My bird’s eye view of the island vanished as we rapidly landed just outside the School area. A few dozen other barges were parked in the area, members of the School boarding another boat even as we landed. The doors opened, the ramps came down, and the surge of passengers exited. Shirayuki didn’t even gesture, simply striding off the boat with aplomb, fully expecting us to follow.

Like lost little ducklings, we did.

There was a grand wall dividing the School portion of the island from the town portion of the island. Glowing Inscriptions – were they even still called Inscriptions? – coated the walls, some sort of magic obviously active. We approached the main gates, flung open to greet us.

“All those who seek knowledge are welcome here.” Iona pointed to some words over the main gates, repeated in dozens and dozens of languages. I quickly scanned over them, the words forming a miniature Rosetta Stone of sorts.

I blinked in surprise, seeing the words in Creation near the top of the list. Just how old was the School!?

“Whoa.” Artemis was looking around wide-eyed. Professional interest?

As we funneled through the gates, the crowd became much thinner as people went their separate ways. We continued to follow Shirayuki to one of the nearest buildings.

Displays of casual magic were everywhere. One student hurried by, drinking haphazardly from a fountain of water coming from the tip of his wand. Another one tripped, an older student – or teacher – with a staff casually waving, catching the student by the robes. All their books and stuff were returned to their hands in the same movement. A half-dozen students – no way were they professors – zipped by on a ‘stone wave’ that they were surfing, much to the consternation and loss of balance of the people they flew past. Another was deep into a dozen books hovering in front of them, flicking her wand in short, tight sequences from book to book, turning pages, not looking at all where she was going.

I knew that because she was deep in the grass by the paths, heading straight for a tree.

I was super jealous though. I wanted to have a dozen books open in front of me, with the ability to read them all. Oooh! With the right skill, I could even read them all at once! Good ideas. Until I had those skills though, I was a bit jealous.

Absent-minded students were everywhere, and I’d take how often that had been me to my grave.

Look, high school hadn’t been that challenging, and a good book under the table was totally fine!

It was surreal to be thinking of my old life again, but something about the environment was bringing it out. Except with magic.

Pillars of pure Arcanite lined the paths, in between the abundant trees, and students casually reached out to touch them as they passed, obviously topping up their mana.

Wow.

The things I could do with that much mana. The speed at which I could level…

Hang on.

Most of the skills I was seeing were based on a wand or a staff. That didn’t jive with what I knew of skills and classes.

There was so much to learn!! I couldn’t wait!

I bounced along after Shirayuki, energetically vibrating as I followed her.

Hurry up! Go faster! Skip the boring parts, get to the learning!

We approached one of the buildings. Even by the standards of the few buildings I’d seen, this one was grand, giving off an intimidating aura of age, taste, and money. There was minimal magic on this building, instead designed to impress all those who approached.

The fact that it was one of the first buildings I’d seen since entering through the front gate couldn’t be a coincidence.

Shirayuki marched right up to the building, through the vaulted and high doors, and we followed her into a great big hall. Some benches were scuttling along the walls, to the consternation of a few people sitting on them. Two benches in particular seemed intent on getting their occupants together, the pair awkwardly pushing each other away as the benches tried to dump one on the other’s lap.

Note to self: Don’t sit on the matchmaking benches.

Shirayuki knew exactly where she was going, and we skipped a line of non-students to go straight to one of the rooms. Iona thankfully trailed along with us. Amber, Julius, and Artemis kept getting distracted by various cool magic things, and I couldn’t blame them.

I gave Iona a questioning look, and she winked back.

“I get to skip the line by helping you out!” She flicked some of her hair back.

Fenrir gave a pleased rumble from his throat, that sounded suspiciously like a deep purr.

We ended up near a wizened old faun. Shirayuki gave a few curt words and slapped down a pile of paper in front of the [Accountant]. He just arched a skeptical eyebrow at her, and started slowly going through the paperwork.

At various points he asked Shirayuki questions, who sighed and huffed at him. Then he had a bunch of magical lights go off, surrounding Shirayuki, who folded her arms and glared.

“What do you think they’re doing?” I whispered to Artemis. She used to run a school, she might have some insight.

“Probably checking that everything’s on the up and up. I had one illusionist disguise themselves as the son of a famous hotshot Senator, and tried to sweet talk his way into my school. Never know when someone desperate is trying to pull a scam, especially with how much money tuition costs.”

Made sense. If sweet-talking the right person could make tens of thousands of rods, they’d get constantly tested.

Eventually the faun was satisfied that everything was on the up and up, and he gave me a withering glare.

