"Are you changing your major?" Ina asked in surprise, looking at Lusen.
Under normal circumstances, Lusen should have been able to continue his studies until his fifth year without any issues, find a lucrative job as a potion maker with his status as an outstanding graduate of the Stars Academy and a disciple of Professor Derick, or possibly even remain at the academy to teach.
But now he was switching to magical mechanical engineering, which meant starting from scratch.
Lusen nodded. "So do you still need waiters here? I need to find a job to pay for my tuition."
As an orphan, Lusen was eligible for free admission. So, for the past few years, all he needed to do was find a way to earn his living expenses and the cost of materials for practicing potion-making. However, now that he planned to start over and considered himself to be an adult capable of earning money, he didn't want to take advantage of the academy's generosity anymore.
With less than a month to go before the start of the academic year, Lusen had found a job as a lab assistant for a senior student in the School of Magical Mechanical Engineering. However, the senior student only needed him from Monday to Friday in the morning, so Lusen decided to find another part-time job.
Dragon Flame Restaurant was close to the academy, and Lusen naturally thought of it first.
Ina, of course, was willing. She was planning to hire a waiter to help out at her branch in the capital, and it would be even better if it was someone she knew. "Come over in your spare time, I'll pay you 20 copper coins per hour."
Ina had also learned some information about wages in the capital these days. A job that didn't require any special skills usually paid about 10 copper coins per hour. People here didn't have the concept of requiring rest time and would work over twelve hours a day. Ina, of course, wouldn't have such requirements for Lusen. In fact, with the mechanical work bees available, all he needed to do was sit behind the bar, input instructions into the worker bees and collect the money.
Lusen happily agreed. "I'll introduce all the teachers and students from the academy to our restaurant!"
———
In the evening, Lusen came to work at the restaurant. Not only did he come alone, but he also brought along Lilith and a young man.
He was Andrew, the son of the werewolf Keira from the Mist Town, currently studying at the Imperial Knight Academy in the capital. Every year, the Imperial Knights would select students from the academy to join them, a place every knight aspired to be.
Unlike Keira, Andrew didn't have fluffy ears and looked no different from a pure-blood human. He himself said that apart from becoming a bit irritable on full moon nights, he hardly had any werewolf tendencies.
However, more than half of the ruling council of the Silver Empire were vampires, and the Imperial Knights were, in effect, under the power of Duke Elvys. It seemed a bit odd for a werewolf to serve a vampire.
"The knight academy in the Orland Empire requires a bloodline check, and clearly, I don't exactly meet the standards," Andrew shrugged.
This was Lilith's first time leaving home, and she hadn't slept well in days. Now, with dark circles under her eyes, she was excitedly ordering food. She hadn't expected the Dragon Flame Restaurant to have a branch in the capital and finally found something connected to her hometown.
The world outside the Misty Town was beautiful, with stunning sunrises and sunsets, the sun rising and setting every day and fragrant flowers with soft petals. But Lilith still missed her hometown, the foggy little town.
There were many new dishes in the restaurant that she hadn't seen before, but Lilith didn't choose any of them. She ordered mushroom pasta, which she often ate in Misty Town, accompanied by a bowl of seafood soup. Andrew had never been to Dragon Flame Restaurant before, and he was curious about every dish. He threw countless questions at Lilith, who got annoyed and ordered for him directly.
"Senior Lusen, please get him a honey-roasted meat platter, a serving of apple turnovers, and a bowl of rice."
Leaving Lusen to look after the two of them, Ina turned and walked into the house.
Before long, she came out with two large parcels.
Ina put the two large parcels on the tables next to Lilith and Andrew. The weight of the parcels made the tables creak under their weight. "Your families have entrusted me with something to give to you two."
"Really? Thank you!" Lilith instantly bounced up from her chair to see what her parents had sent her.
Andrew's gaze lingered on the parcels, then turned to look at Lilith's petite figure. "I'll help you deliver these to school and then head back."
He was too shy to express his delight as bluntly as Lilith. Andrew gave Ina a bashful thank you, opened the parcel to see everything stuffed into every corner— homemade sausages from home, a thin shirt to wear under armor, a woolen hat, and even a felt doll that had been squeezed out of shape—it was him, dressed in armor and riding a horse, sitting upright on the horseback. The doll's head was squeezed a bit flat, making his smile extra large, almost stretching to the back of his ears, just like Andrew's expression now.
Rosa brought almost everything familiar to Lilith, her bedside doll, the wooden rack for potions, the cup and gloves, and finally, a small potted plant. The plant inside was thin and yellow, the result of Lilith's first attempt at crop cultivation in Mist Town. There was also a note attached: "There is sunshine in the outside world, now your peas can grow."
