Chapter 13: Tourguide

Going back to the now more populated lobby, Kat waves goodbye towards the very busy Mike as she pushes me forward towards the front door. I nod towards Mike and make a mental note of the other people in the room before getting shoved out of the door.

“FREEDOM!!!!”, Kat jumps up and spreads her arms wide open in celebration. The few people walking by just chuckled a bit before continuing on their way.

A bit curious about her punishment I asked her, “Wow. How long were you grounded?”

“Man! I’ve been inside there for nearly a week! Ugh, can you believe it!? This is child abuse!” She complains facing the dorm before grabbing my arm and walking towards the main campus. “They didn't even catch me doing anything too! I was just starting to it up when… ugh”

She releases her grip on my arm then stops and turns to me with a bright smile. “Anyway, enough about that. I'm out anyway, thanks to you! So, where should we go first?”

Looking at her with a tired face I shrugged and answered, “You’re supposed to be the guide, you decide.”

She stares at me for a moment before facepalming herself, “Oh yeah! Sorry, I was a bit too excited, I forgot hehe." She takes her phone out and scrolls through something, "Hmmm… I'll have to show you the main campus first, then I guess we should have enough time to go around town too. Sounds good?!”

“You don’t have to show me around tow-” “Kat?!”, a deep loud voice calls out from behind Kat, interrupting me. “You’re out already?!”

I look over and a figure of a huge Deriair with big, ram-like horns on the side of his head, is pointing at Kat who seems to have brightened up in seeing him. I-is he a student? He’s bigger than dad!

“Kennel!” Kat suddenly exclaims and proceeds to lunge in full sprint towards him. The other person raises his arms and get’s into a… combat position? What?

*WHAM*

What the f#ck? Kat jumped and dropkicked him. Using his left arm to block the kick, he sunk slightly in the ground cracking it in the process. Uhhh what is happening?

He then stepped forward and swung his right arm straight towards Kat’s falling body. A flash of light appeared briefly from underneath her foot.

*fwip*

She flipped upwards… was that a double jump? Woah Time slowed down a bit after activating my skill and I see a screen of light appear beneath her feet as she was upside down. She kicked off that screen and propelled herself towards Kennel, sporting a punch and warcry along the way. “Yooouuuu dummy!!!”

I deactivated my skill while they continued to fight. I continue to just stand there, unsure of what to do with the current situation. Is… is this normal? Looking around, most people are going about their way and ignoring the spectacle, some seem to be watching, but none are as flabbergasted as I am.

“Aren't you supposed to be grounded for longer? If your warden saw you, you’d be in bigger trouble you know!” Kennel says as he grabbed her by the leg, spun, and threw her towards me.

I move sideways instinctively to dodge. Wait, f#ck! Realizing I should probably try to catch her, I activated and went back to my original position. Before I could brace myself to catch her, a light screen flashes once again and she kicks off of it, jumps upwards, and does a flip before landing gently.

“Ha! Mike’s the one that told me I could go outside!” She stands up straight, puffs her pitiful chest up, and points a finger at him haughtily with a wide grin on her face. Technically true I guess.

“What? No way! He can't have, didn't he caught us last week? How can h-”

“Caught me, Kennel, ME. You had one job! Just look out for anyone while I set up, but nooo you dozed off then ran away while I was getting caught.”

“What was I supposed to do? I-” *smack* “-ow!” Kat had rushed and punched him in the face. “Agh!!”

Crossing her arms, Kat says as a matter of factly, “You shouldn't sleep on the job! You deserve that smack. Now we're even.” She then opens her arms wide and hugs him, “I missed you, buddy!”

“Ugh, yeah I missed you too. It’s only been a week, though?” He said, rubbing his nose while hugging back. ”Who’s the fresher?” He looks at me with an inquisitive eye, and I do the same to him.

Name: Kennel

Race: Deriair

Title: ???

Classes: ???

Dangerous, proceed with caution.

“Ah! Kennel, meet Cas! He’s the reason I got out early. Mike told me I can leave if he chose me to be his guide.”

