Nathan

Year 2849 | Month 5 | Day 7

As I walk up to the door to my first class of the day, I check the time on my watch.

11:45.

Not too early, but still early enough, I should think.

And with that, I reach out and touch the door, feeling a strange sensation flow through me as the door scans me for my key before opening. I then pass through the blue portal filling the frame to find myself entering a large classroom. The classroom has several stairs arcing around a desk and magi-tech board – something that I’ve only heard about from my father’s time in the academy. A sort of magical replacement for chalkboards or projectors.

Very convenient.

That aside, on the stairs line rows of tables, each with an outlet to charge our phones, along with a small laptop, and a comfortable looking chair spread out every three quarters of a meter or so.

Something that catches my eye is that the tables are actually gray instead of the black and red colors of everything else, but I push that thought aside as I notice several people already in the class, with half of them glancing at me, only to turn back to whatever it is they were doing without paying me any more attention.

I glance at the front of the room before beginning to walk towards the back row of the class as I turn my attention to a door at the front labeled ‘Training Hall.’

Hmm, probably a place to practice our magic circles.

Right as I sit down in a seat slightly off of the center seat in the back row, the instructor emerges from the portal, followed soon after by Aidan, Cyria, and Sophia – who had all stood around to talk for a little bit at our dorms as I proceeded to come without them.

Kind of surprising that they’re arriving with the instructor, but the guy does have some odd timing, considering our last encounters.

And speaking of the guy, his gaze locks onto mine for some reason before he simply nods his head and walks over to the desk at the front of the classroom, in front of the magi-tech board. Meanwhile, the other three all quickly find me and begin making their way towards me.

Ignoring the instructor’s actions – since it’s probably just because of our previous interactions – I focus on Aidan and the others as they wave towards me.

“Why didn’t you stay to chat with us earlier?” Sophia asks me as the three of them take their seats, with Aidan sitting on my left, and Cyria sitting on my right next to Sophia.

Aidan leans back in his chair and says, “He isn’t exactly the chatty kind of guy, so I doubt you’ll ever find him hanging out just to talk. Especially not before or in between classes.”

I simply nod my head towards Aidan and comment, “What he said.”

After this brief conversation, the three end up talking as we all mess with the laptops in front of us.

Although I’m not really sure why Aidan sat on the other side of me when I’m not even in their conversation.

Time passes by relatively quickly, and students continue to enter the classroom. And after there is only about five minutes left till the start of class, Rebecca emerges from the portal – surprisingly without any other students following her.

Maybe due to yesterday’s fiasco?

She immediately looks around the room at the twenty something students currently in the classroom before locking her eyes onto both me and Cyria and heading in our direction.

Oh? Does she know Cyria from somewhere?

Then again, considering the way Cyria described her before, I wouldn’t be surprised if she did.

As for why she locked eyes with me? It’s probably due to the aforementioned fiasco from yesterday.

Anyways, she ends up going down one row from us and walking straight up to the seat directly in front of me before looking between me and Cyria, only to focus on her as she says, “Cyria.”

“Rebecca,” Cyria replies with a frosty look on her face; one that displays pretty clearly how she feels about the – using her own words – princess.

After a tense few seconds with the two just staring at each other, Rebecca turns towards me and surprisingly introduces herself – as if I didn’t already know who she was.

“Hello, my name is Rebecca Hunter,” she says, nodding her head slightly towards me, “it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

I look between her and Cyria for a moment – briefly noting Cyria’s glare – before nodding my head back to her and answering, “I’m Nathan Fox.”

Surprisingly, she just ends it there with a nod as she sits down in the seat in front of Cyria, despite their obvious tension.

Not really sure what that was about, but-

My thoughts are interrupted as a group of students spill through the portal, ending at seven of them total. And just like with the other two large groups I’ve seen so far, most of them seem to be following one person.

Except, unlike the other large groups, this group is following a stuck-up looking boy. One who seems to be enjoying the attention given to him.

“Who’s he?” Aidan whispers, directing his question towards Cyria, only to look surprised as Rebecca answers instead.