Ina, looking at the tears in the eyes of the two, felt that her hurried trip was worth it. She returned to the Mist Town to ask Keira and Rosa if they had anything they wanted to bring to the kids, and both shyly declined.
It wasn't until Ina mentioned that Andrew and Lilith were waiting at the Dragon Flame Restaurant in the capital that the two hurried back home without hesitation, and soon brought a large bag of things.
Finally, Lusen called them to hurry up and eat. Lilith and Andrew reluctantly left their parcels and returned to their original seats.
Lusen and Ina were making small taro balls on the side. Sweet potatoes, purple potatoes, and taro could just make three-colored taro balls, each the size of a fingernail, looking exquisite and translucent.
As they chatted, Lusen was very envious when he heard that Lilith could skip the first grade and go straight to the second: "I spent four years in the first grade."
The grades at Star Academy were theoretical, meaning that under ideal conditions, a student might be able to finish a grade in a year. But in reality, hardly anyone could actually do that. For the first grade, for example, a typical student had to complete eleven courses and pass at least nine exams to advance to the second grade.
"But in reality, even if you use all your free time for classes, it would still take at least two and a half years to complete these courses. What's even worse, when I enrolled, I hardly knew how to read," Lusen sighed as he recalled his own learning experience.
Lusen entered the Star Academy at the age of 8. He still remembers his first class, "General History of the Moro Continent". Lusen's deskmate was a little kid around his age, and neither of them understood anything after the class.
After they tearfully exchanged their feelings, they were delighted to discover that they were both semi-illiterate and were preparing to unite for warmth. Then a rough voice came from the back seat, "What are you guys afraid of? I've retaken General History of the Moro Continent four times!"
Lusen and his deskmate turned around to see a bearded man in the back seat, and they suddenly felt hopeless, feeling like a "mature student" label was about to be pasted on their foreheads, afraid that they might not be able to graduate from school until they became grey-headed old men.
Later they learned that the bearded man, who was still in the first grade, was only nineteen years old. Lusen and his deskmate were relieved.
"I also have to take exams," Lilith explained, "I've already passed six exams now, and there's one I didn't pass. So, for the remaining four courses, I need to pass at least three of them to smoothly enter the second grade directly."
Ina was somewhat surprised. Lilith had only been in the capital for less than two weeks, right? This knowledge certainly wasn't just learned, could there be some hidden master in Mist Town that Ina didn't know about, secretly teaching Lilith?
Lilith saw her confusion and smiled, showing a pair of sharp little tiger teeth: "My father was also a student of Star Academy, he taught me according to his original textbooks, but it seems the textbook for 'General Knowledge of the Moro Continent' has been revised. A lot of the knowledge I learned was wrong, so I didn't pass this subject."
She cleared her throat, her eyes filled with deep confusion: "Let me think about which questions I got wrong: Green fairies are actually not fairies, Imperial Knights don't belong to the knights, the Elf Tree Lords are not elves..."
The three people beside her helped to explain.
Lusen kneaded the sweet potato dough in his hand vigorously: "Green fairies were originally classified as a type of fairy. They have transparent wings, are less than 20 cm tall, and their bodies appear light green and transparent. But later research found that it was a certain type of plant around them that could release a powder causing hallucinations, creating the illusion of fairies. In fact, there are no such creatures as green fairies. Later, the scientific community named this plant 'Green Fairy', which is one of the important raw materials for many potions."
Andrew put a rib into his mouth: "I know about the knight thing, I think it was about 200 years ago, I can't remember very clearly. The professional guilds began to align with different empires. The Mercenary Guild has a close relationship with the Silver Empire, and the Knight Guild serves the Oran Empire, which rejects non-humans. The Asland Knight Commander happened to be an elf, and the Knight Guild refused to certify his knight status. So strictly speaking, the Imperial Knight Legion of the Silver Empire cannot be called knights. But who cares? Without this title, can't the Knight Commander still ride a horse?"
Finally, it was Ina. She tasted a bit of the honeyed red beans she had prepared and nodded in satisfaction: "Elf Tree Lords are responsible for guarding the Mother Tree of the Elves, but they are not elves, they are sentinel trees growing near the Mother Tree. They can transform into human forms, and they don't have the pointed ears of elves. It's said that they can also freely change their hair color, just like trees, choosing any color within the spectrum of yellow-green."
Lilith listened very seriously, even forgetting to eat, wishing she could immediately go back to her dormitory and correct the mistakes in her old textbooks.
Ina placed a bowl of honeyed double-skin milk in front of her: "To our smart little girl, may all her upcoming exams go smoothly."