“Your soul healing is progressing remarkably fast! If you keep it up, I don’t think it will take any longer than another two years!” The soul therapist said, nodding along happily as he jotted some notes down.
A disheveled-looking Freddy gave the man a flat look. “You think?”
The existence of 1% Lifesteal prevented Freddy from ever looking unhealthy. Yet, despite that, it was already becoming impossible to hide how overworked he was.
University was hard.
Three weeks have passed since he enrolled.
At first, as it started to look like things were going to calm down, Freddy thought it would be smooth sailing. He had severely underestimated just how hard it would be to catch up with all the education he had missed out on.
The “entry” classes were not only dense as hell, but even though they refreshed many of the topics others were expected to have learned throughout their time at their academies, they still failed to cover everything, leaving notable gaps Freddy had to patch up himself.
Despite the fact that every professor insisted that the students should “forget everything they had learned in the academies,” that didn’t actually make the many years of education his peers had gone through useless.
The university library was supposed to be his savior. But what it ultimately ended up being was an exercise in immense frustration as he combed over textbook after textbook—none free nor cheap—looking for that one piece of info that just didn’t seem to exist anywhere whatsoever.
Hiring a tutor made things slightly easier at first, but as his schedule grew denser, he struggled to find anyone who was free at the times he needed them to be, which ultimately forced him to swap several tutors, and then ultimately give up, as it took less time to just look for things himself.
He also ended up with a ton of conflicting classes, forcing him to often miss out on lessons which he was also forced to catch up with.
The worst part? There were another ten classes that hadn’t even started yet.
At this point, he had a constant headache, and it wasn’t just a product of soul healing. He was trying to cram so much knowledge into his skull that his brain outright refused to accept it, which resulted in him often confusing similar topics. With his mind slowly turning to mush, it wasn’t long before he started pissing rune patterns into the toilet bowl.
It had been a long time since he felt fatigue like this. Hell, he had almost started to believe that it was impossible at this point, but boy was he wrong. In fact, he could feel his brain begging him to go to sleep, practically screaming at him that he wasn’t getting enough rest, but even if he wanted to dedicate more of his precious time to shut-eye, he literally didn’t have the time for it.
There were many moments where Freddy thought he could just take things easy. Where was the rush? If he failed a class or two, so be it, he’d just take them again next time they started up and that would be that.
But as he got a better feel for just how loaded the contents of each class were, he had a terrifying realization—even if he put in 110% effort, he genuinely might not pass every class on time. He hadn’t been given a deadline by the empress, but he had been given a deadline by Overlord Umbra, and he wasn’t going to be happy if Freddy was busy when duty called.
“Well, given I have nothing else to say,” the doctor started, “we should end the session early. I’m sure you have plenty of—”
Freddy didn’t wait for the man to finish his sentence before he sprinted out of the room, all in hopes he’d catch the tail end of Foundations of Runesetting.
Runesetting was an extremely difficult class. The theory part of it was relatively slim, but to pass it, one had to be able to fully construct ether shells for imaginary abilities based on short descriptions of what they were supposed to do. To call this feat a challenge would be an absurd understatement. It straight up just felt impossible.
For the classes that Freddy had already started—or barged into halfway though—each one had its own set of problems.
Runeology was probably the easiest, and that was just because it came down to a lot of memorization. It would take an ungodly amount of time, sure, but Freddy was confident he could pass this one with brute force.
Auragraphy 101 and Practical Enchanting were two sides of the same coin, with auragraphy discussing the theoretical foundations of writing runes while enchanting actually had the students, well, enchant.
Enchanting was pretty simple. You take a pen, put it to paper, draw a rune, and voila!
With a few caveats, of course.
Runes were defined by three properties: identity, integrity, and capacity.
Identity referred to which rune exactly it was. Integrity referred to how long it could last. Capacity referred to how much ether it could actually store.
It was easy enough to draw even a complex rune. But the more complex it was, the more fragile it would be, and the more difficult it was to increase the capacity. The entire class revolved around how to maximize those two properties. There was a lot of alchemy involved, which was amazing because Freddy’s alchemy class didn’t even start yet and he didn’t know shit about it.
Next up was Affinity Studies. It was another infodump, this time on affinities, but also, it did involve a lot of information on many different unique affinities. There was nothing on perished water. Yes, he checked that it wasn’t called something else.
