The first day of class was not a fairly good representation of how the courses would progress over the rest of the month.
Two weeks in and we were being completely swamped with work. If you weren’t spending every waking moment out of class focusing on learning more about your courses then you were at a complete loss.
The only course I wasn’t having particular problems with was Alchemical Understanding.
The pace throughout was fairly relaxed. Mainly because there wasn’t some specific end goal the instructor was trying to reach. The other two courses I was in were rapidly spewing out assignments. Paper after paper where I was expected to explain and fully understand the scopes of the lessons. If I didn’t have [Parallel Minds] I was certain I would have fallen behind a long time ago.
As it was, I was considering removing the binding on the back of the textbook so that I could spread out the pages of the entire textbook which would allow me to read more than two pages at a time.
The topics in Beginners Magical Application were very quickly getting more difficult to comprehend, mainly because the assignments quickly compounded on themselves.
At the end of classes, Instructor Tera would assign around three assignments. Each one would build into the next assignment, meaning you’d have to fully understand the first assignment to be able to understand the next one, and so on.
For example, we’d have to write a five-page paper on ‘Apphia’s Three Theories.’ Those three theories would then build into understanding how exactly an electric-based class can accelerate charges to essentially create different forms of vision.
By the way, that was a ten-page paper. Thankfully it was assigned over the weekend. Also on that topic, accelerating electric charges is also known as an electromagnetic wave, which is an advanced level of physics I never even got into on Earth. This is no longer a beginner-level class, once we start getting into figuring out how to create x-ray vision just by manipulating electric charges we’ve officially stepped out of learning basic understanding and moved on to the absurd.
On the other hand, this was the exact kind of stuff I was wanting to learn. It just so coincidentally applied more to me than to other people given that I had an electricity-based class. If I could figure it out, I could possibly start seeing through walls and stuff. Definitely something I’d need to practice at, maybe I could talk with Tera a bit and see if she had any insight into how to go about doing so.
While in the classes I took to heart what Katherine had said and actually spent time looking around at the people that I shared classes with. No one was really looking at me like I had initially thought they were, or at least if they did, it was nothing more than a quick glance that didn’t hold any inherent meaning.
Beginner’s Magical Application was predominantly human. Most of them looked like they were probably fighters and frontline tanks rather than mages, which is probably why they were in this class to start with.
In my other two courses, it was a diverse population. As Katherine had said, there were all sorts of races in the rooms. I wasn’t sure how many people of exotic races that they had here in the organization, but overall it couldn’t be that many.
A huge chunk of the people I walked by in the compound didn’t wear helmets or face coverings of any kind, and they were predominantly human. Very few openly displayed that they were a race other than human.
Whether that was because there was an open level of prejudice against anyone not human or for some other reason, I wasn’t sure. I hadn’t heard of humans being particularly rude to other races, but that wasn’t the kind of thing you would hear about unless you were in the circles that were being ostracized.
I guess I was an example of such a situation, but I didn’t believe I was exactly the normal for this kind of situation. If what Ili’kithari said could be taken at face value, people were rude to me, not because they genuinely didn’t like me but because the gods and goddesses of this world wanted to make sure that any scheme of Ili’kithari’s didn’t make it anywhere by forcing the races of the world to work against her and her people.
I was deep in thought as I walked back to my room. It was unlikely that Adrian would be there, he was fairly popular with people. Very outspoken and just friendly, and despite his ditzy demeanor he was actually fairly intelligent and diligent.
So he ended up having lots of friends that he spent time with. Not that I minded, it basically left our room empty a lot of the time so I generally had it to myself. I wasn’t necessarily used to sharing things, being an only child, so this worked out for my preferences.
I made it back to the room and opened the front door and had to do a double take because there was something pinned to it.
It was a pair of letters that had both of our names on them. One for him and one for me.
I pulled them off and went inside, I set Adrian’s down on his desk on top of the papers and assignments he had left scattered there.
I sat down at my desk and put down my books with my own assortment of papers and leaned back in the chair as I unfolded the letter.
Alexander,
The designations for teams have been assigned. This letter is to inform you of your assignment to Team 72.
There is a scheduled meeting with your team Saturday at 8:00 AM in training room 31.
Your team leader, as assigned by faculty, is Leathine.
Any questions or concerns should be directed to your appointed advisor.
Huh.
