Chapter 52: Orientation (Patreon)

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“...with the influence of those who have come before, standing on the shoulders of giants, you will reach further than…”

Cayden rubbed his eyes in an effort to alert.

It was the first day of the semester at Delver’s Academy, and with the rest of the student body, Cayden endured the orientation speech. The first minute had been fine, though somewhat lacking in any useful details. By minute five, Cayden struggled to keep paying attention to the rambling words that circled themselves without going anywhere useful. And now, over twenty minutes into the headmaster’s speech, he had completely given up on actually paying attention, struggling only to stay awake and hopefully leave a good impression on the instructors that sat behind the headmaster on the stage.

…although, judging by the drooping eyes of some of those instructors, he doubted they were too concerned with monitoring the students

“...and you all will display the might of the kingdom through your power, intelligence, and training!”

There was a pregnant pause as silence filled the auditorium, the many listeners surprised that the torture was finally over. And then, as if worried the headmaster would continue if the silence lingered, one of the instructors started clapping, followed quickly by the rest of the instructors and then the students.

Cayden clapped along with the rest as a new instructor stood from her chair. Unlike the headmaster and most of the other instructors, this woman didn’t have as imposing of a stature. With her glasses and slim frame, she looked more like a librarian than an adventurer. But Cayden recognized her as a vampire, a race with skills that were extremely useful in combat, so he resolved not to underestimate her, though he couldn’t help but feel that she was trustworthy.

As she walked to the center of the stage, Cayden felt a ping from his [Mind is a Temple] skill.

Attempted mental manipulation from [Guiding Hand].

Cayden’s hackles immediately rose, a strange dichotomy to the continuing feeling of trust he felt towards the woman. He might have been more alarmed by the notification if it hadn’t been for his time wandering the city with Elise over the last few days; mental manipulation skills were surprisingly common among the shopkeepers that lined the roads of the capital.

None of the skill’s effects had sounded particularly nefarious – mostly they were skills that made their wares draw customers’ eyes and made those customers feel at peace – but it was surprising to Cayden how common it was. He hadn’t had the skill long enough in Avernon to know if it was a widespread practice or something specific to the capital, but on the positive side, the effects typically seemed minor, and Cayden [Resistance] seemed to do its part to blunt the effects of the skills.

Thankfully, this new instructor and the effects of her skill [Guiding Hand] seemed just as benign as those of the shopkeepers’.

“Thank you, Headmaster Savol, for that invigorating speech. I’m sure all the students will carry your words with them to graduation,” she said without a hint of sarcasm in her words, followed by another small round of applause. After the clapping quieted, she continued. “I am Instructor Blyre, head of administration here at Delver’s, and I also teach a few of the advanced rogue courses. As of now, you should all have been assigned your rooms and been given your uniforms and supplies – if any of you haven’t yet, come see me after I’m done. All students will receive a stipend of experience crystals each week while at Delver’s; if you are still under level eighteen, I highly recommend allocating most of that towards leveling up. The only thing left, then, is to receive your schedules!” She gestured to the side of the auditorium, where a series of tables were set up with secretaries sitting behind them. “Please line up in front of the tables, and someone will assist you. Know that your schedule has been carefully chosen as the best classes for your improvement, based on this school’s instructors’ decades of teaching experience. If you have any questions or disagreements about your schedule,” a dangerous glint shone in her eye. “Come see me, and we’ll get that fixed right up. Dismissed!”

Cayden was eager to see his schedule but wasn’t eager enough to try and shove his way through the crowd of students. With the rest of the incoming class, he stood and casually shuffled toward the tables.

There were around two hundred new students starting at the academy, the majority of those being nobility, with around ten to twenty percent being commoner students who gained admittance through the trials. Those numbers didn’t include any of the affiliate academy students, who had their own orientation in a different building.

Even more than he had expected, Cayden felt isolated from the rest of the student body. He no longer had Elise by his side, and he found he didn’t fit in with either of the two predominant groups that made up the student body. The nobility were obvious from their fancier dress and the way they mostly all knew each other, and while the majority of the commoner adventurers who had passed through the trials had been strangers a few days earlier, the trials seemed to have bonded them. Cayden noticed most of the faces he recognized from the days prior sitting together in the back of the auditorium, separate from any of the noble groups.

Cayden, as neither a noble nor someone who had ‘earned’ his position, felt distinct from each group. He had seen the princess sitting at the front of the auditorium next to Marrianne, but had zero desire to approach either of the only two nobles he knew.

He refused to allow his isolation to bother him and slowly made his way to the nearest table without speaking.

“Cayden! Cayden!”

Surprised, Cayden turned and found Jeremy pushing his way through a group of students, waving his arms in Cayden’s direction.

“Jeremy,” Cayden nodded at his acquaintance after the formine had caught up. “Congratulations on passing the trials. Your group fight was extremely impressive.”

“Oh, you saw that?” Jeremy responded. “Thanks, I wasn’t sure if it was going to be enough to get in. Apparently the instructors were impressed.”

