The continual rippling sound of a liquid reaches my ears, its rejuvenating sound yet disturbing. It's twisting my stomach and ripping my head out—a similar feeling from the first time I used my [Shifting Point]. Slowly, people's voices had begun merging on the surface, diminishing the peaceful sound of the water rippling.
The blackness that's hindering my eyesight slowly fades away, yet everything still looks unclear. Therefore, I rub my eyes ferociously. What welcomed me was the countless colorful sparkles in the air, descending from the light-blue sky, surrounded by wonderful trees and a water fountain at the center. At my sides, Lily, Adelle, and Clara were clinging to my body; Lily took my right arm; Adelle took my left arm; Clara took my entire back.
"Why are you guys even clinging to me?"
"Shut your mouth, I'm feeling dizzy. Lend me your shoulder" Lily gruntingly said.
"Me too," Adelle added.
Some of my fellow classmates were all vomiting on the ground. It's a vomit fest. Later on, at the pinnacle of the water fountain, there's a gemstone embedded which projected an image of an old man that looks familiar to me.
"Welcome new students! Welcome to Atlas Academy one of the prominent schools in the world, founded by the greatest explorer Atlas! My name is Winster Crawford, the headmaster. I will be your guide for today, as you may be known, we gave each individual an identification card. Check your cards, first."
We all took the cards out of our pockets.
"Activate," Winster said.
Soon after, new letters appear on our card, adding on my name, age, and spirit rank.
[Name] Claude Weiss
[Age] 19
[Status] Student
[Spirit Rank] X
[Class] F
[Spirit Attribute] Fire
[Mana Capacity] Null
[Points] 100
Points?
"I bet you're wondering, why are there 100 points listed? Simple, that's our currency circulating around the academy. After graduation, any points that you accumulated can be exchanged for real money, the currency of 1 point would be equals to 1 gold coin. This means, right now, you own 100 gold coins. But headmaster, what if fail in my first year, can I still exchange my points?" Winster tilts his head while putting his finger on his lip.
"The answer would be no, you need to graduate first. Oh, oh, wait headmaster, what about the gold coin that we bought? That will be utterly useless in here, as it already stated in the letter given that gold coins and any other kind of money are prohibited."
Truth to be told, all his cringe gestures are making me want to gouge my eye out. For an old man like him, acting this way was unexpected.
On the side note, a gold coins equivalency in silver coins would be one-hundred silver coins for one gold coin, and a one silver coin would be five-hundred bronze coins. A gold coin would be worth a fortune, as any normal commoners who would get their hands on a single gold coin will be overjoyed as it could feed them for how many weeks, depending on the place. The tax was still a factor. Taxes are different from various places.
Honestly, this is quite clever to give the students some independence to be responsible for their own fortune, especially to spoiled-nobles. Then I saw a glimpse of Clara's card; and out of curiosity, I took a quick peek.
[Name] Clara Weiss
[Age] 22
[Status] Attendant of Lily Blanch
[Spirit Rank] A
[Spirit Attribute] Dark
[Mana Capacity] 265
[Points] 100
Mana, 265?
Then I compare it over to Adelle.
[Name] Adelle Fabien
[Age] 19
[Status] Student
[Spirit Rank] S
[Class] S
[Spirit Attribute] Enhancer
[Mana Capacity] 198
[Points] 100
Lastly, Lily.
[Name] Lily Blanch
[Age] 19
[Status] Student
[Spirit Rank] S
[Class] S
[Spirit Attribute] Ice
[Mana Capacity] 351
[Points] 100
351?! Why am I even reacting...? I don't even know the value of it...
"For the point system, you can gain points by doing the following: entering dungeons, doing quests for the residents who are living here, trade of goods, gambling, fighting, etc. But~ I want to earn fast headmaster~ There will be a contest that will be held here, for the enjoyment of the student~ And, the prize would pay you plenty that you can even afford a mansion once you got out here." Winster winks at us.
"Just how fucking rich is this school?" I said while listening to the ridiculous words of the headmaster.
"According to my brother, this school is vastly wealthy. He even said that one man was able to afford to buy an island of his own and create a kingdom. But that's an old story. Obviously, there's a catch on everything." Lily replied.
"Eh? Seriously? No way... Now, I know why people are so obsessed about attending this academy. But it does make sense... There's a catch."
"That part also, but some rumors have been going around for centuries about the academy which is related to the Tower of Babylon. They said, underneath the academy or somewhere in this academy, you can find the Gate of Ishtar. The gate that leads to the tower itself. Atlas, the great adventurer hid the gate beneath this academy and this academy is just a facade for it."
According to the myths about the tower, it connects heaven and land, filled with treasures and artifacts of the old gods, and whoever enters it shall be reborn as a new entity—or a god of this world. There are no details other than that, as Atlas didn't disclose any information of his findings inside, keeping that secret on his corpse. However, I got some hints that the answer to all of these questions shall be under The World's Archive.
"Well then—Honey?! Wait! I haven't explained to the— The other crucial information shall be discussed with you tomorrow, by your class supervisors! Honey—! Wait— One thing! Don't ever let your cards be shown! It's for your own personal safety! Nooo—Honey! I'm innocent! I didn't flirt with her—" Winster looked at his right before the projection got cut off.
