Course Selection
The selection of courses continued, even if one lecture had been excluded. We sipped our coffee and steadily picked out our classes one by one.
“What about that Introductory Mycology lecture?”
“I heard you shouldn’t mess with mushrooms recklessly. It’s a trap. A total trap.”
“Sian, wanna take Psychology of Hunting together?”
“Isn’t that the one where you have to memorize a thousand pages for the exam?”
“The Political Landscape of Shareltea! This looks promising.”
“I heard that one’s pretty much useless.”
“What the hell is a Chemistry lecture doing at an academy?”
“I think it’s for aspiring alchemists?”
“Hey, how about the Beginner Fishing class?”
“It feels like we’d spend all day trying to catch fish and end up accomplishing nothing…”
We filtered. And filtered. And filtered again. By the time I lost count of how many we’d struck from the list, I decided this wasn’t working and pulled out the mandatory first-year courses separately. There were things like Introduction to Hunter Studies, Basic Hunting, and Basic Combat.
“Wait, what the hell are Basic Hunting and Basic Combat? Each one’s worth five credits?”
“Hunting and combat are time-intensive activities by nature, so I guess that makes sense.”
Three classes and thirteen credits. In other words, we’d be spending thirteen hours a week just sitting in lectures. Still, after checking the details, it wasn’t actually five straight hours of classroom time. The five-hour block was listed, but it noted that practical sessions often ended early, sometimes cutting the total time in half.
“Still feels long… One class and the whole day’s gone.”
But what could we do? If the academy said take it, we had to take it.
“Sian, do we really have to take a Swordsmanship class?”
“Swordsmanship? If everyone else is taking it, wouldn’t it be better to join in?”
“No, we already learned more than enough swordsmanship back in middle and high school. I don’t think either of us really needs it.”
“But it’s not like we were the only ones learning swordsmanship as teenagers. Other people trained too. Would they really skip this class?”
“Ah, yeah… that’s true.”
“But looking at the course reviews, it doesn’t seem necessary. Let’s just take the Ice School lecture instead.”
“Hey.”
And there was only one Ice School professor I knew. I immediately searched for the name Na Sua and found her course. She might have been assigned to second-, third-, or fourth-year classes, but surprisingly, Sua was in charge of first-year Ice School magic.
“Wait a second. She’s teaching second-, third-, and fourth-year classes too…?”
She must be insanely busy. Maybe it would be better not to take it. But whether I enrolled or not, she’d still be overworked. I set aside the course titled Foundations of Ice School.
I asked Cheon Mari if she’d done the same, but her attention had already been stolen by something strange.
“Chaos School and Blood Magic?”
She seemed to have found what she wanted. Since the world wouldn’t collapse if we were apart for a few hours, I left her to it. I glanced over at Shannon’s monitor. She was looking at courses related to her main school of magic.
“Looks like we just need one more class each…”
“Sian. Sian. I’ve got a brilliant idea.”
“What is it?”
“This is annoying, so let’s stop choosing classes here and dump everything on future us.”
“Shut up.”
We still had over a hundred credits to earn before graduation. Slacking off now could cause serious problems later. Especially as first-years, we needed to take as many classes as possible while we could.
Just as I was about to keep searching carefully, Shannon suddenly raised her hand.
“How about this one?”
Beginner Survival Cooking - Kayla Adkins
“Beginner Survival Cooking?”
Survival cooking. I knew that term. It was one of the basic skills the protagonist started the game with. A so-called skill that uselessly demanded you add specific ingredients or hit perfect timing. It was annoying, but I’d used it a lot to save on expensive potions. As a result, I knew what could be cooked, what processes were involved, and what ingredients were required.
If the knowledge from Gray Zone applied here, I could probably get a decent grade.
“It doesn’t seem too bad…”
“The reviews are really good too!”
Shannon turned her laptop toward me. A flood of positive comments appeared—quite different in tone from the hallucination class reviews.
They were surprisingly stable reviews. My heart wavered a little.
But is it okay to take classes with Shannon like this?
It was one thing to be moderately close, but if we took this many classes together, would I even get to meet the protagonist? I was supposed to meet him through Shannon. She needed to become close to him. At this rate, it felt like nothing would happen at all.
