The Dormitories of Sirius Academy
Three days after the entrance exam results were announced, most of the rejected applicants had already left the island.
Those who remained were a handful of merchants and the successful candidates of the academy entrance exam.
Among them, we had become something of a celebrity pair.
"Huh? Wait—isn't that them? Rank four from this exam, and next to them..."
"That's rank two! Didn't you notice they share the same last name?"
"Wittelsbach... that's a German house, right? Twins?"
"They don't look like twins, though—the height difference is a little..."
"Hey! My height is perfectly fine—!"
"Julia. Quiet down."
Barely a few minutes outside and people were already clustering around us. I sighed and flicked my fingers.
"Huh...? Why am I suddenly dizzy..."
"My vision's going a little dark..."
As the people nearby began complaining of dizziness one after another, I took Julia by the arm and steered us toward a quieter direction.
"W-what the hell? Why is everyone acting like that all of a sudden?"
"Beats me. Maybe they all came down with anemia at once."
It was a hundred percent true—if you ignored the fact that I was the one who had caused the anemia.
"By the way, they said they'd arrive at ten, right?"
"Yeah! That's definitely what I heard!"
Ten in the morning.
Today was the monumental day we would set foot for the first time in the district that housed Sirius Academy.
"Did you finish packing?"
"More or less."
My "luggage" amounted to little more than the various machines I needed to operate and maintain Laplace and Darwin, a few simple changes of clothes, and a handful of artifacts Yekaterina had pressed on me.
Most things could be bought at the academy anyway, so there was no real need to haul much along.
"But Seo-hyun."
"Hm?"
"Isn't that thing a little too big?"
Julia was staring at the carrier I was dragging. It was so tall it nearly reached my shoulder.
"What on earth did you pack in there...? You said you weren't even bringing clothes because we'll be in uniform..."
"Uh... mostly machine equipment?"
"Why would you need machine equipment..."
Obviously, to prepare for classes.
"This is a computer tower, and these are remotely controlled drones and a small robotic arm. Holographic monitors, genetic samples..."
"Wait, wait, wait—why are you carrying all that around?"
"...? Why wouldn't I carry it around?"
This was the bare minimum.
People with innate abilities could use their powers without any prior setup, which was convenient for them. I was not one of those people.
Darwin might be the ultimate organism equipped with real-time evolution, but she was still a living being—she needed organic matter at least once a month. Laplace, for her part, could do nothing if electronic devices weren't running, so I had to haul around all sorts of gear just to make use of her.
I could always hack the equipment already at Sirius Academy, but honestly I wasn't confident I wouldn't get caught. Working in peace felt like the better option.
"..."
"Anyway, let's go. It's already nine-thirty."
I led Julia toward the vast lake that occupied the center of the island.
The lake sat in the middle of a national park connected to the sea; sunlight scattered across its surface in a dazzling rainbow of colors. It was genuinely beautiful.
"Wow! It's huge!"
"Yeah."
I sat down and dipped my fingers into the water. At the same moment, Darwin's heightened senses picked up something unusual about the lake.
"Magitech engineering?"
Magitech had been applied so that natural disasters and climate would never alter the lake's shape.
The lake was lovely, sure—but was there really a reason to protect it with magitech on this scale?
While I was still turning the thought over, cheers rose from the students nearby.
"Whoa, look at that!"
"I'd only ever heard about it—how is something that big even floating in the sky?"
A colossal floating island five kilometers across was drifting slowly toward us from the far side of the sky.
"This is... beyond anything I imagined."
Fantasy or not, wasn't this going a little too far?
I had seen plenty of unreal sights, but never anything like this.
If science advanced far enough, would scenes like this become ordinary?
Opinions about the first headmaster of Sirius Academy were still wildly divided. Some claimed he had been a dragon who took human form; others insisted he was a human born with an innate ability related to levitation. Given that the academy had been founded in the early 1900s, there were even theories that it had originally been a training ground for troops meant to start a world war.
