CHAPTER 12 – FIRST DAY

It feels like time always goes faster, when you are having fun. After my little trip to mum’s garden and the divine realm, I just enjoyed my days being with my family and friends. I was grateful that the rapport, we had built up over the years had not changed.

Claude still treated me as a little sister, even when he found out we were not related. Ingrid still told me off for being unbecoming of my age and status. Erika was still fussy about how I maintained my looks. No scratch that she’s gotten worse. In her words ‘as a goddess, it only makes sense that I was always presentable.’ Gil and Alec still completely thrash me, when we spare, even when I can beat most of the other guards and knights for some reason, I just can’t beat these two.

Finally, my childhood friends still treat me the most 'normally', and by that, I mean that they still constantly steal my food and are not afraid to bicker with me. Just yesterday when we were discussing about desserts.

Hilda and I ended up in a heated debate about when was the best time to have dessert. I was on the pro after meal side while Hilda being Hilda would have dessert first. While Hilda and I were having our debate and the rest were distracted by our bickering.

Catrina the food thief, once again stole all the dessert and stuffed herself silly. Does this girl not have anything to eat at home? Why does she always steal my food? It was only when we started to live together in the dorm, that I found out her family were highly strict on her diet, and did not allow her to have any sweets and snacks outside mealtimes.

While I was distracted by my numerous thoughts, Erika had finished packing all the things I needed to head to the academy with. We were not taking much, just daily necessities and a few changes of clothes. The academy had its uniform that students were required to wear and everything else was provided.

Worried that I would be late on the first day of school, Erika started to urge me to stop daydreaming and to head to the carriage that was taking us to the academy. I did not understand why she was in a rush as we had already enrolled a few days pier to the start of school, so we did not need to do that. The villa had already been allocated to us and I had explored it during enrolment, so I knew where it was. Classes did not even start today. There was just an opening ceremony and a little class introduction and that began after lunch. It was currently eight in the morning.

However, all my protests were ignored, as Erika was simply following Ingrid's orders. Ingrid was going with us as my guardian this time round. I knew I should not have agreed for Ingrid to go with me. In every possible situation, she tries to have me act appropriately. While I love her, and I knew she cared for me as an older sister, but, sometimes it became pretty draining. At least she’s better than Claude, as he got older, he is starting to become more dorkish. I for one am glad he is not going with us today.

Meeting Ingrid out front, who was already waiting for me on the carriage we set off to the Academy. This would be where I will stay and study for the next three to four years.

The journey to the academy was completely uneventful. As we were traveling in a carriage marked with the Royal Emblem no one was dumb enough to get in its way. We soon arrived at the gates of the academy. Seeing the royal seal, they quickly let us through without any fuss, while everyone else was still waiting in line.

Have I ever stated how much I enjoy the privileges of being royalty?

The carriage driver was already familiar with where my dorm was located so he quickly led the horses in that direction. Arriving at the villa, that would serve as my home for the next few years, I found that none of my friends had arrived. Taking this opportunity, I decide to claim my room before the rest showed up. First come first serve, right?

After organising a few things in the room with Ingrid and Erika’s help the other girls finally started to show up with their family in tow. However, as they appeared a bit late it would soon be lunchtime, and they still had not organised everything. Is this the reason why Ingrid had me come earlier? If so, you can just tell she has the inner mum all sorted out. Take it from the girl that has the goddess of motherhood as a mum.

My friends still had not finished sorting out their things before the opening ceremony, so they finally just left it to their maids and headed out with me and Ingrid.

As I had expected, nothing special happened during the opening ceremony. The various deans and faculty staff went up on stage explaining some things about their courses and classes. As you would expect most of the deans were old and their speeches just went on and on. The exception was this old lady who was the dean of runes and magic technology. She seems like an interesting person and despite her age was still going strong. Her speech was to the point and confirmed many of my thought about a future where information is more easily shared.

With the opening ceremony, all finished it was now time for the students to gather with their homeroom teachers. There was a total of twenty homeroom classes, with some abuse of authority, my friends and I were placed in the same homeroom which happened to be first-year homeroom class one.

As this was an academy where even if you’re in an unrelated related course you could join in on the classes that another course run. Some even stayed back after their course had been finished to learn from classes that were unrelated to their course but found useful. This was also what my friends and I were planning to do.

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Separating from our family as they went home, we headed to the main building that all the homerooms were located and easily found our homeroom as it was on the first floor and labelled clearly.

Taking a seat at the front row as it was the only one, we could all sit together as other students had already taken the seats in the middle of the rows. As the students trickled in the first thing, I noticed was that the average age of the students in attendance to the academy as first-year students was sixteen. The youngest was around twelve and that was only because my friends and I were here, excluding us the youngest was thirteen.

