Why am I always picked to do this?

The Master sighed and looked at the applicant. His tusked mouth was wide open with the tongue hanging out. His snout was dripping snot and panting warm air in the hunter’s purple and freckled face, messing up her curly blue hair and revealing her pointed ears. His fur was greasy, messy, and his bristly mohawk stuck straight up. His only clothing was a leather scale skirt, a pair of hide pauldrons on his shoulders, a pair of thick hide boots, and leather lamellar guards covering the outside of his forearms.

“Take it easy! I just asked for your name, not your life’s story!” The applicant raised his fists and snout into the air and shouted “Yes! I am Hog! Son of Swine! Daughter of Bull! I am here to become a Master and do what no beastman has ever done before to bring great honor to my family because I am Hog! Son of Swine! Daughter of Bull!” The Master considered telling him that there have been millions of beastman Masters across the academy’s history, but she didn’t want to break his dreams.

The Master sighed again and looked around. It was a beautiful sunny day. The sun was shining, the wind was blowing, the birds in the trees were chirping, she would much rather be inside eavesdropping on other people’s conversations. But now she was in front of the big domed meeting hall sitting at one of the hundred foldable tables lying a few feet beyond the stairs leading up to the open gated entrance. In the rectangular plaza, there were dozens of large ships within the walls with applicants still streaming out and forming into lines to meet at the application tables. The plaza had a bright green layer of grass on the ground with trees sticking out at random spots. Sometimes there were patches of flowering plants between the trees each surrounded by a chain of rocks to deter people from stepping on them. Along the walls were a series of large arches that lead into different parts of Helgram with the single largest being in the wall at the other end of the plaza. Lining the top half of the horizontal walls were stained glass windows. Along the top of each wall was a walkway with a small turret for an entrance that appeared between every third arch.

“You’re shouting is impressive enough, and I’ve already got your name down, so just go on up the stairs behind me so I can get the guy behind you.” “I am Hog!” Shouted Hog before jumping onto all fours and racing up the stairs behind her.

The Master closed her eyes, sighed, and said “Next.” Before opening them once more. At least this one’s handsome, or at the very least clean. “Name please.” “Nicholas Xed.”

Suddenly, it was like thunder roared inside the hunter’s head. Whowhatwhenwherewhy? Was only one of the hundreds of abstract questions that flooded her mind in the split second after hearing the last sound of this new applicant’s name. She started imagining thousands of simulations, two after another, to arrive at a reasonable explanation as to why someone with that particular name would arrive at the Master’s academy at this table, on this day, and at this time. After one-twelfth of a second, she arrived at a simple, undeniable, and plausible answer: I guess it has been eighteen years.

She wrote down his name in the registry and flatly said, “Go ahead.” “Thanks!” Replied Thomas Xed’s son before walking to the yearly orientation. This is going to be so fun! Thought the Mystery Master. After all, the only thing more fun than solving old mysteries is making new ones for others to solve.

***

Not as uncomfortable as I thought it would be! Thought Nicholas Xed as he drifted between people in the crowd within the meeting hall.

The floor was polished slate stone that didn’t scuff or smear no matter how many people with filthy feet or footwear tread on it. A wide window at the back secured by wrought metal grating with a design of seemingly infinitesimal intricacy illuminated the hall. At the far end of the hall was a raised platform with two sets of marble stairs curving around the edge of the building as pathways leading to it. At the top of the domed ceiling hung a chandelier with hundreds of trumpeted ends curving upward where he assumed luminorbs, a soap-like substance that glows after its innate surface tension activated, sit at night. But what captured his attention most was the portraits covering every part of the wall. Each was an image of an impressive-looking individual captured in a completely unique art style. He wondered if someday his image would hang along this wall. The inside of this new place enamored him so much that he didn’t notice someone just as enamored right in front of him until he accidentally bumped into and knocked them down.

