The other students walked past me as they entered the classroom, while I was looking up the headmaster — Lloyd Massey.

There was a lot to find.

Not only was he one of the earliest heroes, but he was also one of the people responsible for designing the current ranking-system that was used to classify the different heroes and monsters. He’d also participated in a lot of famous subjugations and been a close friend of Lemorth, the deceased hero that the academy was named after. I’d known that Lemorth had been a famous hero, but I hadn't known to what extent. That guy had been a legend. Not only was he one of the first heroes to fight against the Awakening — which is what they called the sudden appearance of dungeons and towers in the sixties — but he had also singlehandedly subjugated several towers.

For the record, towers were generally a lot harder to subjugate than a dungeon. Towers also had better loot in them, unless you were really lucky with your dungeon.

But I can’t even begin to imagine someone subjugating a tower all by themselves. Lemorth had been one of the most powerful heroes this world had ever seen. He’d been more than just another champion-ranked hero. Unofficially — or rather, semi-officially it seemed — people to be calling heroes like him, the most powerful and influential champion-ranked heroes, by the title of 'Legend'. It wasn't an official rank, but up till now there had only been eight of these ‘legends,’ and only six of them were still alive. And they were all starting to get on in age. Lemorth himself had been over seventy when he died twenty years ago.

The sound of someone clearing their throat rang out from the front of the classroom. I turned off my watch and looked at the person who stood there. It was a tall Egyptian man, with slick black hair and a small smile on his face. I'd noticed when he entered and assumed that he was the teacher.

“Hello, students. My name is Haji Basara, and I’ll be your homeroom teacher from now on. I’m a high-rank hero, currently ranked 8763.” He introduced himself.

I heard some whispers and a whistle at the mention of his ranking. It didn’t sound that impressive, but that'd be somewhere in the top 0.5 percentile, so I guess it was pretty good.

“Today, we won’t be doing much. Only some introductions, an overview of the curriculum, and a short trip over to the Armory so that all of you can pick up your training weapons as soon as possible. These first few days at the academy are designed to let you guys get used to the new environment and all of the facilities here so, after today, there are no scheduled classes for the first four days.”

He looked over the students in the room carefully, his eyes stopping for a second on Jean Bradford who sat in the middle of the room before moving on.

“As I’m sure you all know, the training facilities here at Lemorth Academy are top-notch. I recommend that you spend these first days getting used to them as you’ll be spending a lot of time in them these coming years. Lemorth Academy is one of the top academies in the world for a reason. Even though we don’t force the students to train during their free time, I can assure you that you won’t make it here if you don’t.”

Putting his left hand higher in the air, he tapped a couple of times on the smartwatch that sat on his wrist. This caused a large hologram to appear above it, showing a list of names. The scene left me staring for a moment. I had no idea the smartwatches had a feature like that.

“This is a list of the students in class 1 and their respective dorms. The same list can be found on your smartwatches, and there you can also access a map over the academy. All of your watches have specific keycodes matching up with your student ID. Both the dorms and all of the training facilities in the academy require the use of these keys to gain entrance, so make sure to always have your watch with you when you’re not in your dorm.”

He continued to further explain the basic features of our smartwatches before proceeding to go over the curriculum for the upcoming weeks. After that, he told us to head over to the armory where we'd pick up our training weapons.

"I'll let you kids find the way there by yourselves. Consider it an exercise in orienteering." Mr. Basara said. However, as I stood up and was about to leave the classroom, I heard him call my name.

“Student Kim Hooper.”

I turned to the teacher. He waved me over.

“Come over here. I want to talk to you.”

The rest of the students in the class steadily left the room, leaving me alone with the teacher. I hesitated for a second before walking over to him. It was unlikely that he meant to hurt me, but you never know. Or it might be that they found something weird about the entrance exam and wanted to confront me about it. He seemed to notice my wariness because he chuckled lightly.

“Don’t worry. You’re not in trouble or anything. Rather, it’s about your performance during the entrance exam.” He said and pressed a few times on his watch. A hologram showed up with my name and a bunch of text.

“...Right,” My performance during the exam didn't reflect my actual abilities, so in a way, one could there was cheating involving in me getting accepted — but they had no way of knowing that, did they?

“You didn’t choose any weapon for the entrance exam, did you?” He asked.

Looking at him in surprise for a moment, I realized how odd it would be if I didn't know something like that and nodded my head.

“You’re not planning on becoming a magician, are you?”

"A magician?" If I could, that sounded impressive. But I doubt that'd be possible with my low magic force. "...Not exactly, no."

He chortled. "No, I didn't think so. It'd have been smarter to go to one of the magic academies instead of this place if that were the case."

He looked at the hologram again, which showed an overview of my entrance exam.

"Although it's impressive that you passed the entrance exam without using a weapon, I noticed that you barely passed. There aren't any advantages to not using a weapon unless you have a Talent specifically related to using your fists, but it didn't look like you had a Talent like that." He gave me a questioning look. "You don't, do you?"

I shook my head.

"You chose not to announce your Talent. The academy won't force its students to reveal their Talents if they don't want to, so you don't have to worry about that. I don't know why you chose to take the entrance exam without a weapon, and I won't pry too much into it, but I do advise you to choose a weapon now. Otherwise, you'll have a hard time here at the academy." He finished in a serious voice.

"I will. I'm not fond of fighting monsters barehanded." I said.

“That’s good.” he chuckled and patted me on my shoulder. “That was all. Head over to the Armory with the rest of the students. I’ll meet up with you there when I’m finished with some matters.”

He turned away from me and started tapping away on his watch again. I did as he said and left the classroom behind, looking around the hallway outside. The other students had already disappeared, so it was up to me to find my way to the Armory by myself. Looking down at my watch, I began looking for a map of the academy. It didn't take me long to find one, and as I pressed it a small hologram appeared above my watch, giving me an overhead view of the entire island including my position.

"Wow...” I couldn’t help but let out an impressed breath as I probed over the map. I could spin it around by grabbing it and zoom in and out with my fingers. This is the kind of technology people in my world would have salivated over a few years ago.

The Armory was located on the other side of the academy, so after having reigned in the thrill of playing around with the hologram for a while, I sucked in my breath and headed over in that general direction.