This was the case because usually the primary education nobles and wealthy families received was made to last until they reach the age of sixteen. At that point, they could do whatever they wanted. But my friends and I had a great governess that taught us efficiently without dragging things one, so we finished our primary education a full four years early.

Many of the students here in our homeroom also appeared to be nobles. As they easily recognised us and had been glancing at us, for a while now. While I was use to it, Dorothy still did not like it, as the youngest and shyest person in our group, she often did not like being in the spotlight. Noticing her dilemma Caitlyn more commonly referred to as Lyn, being the oldest took it upon herself to tell everyone off, and that it was not nice to stare at people.

Being told off by someone younger than them, some of the spoilt nobles could not stand it, but they stopped when their friends whispered into their ears while glancing at me. They were clearing being told of my status as the royal princess. Those that did not know about me and my friends, were most likely children of minor nobles or upstarts. While I had nothing against these people their arrogance really surprised me. They were almost as bad as my friends and I. That’s saying something as we were as high ranked in the food chain as one could be.

Once the staring had died down a bit, the homeroom teacher finally arrived. He was fairly young to be a teacher, maybe younger than Claude, but his heavy eye bags and overall haggard and unkempt appearance made him seem much older. He introduced himself as Professor Ian, and the class he taught was monster biology as well as the Knight introductory classes.

Taking out a class list, he went through all our names. When he reached mine there was a noticeable commotion. My full name was Ayra Asteri Kar. While the name Ayra was a common enough name, Asteri was only used in the names of the heir to the throne of Kar. Once I was named the heir, even if Claude had children, they would not be able to succeed him unless I abdicated from my position as heir. The last name of Kar was self-explanatory, I was a member of the Kar royal family end of story.

They only got louder when I raised my hand, indicating I was present. Even the homeroom teacher had taken a few glances at me.

When the homeroom teacher finally got through the class list by my count of fifty students, he had everyone get up and took us on a tour of the campus. Like a tour guide herding his tourist around, he showed us various places. While I had already been around the campus and had a look around, having a guide to tell you where everything was, its purpose and the best ways to get from A to B was much appreciated.

However, the thing I was most interested in was the Clubs and Societies that he showed us. For an academy that did not even have more than three thousand students, having more than three hundred different clubs and societies seemed a bit overkill.

When I asked Professor Ian about the issue, he explained that students could be in multiple clubs and societies at once. However, it is not without its limits. Clubs and societies must elect a leader or chair and there must be a minimum of five students in each otherwise the society would be disbanded. The minimum requirements for clubs was even stricter, and a minimum of ten students had to be regular attendees and they had to be active weekly or they would also be disbanded or demoted to a society.

He further explained that the system was not perfect, but it helped to reduce the number of clubs and societies. It was done this way because clubs and societies receive recourse and funds to help them conduct their activities. Societies did not receive many funds but were officially recognised as an official program by the academy. This meant that they could use the facilities for their activities if no one else was already using them. Clubs had even more benefits in that they had their designated location where they could conduct their activities and had priority in applying for facilities, to conduct their activities.

While it was impossible to go through all the clubs and societies, Professor Ian did take us to the most popular ones. The first one we visited was the Large scale warfare club which as you could guess was a gathering of students in the combat-related courses to practice large scale group combat. Most of the people in my class were also interested in this one as we were all part of the knight course. My friends and I were most likely going to join it as while we were experienced in one-on-one duels often battles and wars involve large scale conflicts. The experience we could gain here was invulnerable.

The seconds one we visited surprisingly was not a combat-related club or society. If I had to put a name to it, I would call it a petting zoo, but they apparently called it the club for the weary student. I can understand where they are coming from with all the fluffy and cute animals and magic beasts, but surely, they could have come up with a better name. While I might not join as a member of the club, I could definitely see myself visiting it often.

Moving onto the next destination we arrived at combat-related society, which was the hunting society. While it had many members the society was only active once a month as they usually had to travel around and it often involved staying overnight. So, their activities were limited to weekends as to not clash with classes.

I preferred sleeping in a comfy bed than to going out and sleeping rough, so this one was not for me, but Chandre who was fond of hunting and the great outdoors was sure to join. I may go with her and keep her company, but I was still undecided. The same was true with the other girls.

The last one we visited was not a real club, but the student council which oversaw promoting student welfare and hosting large scale activities. The current president was an easy-going girl in her late teens, by the name of Amelia. She explained that if we ever wanted something that the academy was missing, we could always come to the student council, and they can try to make it possible. She also encouraged us to join the student council if we did not want to join a club, even if we did, we could still be on the council while being in a club. I think I would pass on this one it did not seem like my kind of gig.

We finally headed back into our homeroom after walking around all afternoon. Here Ian told us to elect two class representatives, he explained that anyone can nominate themselves or someone else. I could already see myself being pushed into the position and boy was I right.