Well, whatever. I open the door and walk in. The room is mediocre; it's actually a bit worse than the academy's living space, but I suppose that's because I'm in a room originally intended for servants. That damned Bigil really is so annoying.
Whatever, I'm not here to enjoy myself, I'm here to act like Ustos and not get noticed, because I don't want to lose all that potential magic knowledge that will come from the academy.
After unpacking my bags, I sit down on my bed and think of what to do. Normally if I were in the academy, I would use this spare time to go to the library, but now I have nothing to do.
I have so many annoying questions nagging at my mind every time I hear more about magic, but it's rare any actually get answered. All the knowledge in the library goes quite in-depth about many subjects, but there aren't answers to obvious questions like, how does mana exist on top of my body? Is there just some other mana dimension that exists above the physical? Or how the hell mana breaches transfer mana neural impulses into my brain, or what mana and element even are? Are they some sort of new editions to physics or something?
I don't know, and that is annoying. I'd love to experiment but I'm still a beginner mage, who hasn't even cast his first spell. So the only real place I can learn is the damned library, but for some stupid reason, it's closed, so I just have to sit here for a damned month, twiddling my fingers, and probably be annoyed about Ustosis's stupid illegitimacy for the fifty-second time this week.
Whilst in the middle of my brooding someone dear's knock on my door, I calm myself down and say, "What is it?".
I hear some rando's voice "Sir. Jeldard, master Bigil ordures you to join the family dinner.".
Hmm, yes, I do feel hungry. I get up and open the door, I see a maid standing outside, she bows and asks me to follow her.
In a short time, she takes me to a lavishly decorated room with a long table, there is plenty of great food on the table, and there are seven chairs laid out around it, each taken up by a member of the Ustos family. The head chair for Jeldrad's father, another for his wife, two more chairs taken up by brothers, and two more taken up by his sisters. Leaving one chair empty just for good old me.
I bow and greet everyone and take my seat. I don't touch any of the food yet because, thanks to Jeldrad, I know these idiots do some sort of praying ritual to show appreciation for the food to the gods, before eating. And indeed they do, they all stand up and start chanting a prayer. Fortunately, my luscious and genius self already memorized the prayer beforehand, expecting this to happen.
After the annoying prayer that took away 20 minutes of my life to memorize finished, everyone sat back down and picked out their utensils.
I carefully watched my family members dine; they all followed some sense of etiquette. I tried my best to follow their useless rules for eating, and I'm apparently pulling it off convincingly enough because everybody is ignoring me, which of course is never good, my great looks need to be acknowledged by the lesser creatures, but I suppose this should be an exeption.
Actually, looking around, there seems to be an air of drama going around the table. Nobody's really speaking a word, Jeldrad's father is sitting at the front of the table, deep in thought, and his wife is sitting next to him looking all worried and nervous. The older sister from the academy is quietly eating her food not looking at anybody.
Probably due to the two brothers sitting to my left. Currently, Bigil is deliberating on which of them to pick to become the next head of the Ustos household. There is a strong rivalry between the two brothers, which probably brings a lot of drama and all. But I find this to be a very good thing, the whole family is distracted from me and my great genius.
Hmm, the only real person that seems not bothered at all, is the youngest sibling at the table, at the age of around five, her brain is probably too underdeveloped to understand what's going on. She just keeps staring at me and the older sister whose name I just recall as Edwina. Whatever she can do whatever she wants, what the hell is she even gonna notice she's five years old.
I continue eating the food, it tastes quite good. The food selection in this world is quite weird, it's like it resembles the food from the world I came from, but not equally. The food looks and tastes off, but somehow it's still good in its own weird way.