Kennel looks at me funny and points to Kat, “Really? Her?” *smack* “-ow!”

Chuckling at the display, I shrugged at him and asked. “What’s wrong with that?” Not like I had a lot of choices at the time.

“Want me to guide you instead? I’ll be a lot better tha-” *smack* "Stop hitting me!" Kat sends another kick towards his head which he promptly blocks with arm before hugging my arm tightly. “No! My points!!” Points?

“Fine fine. Uhh good luck then, fresher, Kat! Imma go ahead and hunt for a fresher too.” He salutes goodbye and heads off towards where we came from. “So… what was that all about?” I ask Kat, still weirded out by the sudden combat.

“Oh, that’s Kennel, sorta my best-friend-slash-partner-in-crime. We were doing a prank on one of the instructors a week ago, putting a spell-parasite that can latch onto a person and make fart noises *giggle* periodically once I activate it. We kinda got caught while setting up the trap hehe…”

“Well, I kinda guessed that already. I mean what was the fighting all about?”

She tilted her head at me like I was the weird one asking about it. “I wanted to smack him, he didn’t want to be smacked.”

*sigh* “...sure.” I still have a headache from the overuse of earlier, so I just let it be. I guess smacking people is more complicated if everyone can fight. Sure, let’s go with that.

“Oh yeah, your tour!! Hmmm… I’ll show you around the campus first! Let’s go!” She marches on forward, humming a happy tune, and I shuffle along beside her. She explains that there are basically 4 main buildings on campus, the lecture halls where most of the classes are held in.

The main buildings are Auras, Magics, Psychs, and Commons. Based on their names it’s easy to guess which lectures will be held in them, except for the Commons which actually hosts a plethora of lectures, mostly non-combat, and is also the biggest building of them all.

Other than the main buildings there are also the guild houses, smaller buildings that are used as the student bases of the guilds outside of the Union. Kat listed all of them but I was too spaced out to listen, let alone remember.

She often casually mentions random worrying information like where the blindspots of security cameras are, or the location of the fastest escape routes if you get caught doing bad stuff. I mean it didn't really help her last time.

Lastly, she showed me the utility buildings like the cafeteria and the arena. Because of course, what sort of fantasy school wouldn’t have an arena where students risk their lives on petty rivalries and deadly sparring lessons. *sigh*

“You’ve been sighing a lot, am I boring?” Kat stops her rambling and pouts at me. I wave my hands in defence, “Sorry, I’m just really tired right now and I have a headache.”

“Ohhh, wait a minute.” Fumbling inside her satchel, she takes out a questionably coloured pill. “Eat this!”

“Uhhh what? No?!” I’m not eating some random- “Mpphh!” She shoves the pill in my mouth and holds it close. Her other hand blocks my nose as I feel the pill slowly turn to a liquid and go down my throat on its own. I get her off me and cough violently on the ground.

“*cough cough* What the hell waaaooohhh…” My... chest feels warm and pleasant all of a sudden. I feel my headache slowly going away along with my fatigue. “What was that? My headache's gone!”

“It’s a rejuvenation pill. You haven’t heard of it? It's been on the market for a few months now and it’s really helpful! I get sleep deprived because I usually do the pranks at night. It also helps when I have to stalk a place out overnight!”

“Oh… uhhh okay?” I gotta learn how to make them, damn. It’s like coffee in a pill! “ Thanks, I guess.”

“No problem! Just tell Mike I’m doing good, okay?~” She grins in a sweet yet menacing way.

“Sure?” A realization hit me as we continue our tour.

“Wait… why didn’t... what’s his name? Kenal?”

“Kennel?”

“Yeah, that dude. Why didn’t he take one before so he didn’t doze off when you were doing stuff?”

“Oh, because they don’t like the side effects. And it’s really expensive!” Raising her hands, seemingly trying to gesture how high the price of the pill is. “But don’t worry! I won’t make you pay for it, I have a lot of it here see!” She then shows me a small box filled with the pills.

“I see… thanks. Wait a minute… side effects?”

