Having picked my skills, I got out of bed and stretched, working out the various kinks in my back and neck. I focused on the world around me, my eyes narrowing at the suspicious amount of dust in the room. I grabbed the snacks I’d prepared for myself, quickly chowed down and had a drink, and left my room.

“Elaine? Is that you?” A voice croaked from the living room, and I walked over there to see an aged Skye, with Auri on the counter. Skye looked ancient and decrepit, her pale hair now white, with wrinkles on her face.

“Brrrrpt……” Auri was hunched over, telling me she was happy to see me after seven thousand centuries.

I put my hands on my hips.

“The prank’s funny, but you’re forgetting I’m a healer. I haven’t aged a bit, I would’ve died with that length of time, and why would you all still be here in the same building? I’m more curious how you got Auri to play along.”

“Brrrpt!” Auri shed her hunched over look, flitting over to me and hovering in front of me. “Brrpt BRPT!”

I laughed at the bird.

“Bored and thought it’d be funny, huh. Well, let’s just see what I can think of next time you’re classing up. I know there’s a small lake nearby…”

“BRPTTTT!!!!!” Auri was frantically flying circles around me, begging me not to leave her in the middle of a lake when she was next classing up.

The illusion around Skye vanished, and she returned back to normal.

“Nobody here ever falls for it.” She complained, picking herself up. “Well, glad you came out before I needed to get to class. See ya!”

“Take care.” I told my roommate, flopping down and stretching on the couch with Auri.

“Brrrpt?”

“Sure, let me tell you all about it…”

I started to regale the options I had and the class I picked to Auri, along with the skills, when Iona’s door slammed open. A man strategically holding a bundle of robes fled the room, and then the suite, with Iona yelling behind him.

“Exit’s that way jackass! And ‘oops wrong entrance’ doesn’t work on anyone!” She stormed out of her room as jackass made the fastest exit I’d ever seen.

“Ugh.” A very naked Iona crossed her arms and tapped her foot at the now-closed door. “Why do I bother?”

She had a stellar ass though.

“Brrrpt!”

“You’re right.” Iona agreed with Auri, noticing me on the sofa. “Hey! New class, awesome! Hang on, let me get some clothes first.”

I could only softly laugh to myself at all the chaos.

At least Reinhart was relatively low-key. I’d never guess my kirin roommate to be the easygoing one, but life was full of surprises.

The time until classes started passed in a mad blur. I got to practice a bit with my skills, grabbing a number of easy, early levels for them, and getting a feel how they worked. I needed a job, both to complete the School experience, and because cold hard gem-studded coins were needed to buy food, and more importantly, nice robes.

The boring admin building took care of that. A single centralized hub for all the small jobs the School had, with an expert [Headhunter] ready to help people find the right job for them.

There were dozens, if not hundreds of jobs, from sweeping, cleaning, cooking at the cafeteria, assisting various professors, and more. The pay was the same regardless of where we worked, seemingly carefully calculated to provide for all of our living expenses, with a modest chunk of change left over for personal spending. The two jobs that caught my attention were working in the hospital, and working as one of the library attendants.

Sadly, the hospital one was scut work, not ‘heal everyone who comes in’, and I’d be hard pressed not to heal everyone I saw. The library looked more interesting, and I’d confess that getting peeks at various books, learning the layout front and back, squirreling away various books for when I was done with work, and finding the perfect hidey-holes to read in strongly motivated my decision to work in the library.

With food for the foreseeable future secured, it was time to check out practice with the School’s combat team.

“Elaine. Welcome.” Shirayuki greeted me… well, it wasn’t bright and early as the sun went, but the School’s own timekeeping system thought it was.

“Shirayuki. Thank you. I tried to get here a bit early.”

[*brrrrrrrrring!* I should be at practice by now.]

[*ding!* [Timekeeping] leveled up! 8->9]

I was going to be so sad when I lost this skill.

She gave me a nod.

“It is good to see that you are serious about this. Now. You know combat. What do you know of the School’s combat team, and our goals?”

I shrugged.

“That you want me badly enough to pay for my schooling here?”

She snorted.

“Both correct, and so utterly wrong. Walk with me.”

I walked with Shirayuki, taking a lap around a field that was slowly filling up with students. Something I immediately noticed was that most of them were in form-fitting clothes, mostly in black but with a few purples in the mix. Clothes that were easy to move in, and wouldn’t tangle.

Thank goodness.

The few not in what I was mentally calling sportswear had on armor, and seeing the variety brought a smile to my face.