I might end up having to spend my own money to track him down. That would honestly be a waste. With that kind of cash I could buy so many cans of Pepsi.
“What do you think, Sian?”
“Yeah… it’s fine.”
Even if it was a waste, it wasn’t like I couldn’t afford it. I had enough funds set aside, and as a first-year in the first semester, I had plenty of time. Besides, Shannon might make a new friend someday. I could wait patiently and only go looking for the protagonist if it seemed necessary.
It was a thought I’d had countless times out of anxiety. I reorganized my policy regarding the protagonist and tucked it away in a corner of my mind. Then I added the class Shannon recommended.
I naturally told Cheon Mari that it would be good for her to take it too.
“Huh? I’ve always been good at cooking though?”
“Bullshit.”
She was the kind of woman who could cook cheap ingredients decently but ruined every expensive one. Back in high school, whenever we camped in Shareltea, she’d insist on cooking for me and the results were always the same. If I offered to cook instead, she’d stop me and spout patriarchal nonsense about how cooking was a woman’s domain.
It was so bizarre that I tried to argue back. I even brought up the time I’d cooked for her with my aunt.
“Sian, it seems like you lack gender sensitivity.”
“???”
What came out of her mouth was complete nonsense that didn’t even fit the situation. When I argued again, she tied me up tight and cooked by herself, saying she didn’t want to hear any more. Her behavior was completely unhinged. Thankfully the ingredients had been cheap that time so the food tasted good, but her confidence was still wildly misplaced.
Cheon Mari’s extraordinary faith. Her infinite trust in her own cooking skills had continued to this day. In the end, she acted like her culinary abilities were flawless and didn’t register for the class.
That meant while Shannon and I would be taking nineteen credits, she would only be taking sixteen.
“Mari is free~ Time to short some stocks~”
It seemed like cooking was just an excuse. She was probably just too lazy. I had no idea how she planned to graduate like this.
A few days later, we gathered again on course registration day. Since we were registering alongside the fourth-years, we were able to smoothly secure all the classes we wanted.
“Registration’s done. Shall we head out now?”
“Yep~”
“Yesss~”
There was nothing left to do if we stayed, so we reluctantly left the café. We walked through the dark heart of the city. When we reached the main street and the plaza, cheerful singing rang out from a crowd in the middle of the road.
“““Oh, I wish I was in the land of cotton~”””
It had the unmistakable vibe of a rural American town proudly announcing itself. I didn’t know the song, but the melody itself was quite upbeat.
“““Old times there are not forgotten~”””
“Looks like some group is doing a promotional event.”
“It’s a pretty good song, actually.”
“With admission approaching, they must be out here advertising.”
The group marched forward, gradually approaching us. Their outfits and what they were carrying slowly came into focus. Something strange caught my eye and I narrowed my gaze. And then—
“““Look away, Look away, Look away Dixie Land~!”””
“Wait, did I hear that wrong? Dixie?”
“Isn’t that a Southern American song?”
“Uh, um? Look at their clothes and the flags…”
When I stared straight ahead, the true nature of these cheerful friends was revealed. No exaggeration—they were genuinely cheerful in the most ridiculous way possible. They were so ridiculous that the white, Black, and Asian people who had been walking around all quietly slipped away together.
I stared blankly at one of the flags they were holding.
Let us protect America, blessed by God’s grace, from impure blood!
Join now and receive Southern-grown wheat and cotton!
The slogans were written boldly across what was clearly a Confederate flag. Below it were people in normal clothes or wearing white hoods… beings who were suspiciously kind to other races and species.
“Sian, have you heard that the academy has a club like this?”
“Uh… I did hear about it while investigating?”
“You heard about it?”
“I heard it was disbanded five years ago, disbanded four years ago, disbanded three years ago, disbanded two years ago, and officially disbanded a year ago.”
“Is that actually disbanded?”
I don’t know? That’s definitely what it said on the internet. What a mystery.
“““I wish I was in Dixie, Hooray! Hooray!”””
Even while singing that, these rednecks who hated beastkin, elves, people of color, mixed-bloods, and everything else—but seemed suspiciously fond of incest—were steadily approaching. It looked impossible to avoid them, so I quickly pressed myself against the wall. I desperately hoped these inbreeding enthusiasts wouldn’t say anything to us.