Initializing... 50%

  Initialization still paused. Please insert Power source to continue.

  Once again the voice scraped across Alex's skull like static, but this time he had actually heard it. Initialization? Of what? And what kind of power source did it require? He opened his eyes and slowly sat up in his bed. The lime-green light that hung over the entire room seemed dimmed, and the bustle of people outside his curtained room was much lower than before. How long had he been asleep? The curtain around his bed rustled open, and a familiar face smiled at him.

  "Alex, you're awake, good," Fillonia said as she sat down at the edge of his bed again. "You clearly needed the rest, honey. It's evening by now; you've been asleep for almost nine hours."

  "I did?" Alex asked, surprised. He just wanted to close his eyes for a moment. Was he really that tired when she left him?

  "You did, but that's alright," the tall woman placed her hand on his leg and the warmth of her touch spread through his entire body again, "Since you didn't seem to remember who exactly you are or how you got here this morning, I brought your situation to the board of the academy."

  "The academy?" Alex asked, hoping to gain more information. The academy, that was his first clue as to where exactly he was. He wasn't in a regular hospital; he was in some kind of school. But what kind of school had an infirmary this large?

  "Yes, you're currently at the Emerald Claw Academy for Sanctioned Adventurers or ECASA for short. Does that ring a bell, Alex?"

  This time he didn't need to lie to her. He really had no clue what ECASA was. "No, I'm sorry. I really wish it did."

  "That's fine, honey. We train all sorts of adventurers here, hence the large infirmary you're currently in," Fillonia explained, waving her arms around the room. "One of our teachers, Mr. Rixtor, brought you in this morning. Like I said, I brought your situation up to the board, and we almost unanimously decided it would be best to keep you here and enroll you as a student while your memory is gone. That way we can keep a close eye on you in case anything goes wrong. Is that alright with you?"

  A student again, maybe that wouldn't be so bad an idea. What better way to learn about a new world than at a school? Besides, he had always enjoyed going to school. He had even been good at it at one point. Though he wasn't sure how much of his knowledge from back then would transfer over to this new place. On another note, who was this Mr. Rixtor and how had he found him? Last he remembered, he had been knocked out by that... assassin, yes, that was the easiest way to describe what that monster was.

  "Alex? Is that alright with you?" Fillonia repeated her question, the motherly smile on her face vanishing for a moment and getting replaced by a twinkle of worry.

  "Uhm..., sorry, yes. It's just... a lot of information."

  "Oh, I get it, honey. But I'm glad to hear you're willing to give it a shot. I would have hated to discharge you and put you back out on the street." The pointy-eared woman gave his leg a soft squeeze before standing back up. "I'm sure you'll want to put some clothes back on. I've placed a school uniform for you over there," she waved to a small pile of black clothes on a small cart in the corner of his room. "Take your time. Just move the curtain away when you're ready, and someone will be waiting to take you to your dorm. I wish I could have taken you myself, but my other patients call for me."

  Her hand lingered on the blue curtain surrounding Alex's bed longer than it should have. "You'll be safe here...," she said, but there was a weight behind her smile that made him wonder whether she was reassuring herself more than she was him.

  With that, the tall woman left, and he was alone again. An academy for adventurers, this world really was different from Earth. And he was going to be a student at it. His mind raced as he tried to think of what kind of classes this place would have. Would the academy offer general subjects such as math or history, or would the curriculum concentrate on adventuring, whatever that entailed? He'd always dreamed of travelling back on Earth, and he wondered if this place was his punishment or rather a new opportunity to fulfill those dreams.

  It didn't take him long to put on the school uniform. After all, it was too cold to just be standing there in his underwear. The uniform itself seemed simple. It was a black fitted jacket with long sleeves over a pair of black pants. There was a small pocket on his chest. Embroidered on it was what he assumed to be the academy's emblem, a curved, green reptile claw. For some reason he had expected the uniform of an adventurer's academy to be more... flamboyant. He was glad it wasn't.

  As soon as he pulled the curtain aside, a rough, loud voice with a tint of what sounded like an Irish accent greeted him. "There he is!" The voice came from a short man with bushy brown eyebrows, a majestic, curling mustache, and a completely hairless scalp. "The name's Marcus, or Mr. Ghestalt, I suppose, but you can call me whatever you want. Most of my students just call me Marcus, or Professor Baldy. Not a big fan of that last one."

  "Come on, let's hurry before the cleaning slimes wake up. You don't want to be around when they do. Found that one out the hard way." Mister Ghestalt said as he waved for Alex to follow him as he started walking. Despite his short stature, the bald man was surprisingly fast, already almost out of the infirmary door before Alex had a chance to take a look around the place. He even had to run to catch up with him. While he was short, he wasn't dwarf-short, or was he? This world also had elves, at least that's what he assumed Fillonia was. What else could a tall woman with pointy ears be?

  "You caused quite a fuss over at the board, you know," the short man said off-handed, pushing the door out of the infirmary open. A breeze of cool air blew in as Alex got his first look at the campus, and he was too stunned by the sight to catch the remark. The dark night sky made it hard to see, but still the view amazed him. The infirmary opened up onto a large courtyard with a small awning attached to the surrounding buildings held up by massive columns. Geometrical symbols intricately decorated each column. If they had a meaning, Alex couldn't immediately decipher them.

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  They made the courtyard out of some type of smooth stone, and the light from the blue moon in the sky reflected off it. In the center of the courtyard stood a large fountain depicting a massive stone serpent coiling around a large cylinder in the middle, water spouting from its open mouth. The cylinder had the same kind of geometrical symbols as the massive columns supporting the awning had, though to a lesser extent.