“Ow!” “Sorry!” “Nonono! I’m Sorry! Pleasedon’thurtme!” At that response, Nick decided to take a good look at the first person who ever begged him for mercy in his entire life. He was short, so short in fact that the top of his head only came up to the center of Nick’s abdomen. He had olive green skin, golden blond hair, and shiny amber eyes. He wore in a patched-up dark purple velvet coat, faded grey dress pants, and mud-stained buckled leather shoes.

Nick bent down, grabbed his hand, and helped him up. “My name is Nick by the way.” He just stared for a moment until he blurted out, “Yohan! My name is... Yohan...” “I’m from Iaso, how about you?” “Well... Um... Nowhere really...” “My Dad always said, ‘Nobody’s from nowhere.’ and if I’m seeing you and talking with you, you can’t be nobody.”

Yohan looked like he was about to cry, but suddenly a loud voice boomed throughout the hall. “Silence.” All conversations died. Everyone looked at the back of the hall. Standing at the front of the marble railing at the edge of the platform was a man with grey hair. He wore a black suit, pants, shoes, and tie. In his hand, he held a black suitcase with a golden handle and latches.

“I am Mr. Ender, the Talent Master. I am the highest authority in the entire Master’s Academy, and through it Helgram. Here, my word is law.” Mr. Ender paused for dramatic effect.

“The Master’s Academy was founded over one thousand years ago for one purpose and one purpose only, to educate the next generation of Masters to be the best they can be. I am the latest in a long line who maintains this mission.”

“Masters are the most essential resource needed to solve the eternal problems of the endlessly expanding population of mortals, the threat of monsters, and the never-ending need for new resources. As such, I cannot afford to pull any punches when it comes to honing each of your individual talents. So, you must face the same risks as any full-fledged Master, like the ever-present threat of injury and death.”

“However, considering your courage in pursuing this lifestyle, you will also receive many of the benefits of being a Master. If you remain a student here, you shall have the privilege of living in the equivalent of absolute luxury. Anything you need such as food, drink, boarding, clothing, entertainment, and the opportunity to train and educate yourself at your own pace is present for you to utilize. All we ask is that you don’t make too much trouble. Because if you make more trouble than you can handle, there will be consequences.”

“Like the profession itself, the Master’s Academy is not even close to being an ordinary school. Instead of normal credits, we use HCs or Helgram Credits, and each authoritative figure has an unlimited supply to award however they wish. Your goal is to earn one hundred million HCs in order to gain entry to the final exam, which if passed will grant you the title of full Master and leave me nothing left to teach you.”

“Throughout this dimension, you shall find opportunities to earn HCs, the simplest of which will be within classes. You are also free to donate anything of material worth to the school in exchange for a negotiable number of HCs. The Master’s Academy also makes contracts with individual parties for students to fulfill, but to do so requires every student involved to pay a number of HCs equal to the risk of failure as an insurance fee; If the contract is successfully fulfilled, then the student and all who worked with them shall receive double their HCs back. The students are free to use Helgram’s private network of personal portals to travel between dimensions to meet with the parties who posted the contracts. At the beginning of each new year, Helgram plays host to a Master Game Competition with rules decided on a lottery that all students are free to participate in. The winning student or team of students shall receive one HC for each competitor and spectator. Posted for all to see in each of the many common’s halls available to students is information on such events.

"Now, all new students are required to claim a boarding room with at least one roommate. If you cannot find roommates, then you shall board with random students. You are all dismissed. Remember the motto of our Academy." Mr. Ender raised his fist into the air with hundreds of students Nick assumed were his seniors and they all shouted at once, “To dream is to live! To live is to dream!" If Nick didn’t know any better, it almost sounded exactly like one of the cheesy affirmations his father loved to come up with.

“Wow, sounds like we’ve got a lot cut out for us, huh Yohan?” Nick turned to look at Yohan expecting a reasonable response, but he was staring at where Mr. Ender used to be with his eyes and mouth wide open and his knees trembling. Nick walked in front of Yohan and snapped his fingers in front of his face. After waiting seven seconds for a response, Nick put his hand on Yohan’s shoulder and gave him a light smack on the face.