“There are numerous organizations for teaching in the world. We like to believe we’re the best, but Calador, Chanlaar, the Wizard’s University, the Elven Academy, and more are all our competition. We all want the best students. Politely, we all want the richest students as well, along with the most successful alumni. The combat team is just one way we can compete with the other centers of learning. We beat Calador in combat, sponsors on the fence send their charges to us, not them. Calador wins, and they get more students. The events are also well attended. We win? Alumni open their pockets and shower the School with money. We lose? Well, some donate regardless, but the [Scribes] all tell me the numbers are significantly higher when we win. None of this is life or death. None of this is of critical importance to the School, but on balance, it is better that we win, than lose. Understood?”

I nodded. Seemed straightforward enough.

“Do I need to win, or do I need to win with style?”

“Win without making us look bad.” Shirayuki gave me a significant look and I mentally sighed.

“No shooting people under a truce banner.”

“Correct. To be clear, I approve of the maneuver in a single game where you needed to stand out. In that time and place, you made the optimal move. I can’t think of it being the best move in future events.”

“Understood. What do you need from me on a daily basis until the events?”

“Practice.” Shirayuki told me. “Relentless practice. I am of a mind to put you in most freestyle events, unless you have strong personal objections to some of them.”

“As long as I’m not violating my [Oath], I’m happy to participate in anything you need me to.” Why make life hard for the person greasing the wheels? From the various pay rates I’d seen, participating in the School’s team was some of the best return on investment I could possibly have, all while keeping myself sharp.

I wanted a safe, peaceful life. I had no illusions that I’d manage to get and keep one. The world was always dangerous, it would always knock on my door and demand my money or my life.

They couldn’t have either.

“Good. Here.” Shirayuki handed me a wand.

I looked it over. Short, something like 8, 9 inches long, and slightly flexible as I swished it through the air.

“Thank you, what’s this?” I asked her.

“Your winnings from the free-for-all event.” Her mouth twisted in a grin. “It seemed to have entirely slipped your mind, although everyone ranked under you was happy to have gotten a higher pick of the prizes. This wand was left, and it’s useful for wizardry. Not that you seem to employ the art. Sell it, keep it as a reminder, gain a wizardry class, it is all the same to me. You should see Mormerilhawn. He will calibrate a better, more personalized shield for you. It will give you the needed experience for how it works in large events.”

Shirayuki abruptly turned and swished her tails as she cut across the field, yelling in a different language at two students who’d somehow screwed up.

My conversation with Shirayuki done, I went to find Mormerilhawn to get my shield calibrated with a bit more finesse and detail.

“Mormerilhawn! Hey, I was told to talk with you about calibrating a shield?”

“Elaine. Welcome. Yes, the protection I provide to the members of the School team is more comprehensive than the protection I provide in arbitrary events, simply because I have more time to dedicate to each member. In the interest of fairness, each member of the School team, when participating in such an event, gets a similarly downgraded shield. By the same token, when competing in true events, I coordinate with my counterparts to ensure that everyone has similarly well-attuned shields.”

The Black Rose sniffed, and I suspected his counterparts didn’t meet his standards.

“Ok, great. What do we need to do differently this time?”

“I will need to test a wide variety of materials, elements, and types of attacks, to determine sensitivity. An excellent example are poisoned weapons. In the event you were just in, a poisoned weapon was treated just the same as any other weapon. Now, it is considered a stronger hit.”

“Unless I’m impervious to poisons.” I cheekily replied.

Mormerilhawn paused a moment, looking at me.

“Unless you are resistant to poisons, yes. Your shield will have some additional calibrations around your mana, that is to say, when taking a blow, I will ensure your mana pool takes a hit. It will be entirely safe, and once you no longer have mana, your shield will be downgraded appropriately.”

Complicated, but made sense.

“Oh! You’re calibrating each element differently, right? A full-spectrum check?”

He nodded.

“Indeed. You’ve caught on quickly, unlike most of the muscleheads on this team.”

I grinned.

“Sooo… how does immunity to fire work?”

He gave me a strange look.

“I will calibrate your resistance to fire like anything else.”

I shook my head.

“No no. I’m immune. Fully, properly, totally immune. System even says so. I’d take my own protection against fire over your shield any day.”

The Black Rose blinked owlishly at me, as he jaw slowly opened.

Ha! The look on his face!

Priceless.

Getting my class schedule together was tricky, an exercise in copious note taking, cross-referencing, looking up class schedules, looking up tracks, finding overlapping classes, finding when and where they were, seeing what other courses I was interested in, then trying to fit them together.

Then, of course, was deciding what medical classes I wanted to take. Did I want to start at the beginning? I was confident in my knowledge, but there was a line between confidence and arrogance. Had the fundamentals changed in the last few tens of thousands of years? Did elvenoid understanding of healing shift? Were there bare-bone basics I had missed that would be covered in the early classes, that would be foundational later on?

Or was I massively overthinking everything? Did I have a strong enough foundation to skip the introductory classes - intended for people with no knowledge in the subject - and go right to the advanced material?

I only had so much time in the day. A useless class ate up hours, and medicine was especially demanding in how much time was needed.