The letter ended fairly abruptly, but I didn’t really blame them considering they probably had to write several hundred of these, if not over a thousand of them. Who knows how many people they even had working on these in the first place?
I assumed Adrian’s letter was the same, letting him know the who, what, when, where, and why of the situation like mine had. Although I was still under the assumption that they were grooming him to be a team leader, so he probably differed from mine in that regard.
I was fairly tempted to look at his to see if I was right, but I decided against it in the end.
Invasion of privacy was not something I was particularly interested in doing. I didn’t want to end up getting caught and finding out what the punishments were for such a thing. Although I doubted Adrian would actually push anything, hell, he’d probably just show me if I asked.
I probably would.
He wasn’t usually back to our room until late, so it would be a while before I’d even get the chance to ask him. In the meantime, I decided I’d probably start knocking out these assignments.
As the weeks went on, I spent less and less time actually training my skills, [Parallel Minds] was the only reason I was even able to stay on top of my work. The multi-tasking functionality and the ability to conjoin the minds to be able to essentially think harder allowed me to complete assignments that normally would’ve been beyond my capabilities at the pace we were supposed to be learning.
Don’t ask me how that worked. I still wasn’t entirely sure how the skill worked, it just did. And I wasn’t complaining about that.
I poured all of my minds into the assignments I had. Tomorrow a paper was due for Beginners Magical Application, a relatively small assignment before the big one Tera would assign for the weekend.
I also received a few in-depth assignments from both World History and Alchemical Understanding. Those were a lot easier to parse though, mainly because the answers were explicitly listed in the books, so it was mainly just knowing where to find the answers with the occasional critical thinking question. They were usually in the form of a ‘what if’ question, so that took about zero effort for me.
I worked on all three assignments simultaneously by making use of my wood manipulation. I had managed to acquire a few extra thinnels by talking to Katherine who had then directed me to the surplus quarters. Which conveniently happened to be located in the same building on the first floor tucked away into the northeast corner of the building.
The unfortunate side of this was that they weren’t free, I ended up having to pay a few silver for the three extra I had purchased, leaving me with four in total. The fourth one was a spare on the off chance that I lost any of them and needed a quick replacement.
On Earth I’d had an especially bad time with misplacing my writing utensils, hopefully, I’d be able to kick that habit here.
Thankfully, it didn’t take me long to complete my BMA assignment and make decent headway on the other two. I stood up from my chair, letting my thinnels come to rest on the desk next to the papers they’d been working on.
I had plans today, I was heading towards the library.
I’d been there a few times for class-related reasons. Either to take a look at a book the professor had suggested or just because it was a fairly decent place to study whenever Adrian was in the room. For whatever reason I struggled to study in the same room as him.
This time though, I was going purely for self-interest. There have been a few things I’ve been curious about during my time here in Kelthas, and I wanted to try and get to the bottom of some of them.
A few of them had to do with class options, maybe there would be an index of classes and their requirements to get them with insight into each of the classes and potential skills to acquire.
Insight on how to develop my classes was always welcome, especially when it was well-documented and I could cross-reference the data to actually make sure it was a good idea.
Another thing I was curious about was how far I could take [Electric Manipulation], several thoughts I’d had was manipulating impulse controls. To move your body, you first had to have the thought of how you wanted to move and then your body would send an electrical signal, from the brain, down your body to the muscles necessary to move your body in the way that you wanted to.
My hope was that I could completely cut out the travel time and instead make my movements and reactions happen at the speed of thought by manipulating those signals and just manifesting them where they needed to be.
I wasn’t necessarily interested in trying this without looking into it though, the last thing I needed to do was kill myself or destroy my leg or something by not being careful. No, I’d take this slow and do proper research before jumping into this.
There was no rush for me to acquire skills like this, I had plenty of time.
There were many ways this could eventually go, at the upper ends of control and power I could dissolve the electrical fields that held atoms together, functionally disintegrating things into their useless base counterparts.
On the further, darker side, of the applications I could control someone’s entire body and even their thoughts.
The very thought of doing that to someone made me feel nauseous. I’d had my entire body thoroughly dominated by Lurks’ power, I wasn’t interested in doing the same to anyone else. In fact, what I’d be able to do would be even worse. Lurks hadn’t been able to force me to think things.
Not without mentally breaking me and subjecting me to Stockholm syndrome. I would be able to completely rewrite someone’s memory. I could make them think whatever I wanted, I could make them even like what I was doing to them.