“Just some minor stuff. You’ll be more forgetful the longer you don’t sleep.” *grumble* “Also, you’ll constantly be hungry. The energy has to come from somewhere right!” She giggles and continues, “Let’s go to town and find something to eat! I’m so sick of cafeteria food. Ughhh” Well, that’s not too bad I guess. The hunger part sucks though.

We resume walking and head towards the front gate, my stomach grumbling all the way. “Is this normal? I feel so hungry ughh.”

“Yeah, that’s normal, though we do have to feed you ASAP before you die.”

“Wait, what?! Die?!”

“Yeah, well I did say that the pill has to pull energy out from somewhere. We have to hurry though you need to eat.” She then runs immediately towards the town and I chase after her.

I look at her flabbergasted before chasing, “You should have told me that sooner!!” ! Quick as a flash, I zoomed past her instantly with my skill. “Woah!”

When I got to tow, I went immediately to the nearest food stall and ordered. Grabbing the shish kebab looking food, I chowed down till the grumbling finally subsided. “Ughh… that was close.”

“Feeling better?”, A voice speaks out from behind me. Looking back I see Kat, who’s just nonchalantly smiling there.

“Why did you not tell me that could kill me?!” I grab her and proceed to shake her angrily. She just giggles and I shake her some more. “Stop! Stop I’m getting dizzy… hurghk!”

“Explain,” I said while putting her down.

“That was a joke.”

“...what”, I said incredulously.

“I was joking when I say you’d die. Hehehehe. At most you’d just starve for a bit until you eat normally again. But you wouldn’t die that fast. Why would I give you something that could kill a fresher?”

“I don’t know?! Ugh” I turn around and proceed to ignore her, munching on some more kebabs.

“Awww are you sulking, Cas? It was just a prank! You were so scared, and so fast! How are you that fast?! Come one tell me! Tell meeeee” She keeps giggling behind me and teasing me. Now I get why Kennel said that. Ugh, I should’ve accepted his offer, but then again he might’ve been worse.

As I chew the last of the meat off of the stick, I suddenly thought of a way to get back at her. Hmmm… maybe that’ll work. “I’ll tell Mike.”

She froze. Her eyes widen and her smile stiff, she slowly looked downwards and whispered almost inaudibly “please...”

“I’ll say you were a bad guide and you ha- HMPHHHH!” She suddenly jumped at me and blocked my mouth. “No! Please don’t tell Mike! I don’t want to get in trouble again this soon! I don't wanna get grounded agaiinn!!”

“Mpphh mmm!” Let go of me woman!

“I’ll make it up to you! I’ll… uhh… pay you money? No… uhh I’ll help you with your chores! Wait no... ummm”

“Mpphh mm mmMMMM!!!” How are you so strong?! I struggled, trying to get her hand off my mouth. She finally noticed, “Oh yeah, s-sorry. Please don’t tell Mike. I'm begging you!”

“Fine, fine. I won’t tell. Just don’t do that again. You scared me ugh.” She then hugged me tight while saying words of gratitude. What a tiresome girl.

“Moving on, I thought you’d give me a tour here? Or was that a prank too?”

“No no, I gotta show you around town too. It’s actually a part of the union, a lot of students and professors live here, and it’s our supply line to the main city.”

So we go around town and she introduces me to the big shops and establishments. Hmmm, I need to check out the smith here, hopefully, I can borrow their forge. Apparently, we can sell stuff here too and I'd like to earn some money for stuff.

“And finally, here’s the Monument Union HQ! We can get quests here for extra credits and union points. Some lecturers will require you to do quests, you’ll have to get them here.”

“Union points?”

“Oh! Didn’t you get a pamphlet? I’m sure they hand it out in the entrance. Eh, whatever, you can just go to the Union forum and look stuff up like rules and whatnot. Here, I’ll send you the link!” *ding* “Be careful though, instructors also monitor stuff there, so no funny business!”

“Wow, we have a forum. Hmmm, rules?” I open the topmost post and a giant bulwark of text pops up in front of me. “What the…”

“Oh yeah, that. It’s basically; don’t do anything stupid, don’t unsheathe or ready your weapons without any proper reason, and always have your plate or your emblem on you. You can read the specifics later, let’s go inside the hall for now!”