Yohan blinked twice, shook his head, looked Nick right in the eye and said, “Whahappen?” “Are you okay?” “I don’t know, everything went dark when I heard him say the word ‘death’ where is everyone going?” “He said that we have to find roommates and our own rooms. This is my first time here and judging from your reaction to the yearly orientation, I’m guessing this is your first time too. So, I think it would be best for both of us if we become roommates and I find us a room, agreed?”

Yohan stared at Nick in amazement and said, “U’huh!" “Excellent! I managed to count a few people who I think are senior students, so I’ll follow them and you can follow me, right?” “U’huh!"

***

“This seems like as good a place as any to sleep.” “I’ve slept in worse places.”

Their room was a simple one. It had a polished wood-plank floor, stone bricks for walls, and a solid concrete ceiling held up by four sanded wood pillars in the corners. The room had five down bends with no covers or pillows on either side of the room, two on the left, three on the right. in the middle of each wall was a two-horned luminorbs lamp with an outwardly curving pipe to blow into. On the left side of the wall opposite the door was a square shuttered window that leads to a solitary garden with rocked-off flowers in each corner and a tree in the middle.

“Everything I need is in this bag, so I’ll just set it here.” Nick placed his bag on one of the mattresses. “And I pretty much have nothing to my name, so I’ll just sit here for now.” Yohan sat on a mattress on the opposite side of the room.

While they made their way to an unoccupied room, they had a chance to get acquainted with each other. Yohan was the nephew of the single most wealthy individual in the known universe, Mohan O’Mann. Mohan was known far and wide as a self-made trillionaire, he came from a dimension with a name whose literal translation was dirt. Most of the residents made a living by gathering and helping to ship fertile mud to farmlands in neighboring dimensions, but Mohan made his living at a young age by shining the footwear of the merchants as they came and went.

When Mohan acquired enough money to buy a plot of land in a dimension now known as The Peaks of O’Mann, he made his own tools and clothing with anything he could find and worked sixteen hours a day to hollow out a tunnel in a mountain and eventually struck gold, oil, gemstones, and eventually levistone, an extremely rare resource as strong as concrete but lighter than air. He then proceeded to purchase his home dimension and convert it into a giant farmland, bringing prosperity to both himself and all of the residents. He spent the next couple of decades exploring uncharted dimensions, finding rare resources, doing research to find the best way to cultivate them, and founding union-run businesses across multiple dimensions to do so.

When Yohan was barely two years old, his parents died in a monster attack. The only reason he was alive was that they forced his uncle to take him and flee while they stayed behind to save as many lives as possible. Yohan earned his keep by becoming Mohan’s personal assistant and apprentice; he traveled far and wide on business trips with his uncle and learned all kinds of skills, crafts, and trades, but the one thing he could never get over was his crippling cowardice. When Yohan turned twenty-one, his uncle told him that the only way he could acknowledge him as an adult was by making his own name, and the most surefire way to do that was to graduate at the Master’s Academy, so here he was.

“Where do you suppose we should start earning HCs?” Asked Yohan. “Mr. Ender said that the most basic way was to go to classes, so we should find some other students and follow them until they lead us to a commons area where we can find out where to go to find one.” “Fine by me.”

They exited the room into the hallway. The part of Helgram they were in now greatly resembled a mansion, made up of hallways that lead to more hallways and sometimes doorways into larger rooms. There were stained-glass windows at regular intervals along with stone-block archways. The corner of each fourth turn in the hall had at least one statue, couch, and a set of paintings. Strangely, each individual object within Helgram from the buildings to the bricks had a seemingly random number marking it that had over fifteen digits or more.

After walking for two hours, they managed to find a stream of students that eventually led them to a commons room. It resembled the hallways that they came through, only it was more than three times the area and full of students. At the other end of the room was a cork pinboard that most students seemed to be staring at.

“Is that where we can find information on a class?” Asked Yohan. “Your guess is as good as mine.” Nick walked up to the board and scanned it until he found a document that caught his eye, Basics. “That one seems easy enough. But what do all those numbers at the bottom mean?” Stated Nick. “I think we walked through a hallway a way back with a few doors that had a lot of the same numbers in the same order, so we should probably check that area.”