I immediately came to a stop and pressed a hand against the wall to steady myself, it felt like the entire world around me was spinning. It took everything I had not to throw up the food I had eaten for lunch.
I stayed like that for a moment and took several long, deep breaths to steady myself.
“Alex, you alright man?”
I looked up to see Adrian and the gaggle of people he was surrounded by. He had a look of genuine concern on his face as he rested his hand on my shoulder comfortingly.
The self-conscious side of me hated being seen by a bunch of people in such a vulnerable state. I knew that Adrian meant well, I didn’t know if that was the case with everyone else, however.
It took me a moment of staring before I realized I hadn’t responded, the world slowly stopped spinning, my stomach along with it, and I managed to calm down and not end up hyperventilating.
I nodded, “I’m fine, thanks.”
I gave him a pat on the shoulder as I moved past him, I didn’t want to linger. I hated the way their eyes watched me, the seemingly faux pity and concern. They thought that I was possibly just doing this for attention, or that I was just overreacting to something.
They didn’t know what it was like, they didn’t understand.
Very few people understood what it was like. The absolute authority and power she held over me.
I could fully rewrite someone’s mind with the level of power I was aiming for. Lurks didn’t even need that though. Her pure skill and technique in what she did had been elevated to the highest levels.
She could make you adore her and worship her with minimal effort. And she used that capability to break you.
I hated it. The worst part is that it had worked. It had worked really fucking well.
To a degree, I had loved her. I adored her, I had felt safe with her, despite everything she had done to me. Even now there were still moments where I could hear her whispering in my ears, still moments where I thought I felt her touch.
I swallowed deeply and split my minds and immediately began trying to attack those thoughts, to bury them underneath a wave of side-tracked thoughts and irrelevant tangents on various subjects.
It worked to a degree and it slowly moved my thoughts away from the spiraling pit of self-destructive thoughts I was heading down.
From what little I knew about psychology from back on Earth, I was pretty sure there were some traumas that just never fully healed. Some that you never quite got over. I wasn’t sure what the breaking point for that was.
I wasn’t sure if I’d ever recover from what she did to me.
The worst part?
Sometimes, I worried that I didn’t want to.
The first day of class was not a fairly good representation of how the courses would progress over the rest of the month.
Two weeks in and we were being completely swamped with work. If you weren’t spending every waking moment out of class focusing on learning more about your courses then you were at a complete loss.
The only course I wasn’t having particular problems with was Alchemical Understanding.
The pace throughout was fairly relaxed. Mainly because there wasn’t some specific end goal the instructor was trying to reach. The other two courses I was in were rapidly spewing out assignments. Paper after paper where I was expected to explain and fully understand the scopes of the lessons. If I didn’t have [Parallel Minds] I was certain I would have fallen behind a long time ago.
As it was, I was considering removing the binding on the back of the textbook so that I could spread out the pages of the entire textbook which would allow me to read more than two pages at a time.
The topics in Beginners Magical Application were very quickly getting more difficult to comprehend, mainly because the assignments quickly compounded on themselves.
At the end of classes, Instructor Tera would assign around three assignments. Each one would build into the next assignment, meaning you’d have to fully understand the first assignment to be able to understand the next one, and so on.
For example, we’d have to write a five-page paper on ‘Apphia’s Three Theories.’ Those three theories would then build into understanding how exactly an electric-based class can accelerate charges to essentially create different forms of vision.
By the way, that was a ten-page paper. Thankfully it was assigned over the weekend. Also on that topic, accelerating electric charges is also known as an electromagnetic wave, which is an advanced level of physics I never even got into on Earth. This is no longer a beginner-level class, once we start getting into figuring out how to create x-ray vision just by manipulating electric charges we’ve officially stepped out of learning basic understanding and moved on to the absurd.
On the other hand, this was the exact kind of stuff I was wanting to learn. It just so coincidentally applied more to me than to other people given that I had an electricity-based class. If I could figure it out, I could possibly start seeing through walls and stuff. Definitely something I’d need to practice at, maybe I could talk with Tera a bit and see if she had any insight into how to go about doing so.
While in the classes I took to heart what Katherine had said and actually spent time looking around at the people that I shared classes with. No one was really looking at me like I had initially thought they were, or at least if they did, it was nothing more than a quick glance that didn’t hold any inherent meaning.
