We’ve been shown the dorms, they look like a bunch of doors right next to each other, barely enough room for the walls to be between them. Neither I nor Grey were happy about this before we opened a room to see what’s inside. When you open the door it’s actually bigger on the inside, each room comes with a large bed and a chest. It’s apparently where you’re supposed to sleep and keep your valuables but nothing more, so even though it’s wider and longer than what it looks from the outside, it’s still pretty small. The bed was comfy and the chest was enough for my stuff, although aside from my new clothes, sword and shield there aren’t many things I can put there. Luxios said that when people really want to keep stuff safe they put it in a bag of holding. It's a unique bag that ,much like the room, is bigger on the inside, and can also reduce the perceived weight of things inside it. Since the guild master takes care of these and he’s ‘preoccupied’ they have to conserve them, or take them from somewhere else.

The rooms Grey and I got are a bit far apart, even though we’re the only new recruits the other rooms are reserved for some hunters who are out on a hunt right now, so we ended up five doors apart.

That was all yesterday. Right now we need to get dressed and go find Luxios, he said something about a lecture room but he forgot to tell us where.

Knock knock “Grey, are you awake?” I knock on his door, I think it’s better if we go together.

The door to my left opens and Grey comes out. “Fren, good morning!” I guess it was six doors apart, my mistake. “Are you alright?”

He looks like he didn’t have enough sleep, probably the excitement kept him up all night. “Yeah, uhh… I’m just a little tired. No morning training for me, alright?” He says and follows with a large yawn. I think this is the first time I ever saw Grey in plain clothes. I still know he’s a priest but he looks so different with shirt and pant’s instead of robes.

“Yeah, OK, but we still need breakfast, it should be free downstairs.”

Right now it feels more like a big inn rather than an adventuring guild. There are a few parties that woke up early for breakfast too. I’m happy I didn’t overdress, they all have plain clothes. Breakfast was mostly fried chicken and a salad. I didn’t expect much of a kitchen majoring in serving beer late at night to make a good breakfast.

“Hey, Fren, look at those two.” Grey points at a couple of guild members discussing their quest over the table. “Do you think we’re going to be like that soon?” He’s grinning thinking about it with a gleeful expression.

“Definitely not if we don’t finish our meals and skip morning training.”

“Damn it, Fren, why you gotta be so mean.” He becomes sour for a moment before finding something to say back to me. “Well, you can train for the both of us, I can finish both our meals.” He takes my plate, and laughs it off. We joke around a bit more, even though he looks kind of tired he’d never turn down an opportunity for a joke.

“It’s time to go to class.” He says… yeah, go to class.

I ‘m having a hard time pointing out what it is about class but it feels nostalgic, familiar in a way… I don’t know if I like the feeling I get from it or not but it’s definitely familiar. Maybe I’m also a bit tired like Grey. Anyway we head to the classroom where Luxios will give us a lesson, I don’t know precisely how long it would be, and since we’re the only new registries does it mean we’ll be alone in class? Apparently not because when we open the door it already has a few people inside.

The room is an auditorium with steps to go down to the desks and the lecturer’s desk at the bottom. Some seats are already taken by similar people, boys and girls of Grey’s age. It feels like we came a bit unprepared since everyone has more than just plain clothes, most came with weapons and those who didn’t at least brought some adventuring looking armor. Some of the others are looking at us with odd looks. Grey and I walk silently to an empty desk and sit down.

“Hey, I saw you guys eating downstairs, are you guys already adventurers?” One of the classmates asks us. Is that what they were wondering? I thought they looked at us odd because of our clothes, or at least because we’renew.

“No, we just came in yesterday. We didn’t know what to wear, so we came in this… should we go switch?”

“I don’t know, our guild told us to come prepared, we don’t know what to expect.” The boy replies, his mates next to him nod. I don’t really understand what he means, ‘our guild’.

“Name’s Delvin.” He leans in to shake my hand, he doesn’t look threatening. Black short hair, and a face a bit younger than Grey’s, yellowish brown eyes I notice those more often now after dealing with Ruby.

I shake his hand “Fren, and this is Gregory.” We introduce ourselves and exchange hello’s.

“Now now, you will all have time to introduce yourselves.” Luxios’s older voice takes everyone’s attention, he takes the steps down slowly while holding a hefty book. “I will start with introducing myself first, and the course. Only then will you say your name and guild in order.” He stops at the center of the auditorium stage and puts the book down on the teacher desk.

“My name is Lu Xiao, an elven name fitting of my ears and hair.” He writes his name on the chalk board behind him so that everyone can see. “Everyone calls me Luxios so feel free to call me that instead. I’m an F rank hunter, for those of you who know what that means, and I will be teaching this course to you to prepare you to become B rank hunters. We will learn about the bureaucracy of taking quests, the preparations, and have some combat training. We will also check your aptitude for magic and different weapons and techniques so those of you who prefer magic, don’t worry, you will only have to try out a sword for a little while.”

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

It’s all pretty understandable but I still don’t understand fully. He’s dumping a lot of information on us and it takes a while to process.

“This” He brandishes the book. “is the M lexicon, also known as other things in other guilds. It will have most of everything you need to know when facing a monster. It doesn’t have everything, you will need to go to the library to find books with more details on specifics, but this is a great book to have with you in the field.”

