“One of the greatest strengths of the Interface is how linked it is to you. Many people do not customize their view and it can save you in a life or death situation… or make sure that you are on time. Raise your hand if you have integrated the time with your Interface." Instructor Brook looked around, seemingly impressed as most of the class had their hands up.
“Very impressive. Time may seem important for getting to class on time, it can also help you keep track of how much time has passed in a cavern or allow you to rendezvous with team members in a more organized way. It syncs everyone up. If you haven’t added the time to your Interface, look at the slate next to me and watch the time increase as you ‘will’ for the Interface to display it. It usually takes a minute or two before it works, but it will stay there unless, for whatever reason, you desire for it to be removed.” She waited patiently for the handful of students who were syncing up to the time to finish before continuing, “as many of you have already customized the Interface to show you a more redux version of your health, Mana, etc, did you also know you can ‘will’ for your Interface to alert you when it has also reached full levels again? Or that you can make it alert you when it has fallen incrementally. Let’s say you are using an ability and want to conserve your Mana for something, so you only want to use 30%. You can make the Interface bring your Mana level into focus when it gets to that point.”
She gave a big sigh and looked at all of us in the class for a moment before continuing, “not all of this is able to be clearly explained because I cannot control your Interface for you, you have to be the one to experiment and use it in some of the ways I am describing to establish these types of use cases. This class going forward will be more of an open format. Somedays, it will be an hour long, others it may be ten or fifteen minutes. It will also serve as a place to ask questions about Interface related things. It has only been about twenty minutes since we started today, but I want each of you to practice some of what we went over today and we will discuss tomorrow. Dismissed.” she said in a respectful, but slightly curt way before leaving the class.
“That was a bit abrupt.” I said to nobody in particular.
“Yeah, I was expecting an hour-long lecture or something, but I’m not gonna complain.” John said as we both moved to get up and leave the room. “We have some time to kill, what do you want to do Jude?”
“I think I want to actually do my laundry now that I have a little time, what are you going to do? We both have separate classes from each other until later this afternoon.” I said with a smile as the laundry had become a bit of a joke between us at this point.
“I’ll come with you and witness you actually doing it. Maybe we can practice some ideas for customizing the Interface to use for tomorrow while we wait.” John said and we headed back up the dormitories.
I grabbed my laundry and brought it down to the little laundry room next to Bartley’s. Infusing some Mana into the enchanted laundry device. It looked like a big stone box about as tall as me that had a door similar to a wardrobe. There was a bar going across the top to maybe hang things? It was hard to tell, so I just piled everything in on the bottom and shut the door and infused Mana into it. Looking at my Interface, it took a little more Mana than I expected.
“Fifteen percent of my Mana for the laundry John, a little more than I expected…”
He shrugged, “Well, it is cleaning everything inside and you don’t have to hang them up on the line to dry either.
“Good point!” I said with a grin and remembered that I could try and focus on my Interface to have it make me aware when it was back at full. I focused on each percentage point ticking up as my Mana filled back up, with my main desire for it to make it clear when it was filled.
Sure enough, I felt an intrinsic knowledge that it was full and the Mana section of the Interface was even bolded.
After sharing the expected result with John, he headed to his Warrior Ability Exploration class and it was time to head to my next class, Mage Ability Exploration.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
I brought my clothes back to my room before heading to the classroom, but it took a little longer, so I had to hustle a bit to not be late. I walked in with a minute to spare, but every seat was taken except for one. I looked and sitting next to the last open seat was that noble boy that shamed me about my laundry this morning.
“You have to be kidding me…” I thought to myself as I sat down. He looked at me, scoffed and pointedly looked away. A few moments later, the class began.
Lilla Cropper was the instructor and she introduced herself again, “As many of you remember, my name is Lilla, but you can call me Instructor Lilla or Instructor Lilla. I will not skirt around an obvious reality that I am younger than many of my peers here, but do not mistake that for a lack of expertise. I am a Mage with abilities that specialize in gravity, which forced me to find unique ways to utilize my abilities to be effective within a team and on the battlefield. Starting out, all I could do was make things slightly heavier or lighter with my ability. It was most definitely more utility in nature. I was not going to just assume the Architect had made a mistake and I used my ability as much as I could and found even in my early levels that changing the weight of something at just the right time could completely alter the outcome of a battle.”
I was engrossed with every word from her mouth, “this is my exact situation… I don’t know how to use my Barrier to be effective.” I thought and as I was ready for her next words, the noble boy next to me scoffed and stood.
“Yes, yes, while all that is fine, a Mage or Warrior with utility abilities are meant to support the actual damage dealers in a battle. While obviously I am of a lower level right, my ability will far outpace something like making things a little heavier or lighter when I reach Level 30.” the boy said. He held out his hand and a watermelon sized fireball came into being that was rotated around on his palm with blue flames. It was so hot, I had to lean away from him.
