Once again, darkness and despair coiled tightly around Alexander's heart. This morning, like almost every morning, the taste of his roommates' foul seed soured and rotted in his mouth. Hips sore and bruised, as usual, he staggered over to his bed and quickly wiped the sticky cream from his face before it crusted and dried into a flaky mess.
'Just a few more days,' he promised himself, as he straightened his dress and swayed seductively out the door. 'Soon the season will end, and they'll all be gone for the Winter. I'll finally have a break then,' he reminded himself.
Dressed in a short, loose skirt that was barely as long as his hips, Alexander smiled warmly at every boy he passed as he sashayed his way through the apprentices' dorm. No matter how many times his bottom was pinched, squeezed, or slapped, he simply smiled invitingly in return. He'd learned quite a long time ago not to do anything different — after all, he was "The Lady of Comfort" for whomever was willing to toss a few coppers to his roommates for his services.
Though he was born a full fledged male, Alexander was anything but that now. Life as a child had been bright and wonderful for him, and as a child of the Skyblade family, he was expected to quickly soar to unfathomable heights. Unfortunately, once he'd arrived at The Blue Heaven Academy, everything had changed.
Tested, retested, and then tested again, Alexander was proven to have zero compatibility with any of the spirits. Even as a Skyblade, not even the spirits of the air elementals would acknowledge him. Even worse, he couldn't even cultivate the simplest of mantras. He was trash — he was beyond the lowest trash — and truly no one cared about anything that happened to him after that.
At first, the harassment started as just simple, verbal abuse. As the other students realized that no one was going to step in and stop them, no matter how abusive they became, they gradually gravitated to greater depths of depravity. His roommates stole his money. Destroyed his books. Slapped and kicked him around. Eventually, one night when they were drunken, he was pushed down and ravished like a woman.
Things settled for a few weeks after that, as everyone waited to see what hellfire might rain down upon them for their actions. When nothing at all happened, the boys took it as an implicit sign that the school silently approved, and then everything started to change. Alexander's pants were stolen and replaced with skirts. His socks turned into hose. Shoes into high heels. Almost overnight, Alexander transformed into "Lady Alexandra" — and he was expected to play the part properly, or else be beaten almost to the point of death.
Now, the only part of him that remained a man, was the tiny, undeveloped manhood which was hidden away beneath a sliver chastity belt which he didn't have the key for. In all other ways, Alexander had been transformed into Lady Alexandra — even to the point of growing breasts!
Between spirits, magics, alchemy, and artifacts, there wasn't much that couldn't be accomplished in the world of transformations. Spirit beasts could change from animal to human form. Creatures as small as mice could grow into a full sized person. Even something as massive as a dragon could shrink and shape itself to become a completely different race. One of the boys having an alchemist come up with a formula to grow two lumps of fat on Alexander's chest wasn't hard at all for them to unearth!
In fact, Alexander was convinced that there was only one single thing that kept his roommates from making him completely a woman — he'd end up being transferred out of their room and sent to the girls' dorm. His manhood, as small and pitiful as it was, was the only thing that kept him in the boys' dorm. A necessary evil, in the others' eyes, it was locked beneath a silver chastity belt, and then promptly pretended to have never existed.
Now, Lady Alexandra was the boys' "Lady of Comfort", and his roommates used him to earn coin for them to enjoy. Of course, they were fair about splitting the profits with him — Alexandra earned one copper per boy, which was saved all week long in a box in the room, and then split four ways each weekend. If he entertained twenty boys in a week, Alex got all of two coppers for his effort — the same amount that the cheapest, dirtiest wench in town would charge for a single customer.
Life was hell for Alex at the school, and he knew beyond any shadow of a doubt, he was unwanted there. Unspiritual, with no means to grow or cultivate, he was wasted garbage in the eyes of the school. No teacher wanted him in their classes. No master would take him as a disciple or apprentice. If it wasn't for his family diligently paying the full exorbitant price of tuition, the school would've expelled him long ago.
But, Alex hung on. No matter the humiliation, abuse, or number of times he was assaulted, he refused to leave. Regardless if he had to lower his head and exist as a woman, to be pimped out by his roommates, he forced himself to endure. After all, his only hope for the future was possibly in the library!
Books were a rare thing in the world, and collections of books were almost impossible to come across. In a world that valued strength over all, knowledge was passed from master to student; not from book to reader. Many of the strongest warriors and spiritualists could barely write their own names — a blooded thumbprint was the norm as a signature on documents — and books were an useless relic of worthless knowledge from the past.
After all, what was the point in trying to write down something like a sword style? At best, one could only capture the essence of the style as it exists today. Tomorrow, your enemy might develop a counter to the style of today. The day after that, you'd be forced to evolve into something better, or else die.
Books were simply regarded as containers of outdated, and worthless, information by most. Merchants might need to know them, along with the tax collectors or nobles, but for most folks they were just worthless garbage — just like Alex. Finding a place that stored and preserved that worthless garbage was hard to do — and that was why Alex refused to leave the school, no matter what happened.
If the answers to why he couldn't cultivate, and why the spirits all ignored him, wasn't something that "modern knowledge" held the answers to, then he'd have to turn to ancient knowledge. The library was his only hope.