After Selenne quit the Landsknecht and performed a dine-and-dash, poor Lucian had to foot the bill. Bena and Thomas said they could pay a portion (not very convincingly, though), but Lucian declined. He said he would pay after his sister ran out like that.

  It was a bit of a bummer that Selenne left. Not only did she seem knowledgeable about the academy, but she was strong. Viviana would freely admit Selenne was stronger than her– she had only won because Selenne was taking her seriously. If she fought all out from the beginning, she would have lost.

  But with soulbound weapons?

  In any case, Selenne’s departure made sense. Why associate with Viviana? The shamed child of the greatest guild?

  Bena and Thomas stayed, a part of her brain said. A more cynical part spoke as well. They’re weak, and need to stick with someone strong. Selenne had no reason to stay.

  What was strange was Lucian. Viviana thought he would join his sister, but she guessed wrong. Lucian was sticking with them– even abandoning the teammates he had during orientation. She asked him about that, and he only responded: “They turned out to be assholes.”

  Lucian wasn’t staying fully willingly, though. Turns out his sister blocked him and the rest of Landsknecht. She cut ties, just like that. Viviana could tell Lucian was depressed. But there was no time to mope about it.

  First, they had to find somewhere to stay. A quick search in the academy app found two rooms in an abandoned building, tucked away in a corner of the campus.

  They found the place just in time, too. The academy app notified them that they had to move their stuff out of the rooms they used for orientation. Those were only free for a time, and now they had to pay to stay– a price they couldn’t afford.

  “How is this fair?!” Bena exclaimed, lugging a rucksack that was twice her size. She looked like a snail. “They should’ve given us some money! We ranked so high! This just favours the stupid rich kids, and our resident rich kid is broker than all of us!”

  Thomas shook his head. “...I don’t think it's supposed to be fair. In a sense, we’re all… reborn, into the academy. Whether you’re born into riches or not doesn't depend on merit… just luck.”

  Bena stomped her feet. “I’m not even broke! I just told my parents I didn’t need a lot of money, so I sent it back!”

  Thomas shook his head. “I’m broke.”

  Lucian nodded. “Same.”

  After a good minute of walking, they finally found the abandoned building. They had already paid for the two rooms on the academy app, sending the funds into the void. Thomas had said scams were very rare in the academy due to the fear of the guilds.

  The building was built like a storefront with an attached office space at the top. It clearly wasn’t meant for residential housing. The exterior was covered in a layer of grime, and the outside lights were flickering. It looked like the set of a horror film.

  “Well, this is it!” Bena said. “Home! You think we’ll find the key under the door mat?”

  “... we better,” Thomas said. “There’s no way they’d scam us… for this junk…”

  Despite Thomas’s quiet assurances, the group couldn’t help but hold a breath as Bena lifted the decaying welcome mat. A key was there.

  “Woah. I didn’t know mechanical locks still existed!” Bena said, marvelling at the key like it was some sort of ancient artifact.

  Thomas nodded. “Everything uses bioscans now.”

  Viviana snuck a peak, a little curious. She was from a rich family. They did not use physical keys.

  Bena inserted the key and twisted it back and forth to no avail. Lucian stepped forth and helped her, unlocking it in one try.

  Bena pushed open the door, nearly slamming it off its hinges. What greeted them wasn’t much better than the outside. Dust lined the ground and entranceway. A musty room, presumably for the storefront display, branched off to one side while another door led up a set of stairs.

  “Well, our rooms are on the second floor,” Lucian said.

  Reluctantly the group walked up the stairs. One of them cracked under Lucian’s weight. The Landsknecht looked at each other. They collectively decided to ignore it.

  The stairs lead into a dingy hallway. On one side were two rooms. With reluctance they opened the doors with keys they found on the floor.

  The group looked at the splendid choices in front of them. The two rooms were more storage closets than anything. No furniture save for a pile of unused office chairs in one room and a large meeting table in the other.

  “I want the chair room,” Viviana said.

  Thomas and Lucian shrugged. They would get the meeting table room, then. Bena and Viviana would get the room full of chairs.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  They unpacked their stuff quickly. Bena opted to construct a fort out of the chairs, angling them this way and that to make a somewhat private area. A squirrel nest, Viviana thought.

  She followed suit. Her family had packed her bags (aside from her clothes, which she did herself), and she was pleased to find ample bedding. There are perks to being Adler-Stern, I guess. Even an exiled one.

  There was no bed in the room, so she removed a bunch of chair cushions and laid them out on the floor. She placed her bed sheets on top. It was comfortable enough. She laid down and stared at the ceiling as she rested and thought.

  This sucks. This place only has a communal shower. Communal washroom. No bidets. Horrible.

  Viviana checked her phone again, still not over the complete lack of funds. Normally it’d have a half a dozen or so zeros, not just one.

