“Hey Jin, are you sure these notes are correct?“

“Indeed, I am."

"Then why have you written that an Orc's weak point are its wings?" Odis closed in on Jin with widened eyes. "HUH? What fucking Orc has wings?"

Jin scuttled backward, trying to put some distance between him and Odis, but in vain, as the bruno kept closing in with gritted teeth and a twitching brow.

"M-my sincerest apologies, it seems I was careless," Jin said, awkwardly raising his hand when the back of his head was blocked by the sturdy walls of the lobby.

"HUH!?"

"Dude, sorry, ok? I need new ones too! Why would I trick you?" All of Jin's sense of sophistication was lost under Odis' intimidation. I couldn't help but let out a chuckle.

"You guys suck at this, huh?" I said. Odis and Jin, still in their strange position, snapped their head toward me. "What, you're any better, bitch?"

"Of course, I am." I leaned back into my seat and scrolled down my notes, ignoring my idiot dormmates. It had been a sort of ritual for us to just come down and sit in Green Wolves Dormitory's lobby now and then, and these days we had made it a time for some group study.

"Give us your notes then," Odis demanded. "We'll judge how better you are."

"I agree, hand them over."

I narrowed my eyes and thought for a few seconds. "Alright, on a condition though."

These guys might just be useful enough for the system's and my special training. Before I could continue, the sound of familiar heavy footsteps filled the room. The weight of the steps was so heavy one could almost smell it from the air.

"Are you guys dense or what?! I asked for a potion to use in trainings!" A girlish voice, completely out of place with the heavy footsteps, rang out in an annoyed tone.

I turned to look at Odis and Jin as all three of us shared a nod. We knew exactly what the next line was going to be.

"But, Nica! Protein shakes are the potions you use for training!"

There it was.

The ginormous figures of our three muscle seniors and dormmates appeared from the corner of the room. A tall, brunette girl that could only seem tiny in comparison to the other three walked in front of them as she passed through the thin passageway leading to the lobby of the dorm's boys' end.

She wiped away the sweat from her forehead and rolled her eyes while the three muscle seniors followed behind, waving their hands around to convince her of whatever muscle-heady bullcrap they were on about.

"Look, Toko, Koko, Bukko..." the girl turned to face the three seniors and said. My eyes widened at the strange names as I turned toward the other two again just to see a similar reaction. "You guys need to get a life." The straight face and the pitiful eyes she cast on the giant steel plates of muscle in front of her merged with her spear-like words and tore down their defenses, the three seniors shut up in an instant.

'Who the fuck did she just name?' Odis mimed.

'No way, those were NOT their name! NO!' Jin mimed right back. Our shock became the medium for the sound of our minds to reach each other.

Toko, Koko, and Bukko? What the fuck kind of cutesy names were those?

{Are the three muscle seniors a three-year-old's missing dolls turned mutant or something?} Even the system had some thoughts about this!

The girl soon left and the three muscle seniors walked over with downcast faces. Odis immediately left the eight-seater sofa he was taking over and joined Jin in the three-seater one. The muscle seniors quietly covered all the eight positions and one more as they sat down.

"Haah," the spiky-muscle senior sighed.

{Which one is he, Koko? Toko?}

"What is it, senior. You look sad," I carefully talked to him.

"Hm? Yeah," long-hair senior answered back. "The pace of our studies has picked up, so we think a special exam might be around the corner. But you have to team up with someone from another course and we are having real bad luck with that."

Oh?

These guys' classes had picked up pace too!

Odis and Jin's eyes brightened just like mine at the smell of potential information wafting in between that of muscles.

"Why do you have to team up?" Odis asked. "Are we supposed to do that too?

"Huh? Probably. You'll have a ton of students coming in to partner up since you guys are in the Awakener course. The engineering kids are the ones that stick to you like sweat."

Engineering students.

Thinking about it again. Remy Marcin was also an engineering student.

Now, that made a lot of sense. The reason she asked for my number so brazenly wasn't that it was a 'score,' but because she wanted to team up!

"And," Jin continued the questioning. "What kind of partnerships do they have to do?"

"Partnerships? We alchemy students have to help out with anyone who could use potions –wait." The last of the three seniors said interrupted himself. His eyes grew sharp and his sunken smile grew wide. "Don't you guys make use of Alchemy too?"

Fuck.

In the blink of an eye, the other two seniors had wrapped their arms around Jin and Odis' necks. "You'll partner with us, right? Right?"

As an upstanding student; no, a citizen, it should've been my duty to report these guys to the police right then and there.

"Uh, I have to attend to a call," I muttered to no one in particular and ran out of the dorms before those guys could catch me. I thought I heard Odis screaming my name from behind, but it was a sacrifice worth making.

***

I was walking away from the dormitory with a chipper gait. With nothing important to do, I thought of going down to the library and working on the assignment again. There was also the system's matter I had to think about as soon as I could.

My initial plan was to ask Isabella for help with the training, but I doubt she would like any system to gain any powers.

My hands mindlessly tapped on the watch and the hologram screen spread in front of my eyes. Scrolling through the list, the hologram screen replaced the home tab with the messaging application interface.

At the top of the list was a message from a friend with a bird as his profile picture.

[Zachy Bird: Ralph. Training here. Come urgent;;ly]

[]

A link to the maps, and a message from fifteen minutes back.

{Did he say he's training there? What's so urgent?}

I raised my eyebrows and tapped on the text box at the bottom. A keypad appeared on the screen as I glided my hand over it to type a reply. The watch's camera captures my gestures and transcribed them with accuracy.

[Ralph: Still there? I'll come over now. Sorry, didn't see the message.]

It didn't take even a minute for his reply to pop up.

[Zachy Bird: Yee, come quivk.]

"His texts are frustrating."

{Sure are. You going, host? I thought you wouldn't want to train with them.}

"I don't," I shrugged. "But we were just in need of a training partner, remember?"

{Right...} The system's window flickered with multiple 'right's. It was nervous.

"Don't worry too much," I said, tapping on the location and following it down to the southern end of the campus. "We'll try to absorb any mana that comes our way, and you can run your formulas on that, alright?"

{Understood...}

I ignored the flickers this time and rushed down to the location Zachy had sent me. It was a rather good opportunity at the perfect time. A major part of our preparations was to be able to check other creatures' stats, and for that, we needed to have mana from others until we got things right. Physically training with Zachy -and likely also with Luke, since the two had been rather close these days- would give me a fair many chances to test things.

Soon enough, I found myself in front of a slightly deserted pathway at the southernmost parts of the campus. The paved roads here were slightly moldy and had some weeds growing on them, starkly different from the pathways everywhere else that seemed to have been erected just yesterday.

I glanced at the map and followed down the road, my eyes swerving around as a veneer of trees and bushes covered the plains on both sides. Eventually, my eyes landed on the fillings of white between the covers of the leaves and as I came closer, an enormous dome-shaped structure revealed itself.

A couple of automatic glass doors stood at the tiny entrance of the large place, coinciding with the marker on the map.

{There was something this big for training?}

The system gave form to my thoughts as I paced down the pathway and through the automatic doors. A wave of bright lights assaulted my eyes, forcing me to cover my face with my hands.

"HEY! Ralph!!"

I didn't even get the chance to let the bright lights blur away when I heard my name being called out. I lowered my hands and turned to my left.

Standing there was none other than Zachy Bird and a bunch of familiar faces.

Seeing them, I smiled and turned to my left.

And walked straight out of the place.