“Yikes, what did I ever do to him?” I muttered to myself.

“People that take money like getting money, even if it’s not theirs.” Amber reasonably said.

Meeeh fine.

Shirayuki came up to me and said something, handed me the pile of papers, and left.

“Practice is first thing in the morning at the Mistor Stadium.” Iona translated as the last of Shirayuki’s tails flicked through the door. “You’ve got a week to orient yourself.”

Iona shrugged, and went to talk with the bursar herself. An even longer conversation ensued, while the rest of us hung out.

“Brrrpt?” Auri asked.

“I’m sure we’ll find a spot for you.” I reassured her.

“Brrpt?”

“I haven’t asked anyone yet.”

“BRPT BRPTT!!!”

I glanced around and lowered my voice.

“Worst case I’ll smuggle you inside my tunic.”

“Brrpt!!” The idea of subterfuge and sneaking around appealed to Auri, and she wasted no time flying down to my legs, then up my tunic.

“Auri no!” I cried out as patches of my tunic started to smoke, the little pyromaniac sowing chaos wherever she flew.

I started playing a furious game of “pat out the flames” and “don’t get expelled minutes after getting into the School”, with Auri madly cackling as she flew around my tunic, a little ball moving around in my clothes.

The flames naturally couldn’t hurt me, but the side effects from them could.

Julius, Artemis, and Amber were no help either, laughing uproariously at Auri’s antics. The [Bursar] was giving us death glares as he kept talking with Iona, and I decided that our antics in a single office was better than our antics in a crowded hallway.

I eventually wrapped Auri up in my [Mantle], and carefully extracted her from my tunic.

“What are we going to do?” Artemis asked. “Right now we’re just following you around.”

I thought about it for a moment.

“Let’s see how long they’ll let you stick around. It’d be nice if you could stay a few days while I get settled in, and nobody’s said anything yet.” That we understood.

Still, guards yelling at us was a fairly clear message, regardless of the language.

“We should see if there’s a place in town we can grab.” Julius tapped a finger to his lips. “See if there’s any sort of work. The rules here seem to be significantly more lax.”

“There’s enough people to make money, but with how overbuilt everything is, I think the market’s pretty mature. I would like to see if there’s anything I can buy here to kick start things though. There’s gotta be a speciality.” Amber said.

“One step at a time.” I said.

“Brrpt! Brrpt?”

“Yeah, I’ll try to find you a tiny hat.” I told Auri.

“BRPT!”

We devolved into more small talk while Iona finished up, although we tried to have it in crude Hakka to work on our proficiencies. We’d never improve if we didn’t constantly speak the language. Total immersion was the name of the game.

[*ding!* Congratulations! [Learning Languages] has leveled up! 49 -> 50]

The skill had an interesting snowball effect. The more it leveled up, the easier it was to learn a language. The easier it was to learn a language, the more it leveled up. I could see the skill rapidly cascading until I mastered all the languages I wanted to, then it’d abruptly stop and become practically worthless.

“Ok! I’m all set! We need to go to registration now.” Iona told us.

I wanted to groan. Another layer of bureaucracy. This was getting absurd.

“I really hope this is the last line or scribe we need to see.” I complained to Iona. She nodded, and we all started walking and talking. Iona seemed to know where we needed to go next, and we were both new students. Stood to reason that I should follow her.

“Hope so! Just gotta remember that everyone wants something, and people in these roles generally want to be helpful. Play the game, make nice, and they’ll make your stay that much easier.”

I threw a look over my shoulder at the office we’d just left.

The one grumpy [Accountant] completely controlled who got into the School, and who didn’t. If he took a disliking to me, he could throw up obstacle after obstacle, and I’d have to leave.

I made a mental note to bring him some cookies or something. I was making a lot of mental notes recently.

[*ding!* You’ve unlocked the General Skill [Mental Notes]. Would you like to replace a skill with it? Y/N]

I declined, thinking that had come a lot easier than most skills I was offered.

Before long we ended up in ANOTHER DAMN LINE. The seven of us continued to chat in Hakka, Iona regaling us with tales of her exploits in the language. Some of them were quite… explicit, but it got us through the line and helped us with our language.

I wasn’t much on social stuff, but I knew most people liked to talk about themselves.

We made it to one of the scribes, and five sentences in Iona’s face fell.

“Wrong line.”

“What!” Amber shrieked in outrage. “Wrong line!?”

“Well, technically it was the right line, but she’s the wrong [Scribe] for us. Wants us to see someone else. The head administrator or someone.”

That sounded great to me.

