#Marcus Laurier#
Classes went on and on. After hearing teachers speak for a day, I was tired. If not, fatigued though Wallace seemed to have a harder time getting nagged by the teachers.
Our room, or dormitory if you prefer to call it, was a compact 3-roomed spaced apartment. Simple bathroom, living room, and the night quarters with a bunk-bed. Everything was magically advanced. Doors that opened automatically. Along with a showering hose that washed you. Floating around in the air as if it was held captive by the metal leash.
The bed was silky, though Wallace didn't agree. If only mother was here with me. We could live comfortably like this.
"What's up?"
I turn around to meet Wallace's head hanging from the top bed.
"What? You're not even scared? No fun."
I turn around.
"Why are you so depressed?
What was most annoying was how the walls weren't soundproof. No matter how hard I try to cover my head with a pillow, there were always occasional thumps. Boys will be boys they say but it wouldn't hurt to not hit the ground every 10 seconds. Every thud sounded like cement being pounded by some burly kid with sticks for a mustache.
"Sticks for a moustache? Gonna wish you had one soon, haha." -
"Shut up, go to sleep." I turned over to face the blank wall and listened to the constant thumps. "I'm not ever going to get sleep…"
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6 months later I still never did. Properly. Time flew as class did. Then came the exams, a chance for other people to increase their ranking. It was simple. The higher the ranking, the more privileges you had.
One day, Wallace and I headed to the library downtown to research to research for our artifact's presentation, an ancient artifact with no magical application with the ability to propel fast-moving pellets at high speeds to inflict damage. We headed to the library and asked where we could get evidence. Then we were asked for our IDs. A curious thing indeed. We quickly showed the librarian and he guided us to another part of the library, away from the rest.
"This is only a privilege for the great, I hope you won't tell others," the librarian pleaded. No. Threatened. I could feel the pressure as if he would willingly take two teenagers' lives to keep this a secret, "This library is only given access to the top students of the academy. Consider yourselves lucky…"
"We won't," Wallace ensured. Immediately the librarian stopped, his mood drastically changing.
Through the passageway, there laid a chamber. Much like an old library. The librarian chanted some spell that lifted the seemingly, impossibly heavy, iron bars from their place. The library was ancient like an old shrine. There laid several books on cleanly dusted shelves. Well maintained. I thought as I walked through the creaky wooden floorboards, half expecting some creature to present itself. Contrary to my belief, no cobwebs or mice were lying around.
"I believe the record of ancient weapons are here," the librarian said, handing us a controller of sorts, "after obtaining the information, please hit this button to let me know when you're done so," and the ghostlike librarian tread through the passageway without a sound, closing the only source of external light away.
We were inside a dome-like building. Its roofs were lit with glowing with Citrine, which illuminated the whole library in gold, in the middle, there was a marble table with eight chairs, the middle having a blue cylindrical crystal. Rhodonite. It was a stunning experience. I observed in wonder, a magnificent place. That's another place to regularly visit. Wallace, on the other hand, was observing another section of this hidden library. Like a museum's display, this one had its own. There were rows of foreign objects, some of which I sensed had no mana, but shone brilliantly.
Shaking away from excitement, I resumed our task. For our artifact, I had a brief explanation of it with some sketches of what it might look like. It looked like a small L-shaped weapon with the shorter hand acting as a handle. Wallace scoured the exhibit with ease and told me to come over.
There it was suspended mid-air with gravitational magic with a few of its pellets. Under it said the name, Glock-19 9mm. I frowned in curiosity over the weird numbers. What did 9mm mean? What a weird name for a weapon I thought. Then under the glass case, there was a cupboard underneath, as all the others did. There were six books inside of varying lengths. Wallace, taking advantage, took all the smaller books, leaving me with more work to do.
"Come back here Wallace, we have to share," I convinced, but he was already long gone.
I remembered we got full marks for that one, no doubt. It was also one of the most interesting tasks I've done, not that I've done many. Not sure how powerful the librarian considered great, but it was enough to make me try hard enough for the next exam. Not only that but being in the top 50 gets you into a scholarship.
