I woke up and it was still dark outside. “It feels a bit chilly…” I thought as I forced myself to get out of bed. I looked at my Interface and saw it was 6:20am. “Not early enough to go back to sleep, but John is probably asleep and I don’t feel like getting breakfast alone.”

  Looking down at the floor as I swung my feet out of bed, I saw the pile of laundry and decided that I have to figure out where to do the laundry today as I was officially out of clean underwear.

  “Early mornings do usually mean longer showers, though” I said to myself happily as I grabbed my towel and soap to head to the bathroom. On the way, I saw another boy coming out of the bathroom and figured that this was as good of a time as any to ask them if they knew the vast secrets of laundry at the academy.

  “Good morning!” I said with the most cheerful tone I could muster as some of my first words of the day.

  “Good day.” The boy said with a curt nod and he continued to walk past me.

  “Hey, do you happen to know where to do laundry? I am finally starting to run low on some of my clean clothes and could use some help finding where to wash and dry them. Do you know if the academy has a facility for that?” I asked.

  The boy scoffed, “Laundry? Who do you take me as? A commoner who does their own laundry? Ha! All of my clothes have self cleaning runes inscribed and anything that doesn’t I just throw away after it has been sullied. How about you ask another one of your commoner friends from the villages in the boonies of the kingdom how to do the laundry. Truly disgusting.” He said as he continued down the hallway to his room.

  “Are you serious?” I asked out loud to nobody as I just stood in the hallway in front of the bathroom, dumbstruck and still waiting for the punchline of the joke, but in the next few seconds, I realized it wasn’t a joke. “That guy was actually serious, wow…” I said under my breath as I walked into the bathroom and into the shower.

  After a long shower, the irritation from my first encounter with a noble had lessened, but was still nagging on me. “All I asked was about some laundry and that is how they treated me? He didn’t even give me a chance to speak and just belittled me and anyone that didn’t have enough money for expensive self cleaning clothes. If this is how the nobility act, I don’t know how I could get along with them. I think I would have preferred if they had just ignored me altogether…”

  Looking at my Interface, it was 7:01am so I knocked on John’s door and waited. He didn’t come to the door right away, as he was still sleeping. When he did eventually open his door he greeted me with bleary eyes, “Jude, what’s up man?”

  “I just wanted to get breakfast. It is the first day of classes and I figured the more time we had before the official school day goes, the better.”

  “Alright, just give me a minute.” John said and he quickly got changed and headed down to the cafeteria.

  It was already pretty busy as everyone at the Acacia Academy received their schedules of classes and the year was kicking off today. The queue for breakfast was moderately long and it looked like eggs, bacon and toast, with an option of some bizarre looking fruit I hadn’t seen before.

  John and I both decided to try it. Neither of us knew how to eat it or what it was, but when we sat down, John asked a girl that was two seats over from us. “Oh, you’ve never seen one before? They’re from one of the southern kingdoms, that is a brindlefruit. You can cut it up or eat it like an apple. Try it!” she said with a thumbs up at us before returning to her own conversation and breakfast.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  I lifted up the brindlefruit and looked at it closer. It was smaller than a normal apple, while having a shiny skin and yellow color. I took a bite and it tasted like tea sweetened with sugar with a little vanilla. It wasn’t nearly as sweet as I expected, but it was refreshing and it had a nice crunch. Looking inside where I bit, there were a few seeds, so I just spit them onto my plate because I didn’t know if they were good or not to eat.

  “I think I give the brindlefruit a six out of ten, but not bad!” John said and I agreed with that. Definitely a fruit we’d have to try again.

  “John, we have to figure out where these rooms are so we aren’t late, I do not want to get stuck embarrassing ourselves again.” I said

  “We showed up to the evaluations with plenty of time, don’t sweat it Jude. Let’s just relax and enjoy our first real day of school.”

  Time ticked away as we chatted more. I shared with John about how much that noble boy I spoke with this morning rubbed me the wrong way and I was interested to hear what John thought.

  “I wouldn’t worry about it Jude. We still have a lot to learn and if we let people’s attitudes get to us, we won’t be able to enjoy the opportunity we have here. You’ll probably hardly see the guy, so just put it out of your mind and let’s have fun learning all this new stuff.

  John was always good at not overcomplicating things. I get into my head so easily about things like this and it eats up my thinking. “He’s right.” I thought, “I need to put that guy out of my head and just enjoy the day.”

  We talked a bit more and I figured out that there was a place to do laundry that was right next to Bartley’s supply room and there were multiple runic containers that didn’t even have to wash the clothes, they simply removed the dirt, filth and smells from them. It was almost instantaneous, but it did not repair any wear or tear on anything. That would require a self repair rune on the equipment or clothes, which were quite pricey.

  “At least I can finally do my laundry.” I said to John as we both laughed about my cursed laundry pile and headed outside since we still had some time before our first class.

  The morning air was brisk and fresh. It was a bit foggy, but the sunshine was starting to melt it away and you could see the rainbow coloring of the Grand Seal above.

  “Whenever I look at the Grand Seal, it just fills me with wonder. It amazes me that something so beautiful holds back something so terrible. I can’t imagine what it would be like for any of the seals to fail.” I said with awe.

  “It is pretty cool, I sometimes can’t believe that it is actually holding back hordes of monsters from the Twisted Realms. I don’t really know how it all works, but I am sure we’ll learn more about it this year.” John said and I nodded.

  We walked around the grounds of the academy for a bit before going back inside and finding a slate, going to the map and finding the exact room again. “Room 101… Alright, yeah. It is on the ground level and… it is right next to the auditorium, that isn’t too hard to find.” John said.

  As we arrived to Room 101, we stepped in and I looked at my Interface: 8:50am. “Pretty good, ten minutes early.” I said to John as we looked at the room. It was about half the size as the auditorium and had tiered seating that went higher as you went further back in the room to give everyone a good view of the large slate and teaching area on the ground in the middle of the room.

  There were plenty of seats open as we were still ten minutes early. We sat in the middle of the room to be able to have a good view, still not really sure what to expect. About five minutes later the whole room began to fill with other first years and then the instructor walked in. The class schedules from the slates didn’t show who taught which class, so it was a surprise when Angelina Brook, the same lady that gave the big welcome assembly, stood up at the podium and addressed the class.

  “Good morning class. I see from some surprised looks, many of you didn’t expect me to be the instructor for this class, but being one of the highest leveled individuals in the kingdom and at this academy, who else would be better to teach you about the Interface? My name is Angelina Brook, but you will refer to me as Instructor Brook or Provost Brook.” she said with an authority that had the entire class silent.

  “This is a required class for all first years and with it being Introduction to The Interface, I plan on giving you an introduction and more. Part of that is explaining what we know so far about the Interface, what history has shown and from my personal journey, what the Interface is.”

  “As you all know to some extent, the Architect gave us the Interface to allow us to be able to use the Mana from the Seed of Creation, which is essentially the Architect’s power. The power given enables every human to have miraculous abilities to grow in power and help us conquer the Twisted Realms and rectify the mistakes humanity made many, many years ago. The Interface gives you a quantification to understand and build towards strength. This strength increases by using these Architect given abilities in creative ways, learning, and by defeating monsters. These monsters, as you know, seep through the seals constantly, but the Grand Seal keeps the worst of it all within the Twisted Realms.”

  “The goal of this class is to help you understand how to grow, how to use your Interface in creative ways and as a way for me to share my personal experiences of hundreds of years and battles with you.” she said with a slight smile.

  John and I looked at each other with wide eyes, ready for whatever she could tell us.