We were sent to another office in the dizzying, magical, maze-like building. It was almost like the [Architect] who had designed the place had taken the phrase “Magical bureaucratic labyrinth” literally, and made the building a reflection of its inhabitants.

There was blessedly no line here.

We ended up in a nice office with hundreds of books magically suspended from the ceiling. A woman with red skin and wings was sitting behind the desk in red robes, and she looked a lot like the devil I’d fought back in Ochi. I quickly checked her level.

[Laborer – 3136]

That jived with the levels of most Immortals I’d seen.

Interestingly, the woman’s desk was relatively near the front of the room. Behind her there was a long hallway, with hundreds, if not thousands, of open books, scrolls, and papers on desks. Above each one was a quill, industriously writing. I didn’t see any inkpots, but I didn’t exactly have a great angle. The sound of thousands of quietly scratching quills formed a strangely soothing backdrop to the whole place, and if I was told that the [Scribe] was single-handedly running all of those, I’d believe it.

Iona and the woman there got down to business. She then translated for me.

“I see your name’s… Elaine? And you’re here for healing, on a full combat scholarship. Country of origin is… Remus?” She frowned as her finger traced down the papers I’d handed to her.

“Correct.” I was fully ready to explain or defend myself.

“Immortal or Fae? Sorry, silly question, it has to be Fae. Combat scholarships wouldn’t take somebody that old.” The woman said to herself, Iona translating anyways.

I needed to do something really nice for Iona, after all she’d done for me.

I was impressed with how astute the woman was, and straightened up a bit.

“Doesn’t speak the language-” Iona cut herself off, and had a rapid-fire exchange with the woman.

“Speaks the Vampire Tongue.” She corrected, and Iona translated that part. “That’s a useful start. Is that young lady with you also coming?”

Amber pointed to herself.

“Me?” She asked.

The [Head Scribe] shooed at Amber.

“Not you, her.” She pointed at Auri.

“I hope she can come along.” I hedged.

“How old is she?” She asked, and Iona rapidly answered back before I could. Benefit of being able to see Auri’s stats.

“You wouldn’t be the first to bring a dependent with you, and she’s young enough to count.” The woman told me, and Auri fluttered around in joy at hearing that.

“Brrpt! BRRPT!!!!” She was so excited she could come!

Not that there was any doubt that I’d leave her.

“We’ve got a smaller place for kids to learn while their parents are getting an education.” The scribe continued, adjusting her glasses. “Also, either a skill of mine is on the fritz, or she’s a phoenix?”

I froze at that, my mouth opening and closing wordlessly.

“I’ll take that as a yes. No worries, we’ve had stranger things come through. Heck, you’re barely the strangest thing this admittance cycle! So far at least. The truly weird ones are always breaking into my office three days after admissions are closed, demanding I just ‘make it work’ and ‘perform miracles’ and ‘backdate the paperwork.’ Ha! Like I’d ever backdate anything. Far be it for me to assume, but I suspect the two of you will want to be in the same room. Correct?”

I mutely nodded, keeping my mouth closed as the true power that ran this place blathered on. The less said the better.

“Excuse me…” Amber sweetly cut in, and Iona obligingly translated. I wanted to facepalm. “Any chance we can also come in?”

I noticed Amber’s hand was in her pocket, probably clutching onto her lucky coin.

“Did you get admitted? Did you pay?” The [Scribe] asked.

“Well, no.”

“That answers that. Right, next question…”

The woman behind the desk continued to officiously ask me dozens of probing questions, discerning way more information out from my answers than I thought I’d given her. Not a single thing seemed to faze her, and even Julius looked impressed.

I bet I could tell her I had an Immortality-granting skill, and she’d just grunt, make a mark on a piece of paper, and let me know that was nice, but had I ever seen a massive Immortality-granting event? Why, there’d been one eight decades ago, and…

After all her questions, she stopped talking entirely, closing her eyes a moment as her fingers twitched. A few sheets of paper then zoomed onto her desk and, with a flick of her fingers, were filled out.

“Right. Here you two go.” She handed us the papers before Iona could finish translating. She said a bunch more things, too quickly for Iona to translate, then waved us out of her office. As I left, I saw the book she’d been working on snap back up to the ceiling, and another one drifted down onto her desk.

We left her room, my friends peering over my shoulder at the paperwork I’d been handed.

I couldn’t read any of it, and I wanted to scream in frustration. This language thing SUCKED!

We wandered through the maze of the building, trying to find an exit, with Iona poring over her paperwork. Finally, we found an exit, and ended up back on the campus.

Iona tore herself away from her own stuff, and finally explained and translated a few things for me.