“...sure?” I guess I’ll check this out later. I closed my phone and proceeded to go inside the building.

Opening the door, my nose is assaulted by a strong smell of caffeine. A row of receptionist’s booths are directly in the centre, with holographic screens on the back with unknown information. People are queueing up on the booths and there are also some other freshers with their own tour guides milling about.

“Welcome to the quest hall! As I said earlier, we earn union points or credits here to spend in the town for stuff like provisions, ingredients, and equipment.” She then walked me through how to get quests and how to turn stuff in.

There’s a row of computers on the side for viewing information. Scrolling through the quest lists, I notice that some quests are exterminations and dungeon runs. “Isn’t it a bit dangerous for students to…” Squinting to see if I read the quest title right, I continued “...hunt for a rank D poison sack from a Venomape?”

She pats my cheek. “Well, that’s for the older students don’t you worry about that for now.” Adventurer students are this strong already, how about graduates? How scary are the monsters out there that we have to have a country-wide barrier?

After answering most of my questions, we went back out and grabbed some more food and headed straight back towards the campus while eating and chatting. Well, it’s mostly her telling stories about her life in the Union so far. Though it's actually more of a list of the pranks she's done so far. No wonder she got grounded without needing evidence.

“Oh yeah, I forgot, any last questions?”, she asks as we finally got to the dorm. The sky was beginning to darken as we were walking back.

“Uhhh, none I guess.” As per every time someone asks me that, I forget most of the questions I had earlier.

“Well, okay then. I’ll see you around the Union Cas! Don’t forget to tell Mike I did great okay?!” She says as she runs back towards the main campus. “Uhhh bye?” Well, that's that I guess.

*whoosh*

She instantly got in front of me again and exclaimed, “I almost forgot! Welcome to the Union!” She giggles while shaking my hand forcefully then went back to running away from the dorm. I didn’t even see her rush me. I thought my speed was special.

Shrugging it off, I go back inside and see some seniors and freshers talking with each other, generally looking like they're getting along. I’ll socialize tomorrow, I’d rather sleep for now. Hopefully, the pill won't stop me from sleeping.

“So, how was the tour?” Mike suddenly asked me from behind his desk. I approached him and leaned on the wall next to him.

“It was… tiring.”

“Oh? You don’t look tired at all.”

“Kat gave me a rejuvenation pill, which was nice. I got to stay awake for the rest of the day. Though… I’ll still be able to sleep tonight right?”

“Don’t worry, you can sleep anytime even with that. Interesting. She gave you that huh, how generous. But I guess it is her after all.”

“Generous? I guess it is.”

“Those pills are sought after you know, a few hundred thousand credits per box for the cheapest one.”

“What?! She had so much in her bag I thought they were cheap.”

“Yeah, well, she has her reasons. Speaking of, how was Kat?”

“Well, she was very helpful. She answered all my questions I guess, and we got to finish everything today so there’s also that. There’s no dull moment with her I'll give her that.”

“Oh… anything else?”, Mike says with a suspicious glint.

Should I tell him about the other stuff? Nah, the pill was expensive enough. “Nah, nothing much. She’s helpful and fun.”

He breathes a sigh of relief after that and inputs something on his computer. “Well, I guess Kat has to thank you later.”

“What why?”

“Guides that perform well on their tours are rewarded with extra union points. Plus, she’s cleared her punishment from last year’s mischiefs.”

Ohhh, that’s why she was eager and nice I guess. But… “Isn’t that a bit too easy? She could have threatened me you know.”

“I know Kat, she wouldn’t do that anyway. Plus it’s not my fault the rules are broken.” He winks at me. "Just put your badge here to confirm that assessment."

I did so and waved goodnight to him. I came back to my room, still empty of activity other than mine. Looking at the pile of luggage at the side, the source of my headache earlier. ...tomorrow.

I lie on the lower bunk closed my eyes, thinking about what happened today for a while before finally falling asleep. Hopefully, tomorrow wouldn’t be as tiring.