Chapter XXIV: To the palace
When I woke up, it was five in the morning. I was a little disoriented, why was the Neural Sphere still on my head? Oh yeah, I had fallen asleep in the game. The inn bed was surprisingly comfortable.
After pushing the visor up and getting the helmet off my head, I stretched. There was nothing like a morning stretch... To realize I was wearing the same clothes as yesterday.
"I better change." A quick shower later and some fresh clothes, it was time to get. I had a few chocolate-baked croissants for breakfast and poured over my Chinese textbook as I ate. I still didn't understand how the tonal languages worked. I understood the concept, but in practice it just want's clicking for me.
I understood why they said Chinese was the hardest language to learn for native English speakers. I wondered if that applied to French speakers as well...
"Korean isn't a tonal language. Why couldn't my school offer Korean?" I grabbed my schedule, trying to memorize what classes I would have today. That's when I noticed the time. Today was Wednesday, and the schedule was different. School started at 08:30 like normal, but it ended at 12:00.
Huh? Was Wednesday a half day for French schoolchildren? I checked the rest of my schedule. I had Sunday off completely, but I had to go to school Saturday. It wasn't a full day though. Like Wednesday, it ended at noon. Two half days, four full days, and one day off.
I liked the American schedule more. I wanted the whole weekend off, but I'd take a half day.
Instead of four morning lessons, I had two double lessons today. A double period of math and a double period of Economics. Both sounded riveting.
At least my friends agent up. "You look a lot more awake today, Amos," I said as I sat my bag down.
"I feel a lot better. So, what do you guys think about heading to Joyful Flourish today? If we get any homework, we can knock it out quickly and then meet up. If my homework is done, my parents don't care if I'm out of the house with my friends."
"Sure." I could go even without doing my homework, but that would sound like bragging.
"I have a family commitment at five, so I can't stay longer than four," Euphie said. "If we head there right after school, I can go."
"If we don't have any homework, I can go," Kanade said. "My parents insist I finish all my homework before doing anything else. Other than club activities. They want me to join a club."
"Then it's settled. If we're lucky to be homework free, then we head back to Dynasty!"
Well, I had to head back to Dynasty regardless. I had to hand the letter to Lord Alphonse, or the whole quest would reset, but I hoped I'd get the chance to go with my friends.
It was still strange calling Primal Vale Dynasty, but I would have to get used to it.
Professor Dubois came in for a few minutes to go over clubs. On Saturday, after morning classes, we'd have the chance to join clubs and extra circular activities. Of which I planned to do absolutely none.
Then she left and the crotchety Professor Clement came in. Why did I have to take his class two days in a row? At least Thursday I didn't have math. I sat through the nearly two-hour lesson completely silent, only speaking when spoken to. I felt like a kid from the nineteenth century. How did that old saying go? Children were to be seen, not heard?
When the double period ended, it was a relief. We got a nice ten-minute break, where I got to eat more croissants. It might just be the French in me, but croissants were pretty good. I should have eaten them more often in my last life.
"Calixte?" Euphie nudged me.
"What is it?"
"Is that kid glaring at you?"
"Who?"
"Over there."
She pointed down to the other side of the classroom. I spotted the red-headed Sylvie speaking with another girl. On either side of them were two boys. One boy was speaking with Sylvie and her friend, but the last boy was looking at us. Or at me. Euphie was right, he was glaring.
When he noticed my look, the boy looked away.
"Did you offend him?"
"I've never said a word to the guy."
"Well, he doesn't seem to like you."
"No. He doesn't."
Did that kid have something to do with Set? Maybe this guy was Set's champion? Or maybe he worked for Set somehow. Set admitted that he helped a lot of people and those people owed him favors. Could Set have put one of his... Agents, for lack of a better word, here?
Someone to keep an eye on me. Why would he need to do that? Couldn't he just keep watch with his godly powers? Or did Athena protect me from that? If she did, then he would need an agent here. If he wanted to watch me.
But if that guy was an agent, would he be glaring at me? That would make me suspicious. Maybe he wasn't an agent?
... And I was thinking in circles.
"Wow! Check this out!" Amos said, shoving his phone in my name.
"What is it?"
Amos was on Dynasty's official Twitter. There was a tweet threat regarding a new update: "In the Beta Version, Continental Servers were kept separate. After receiving feedback from our community, we have decided to update the policy on server isolation.
"Once a Continental Server has been completely unlocked, a final Regional Labyrinth will be released. Once that labyrinth has been cleared, players from all over the world will be free to transfer over to other unlocked Servers.