  As Alex followed the serpent up the column, he finally noticed the moon. Back on Earth, he had heard the expression of once in a blue moon, but he had never thought to see an actual blue moon. The color of the moon wasn't the only unusual thing about the celestial body. This moon appeared at least twice the size of the Earth moon he knew. The extraordinary moon coupled with the massive number of stars visible in the night sky made for an amazing sight.

  "Alright, stop gawking," Mr. Ghestalt interrupted Alex's, well, gawking, and started walking again. "You'll have plenty of time to look at my master craftwork another time. I'll even let you in on a little secret. That fountain there of Jorrmund, I always tell everyone that it took me weeks to make it, but in reality it took me only three days. The rest of that time I just spent lazing around. I needed the rest."

  Alex continued to follow the short man, but his gaze kept flicking between the large fountain and the blue moon hanging in the sky. This world really was something. Walking beside Mr. Ghestalt felt strange. The bald man was only slightly shorter than him, but Alex knew that his current body wasn't his own adult one. He currently looked and sounded like a sixteen-year-old boy. While that may have almost been an adult, plenty of sixteen-year-olds still go through a growth-spurt.

  As they crossed the courtyard, Alex caught a glimpse of the other wings. "Alright lad, quick orientation. To the east, we've got the training yards. Those are closed off to the students at night so don't even think about going out there later," Mr. Ghestalt said as he pointed to large archways that led to what seemed to be another large courtyard, strange silhouettes he couldn't quite place moving slowly or even standing completely still in the dim light of the blue moon.

  "Next, up there we've got the main building of the campus. It houses everything from the basic classrooms to the offices and quarters of the academy staff. That means my sleeping place, so once again, don't think about going there later." This time he pointed to the building in front of them. The building with multiple floors took up his entire view. Some of the building's hallways seemed to be open to the night sky, the cool breeze in the air making a whooshing sound as it blew through them.

  "Last, but not least and the next stop on our walk, the dorms," the short man continued as he started walking to their right, towards another corridor of large archways splitting into five paths, each leading to another large building. "Each discipline's got their own roost, but for now you'll start out in general with the rest of the new students. You know, you're just in time. New class is about to start next week. Couldn't find a better time to forget who you are and get enrolled into a prestigious academy." He laughed at his own joke with a thunderous laugh, but Alex found it just a bit too convenient that now was the time he arrived in this world.

  "Tomorrow you'll probably see students walking about with different colored cuffs on their jackets. These denote their primary discipline and thus the dorms they're staying at. We've got red for Combat, blue for Arcana, green for Restoration and finally gold for Support," Mr. Ghestalt continued his explanation, proudly pointing out the brownish-gold accents on his own uniform. "Yours are plain black for now. By your second year here, you should have decided on your main discipline. Though don't worry about restricting yourself too much. Most students have classes from almost every discipline. They're there more as a guideline."

  When they came to the split in the path, they stopped for a moment. "See those small gems up there?" Mr. Ghestalt said, pointing to colored gems at the top of each archway at the start of each path. "Those tell you which dorm the path leads to. We've got a ruby for the Combat dorm, a sapphire for the Arcana one," he continued his explanation waving at the two paths to the left of the fork, "an emerald for Restoration, a topaz for Support and finally some obsidian for the general dorm." He finished his explanation by waving to the two paths to the right, ending with the one in the middle.

  "Now, let's get going. I'm pining for some rest myself," the short man started walking again, heading down the central path underneath the archway with the piece of obsidian. "I'll be honest, out of all the dorms we've got, the general one, or the Hearth as the students like to call it, has to be one of my favorites. Kind of reminds me of back home, feels like one big community, you know."

  It didn't take long for the building to come into view, and once again Alex's jaw almost dropped from the scale alone. From the outside, it looked like a four-story circular hall of timber and copper, faintly reminding him of the photos he had seen of the Colosseum in Rome in his Backpacking around Europe guidebook, only not made of stone.

  Through a large gate at the center, he could get a first glimpse of the inside. He could see that each floor was a little wider than the one on top of it, giving the feeling of terraced seats for giants looking down on the spectacle below. The center of the building dipped into a massive sunken courtyard, its stone floor filled with wooden benches around a massive fire pit that burned throughout the night.

  A large group of students had already been gathering around the fire by the time Alex and his guide headed inside. Most didn't seem to pay attention to them, though of few glanced their way, one even getting up and heading over to them. "Alright, this is where I leave you, lad." Mr. Ghestalt said as he looked around the dorm himself. "The size of this place still amazes me. Who would have thought this place would have grown this big, this fast? Guess it helps that the head of our academy is a noble's son."

  "Mr. Ghestalt," the student that had come running towards them said with a bow, a slight growl to their voice. Alex hadn't been certain when he had seen the student from afar, but up close it was clear. His flowing blonde hair was more like a lion's mane, and a long tail waved back and forth behind him. Even the boy's eyes had vertical slits like those of a cat. "Told you to just call me Marcus, Aro." Mr. Ghestalt said, placing his hand on the tall boy's shoulder, barely reaching it.

  "I'm sorry, Marcus, thought I'd leave a good impression for the new kid. You must be Alex," Aro said as he looked at Alex with a smile. There was something wicked about the smile, like a mischievous cat who had just found a new plaything. "I was surprised when I got a message from our headmaster that a new student would be arriving today, but I'm more than happy to show you to your room."

  "I'll leave you in Aro's capable hands, lad. Hopefully, I'll see you in class sooner rather than later." Mr. Ghestalt waved goodbye as he headed back down the arched path towards the main campus building.