Instructor Lilla raised her eyebrows and asked, “Oh? What’s your name?” taking a passive stance and putting her hands behind her back.
He gave a smug look to her and the entire room before declaring, “I am Sterling White of the great noble house of White. This is what being a true Mage looks like.” the fire in his hand grew to twice the size as before and multiple people around him now stood up and backed away, including myself.
Not even two seconds had passed before Instructor Lilla nodded her head without saying a word. Suddenly, the fireball in Sterling’s hand lost its blue color and turned more orangey red and then it disappeared entirely. His eyes were almost bulging out of his head. He was so surprised.
“What did you do to my fireball?! He asked, incredulous.
“Mr. White, thank you for volunteering! This was a great practical example of what I was trying to get to in the first place: certain abilities are more straightforward than others, that is true, but when you are able to think outside of the box and use even just a ‘simple’ utility ability to change the course of things. I decreased the gravity around and within your fireball so much that it could no longer sustain the flame. Your Mana is fuel for the flame, but it still relies on the oxygen and airflow in the room to burn. If you really put your mind and Mana to it, you could keep it burning, but you would probably deplete your total Mana in less than two seconds. Efficiency is key and knowing the limits or how to tweak your abilities in situations is what will make you great. Thank you again for the demonstration, you make sit down Mr. White.” Instructor Lilla said without missing a beat.
Speaking of beats, Sterling’s face was as red as a beat. He was mad and embarrassed. I couldn’t help, but think of how I could practice my Barrier today and figure out ways to slightly tweak it to figure out different limits or ways I could utilize it.
That class blasted by and Sterling stormed out of the room before I even realized that it was done for the day and then it was on to Physical Training. Showing up, it was actually going to be a rotation of third year students teaching the class and I want to use class in a loose way. It wasn’t really a class at all, but rather physical conditioning and training. It was made very clear we were to run, lift weights and work our way through the obstacle course above that we had used in the evaluation to become proficient.
“A Warrior or a Mage can only be effective in the long term if they can run to their destination quickly and run away from danger just as quick.” the third year girl had said that was teaching the class that day. I suppose they had a point. I remembered back to how much I was dragging on the run just to get to Acacia from Hawthorn. It wasn’t even that hard, but I struggled. Needless to say, this was a necessary training, but it was going to probably be my least favorite part of the day.
Last, but not least was Introduction to Monsters. I got to the room about ten minutes early because I wanted to find John. He came a few minutes later and we got a seat near the front of the room. The class begun and the Instructor for this course was Ruben Skidd.
“Hello class, my name is Instructor Skidd. The purpose of this class is relatively obvious. We are going to talk about monsters. Raise your hand if you have seen a monster before?” Almost every hand shot up. “How about seeing one alive?” More than half the hands went down.
“Well, consider yourself lucky if you haven’t. While monsters are a part of our lives, they aren’t a pretty one. Most of us don’t die of old age, but from this battle of these monsters that slip through the Twisted Realms into our world. While many monsters come through randomly, there are several places in the kingdom of Acacia where they come through regularly. We call these places ‘Rifts’.” He said and continued, “eventually you’ll be assigned teams and will go and hunt these monsters in a minor rift. I actually brought an example of a monster that you might encounter.”
Several gasps made their way around the room, including myself as he lifted a large metal box onto the table in front of him. There was a latch that he unlocked and he pulled out a roundish ‘thing’ in his hands. It was about a foot tall and hand an umbrella shaped head with a pole like body.
“Everyone, please identify this in my hands.”
I identified it and my Interface showed it as a “Level 2 Malice Mushroom” over its head.
“Yes, this is a Level 2 Malice Mushroom. One of the lowest level of monsters you’ll encounter. It even looks kind of cute.” He said, holding it up and it did almost look like a stuffed animal. It really didn’t look like something deserving the name of Malice Mushroom.
“This mushroom doesn’t even have claws or teeth, but do you know what it does?” The mushroom monster was wiggling and trying to get out of the gentle grasp of the instructor, “They hurl themselves at people and animals and poison them. Even at Level 2, this poison would be enough to kill any of you in this room in under an hour without potions or healing. Your natural vitality would not be enough to overcome it. It has very weak defense and offense, but if a group of these Malice Mushrooms were close enough to you and you didn’t have a plan, you would be in a very dangerous situation.” Instructor Skidd said while crushing the mushroom in his hands.
“As you can see, the range of the spores it releases is relatively small, but if you underestimate a monster or don’t understand how some of them attack, it could mean the end for you. I definitely will not always have a live display of a monster for you, but I will be going over common types and which kinds of attacks you might expect.”
I thought this class was going to be a bit boring, but it definitely rose to the top of my list.