  Half a day of being broke and I already hate it. She snapped upwards to her feet. I’ve got to make some money. What did Selenne say? Get employed by a guild?

  Viviana didn’t want to be their employee. Not it mattered. As an exiled Adler-Stern, she knew she was unemployable anyways.

  It’s time to check out the dungeons.

  Terrarium four was used exclusively for orientation, but now that it was over, the guilds of the academy were scrambling to take foot in there. Terrarium four was relatively safe during orientation because the proctors contained the dungeon that supplied it, but now that they weren’t systematically culling the dungeon mob population, terrarium four got much, much more dangerous. It was like an entirely different ecosystem.

  This meant that the calmest terrarium was terrarium one. It was where Landsknecht was headed now.

  The plan was simple– kill monsters and butcher their parts to sell on the academy market. Depending on the monster, they’d earn a decent amount of coins.

  Of course, the academy provided rate was low, but some monsters were rare and thus sought after by the guilds. Those were willing to bid on the loot.

  Viviana decided to go on her own, forgoing the backup from the group members. She was confident enough to take on anything that came her way, and working with a group would just make the experience count as [shared].

  Maybe that’s why Selenne left. Maybe it was just for the experience. With her strength, it’s definitely possible.

  She walked through the gentle, snowy meadows that were terrarium one. It was a white, idyllic area with rolling hills and a massive, frozen over lake. Above all else, it was cold.

  The combat jumpsuits the academy provided everyone regulated temperature well, but Viviana had to go back to her room and get a jacket when she first stepped foot in the terrarium.

  Viviana encountered her first monster after ten minutes of walking. An icy spider that spanned the size of a manhole cover. Viviana had no place to put a lightning sigil, so she placed one on the palm of her hand, just in case. She’d have to use her sword in one hand to avoid messing up the sigil, but it was a tradeoff she was willing to make.

  The spider leaped at her at a speed she wasn’t used to, forcing her to use [dash] backwards. She performed a downwards swing as the spider sailed through the air, bisecting it in two.

  [You have slain a level 2 Frost Spider.]

  [+1 exp]

  That was easy, she thought. She checked her surroundings for any other dangers, and finding none she pulled out her phone, placing one hand in a jacket pocket to warm it up. I need to buy gloves.

  Scrolling through the academy app she saw a listing that was buying frost spider parts. ‘Frostburst organ’. What’s that?

  Viviana looked down at the spider’s corpse as it began to glow. Then it exploded. Her vision went black.

  Then she woke up, finding herself lying face up, staring at the top of the terrarium dome. She groaned and pulled herself to her feet, finding herself standing in a five-meter wide blast zone of ice. The spider’s corpse was nowhere to be found.

  She shook her head, causing snow to fall out of her hair. Then, she checked her phone, finding it miraculously undamaged. Three hours had passed. It meant she died and came back on the spot.

  If the spiders explode, how am I supposed to collect their organs?

  There was still time in the day. She couldn’t come back without making some money.

  If we don’t make any money today, we’re going to starve!

  She trudged on.

  Occasionally she bumped into other students. They were all guild affiliated. None of them paid her much attention. A couple of them raised their phones, pointing their cameras at her. They’re scanning my rank.

  The academy app told you the rank of anybody you pointed it at. It was a convenient way of gauging a fellow student’s strength if they didn’t have ranking jackets on.

  Viviana wasn’t sure what to think of the ranking system. She had yet to see its usefulness. A couple of restaurants or fancier living conditions meant nothing to her. She needed to grasp real power to take down Adler-Stern.

  According to the ranking system, Viviana was weak. She was ranked 40880. That was lower ranked than more than forty thousand students. Yet Viviana knew she could kill a majority of the students she encountered with ease.

  No matter the case, the low rank meant that others were less likely to target her. The ranking system was based on how much mana you passively emanated. Increasing your experience points through the system increased the effect of your passive emanation.

  This meant that if the system wouldn’t grant experience points, then your rank wouldn’t improve. The ranking system told those students that Viviana was low ranked. Defeating her was unlikely to grant experience, so higher ranked students didn’t bother her.

  Soon enough she found another frost spider. This time, she had a plan. She placed another lightning sigil on her hand, and when it jumped at her she grabbed it. Its legs and mandibles bit into her arm, easily piercing the combat jumpsuit, but Viviana activated the lightning sigil anyways. Lightning coursed through the two combatants, and Viviana emerged victorious. The spider fell to the ground, limp.

  [You have slain a level 2 Frost Spider.]

  [+1 exp]

  She cut it open and dissected it, removing the lightly charred frost spider organ. She then placed it into a plastic bag and clipped it onto her belt system.

  That wasn’t too bad, actually. If I sell it for the academy value, I could make 3 coins. That's enough for half a bowl of noodles!