“Oh yeah, it was definitely impressive,” Cayden said, feeling a flash of deja vu from his time spent reassuring Elise. “You’ll have to tell me exactly what happened. My friend Elise had some theories about that skill you were using.”

“You noticed?” Jeremy replied, then gave Cayden a lopsided smile. “Well, I’m sure you’ll get plenty of chances to see it in action in the coming years.”

They continued chatting as they found a line to wait in, but were interrupted only a few seconds later by a loud voice just behind them.

“My father will be ashamed to hear of the depths that the academy has fallen,” the voice said. “Not only did they open that ridiculous affiliate school, but now they even allow the trash to learn with the rest of us.”

The voice was loud enough to be impossible to ignore, and Jeremy and Cayden turned to face the source.

A young male sidhe stood behind them, talking to another sidhe next to him, but his words were clearly directed towards Cayden and Jeremy from the way he looked down his nose at them – an impressive feat given that he was several inches shorter than both the gargoyle and the formine.

Cayden sighed. He figured there would be some sort of posturing between the nobles and commoner adventurers, but he didn’t think it would start so early. Despite his outward age, he felt much too old to get into a pissing match with someone as young as the sidhe that glared at them. Yet he knew how things like this worked, and he was unwilling to back down from the challenge without a fight, not on the first day of the new semester. That was just asking to be the boy’s verbal punching bag for the rest of the year, a situation he wasn’t willing to tolerate.

“Excuse me?” Cayden asked, his hostility clear in his voice.

“Oh, the mutt speaks? A formine and a…I don’t even know what the other one might be, daring to address their betters? You better learn your place, doggy, before someone is forced to teach it to you.”

Cayden had no idea where the boy was getting the dog references from – his claws were nothing like a dog’s, and his grey skin was his only other non-human feature. But he decided to lean into it, baring his teeth in an anticipatory smile.

But before Cayden could respond verbally and push the situation to a place of no return, Jeremy grabbed his arm.

“Sorry sirs, to bother you, we didn’t mean any harm. We’ll get right out of your way,” he said to the two sidhes. Then he tugged on Cayden’s arm, attempting to pull him out of the line.

He was surprised, however, when Cayden didn’t so much as budge. Cayden had been playing with his new [Inertia] skill during the speech, and it was currently turned up to roughly double its normal amount. If it came down to it, Cayden was ready for a fight.

But Jeremy gave another insistent tug on Cayden’s arm, and Cayden looked at the formine. Jeremy gave just the tiniest of shakes of his head, small enough that the two sidhe, imperious gazes focused on Cayden, didn’t notice.

Choosing to trust Jeremy, Cayden gave a final defiant look at the nobles before moving with Jeremy’s tugs to a different line behind another table.

“Ah yes, and see how the doggy runs with his tail tucked between his leg, Joseph,” he heard behind him, but neither he nor Jeremy looked back.

“Jeeze, what are you made of, stone?” Jeremy asked a few seconds later in a low voice.

“What was that about?” Cayden asked, ignoring the formine’s surprisingly accurate guess about Cayden’s race. “I don’t plan on being some noble’s whipping boy all semester.”

“Don’t worry, you won’t,” Jeremy responded. “I just didn’t want you to be the one to get in trouble for him to find that out.”

“...what do you mean?”

“It happens every year,” Jeremy sighed. “Bunch of noble kids with no real-world experience shoved in with a bunch of normals like you and me. It’s inevitable that some of them will try to ‘establish superiority,’ or whatever they think they’re doing. The problem is, us ‘normals’ had to go through the trials, and are some of the most powerful adventurers for our age in the kingdom. We aren’t quite as easy targets as some of the nobles might think we are. It’ll take a few days, but most of the nobles will learn quick that no one in this academy can be dismissed as ‘weak’.” He shrugged. “The instructors are going to crack down on the first people who turn it into an unsanctioned fight, though. Gotta set an example. I just didn’t want that to be you.”

Cayden frowned. “How do you know all of this? Isn’t this your first semester too?”

Jeremy chuckled. “Yeah, but I’ve got a bit of an inside scoop. A guy on my old adventurer team made it through the trials a few years ago. He’s a senior now, and he gave me the full run-down on what to expect.”

Cayden nodded, looking at Jeremy appraisingly. He didn’t want to be mercenary when picking friends, but he had to admit that Jeremy’s advice and knowledge in navigating the academy would be welcome.

“Thanks, I guess. But you forget, I didn’t have to go through the trials. How would you know I’m up to the standards of the rest of the ‘normals’?”

“From the way you were staring at that noble?” Jeremy laughed. “Let’s just call it a hunch.”

It took another few minutes for them to get to the front of this new line, but when they did, they each held a sheet of paper that had their schedule listed out.

“Heh, well it seems like you might get to find out about my skill even earlier than I thought. And I’ll find out if you really do measure up to the rest of us,” Jeremy said.

At the top of both of their sheets, in the time slot that began in less than thirty minutes, was the title of their first shared class: Frontline Combat 101.

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