“Ok, orientation is in three days, where they’ll help explain how everything works here. Going to suck slightly for you, since you don’t quite get the language yet.”

No shit.

“Anyways, let me see that…” Iona scanned my piece of paper, starting to point to various parts of it.

“Name. What you’re studying. Your advisor is professor Marcelle. Auri’s got permission to attend, you’re all set. Classes and lodging are all paid for, but not food and miscellaneous expenses. We’re each entitled to a cheap set of robes, which is mandatory wear outside the School, at classes, and broadly encouraged otherwise. We’re both purple, because of our level. You’re in the cheap dormitories, same as I am. Actually…”

Iona squinted at the paper, grabbing hers and comparing the two. Her eyebrows lifted in surprise.

“We’re roommates!?”

======================

We managed to acquire a map of the campus, and the first stop was dropping off Artemis, Julius, and Amber, who wanted to hang out for a few days and see everything. It turned out, not only was that incredibly common, but it was practically expected for various sponsors – usually the parents of the student, but not always – to want to take a few days to look around the School’s campus, and see where all their money was going.

I was still learning the layout of the campus, but in short there were major roads weaving throughout, and most buildings had a solid plot of land on their own little stretch between the roads.

There was a whole inn dedicated to housing those people, and I needed to rub my eyes a few times when I saw it. I double checked the name on the map – having picked up the words after Iona helpfully translated it – and yup.

The Wandering Inn.

The inn was wandering alright. It had dozens of tiny little crab-like legs under it, and it was scuttling around at low speeds on its little plot of land. The place was reasonably priced, not everyone able to afford sky-high rates.

“So, uh, am I supposed to just jump in the door or something?” Amber asked.

We stared at the inn for a few seconds, watching an otherwise well-dressed and put together noble take an awkward leap out of the door. He didn’t quite make it, awkwardly tripping on his way out.

“I’m going to go with yes.” I said. “Good luck!”

“Brrrpt!” Auri was being encouraging, and Iona was chuckling.

“I think I could watch nobles faceplant into the mud all day.” Iona said with a grin.

We said our farewells, but Iona and I hung out to watch my friends enter the Wandering Inn. Julius made it in with contemptuous ease, while Artemis gracefully made her entrance.

Amber was less successful.

“Brrrpt.”

“Really? I thought that was more like seven out of ten.”

=============================

Iona and I followed the map and the details she was given, ending up in a different, smaller administrative building, finding a large one-stop shopping building. The big flashing lights – literally – helped guide us to the building, and the lines of new students without robes was another dead giveaway.

What was it with this island and lines?! I needed to take over the place and abolish lineups entirely.

This one at least moved swifty, and at the end of it we had the option of getting the cheap, free robes, or splurging a bit to get nicer robes.

I wanted, needed, to get the fancy, nicer robes, but I was mostly broke and all too aware that I needed to buy essentials, like food. No more running around the forest, blasting animals and raiding berry bushes. No, I had to be civilized, and my funds were slim. Amber and Artemis needed them more than I did.

There had to be a provision to get money to buy more food, and I immediately jumped to healing people. It was usually pretty good money, although the fact that there was a full medical course dedicated to teaching healing suggested that I’d have stiff competition in that field.

We got our robes, simple purple for Iona and I, and we managed to sweet-talk the man handing them out to give Auri a tiny little black hat, completely appropriate for her level and somewhat fire-resistant.

“Brrpt! BRRRPT!” Auri thought she looked great in it, and was chirping for the whole world to see just how COOL and MAGICAL she looked in her tiny little witch’s hat.

After getting our robes, we consulted the map, and found our new home for the next few years. We got lost twice, after which I insisted on reading the map and being in charge of directions.

We headed outside of the main “circle” of the fancy buildings, over to rows upon rows of large, square, blocky buildings. They looked and felt like bulk apartments, designed for efficiency and sardine packing, and less for comfort and style.

We were on an island. The real estate was incredibly valuable.

Our living accommodations, from the outside, weren’t that impressive. Big square building, a number of colorful paintings by a dozen different artists – or one artist with a dozen different styles – some space around it, and a little fountain.

The doors were surprisingly large, and the hallways way more spacious than I would’ve imagined.

“Brrpt?” Auri asked.

“No, I think it’s this door.” Iona absent-mindedly answered.

I checked the piece of paper I had, and found the door that Auri was at had a matching symbol above it. The door Iona was pointing at didn’t.

“I’m going to go with Auri on this one. Wait. How do we get in?” I asked. Nobody had given us instructions, or keys, or anything.

Iona shrugged and knocked.

The door opened, and I was suddenly face to face with a large unicorn.