NOVEL FROG Chapter 89: Courses
Chapter 89: Courses
Location: Magicon Empire; Magicon System; Terra; Imperia; FBC
We arrive at building 14 without further incidents and when we enter, we find an entrance lobby just like in every other residential tower I’ve been to. The ground floor just features some places to sit down, a receptionist’s counter, and some elevators in the back. There are already lots of people inside, and another queue leads to the single receptionist behind the counter.
Lucy huffs in annoyance. “There’s no way I’m going to wait in another line.”
I agree and immediately ask Clara. “Do you have a map of the building for us? Our room should be on level 63 if I’m reading this correctly.”
“I have one, here you go. And yes, your room is on level 63.”
A map appears in my vision and highlights level 63. Our room, number 407 is marked in green and is conveniently close to the elevators. “Follow me,” I tell the others, and we walk toward the elevators. One of them arrives shortly after, and after stepping in, I press the button for level 63. A panel asks for my handprint, and after pressing my left hand against it, the panel turns green. Then the elevator starts moving.
“Uhh, did you just get a restaurant coupon as well?” Lucy asks, and when I open my notifications, my eyes widen slightly.
“Sure did,” Lydia says, and I nod as well.
Lucy seems deep in thought. She clears her throat. “I guess they reward us when we show initiative? I mean, first Tim and his self-check-in, and now the same happened to us when we look for our room on our own.”
“Probably,” I agree with her but am interrupted by the elevator arriving on level 63. “Huh, I guess it’s time to inspect our new room.”
Thanks to Clara’s map, we find it without issue, and another scan of my handprint later, the door opens and shows a living room without much furniture beyond. We step inside, and the door closes behind us. A dark-skinned girl with shoulder-length black hair jumps out of her seat upon us entering.
We’ve got another roommate? “Uh, hi, I’m Sara, nice to meet you. Are you our roommate?” I step forward and offer my hand. The girl composes herself and puts some loose strands behind her ear.
The girl shrugs, and smiles. “I guess so… My name’s Alina, nice to meet you too.”
We shake hands. Her grip is quite strong, and Lucy and Lydia introduce themselves afterward. We then sit down and talk a bit more about ourselves. Alina is from the Armortec Duchy. Her family’s company produces parts that are later used by Armortec’s trademark Magitech guns. It’s kinda cool hearing about this, considering that I’ve got those guns on the Stargazer. And because my parents upgraded them recently, I’ve now probably even got the parts from Alina’s family.
We meanwhile talk about ourselves, well about our fake identities, but as far as Alina knows, this is our life. I actually feel a bit bad about all this, but for now, I can’t change it.
“So, are you going to get our stuff?” Lucy asks a while later.
I look at the living room we’re currently inside, then at Alina. “Do you mind if I get a bit more furniture for our living room as well?”
“Oh, not at all. I’m also waiting for some things, but delivery services are completely overloaded these days.”
“Perfect, everyone step back, please. I’m getting as much as possible in one go. Clara?”
Instead of an answer, I get a set of coordinates, leading to one of the storage rooms of the Stargazer. Now that we’re in our dorm and I’m not endangering anyone, I’m finally free to teleport. A flash of power later, and I’m on my ship.
We’ve prepared thoroughly over the past month, and so I now have three beds, a plush sofa, and lots of other things that make our stay in the dorm as comfortable as possible standing before me. Oh, and lots of clothes of course! My pseudo-Archmage core makes multitasking as trivial as breathing, so I grab everything with my Telekinesis and move it closer to me, while I’m readying another Teleportation spell that brings me back to the dorm.
One last look confirms that everything is in order, and with another flash of power, I arrive back inside the dorm. Alina stares at me with wide eyes, and I slowly set everything down on the floor. Then I let out a long breath, as doing so many things at once still took a considerable amount of my power.
Alina opens and closes her mouth a few times before speaking. “That was crazy, holy shit! I didn’t believe you at first when you said you were a Master in Space magic, but this? Yeah, that confirms it and you’re not even that winded!” She clears her throat. “Soo, uhh, would you guys be down to form a team for the Exploration course?”
Exploration course? I look at the others and they look just as confused as I am. “What do you mean?” I ask while Lucy and Lydia start moving our stuff to the adjoining rooms.
“Oh, you haven’t looked at the curriculum yet?”
“No, we just arrived… I wanted to take a look in the evening.”
Her face falls. “Oh, then forget what I just said…”
“No wait, can you explain? Exploration sounds interesting.”
She sits back down on the old couch and waves her hand. The room’s holo-projector comes alive and shows the description of a course called Exploration for Beginners. A picture of a team of six students in shipsuits is shown next to the text.
Alina clears her throat. “So basically, every course available at FBC has a description like this. This is the Exploration course, and it is exactly as the name suggests. First, you have theoretical lessons with a professor, then you either get a small starship from the university, or can use your own if you have one, and you have to explore someplace within the galaxy to get your grade. Therefore, having a strong Space Mage in one’s team is a huge advantage.”
My eyes go wide as saucers when I read the description and listen to Alina's words. This is perfect. It’s exactly what I want to do! And with the four of us, we almost have a team. “Wow, I’m so taking this course, and I gladly form a team with you, Alina.”
She smiles happily, and another wave of her hand makes the projection disappear. “Perfect, then let’s get this dorm furnished, then we can register. There are limited slots for that course as the university only has a fixed number of ships.”
“What if I got my own?” I ask curiously.
“You have?”
I point at all the things I teleported here earlier with a raised eyebrow.