“He’s a member of the Wolf family,” she answers with a frown, expressing her clear dislike of the kid just through her cold tone alone, “albeit not a very important member.”

What’s with the number of people from the top families attending this year?

Although the Enhancement Magic affinity family isn’t as important in the republic, mostly because it’s not seen in as high of a light as the other magic affinities. Sure, it’s a powerful magic, but at the same time, it focuses more on the body of the user than magic itself. So a lot of the people with the affinity tend to just become muscle heads.

Kind of like the Warrior General.

Time passes until the kid – who Rebecca actually didn’t give a name for, outside of his family name – notices Rebecca and looks like he’s about to call out to her, only to pause as the instructor claps his hands and says, “Alright, it’s time to begin.”

He then turns to look at the kid and his group and says, “Find a seat.”

Unwilling to argue with the instructor, the kid and his group all sit down in the seats closest to where they were standing as the instructor turns his attention to the class as a whole.

A class that seems rather small compared to the size of the room. Seeing as there look to be just as many empty seats as there are occupied ones.

Looking around the class, I find several of the students with their laptops open to take notes, but I personally just have a pen and paper with me. Mostly because I don’t really understand why I would take notes on the laptop. After all, I don’t have a laptop or computer in my dorm room, so how would I review them outside of class?

Of course, there could be something I’m missing, but still.

“Now,” Instructor Leo begins while raising his hand and summoning a magic circle without any of the lines of code running through it, “can anyone tell me what this is?”

Rebecca raises her hand and answers after the instructor calls on her, “It’s a scriptless magic circle, sir!”

The instructor frowns at her and says, “Call me Instructor Leo, or just instructor. Don’t bother with that sir crap.”

“Right, instructor,” Rebecca says with a polite nod, prompting the instructor’s frown to vanish as he continues, “That aside, your answer was correct. Everyone open up your laptops.”

At his word, I open my laptop before finding the words ‘Tap your key to the screen’ shown on the screen. After I do that, it automatically logs me into my profile and sends me to a desktop, of which includes various coding software, along with different note taking services.

“Once you do that, enter any of the coding software. Just make sure that it either uses the standard coding language that will be taught here, which was named by the academy as MCL, or one that you are comfortable with,” he says, waving his hand towards the magi-tech board and causing a screen to appear with what looks like a tutorial for MCL coding.

A faint smile emerges on my face as I see the coding software my dad taught me through on the desktop of the laptop.

The smile goes away pretty quickly as I focus on the instructor’s words whilst clicking on the coding software.

“Now, I’m sure some of you already know how to code,” he says with his arms crossed and his gaze looking through the students, pausing slightly on me, “and for you, I will have you design a very short and easy program to prove to me that you know what you’re doing.”

His gaze then continues on to the other students as he finishes, “If the program is done to my satisfaction, then I will allow you to start on magic circle construction.”

At his words, a second screen appears next to the first, causing the first to shrink down to half of the board. The second screen has a rubric for a very short, and extremely simple program.

Write a program to output ‘Hello World’ nine times, each on a different line.

The program should ask for the user’s input before starting and asking which line from 1 through 10 to omit. It should then print all ten lines, with the line’s number, followed by a period, a space, and the words ‘Hello World’ on all ten lines except for the inputted number, in which case it should only print the line’s number and a period.

Okay, that’s actually incredibly simple.

“Now, get to work,” Instructor Leo says, his gaze once again roaming through the students, “either on the tutorial on the board, or on writing this program.”

I immediately get to work as the class falls silent, with the only sound being that of clicking keys.

It only takes me a few minutes to finish the program before I raise my hand to signal that I’m done, with a few others finishing before me. The instructor walks from person to person, having them show him their program before giving them a nod after seeing it work. Once he gets to me, he simply gives me a nod and says, “Nathan,” before looking at the MCL code on my screen.

“Good,” he says with another nod of his head before he goes to the next person. He nods his head once before clicking execute and entering in the number 1. After seeing the program work as it should, he runs it again two more times with different inputs each time.

That was easy enough. Now I just have to wait.