eating good food’s important to you, we can splurge a little, right?” Astrid asks.

“Oh, yeah,” Lance says. “It’s no big deal if we spend a little extra this week to increase our meal quality when they’re opening the hunting grounds next week.”

“Hunting grounds?” I ask.

“It’s a year four thing where we’re allowed to go into the nearby woods and hunt animals for food,” Lance informs.

“Animals? Not monsters? Lame.”

“Yeah, it sucks. The boar is the most dangerous animal in there. But, it’ll feel nice learning to use a real weapon to kill moving targets,” Lance says.

“With magic too. I want to start murdering living creatures instead of target dummies, walls, and empty air,” the other girl says.

“Most importantly, we’ll be able to add meat to our diet at no extra cost. Should I grab something from the store that suits your tastes better?” the cook asks.

“No, this is fine for now,” I respond. If I can handle Emdos’s punishments, this is nothing. I scoop myself some beans, scrambled eggs, and bread. It’s all bland, but nothing to throw up over. I leave the carrot out.

When we’re done eating, one of them takes out a paper from a backpack and places it on the table. He puts his palm on the center of it and says, “Do me a favor, Kai. Come here and place yer palm on the scroll as I have here and release Scrap Mana into the symbol.”

I’m not sure what he’s planning, but I walk over to do as he asks. The moment I lay my eyes upon the scroll, I know that I’ve seen this before. The strange symbol on the paper is identical to the one I saw in Emdos’s book! I place my right palm on the same spot and then pump Scrap Mana into the symbol as the boy instructed.

The symbol disappears, and subsequently, the scroll disintegrates into thin air while something appears in my head like I knew it all along. Matching fireballs?

“Something appeared in yer head, right?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I answer, figuring it out at the same time. “It’s a keyword, right?”

“Bingo. Come test it out,” Lance says. He leads me to the magic-proofed training room. “Go ahead.”

Go ahead? What does he want me to do, exactly? Hmm… Based on what I know, I need to gather a sufficient amount of Mana at the designated exit before shouting the keyword. Now to determine where that is.

There are multiple exits; one on each index finger. Okay, I got it. I move some Scrap Mana to those places while curling every finger except for my index fingers. I straighten my index fingers and point them forward.

“Matching fireballs!” I exclaim. A small sphere of fire shoots straight out of my fingers, both flying straight ahead. They disperse into nothing after colliding with the wall. Whoa!

“Nice! You got it on your first try,” Lance says and claps. The others clap too. “You have great control for a beginning second-year student.

“How’d I do that? What was that piece of paper?” I ask.

“It’s a cheat for using magic,” Lance explains. “You’ll learn more about it soon. I wouldn’t want to steal the professor’s glory.”

“That was the easy part. Now do it with Rich Mana,” a girl says.

How would I do that? I know it’s not as simple as moving Rich Mana to my index fingers and using the keyword. I need to rewrite the same instructions for the spell using Rich Mana instead of Scrap Mana, but I’m not sure exactly what those instructions are.