What was certain was this: if that first headmaster were alive today, he would be an overwhelming powerhouse no one could hope to match.
Simply lifting Sirius Academy as high as it would go and then dropping it would be enough to wipe a country off the map.
People even joked that the academy's greatest weapon wasn't the cannons mounted all over the floating island or its economic might—it was its sheer mass.
Under the control of helicopters and drones circling through the air, Sirius Academy began its slow descent toward the ground.
It would take on the new students here, spend some time reorganizing, and then set off once more on its year-long voyage around the world.
After roughly twenty minutes of careful maneuvering, the floating island settled into the lake. The water that had filled the basin drained rapidly through channels into the sea.
"New students, please follow the staff's guidance!"
"Should any accident occur while you are acting on your own, Sirius Academy will bear no responsibility whatsoever!"
As the staff began calling the students, the kids who had been milling about in small groups formed lines in front of them.
"Shall we go as well?"
"Yeah!"
Julia and I took our places at the back of the line, and the entry process began.
There were four thousand new students at Sirius Academy, so the whole thing took a full two hours. Fortunately we had gotten in early and managed to escape the queue relatively quickly.
"They're just checking IDs and letting us through?"
"Tuition was already paid online. There wasn't much else they needed to do."
Sirius Academy prided itself on liberalism.
Unless a procedure was absolutely necessary, they never summoned the students; instead they left most decisions in the students' hands.
That philosophy was already on display even before we had officially enrolled.
"Sirius Academy starts the school year on February first."
"February first? Why that date?"
"Well... every country has a different start date, so they probably just settled on something around the beginning of the new year."
Starting the term right on New Year's Day would have drawn complaints, so they pushed it to February to avoid the hassle.
In any case, February was a month away.
We couldn't exactly sleep on the ground until then, so we needed to be assigned dormitories.
"The island is huge, so there are all kinds of dorms—but you can't just walk into any of them."
The dormitories varied widely in type and character according to academic rank and price.
Astraea, for example—the dormitory closest to the main building of Sirius Academy—was a prestigious residence open only to students ranked in the top one hundred of their year. It was also an ultra-luxury dorm that charged thirty million won per semester.
You might wonder who would pay that much, but the facilities were so excellent and the reputation so high that people lined up to force their way in. A large portion of Sirius Academy's student body came from wealthy families, after all.
"There are twelve dormitories in total."
The twelve dorms were modeled after the twelve signs of the zodiac.
Each had its own distinct atmosphere, and factions had formed around them, so barging into a cheap one without thinking could get you into serious trouble.
"Wow, Seo-hyun. How do you know all that?"
Hey, Laplace. They're saying you know a lot.
[...]
"Yeah. I just sort of picked it up along the way."
Anyway, we needed to go get our dorm assignments.
"Which dorm should we aim for?"
"I have a place in mind, more or less..."
"Ooh, where? The ultra-luxury one—Astraea?"
"No."
"Then! How about the one that symbolizes Virgo, since it matches my birthday?"
"...Astraea is the one that symbolizes Virgo. And stop picking dorms that randomly."
Julia wilted for a moment, then asked carefully,
"Then where are we going?"
I pointed to a spot on the map the staff had handed out.
"Scorpio Palace—Antares."
The moment Yeona entered Sirius Academy, she ignored the map the staff were handing out and began running toward a single location, relying purely on memory.
Countless students who recognized her tried to speak to her along the way, but she brushed every one of them off without a word.
There's only one dormitory worth choosing.
Virgo Palace, Astraea?
Scorpio Palace, Antares?
Both were excellent dorms, but she could not afford to miss the one that hid a secret piece.
The symbol of the thirteenth constellation, which revealed itself only to those who were qualified.
Only by going there could she obtain one of the few divine relics capable of standing against the Demon God.
Ophiuchus—Asclepius.
That was the name of the final dormitory, modeled after the thirteenth house of the zodiac.