"In regards to this change, the Day Night Cycle will be set to the local timezones. The six-hour day cycles will be removed."
The day-night cycle was already being changed? Geez, the game had only been released for a day and they werw changing things.
But what was even more interesting than the day-night cycle change was the undoing of server isolation. If we could jump over to other servers... Bianca would be able to come over here and play with us.
Or we'd be able to go to the North American Server and I'd get to become a cowboy!
"Sweet! Then we need to hurry and clear all the Regional Labyrinths." I hoped the gamers in the other European countries hurry and clear their labyrinths. "That's our goal! We need to go help clear the French labyrinths. It's a good thing we have access to the dungeon under the Lutetia palace."
Amos eyed me. "What does that have to do with the labyrinths?"
"In order to clear the first Labyrinth, we need to clear that dungeon. I was thinking about keeping it a secret as long as possible, so we can have first dibs, but we need to clear it as soon as possible."
"Why?"
"Who doesn't want to be a cowboy?"
My friends laughed. I handed Amos his phone back. I caught that boy glaring at me again, and just like last time he looked away.
Professor Bain, a young woman who couldn't be more than five years older than me, would be our Economics teacher. Despite being on the younger side, she subscribed more to the Clement order of running a class and demanded that we remain silent unless spoken to.
By the time her class was over, I was ready to get the hell out of that classroom. Learning about Economics was interesting from a French perspective might have been interesting, but when you had a bad teacher it ruined the class.
Professor Dubois came in one more time to remind us about the clubs and she dismissed us.
Amos, Euphie, Kanade, and I all ran to Joyful Flourish. Professor Clement and Professor Bain didn't give us any homework, so that left us plenty of time before four.
Despite it being noon on a weekday, the VR cafe was pretty full. We didn't manage to get a room this time, so we'd have to make do with publicly diving in one of the rooms. Joyful Flourish had staff members watch over the public diving rooms at all times, so we didn't have to worry about our things getting jacked.
There were five public rooms and all of them were crowded, but we managed to find a spot. We paid for four hours of internet.
I laid down and pulled the visor down.
While the rest of my friends reappeared where they had logged out, my avatar was laying on the bed.
"So what do we do now?"
I was going to say we head to the palace, but I noticed a flashing icon in the corner of my vision. The Hunger Effect icon. "Let's get something to eat first. My avatar is hungry."
"Can we get something to eat that isn't burnt bread?"
I didn't feel like eating burned bread either. "Let's go see if we can find something else to eat."
There were plenty of NPC shops to choose from. It was still too early for anyone to put real effort into their cooking skill, so no player would be able to make anything better yet.
There were plenty of stalls, but most of the food was bland and unseasoned. The fried meat was still better than burnt bread though.
"When is the food going to get better?" Amos asked.
"When the dungeon is cleared, the monsters surrounding the city will start to thin. According to the lore. As long as the fields are hunted clear, we should still be seeing monsters. But once the darkness starts to thin, trade lines will open and we'll get better equipment, items, and food."
I took another bite of the bland meat.
"I've been meaning to ask, how do the encounters work here? Is it like Pokemon, higher regions have higher monster encounters?"
I shook my head at Kanade. "The higher level you are, the higher level monsters will appear. Encounters go by level. That's what makes taking lower leveled party members a risk. If a player was significantly lower level, they'd draw all the agro to them."
Amos threw the rest of his meat down. "I guess we should go to the palace now. I can't wait until those trade routes pop up."
The palace was at the center of the city. While the rest of Lutetia resembled Paris, the palace at the center was a creation of the game. It was a huge palace that dominated the center of the city, surrounded by a wall that was three times as tall as I was.
The wall was thick enough that it reminded me of the Great Wall of China. Soldiers manned the talk, walking patrols. Four guard posts were always manned.
There was one single gate, and two huge doors made of black wood. There were house guards on either side of the gate and as we came closer, one of the guards held out his hands. "Halt!"
The other players around us stopped what they were doing and turned to look. Right now the palace was closed off to players, the guards wouldn't let anyone in. If a player tried to brute force their way in or bugged the guards too much, they'd be killed. Maybe they want to see us die.
"Sorry, champions, Lord Alphonse has ordered the palace closed. No one may enter. Leave now, or we will be forced to take you into custody."
I opened my menu and summoned Alfred's letter. "General Alfred Beauvale has sent us with a missive for his breath. This is his seal."
The guard narrowed his eyes and held out his hand. "Allow me, champions, but the seal must be verified."
***
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