Tomorrow our ranks will be released and I'm half hoping Wallace will mess up on the written exam so that I'd stay in front of him. Wallace on the other hand should be hoping that I choked the practical exam, which was why I was hearing whispers in the middle of the night across the room.
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I sauntered out of the school full of glee with an undead Wallace, moaning in regret like a ghost.
"It ain't fun if a competition is like this, it should be fiery, something that sets ablaze that fire inside of you that has a boundless amount of fuel!" Wallace howled and cackled in the middle of the night. I covered my head with a pillow and dismissed him.
"Shut up let me sleep, we have class tomorrow," I turned to face a wall and felt Wallace's glare at me. I sighed and turned to face him with his eyes wide open , waiting for approval.
"Fine," I agreed. Reluctantly, "what's on the line?"
"Dinner."
"Just dinner?"
"Loser must pour half their savings into the dinners." He seemed confident about it. Suspicious. I thought as I deeply considered what I had to lose. I only had about a few hundred Aures in my savings and it wasn't like I was making any money. The school pays for my necessities so I didn't have a need to generate income. Wallace on the other hand seemed organized and strategic, he would have his savings to back him up in times of need.
I smiled and reached across the room to shake his hand. He grabbed it hard and clenched it with all his might, which wasn't really much but still gave me a moderate feeling. I silently laughed to myself. Competition? There was no competition, by tomorrow I will be over.
Wallace had lost the bet.
What now? I looked at Wallace and he didn't look back. Instead, he opted to ignore me and continue on his spiral of depression. At some point, I felt some pity. I don't know why but he seemed so sure he won and to see him in this sorry state would put a hole in my ego. So night approached and he rose out of his bed, his eyes dark and baggy cloaking a dark aura around him. The next surrogate of the devil, I laughed but didn't get a response. Or a reaction. In fact, he seemed to be out of it.
Then I had an idea, that was much better than wasting Wallace's money on food. What if, we could spend our time in a more marvellous place?
The library.
The perfect, mystical and quiet place in the city. Nothing was quite like it. I imagined the quiet, serene, and secluded dome. The brilliant light of the crystals and the ancient marble table that centred itself in the library.
Wallace shook me as I glossed over the experience.
"Let's just get this over with," he said, ruffling his blankets on the ground, a thump on the roof followed shortly.
"Yo, I think I got a better idea than depleting your savings in half." It's not like I took the bet seriously. Even if he lost the bet, he wouldn't lose anything either!
We walked over to the library late at dusk with little lights that colored the city with dots like a painting. Like Deja vù, the librarian welcomed us with their identification check and went with the procedure. It wasn't so far a stretch to call this our secret quarters. Since then we've been coming here after school every day. Now his savings were the least of his problems.
Less than the upcoming practical assignment.
You see, Wallace and I had hurdled over problems and problems in the past. But this required a new approach, or a new mentality, not to be sexist.
"What do you mean you can't be in a group of two?" Wallace whined to teacher Bradford, "Let us have some freedom. Freedom!... please?" He glared back like a stone in response and handed us a sheet of paper. "Group must consist of at least two genders with a proportion of 1:1…"
"What!? Teacher, you can't do this to us! Anything but girls!" I pitifully patted my good friend on the back, and he twitched in response. "They are pests! They can't do nothin' and fool around all day!"
"Enough with the sexism Wallace, sit down and listen. I'm only saying this once." Teacher Bradford silences Wallace and begins to talk, "this test requires you to present a solution towards any problem towards society. We once had some ambitious students at our school and they invented a way to keep track of items."
Mr Bradford starts drawing on the board with his magic chalk. "They came with an innovative approach which combined tracking skills meant for traps and hunting with basic magic, and the result is an inscribable magic circle that shows you its location through objects!"
"Isn't that a tracker scroll?" Kaydn, the swordmaster, raises his hand high.
"Correct," our teacher remarks, "the tracker scroll was made by students, at this academy, in this class."
The class gapes in awe.
"If you want a chance to show your creativity and problem solving, this is a great way to prove your worth to the school and also change your ranking."
All the eyes flicker towards Clara.
Number one spot.
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