An awkward silence envelops the air, as we stood there puzzled as to what we needed to do now. Speaking of which, there's been a darting glare at me since earlier. "Hyaaaah!" Then suddenly, a shade cast above me, following it by a kick directly to my face but I blocked it with my palm. Its feet were small.
"Let me go! Kyaaah!" Its voice was familiar.
I held her upside down along with her skirt, unveiling her pink striped panty. Glancing down, I saw some familiar ears that I fell in love with. "Bunny! Long time no see!"
"Let me go, you rascal! I shall get my revenge for touching my ears from last time! Kyaaah!"
I let go of her ankle, face planting on the ground. "Ah, my bad. Are you okay?"
"Muuu-muu—! Screw you!" Rinna shouted before jumping feet high away from us.
"Did she just do that to greet me? I remembered last time that we bid farewell to each other on a good note. Right, Lily?"
Lily tilts her head. "Who? Why are you asking me? I don't even know her."
"Seriously? She's the detective who went to the villa!"
"Detective? I don't remember... Bunny...? The little girl from last time? Oh! The adorable pet you wanted!"
"..."
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I ended up reaching the boy's dormitories. And, I wasn't very well-accepted among my peers as soon I got separated from the three. All alone in this expedition. The only word I could say at this moment about my situation—help. Not really, some gazes were more of a confusing one or basically analyzing me from head to toe.
Afterward, I arrived at the door of my room. In front of it, I was expecting quite some roommates from now on that I will be living along with for a year or so. Therefore, I opened the door to see two individuals sitting in one of the beds.
The room was quite spacious, as we have our respective spaces for closets, desks, and beds; however, there are no borders in between which completely invades our privacy. Below the glass window, there's a one-bed adjacent over the bunk bed and the desks across the beds and had dividers in between. And on our beds, there are uniforms placed on top of it.
The individuals that I spoke of were looking at me. The guy on the right was a skinny dude with sunflower blonde hair and wearing round glasses, yet looks innocent enough to not even touch a knife in his life. Though I'm not sure if the reason was his glasses. Right beside him, it was a handsome fella with a copper-like color long hair that reaches below his waist, and a well-built body, just from a glance I could easily discern that he's a fighter from the scar above his eyebrow and some around his arms.
"Greetings, I'm Claude Weiss one of your roommates, nice to meet you."
After greeting them, the response that I got was silence. Waiting once again...
"I'm Erik Halvig, nice to meet you." The handsome guy said as he stood up and bows to me.
Then next. "I'm Lars. Greetings, I'll be in your care." The guy with glasses said.
"Me too, I'll be in your care. Uh, if I may, what are those uniforms?"
"Oh, this? There are name tags over it, so I guess whoever had their uniforms on the bed shall be their bed? How about that? I've been disclosing it with Lars."
"I disagree, we still need to proper and fair way to select our own bed."
"It's the easier way, no? I don't care where I'll be sleeping anyway. What do you say about this... Claude or Weiss? Which one do you want me to call you? I wanted to be respectful as possible."
"Just Claude."
"So, what do you say about my idea?"
I hold my chin, contemplating over it. "Well, I don't really care about my bed, so I guess that should be good enough."
"See, Lars? The vote is two over one. That's a fair way to end this argument about our beds."
"Haah... I understand, I will not complain any further. Let's do it your way, it'll be utterly pointless if I try to argue more. I'm outnumbered."
"Hahaha."
Watching the two, I thought to myself. 'The two look like good people and respectable. I hope it won't be just in the beginning.'
Once we went to our respective assigned beds where our uniform was placed, we're taking our clothes out of our luggage and then placed them over our respective closets. The assigned bed to me was the top bunker of the bed and the person who got the lower part of the bunker was Lars.
Inspecting the uniform, it's just the basics: black long sleeve coat with stripes of the red line at the side; white collared shirt and necktie; black pants. That's pretty much it. Forgot to mention, I also have a badge beside my necktie. It has some red and black scheme through the inner and outer part of the badge, no engraved symbols or any kind to it—only the plain color.
Then I took a quick peek over the uniforms of my roommates and saw that they also have the same. So, out of curiosity, I decided to ask them a simple yet difficult question. "What Class are you guys on?"
Nevertheless, they took it pretty nonchalantly. Lars spoke first before Erik.
"I-I'm at F..."
"Me too..."
"Whoa, really? That means we're in the same class."
"I mean, it's obvious that the school administration would pair the student in the dormitory based on their Class. It's their way to prevent discrimination and harassment Honestly, I found this more pleasing than sharing a room with other students who are Class above me. Got a feeling they would just make me their lackey or something because of their higher status." Lars smartly pointed out.
"I can't deny that." Erik agreed.
"Yeah... That makes sense... That didn't cross my mind."
Later on, we started talking to each other like normal friends hanging with each other. Truth to be told, I'm enjoying this moment because it feels like reliving the old life that I had once from my previous world. Just some three strangers discussing some random topic to get to know each other.