Beginner’s Magical Application was predominantly human. Most of them looked like they were probably fighters and frontline tanks rather than mages, which is probably why they were in this class to start with.
In my other two courses, it was a diverse population. As Katherine had said, there were all sorts of races in the rooms. I wasn’t sure how many people of exotic races that they had here in the organization, but overall it couldn’t be that many.
A huge chunk of the people I walked by in the compound didn’t wear helmets or face coverings of any kind, and they were predominantly human. Very few openly displayed that they were a race other than human.
Whether that was because there was an open level of prejudice against anyone not human or for some other reason, I wasn’t sure. I hadn’t heard of humans being particularly rude to other races, but that wasn’t the kind of thing you would hear about unless you were in the circles that were being ostracized.
I guess I was an example of such a situation, but I didn’t believe I was exactly the normal for this kind of situation. If what Ili’kithari said could be taken at face value, people were rude to me, not because they genuinely didn’t like me but because the gods and goddesses of this world wanted to make sure that any scheme of Ili’kithari’s didn’t make it anywhere by forcing the races of the world to work against her and her people.
I was deep in thought as I walked back to my room. It was unlikely that Adrian would be there, he was fairly popular with people. Very outspoken and just friendly, and despite his ditzy demeanor he was actually fairly intelligent and diligent.
So he ended up having lots of friends that he spent time with. Not that I minded, it basically left our room empty a lot of the time so I generally had it to myself. I wasn’t necessarily used to sharing things, being an only child, so this worked out for my preferences.
I made it back to the room and opened the front door and had to do a double take because there was something pinned to it.
It was a pair of letters that had both of our names on them. One for him and one for me.
I pulled them off and went inside, I set Adrian’s down on his desk on top of the papers and assignments he had left scattered there.
I sat down at my desk and put down my books with my own assortment of papers and leaned back in the chair as I unfolded the letter.
Alexander,
The designations for teams have been assigned. This letter is to inform you of your assignment to Team 72.
There is a scheduled meeting with your team Saturday at 8:00 AM in training room 31.
Your team leader, as assigned by faculty, is Leathine.
Any questions or concerns should be directed to your appointed advisor.
Huh.
The letter ended fairly abruptly, but I didn’t really blame them considering they probably had to write several hundred of these, if not over a thousand of them. Who knows how many people they even had working on these in the first place?
I assumed Adrian’s letter was the same, letting him know the who, what, when, where, and why of the situation like mine had. Although I was still under the assumption that they were grooming him to be a team leader, so he probably differed from mine in that regard.
I was fairly tempted to look at his to see if I was right, but I decided against it in the end.
Invasion of privacy was not something I was particularly interested in doing. I didn’t want to end up getting caught and finding out what the punishments were for such a thing. Although I doubted Adrian would actually push anything, hell, he’d probably just show me if I asked.
I probably would.
He wasn’t usually back to our room until late, so it would be a while before I’d even get the chance to ask him. In the meantime, I decided I’d probably start knocking out these assignments.
As the weeks went on, I spent less and less time actually training my skills, [Parallel Minds] was the only reason I was even able to stay on top of my work. The multi-tasking functionality and the ability to conjoin the minds to be able to essentially think harder allowed me to complete assignments that normally would’ve been beyond my capabilities at the pace we were supposed to be learning.
Don’t ask me how that worked. I still wasn’t entirely sure how the skill worked, it just did. And I wasn’t complaining about that.
I poured all of my minds into the assignments I had. Tomorrow a paper was due for Beginners Magical Application, a relatively small assignment before the big one Tera would assign for the weekend.
I also received a few in-depth assignments from both World History and Alchemical Understanding. Those were a lot easier to parse though, mainly because the answers were explicitly listed in the books, so it was mainly just knowing where to find the answers with the occasional critical thinking question. They were usually in the form of a ‘what if’ question, so that took about zero effort for me.
I worked on all three assignments simultaneously by making use of my wood manipulation. I had managed to acquire a few extra thinnels by talking to Katherine who had then directed me to the surplus quarters. Which conveniently happened to be located in the same building on the first floor tucked away into the northeast corner of the building.
The unfortunate side of this was that they weren’t free, I ended up having to pay a few silver for the three extra I had purchased, leaving me with four in total. The fourth one was a spare on the off chance that I lost any of them and needed a quick replacement.
On Earth I’d had an especially bad time with misplacing my writing utensils, hopefully, I’d be able to kick that habit here.