“Ohh, I thought you had them in a warehouse or something… But that changes things, with our own ship, we can join the course even if it’s already full. No need to hurry then, I guess.”
I smile, but we still start moving things around with our Telekinesis. Alina didn’t follow the rule, from what she told us. She’s a Senior in Utility, and surprisingly took a Junior A&D core as her secondary. That comes in handy with our guns, I guess.
In the evening, I finally have some time on my own and do exactly what I said earlier. I lie in my bed and take a look at all the available courses. Let’s just say there are a lot! I just browse through the list and have Clara mark every one that interests me. I’ll make a final decision later on. It’s recommended to take a maximum of eight courses throughout the first year, and I plan on doing exactly that. I need a bit of free time to visit Grandpa John and the others after all. I also can take my time… Dad promised to get me a Song Medical age treatment within the year, so I don’t have to worry about dying of old age anytime soon.
In the end, I narrow down the huge list to exactly eight courses I want to take. Well nine, but the extra one doesn’t count as it only is during the first week. It’s the introduction course for FBC, explaining all the things that are available on campus and pretty much everything else I need to know as long as I study here.
Two of the other courses are both for Space magic. The first one is an introduction course or a course for beginners. I decide to take it anyway because, besides teleporting, I don’t really know much about Space Magic. Due to my strength, I also take the advanced Space magic course, which requires me to be at least a Senior in power level. I guess it’s because of the requirement for the Starship Jump spell, but I’m not sure. It would make sense though.
My third course is the introduction course for Utility magic. I take it for the same reasons as the Space one, as I want to learn more about this class of magic. I mean, I’m basically only using Telekinesis and Communication at the moment, and I definitively want to learn all those simple spells Mom’s using to make her life easier. Unfortunately, I can’t take the advanced course. It requires one to be at least Senior in strength as well, and Sara Green is only a Junior Utility Mage – a bummer…
My fourth magic course is called Magic and Artifacts. Especially the part with Artifacts caught my eye, as one of them blocked my magic for so long, and I need an Artifact core to get access to A&D magic.
This brings me to my fifth and last magic course. It’s called Improvised Combat for Non-A&D Mages. I had to laugh when I first read that name, but upon reading the description, I became more and more interested. In the end, I decided to take the course, as I end up in combat situations more often than I want to admit, and it’s still unknown when I’ll get my third core. I pretty much improvised all the time so far, so why not get a formal education on improvising?
My sixth course is of course the Exploration course I’ve talked about with Alina earlier, and my last two courses are completely non-magical. The first is a simple Leadership course because that’s pretty much a position I’ll end up in the future. Be it Captain of a starship or an official position at Valterion Heavy Industries. I originally wanted to take an art course for my eighth slot, to relax a bit more and to try it out, but Clara then showed me a message from my mom:
Hi Sara,
I hope you arrived well in your dorm. Did you get the restaurant coupons? Please say yes, I made a bet with your dad. Anyway, I don’t want to mess too much with your course selection, but you should consider taking the History of The Empire course. I’m pretty sure you’ll like it, considering the adventure you were on in the past months.
Please call me soon, see you,
Jasmine
I guess, I’ll take that one as my last course then… That’ll probably teach me the official version of what happened on Earth and afterward. The description of the course doesn’t say much, only that it’ll give us an overview of what happened in the past 11,000 plus change years.
So yeah, that’s it. I’ve got my eight courses and stand back up. Tomorrow is the last free day, then the introduction to FBC begins. Well free until the evening when I have dinner with Tim. Speaking of dinner, we’ve got another set of coupons, why not use them today?
I return to the living room and find Lydia already lounging on the couch. “Hey there, have you already decided on your courses?”
“Sure have,” she replies, “and you?”
“Yeah, same. Which ones did you choose?”
She sits up and pats the seat next to her, so I sit down. “Well, obviously the Exploration course. That’s so cool, then the beginner course for Utility Magic, and improvised combat. Other than that, I’ve got an administration, a management, a political, and a foreign relations course. I’m not sure about my last one so far.”
“Sounds cool! Are you leaning toward becoming something like a diplomat in the future? Oh, and Mom recommended taking The Empire history course, maybe that’s something for you as well?”
“Yeah, exactly. I’ve always liked to talk to people, and make their lives easier, so why not do it in an official position for The Empire? Maybe I can also visit home from time to time like this. And thanks for the recommendation, I’ll look into it.”
“You’re welcome. What about the others? I was thinking about using our coupons for dinner.”
“Great idea! They’re still in their rooms, let’s check on them.”
She gets up and walks toward Alina’s door, which leaves Lucy for me. I walk over and knock. The door opens shortly after, and I see Lucy lying lazily on her bed. “Hey there, I’ve just finished with my courses. What’s up?”
“Oh just wanted to check on you and if you’d be down to use our restaurant coupons right away. And I guess I’d like to hear about your course choices.” I wink at her.
“Hah, I bet you want to hear about them! And yeah, going out to eat sounds nice. But first, let’s talk about our courses. What did you choose?”
“I asked first,” I grin at her and she groans.
“Fine, fine, here you go…”
Turns out, Lucy did the same thing with A&D as I did with Space. She’s taking both the introduction and advanced courses. Other than that, she joins Lydia and me in the Utility and Exploration courses. Then she plans to visit the Magic and Artifact course, which reminds me of our promise to find out more about magic. Another course we share! Her last three courses are non-magical as well, and she’s with Lydia in the management and administration courses. Her final one surprises me a bit, as it’s a military primer for A&D Mages. When she explains that it’s mostly about learning the role of an A&D Mage on a starship, I am quite pleased by her decision.