It was also another set of classes to try and work into my schedule.

“This is impossible.” I leaned back in my chair, bumping into my bed, as I complained to Auri.

“Brrrpt?”

“Right. Where to start. Last place that was vaguely educational was Ranger Academy, and that had a packed schedule. I did fine. I figure I should repeat that - why waste a moment? I want to take all the classes, and figure out what Tracks I want to take, and where I want to focus and learn. What direction to evolve my [Student] class in, then where to reset it to. As a result, I want to take as many different classes as possible.”

“Brrpt.”

“If I was only taking classes in the Medicine Tracks, I’d be fine. They’re in a neat progression, cleanly laid out, and I’d be able to take two to three classes each quarter, have enough free time, and have no overlaps or conflict, not unless I wanted to take the basic class with the super advanced class.”

Which was cleverly done.

“But I want more than just a single Track and a few general classes to fill in the time. I want everything. Which brings me to the schedule. Practice is first thing in the morning, so that block is gone.” I pointed to a schedule I’d pinned to the wall, seven days of the week each divided up into the 12 blocks that the School used to run its schedule. The four blocks that were ‘night’ were crossed out, along with the first set of blocks. “Any classes offered there are out of the question.”

Which raised a question - if I had a course mandatory for my Track that was morning block only, how would I manage to take it? It couldn’t be a new question.

“Introduction to Voodoo and Potions overlap here,” I pointed to the three blocks in a week in question. “Which, while annoying, isn’t the end of the world. At least that’s a simple choice between one or the other. If I take one, I’m not taking the other.”

“Brrrpt? Brrpt?”

“I can’t take both - I CAN TAKE BOTH!” I shot up in my chair. “Auri, you’re a genius!”

“Brrrpt.” She knew.

“I can totally sign up for both classes, attend one, attend the second one, then decide which one I like! I can drop the other one, miss a single class - it’ll suck, but I’ll see if someone has the notes I can borrow - but it works!”

“Brrrpt!” Auri was the bestest, prettiest, smartest bird, and she knew it.

With the brainwave of Auri’s simple question opening the way, I got to furious work.

The easy class was the Advanced Medicine class I threw onto the schedule. I was taking it, no ifs, ands, or buts.

Of course, “easy” was relative, given that it had three separate sets of hours it could fit in, and I had to juggle the question of ‘which options was I fine cutting off?’, given that most introductory courses had a half-dozen blocks in which they were offered.

The real trick was the few “tri overlapping” courses, where course 1 would be blocks A and B, course 2 would be blocks B and C, and course 3 was naturally blocks A and C. Taking just one of the classes would naturally exclude the other two, and things weren’t easily laid out, oh no. That was an example of an easy conflict to resolve.

Whoever designed the course schedule was an evil genius, and I had a mental flashback to the [Scribe] who’d helped get Auri and I settled in.

What worked well in my favor was that classes went right until the “night” hours, granting a whole 16 hours every day to take classes in.

14 hours after practice.

And the library was open all night, so I could work then… it also tended to be quieter during the ‘night’ hours. Easier to slip in some studying.

It took three sets of knocking at my door and wondering if I wanted to grab a bite to eat - why ask me three times for one meal, honestly - before I wrapped up. The door was cracked open, and I had an omnipresent jug of juice out for Auri, which was surprisingly low.

“Brrrpt. Brrrpt?” Auri looked doubtfully at my masterpiece.

“No no, it’s perfect. See, all the classes fit, and I’ll only have to axe… almost half of them! Slightly less! Hang on, how good are you at fractions? Did Plato ever get around to them?”

“BRRPT!” Auri hovered in front of my masterpiece. I facepalmed.

“Shit! Yeah, hang on.” I switched my quill colors, blocking out another part of the ‘night’ hours, casually eliminating another 30 minutes of sleep every night.

“There! That’s our time together! Every day! Plus, this schedule is going to get wrecked once I drop a bunch of classes. That’ll open up a bunch of time every day for us, or for me to study, or relax! It’ll go great.”

“Brrrpt.”

“I’ll eat between classes!”

“Brrrpt.”

“I don’t know, I’ll figure it out!”

“Brrrpt…”

“Wait, it’s been how long since I ate!? You should’ve said something earlier!”

I got up, and felt my stomach growl. I resolved not to let this happen again, and set three recurring alarms for food. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Marcelle flipped through my proposed schedule. I didn’t need her to approve it, but I figured the more eyes on it the better.

“This is a terrible idea, and you know it.” She handed the schedule back to me. “You’re also not the first student to have tried it, and I know trying to dissuade you is fruitless. Just remember to recognize burnout when it hits you, cut back, and take at least one easy quarter once you’ve gotten the bad ideas out of your head to recover.”

I frowned at her, and she grinned back.

“Can’t wait to see you in biomancy though! I can promise it's better than divination!”