He puts it back on the table and takes some artifice and puts the book inside. And soon enough the cover of the book is projected from the artifice to the wall. “Always a problem with this thing.” Luxios struggles with the artifice and changes it to project toward the chalkboard. “There we go. You can see the book, right? Even the ones in the back? Good.”

We can even see Luxios’s hand turning the pages. He turns it to a page where we see a sketch of a wooden humanoid creature. Next to it is a sketch of a footprint. “This is a boggart. You can all read it right? It’s a creature. Here we see it says the recommended rank is D, that means not a single D rank hunter, but a D rank party. It states its habitat, weaknesses, strengths and behavior. It also gives a rough description…” Luxios goes on with the lesson.

“Fren, what’s habitat?” Grey whispers to me. I forget words are a bit harder for him.

“It’s where it lives, like it’s home.”

“Hey,” Delvin whispers to us. We’re we interrupting?

“I’m sorry.” I apologize.

“What guild are you guys from?”

“You’re restless, aren’t you?” Luxios notices us. “That’s right, I forgot to let everyone introduce each other. Let’s start right now. From left to right and top to bottom. Don’t be shy.” He points at each student and on his turn they say their name and… something else.

“Liscia Dukeham, From Iron Claw.”

“Meril Stern, From Iron Claw.”

“Arjun Nihal, From Three bards.”

“Eddy Frank, From Phoenix Flame.”

From where? Do they mean the village they came from? They move from one to another and finally.

“Delvin Steel, From Red Wings.”

It’s my turn to talk. “Gregory, right? You’re from our guild.”

“Actually, I’m Gregory.” Grey corrects him “Grey Engillian, Umm… Dragon Shifter?”

“So you’re Fren?” He asks me.

“Yes.”

“Fren What?” Fren what? What do you mean? I didn’t get a Surname… I don’t think Dali or Dan had a surname either.

“Umm… just Fren, sir. From Dragon shifter, I guess.”

“Don’t you have a family name?”

“He came from a village, they normally don’t have one.” Grey explains in my place.

“Right, from Duhndale, where Rodrick went. Next,” He points at the next person.

After everyone finished introducing themselves he continued the lesson. It was mostly an introduction to the M lexicon. Where everything is written, and how, and even why. It’s amazing that Hunters have such an in-depth book for all their needs, it is pretty thick though.

“Take a break, we’ll meet back at the yard outside when the bell rings, we’ll do some physical training routines. Take this chance to go to the library and check the M lexicon if you have any lingering questions.” Luxios desmisses the class and walks outside.

“I think we’ll need to go to the library, most of that class was above my head.” Grey had some trouble following everything, and the words he didn’t know sometimes proved to be barriers. I tried to explain most words he didn’t understand but I don’t know if it bridged all the gaps.

“You two were accepted to Dragon shifter?” Delvin comes to talk to us with his two friends after class. “I heard they didn’t accept anyone for a month at least. How did you manage that?”

“This guy had a referral form a guild member.” Grey point at me… It’s kind of embarrassing.

“I think they took Allous’s name more heavily though.”

“You two sure met a lot of people, huh? This is Darsh and Albi, if you missed it when we introduced ourselves. We’re from Red Wings, it’s a big guild in town.”

Darsh is a big boy to say the least, he looks massive, a buzzcut. Albi is a girl that looks similar to ruby in her build but with short hair and a bit of a mean uninterested face, reminds me of what Lisa looks like when she’s angry. Both have brown eyes, but I guess that’s less interesting.

“Why are there so many members from other guilds?” Grey asks, I wondered that too. At least I’m not alone in the dark about this.

“Dragon shifter is probably the most famous guild. Not because of the quests or the adventurers, but the quality of the training and also for its guild master being a shapeshifter. They normally have courses like these for new members from all sorts of guilds, they even built the standards. I wanted to join it, but they stopped taking new members when I did. Lucky for you that you made it through, I’m kind of jealous.” All three of the Red Wing recruits smile.

“If you’re worth it maybe we can spar in the physical training, we’re pretty strong so if you got accepted to Dragon Shifter, maybe you’ll be worth sparring against.” Darsh laughs, showing a bit of a competitive spirit if not a bit bragging about his size, when he grows up he might be the size of the bandit leader at the battle we had at Coppercamp.

“Sure, Fren here is amazingly strong, he’ll take you on.” Grey isn't much of a physical fighter, he punched a guy in the face once but I don’t think he’s much of a fighter, instead he sets me up to fight.

“I’d like to see that.” Darsh only finds more enthusiasm in fighting someone strong. Might be a bit argumentative.

“Anyway, I want to go to the library, I didn’t catch everything Luxios said. Do you guys want to come?” Grey invites Delvin and his friends, I wouldn't mind.

“We’re fine. Darsh might need something to punch outside, he loves fighting and I think you just riled him up. We can meet you at the training yard outside when you’re done.” Delvin leads them off, nice people all in all.

“Are you coming, Fren?” Grey beacons me, right, the library.

“Sure.” I follow him outside. “Do you know where it is?” I ask to find him dumbfounded. Did he forget he didn't know? He’s probably still really sleepy. “We’ll ask Clara.”