Thankfully, it didn’t take me long to complete my BMA assignment and make decent headway on the other two. I stood up from my chair, letting my thinnels come to rest on the desk next to the papers they’d been working on.
I had plans today, I was heading towards the library.
I’d been there a few times for class-related reasons. Either to take a look at a book the professor had suggested or just because it was a fairly decent place to study whenever Adrian was in the room. For whatever reason I struggled to study in the same room as him.
This time though, I was going purely for self-interest. There have been a few things I’ve been curious about during my time here in Kelthas, and I wanted to try and get to the bottom of some of them.
A few of them had to do with class options, maybe there would be an index of classes and their requirements to get them with insight into each of the classes and potential skills to acquire.
Insight on how to develop my classes was always welcome, especially when it was well-documented and I could cross-reference the data to actually make sure it was a good idea.
Another thing I was curious about was how far I could take [Electric Manipulation], several thoughts I’d had was manipulating impulse controls. To move your body, you first had to have the thought of how you wanted to move and then your body would send an electrical signal, from the brain, down your body to the muscles necessary to move your body in the way that you wanted to.
My hope was that I could completely cut out the travel time and instead make my movements and reactions happen at the speed of thought by manipulating those signals and just manifesting them where they needed to be.
I wasn’t necessarily interested in trying this without looking into it though, the last thing I needed to do was kill myself or destroy my leg or something by not being careful. No, I’d take this slow and do proper research before jumping into this.
There was no rush for me to acquire skills like this, I had plenty of time.
There were many ways this could eventually go, at the upper ends of control and power I could dissolve the electrical fields that held atoms together, functionally disintegrating things into their useless base counterparts.
On the further, darker side, of the applications I could control someone’s entire body and even their thoughts.
The very thought of doing that to someone made me feel nauseous. I’d had my entire body thoroughly dominated by Lurks’ power, I wasn’t interested in doing the same to anyone else. In fact, what I’d be able to do would be even worse. Lurks hadn’t been able to force me to think things.
Not without mentally breaking me and subjecting me to Stockholm syndrome. I would be able to completely rewrite someone’s memory. I could make them think whatever I wanted, I could make them even like what I was doing to them.
I immediately came to a stop and pressed a hand against the wall to steady myself, it felt like the entire world around me was spinning. It took everything I had not to throw up the food I had eaten for lunch.
I stayed like that for a moment and took several long, deep breaths to steady myself.
“Alex, you alright man?”
I looked up to see Adrian and the gaggle of people he was surrounded by. He had a look of genuine concern on his face as he rested his hand on my shoulder comfortingly.
The self-conscious side of me hated being seen by a bunch of people in such a vulnerable state. I knew that Adrian meant well, I didn’t know if that was the case with everyone else, however.
It took me a moment of staring before I realized I hadn’t responded, the world slowly stopped spinning, my stomach along with it, and I managed to calm down and not end up hyperventilating.
I nodded, “I’m fine, thanks.”
I gave him a pat on the shoulder as I moved past him, I didn’t want to linger. I hated the way their eyes watched me, the seemingly faux pity and concern. They thought that I was possibly just doing this for attention, or that I was just overreacting to something.
They didn’t know what it was like, they didn’t understand.
Very few people understood what it was like. The absolute authority and power she held over me.
I could fully rewrite someone’s mind with the level of power I was aiming for. Lurks didn’t even need that though. Her pure skill and technique in what she did had been elevated to the highest levels.
She could make you adore her and worship her with minimal effort. And she used that capability to break you.
I hated it. The worst part is that it had worked. It had worked really fucking well.
To a degree, I had loved her. I adored her, I had felt safe with her, despite everything she had done to me. Even now there were still moments where I could hear her whispering in my ears, still moments where I thought I felt her touch.
I swallowed deeply and split my minds and immediately began trying to attack those thoughts, to bury them underneath a wave of side-tracked thoughts and irrelevant tangents on various subjects.
It worked to a degree and it slowly moved my thoughts away from the spiraling pit of self-destructive thoughts I was heading down.
From what little I knew about psychology from back on Earth, I was pretty sure there were some traumas that just never fully healed. Some that you never quite got over. I wasn’t sure what the breaking point for that was.
I wasn’t sure if I’d ever recover from what she did to me.
The worst part?
Sometimes, I worried that I didn’t want to.
