28 - Phase Four

The living room was the very image of a typical classroom. The couch-like furniture had been pushed all the way to the side, the old bigger single Seontto table was in the same place. Added in the space on the center of the room, were 6 smaller tables, each with one chair, organized in 2 rows.

I don't understand why 6 chairs… I was sure it would be either 3, since we are 3 students here, or 7 since everything else followed the pattern of 7 spots… Another mystery for me keep track of. Damn all this lack of information!

The individual stations had a small round hollow space on the far right end of the table. The chairs were the first furniture I saw here that was not 'grown' from the floor, they could be moved around if necessary.

The mostly empty bookshelf had more stuff in it, I'm still not sure what those are. The wall in front of the chairs was very smooth, not very hard to imagine it would be used as a board for teaching. The board had a single protuberance on the bottom left of it, with a hollow circle inside, the same as the individual tables.

Mila was not there when we got home. We just looked around a bit and decided to shower before the Dedication time.

"Do you know why Mila's doing these changes in the house?" The conversation during bath time started with an innocent question, one that I probably knew the answer: she is following some old guide book in building a classroom for teaching you girls.

The simple question, the probable answer that I was unable to give, it all reminded me that I'm not with them, I'm not part of the trio, and mainly, I'm not actually Zwei. It's frustrating. I really forget that I'm not 'her' when I spend too much time in a first person view point and our wills coincide. Most of the time I feel like I'm actually part of her, but then simple things like this happen and I'm reminded of my insignificant position of observer.

Not something I can change even if I think too hard about it. Not something that needs to change, I have a mission and I'll see it until the end!

By the time we had finished their teacher had arrived and warned of the new space rules.

"The Dedication will continue to happen on the old table, the new ones are for your use ONLY during the study time. And only with me present. None of you are allowed to use that if I'm not here. Each of you will sit on the chair with your assigned name. Come here, I'll show you."

She showed each their assigned station. The names were written on the side of the table. Of course none of us knew how to read, which is why she was guiding them right now. The tables were unsurprisingly ordered by the number the names were based on.

Einer had the first chair, Zwei the second, Vier the fourth, right behind Einer's.

I did not recognize the letters representing each one's name. Yet it was beautiful, like a work of art instead of a writing. A bit similar to the Chinese characters? Or Japanese.. Maybe Korean. Sorry, I don't really know. I can say that it's nothing like the roman characters I'm familiar with. My memories are from the western part of Earth, and I have no real knowledge of the East's writing systems, they are completely foreign to me, I can only say that the characters I'm currently seen written on each table reminded me of Eastern Earth, but without actual background to support my claim.

"We will not use these today, lessons start tomorrow." That was expected, it's almost Dedication time and already night, Mila had said before that writing and reading classes would be in the afternoon.

We performed the long and harder Dedication, I did see a small improvement on Zwei's performance in contrast to yesterday. She made the connection with the Seontto a bit faster, but, like all the other new trainings, she was improving very slowly. I'm almost missing the distant past of 4 months ago where training was easy and improvement fast.

The next day mana training started immediately after the morning rituals. This time Mila divided her attention between all 3 of the girls. Going individually between and inspecting the progress. She would stop between each of them, place a hand on the girl's head and stay like that for a while.

After the unusual procedure she always had a review about the student progress. Few things like "Do it like this, it will be better for you", "Do it faster on that point", "Make it go through this point here", "That's good, keep at that pace".

She was making sure to add a little complement for every feedback. Mila really was a good caring teacher that worries about her pupils. She would compliment Zwei a bit more than the others, but also have more points to make about her progress. I really cannot tell if Zwei is just receiving special attention because she is the slowest of the three or if she is actually progressing better at this. Probably the former, the other two are real monsters when it comes to practice and mana manipulation.

"That's it for mana training today" She stopped the training after a few hours. Again, I cannot feel immediate progress on Zwei's part, her mana cores continue to be empty and hungry for mana.

"This type of training is pretty light, there is no need to clean yourselves right now, let's go upstairs and start the new lessons right now!" I get that it's important to learn math, reading and writing, but did Mila really have to be that happy about it? I don't really understand how it can be better than using mana. Is my perception on this different because of my mundane memories without any kind of magic whatsoever? Maybe.

The girls were happy about the prospect of new knowledge, I was too, but magic will always seem more fun to me. They went up and positioned themselves on their assigned set of chairs and tables. Mila was the last one upstairs, she usually stays behind and closes the training room.

"Oh, right. I forgot to tell you. Go get your Seontto, we will need it for the lessons." All three girls got up at the same time and went upstairs to grab the stone from their rooms.

"We will always need it for this class ok? Place it on the round spot of your table, like this" Mila conjured a stone of her own and placed hers on the hollow protuberance from the board. The girls copied and deposited theirs on the indicated place.

"Now try to send a bit of mana into it" The feeling was similar to the old Dedication ritual, the one when the Seontto was embedded on the table. A connection with Mother was created easily, but not only that, I can feel more connections this time. Zwei did as well and concentrated on the extra ones.

She was able to identify 3 other strings, weaker than the path connection to Mother.

"You should be able to tell that there are extra mana paths, extra connections forming a type of small scale network. It is connecting us together, and Mother. This setup is made specially for this class, it will help with your learning …. "

The network would guarantee our improved learning speed and memory, it would not be necessary to teach anything twice. It was an incredible feature, but it came with its downsides as well, it could not be safely used more than a couple hours a day. Which is why our lessons were limited to that.

Mila made sure to emphasize the importance of Mother on this, because it was not possible to learn everything they needed to teach us in the short amount of time we had without Mother's help. I mean, it's true, it is incredibly hard to learn an entire writing system and math in 6 months, especially if you have absolutely no previous knowledge of any of those things.

I agree that anyone would need help to learn something that fast, but would it work on me? I think I can just cannibalize Zwei's knowledge, everything will be fine. Probably.

Mila only started the lesson after she was satisfied with the extensive explanation on how the new routine would work and how Mother was incredible and benevolent. I mean, yea. Mother is a God, I would expect her to be able to do at least this much. And from what I understood, we are like her daughters, she would be worried about the wellbeing and improvement of her daughters right?

A lone white figure looking into a few floating screens, filled with charts and numbers, muttering to herself.

"It's not a failure, but… how is it that I already lost 10% of the souls when it has only started?" She changes screens, looking attentive at some other data.

"Mental stability? Really? Why are they so weak?! I even prepared them thoroughly… Damn it…" Breathing slowly, trying to bring herself under control again, this type of behavior was not fit for someone of her caliber, but the woman continues to talk to herself.

"It's ok, It's ok, there are still good chances there will be good results from this… aaaahhh... The investment… Damn rules! Who invented them? Why can't I just import these directly into a body?! Would be so much simpler, but noooo... Useless rules, useless preparations, useless weak Earthlings... "