Even then, Freddy quite liked this class. The professor was cool as hell, and he introduced the class through a fascinating demonstration of how the ice and fire affinities could theoretically cast the exact same ability by moving heat around in opposite directions.
The man had a pretty rebellious stance on the establishment’s assumptions on how affinities worked. And he seemed to be actually right. He was what every single professor thought they were.
Null-state combat studies weren’t what he expected them to be. Only the first class had been heavy on sparring. The rest involved the professor expanding on increasingly dangerous tools that would end up with people getting killed or mutilated if they used them in sparring sessions. He whined that he wanted to take everyone outside the walls for this class, but the university didn’t allow him.
They did, however, leave the option of using the arena open, but that was something the professor was obviously torn on. He fell in the faction who believed that the arena was poison for one’s mindset, and that participating in it made people develop bad habits.
But it did seem that he would, at the very least, use it for their final exam. What that would look like, Freddy was excited to find out.
Interspace Navigation 101 was strange. It shed an interesting light on something Freddy hadn’t known much about, which was going out into the interspace past the steps where the passages started shifting around. There was a lot of wacky stuff going on out there, and boy was it dangerous. Like, five-stars couldn’t go there safely levels of dangerous.
His elementary studies class was going well. It was catching him up with a lot of basic stuff that was making his life easier in other classes.
Riftography was pretty much just interspace geography. The only thing that made it difficult was how boring it was.
Netherecho Encounters was about talking to sentient ether constructs. It was, without competition, the most awkward thing Freddy had ever gone through in his life. The whole class was about learning how to improv, pretty much. Right in front of a bunch of other people. It was a game without winners. Try too hard? Cringe. Try too little? Cringe. Try just enough? You guessed it, cringe.
If it weren’t a matter of life and death, nobody would be willing to attend this class.
Abilitycrafting 101 was a class built around a theory called the Aspect Synergy Theory. It dictated that power was divided into four broad aspects: offense, defense, mobility, and sustain. And then it said that dividing power between them was better than focusing everything into one of them. Kind of.
What it actually claimed was that the different aspects didn’t have an additive relationship, but a synergistic one, multiplying each other to increase the theoretical “combat power” of an individual archhuman.
It was a bit more complicated than that, but it basically came down to the core idea that having a critical weakness was a problem. Why this had to be taught to people, Freddy wasn’t sure, but alas. Not everyone had a functioning brain in their skull, it seemed.
To be fair, the theory did actually present some maths that could be used in practice to optimize one’s power profile. It also taught a whole bunch of niche abilities that aimed to patch up certain weaknesses of different affinities. And, apparently, the author of the theory was using data from the arena to create a comprehensive statistical model for types of talents, affinities, abilities, fighting styles and so on.
Freddy disagreed with everything the man had to say. This had nothing to do with the fact that Freddy’s current abilities sucked major ass according to the current model.
That was it for the classes that had been forced on him. At least, those that had actually started.
Then, there were the classes he had selected.
He had been an absolute moron with his choices.
Tempering Studies was the only good choice he had made. Heavy Swordsmanship also maybe, but it hadn’t started yet so he wasn’t sure. The rest were either not quite classes at all, or absurdly high-level.
He feared Primordial Domain Studies and Extreme Anomalies the most. They hadn’t started yet, but boy, given what people were saying about these, he was completely screwed.
He had selected both the basic and advanced level for both blood and water runeology. And also Blood Alchemy. All of these classes were full of experts who had been studying in these subjects for many, many years. Every time he attended these classes, he sat all the way in the back and made himself look as tiny as possible.
Both of the professors had entered their respective primordial domains, and they could tell Freddy had as well. This made them pay extra attention to him, which resulted in many questions and a whole lot of curiosity. They both also agreed he was an idiot for signing up for classes before he was ready, but they weren’t too harsh on him for that.
They were getting paid due to his stupidity, after all.
The blood alchemy professor, however, was merciless.
“You candle-chewing imbecile!” she shouted at Freddy, who was standing before a broken piece of ethertech. It was a specialized tool for separating blood samples. And no, it did not twist in that direction. And yes, tugging on it to check was a terrible idea. “What on New Earth made you think signing up for a practical blood alchemy class was a good idea when you didn’t even take Alchemy 101 yet!?”
Freddy coughed. “To be fair, the class name didn’t have ‘practical’ in it…”
A couple of chuckles came from the other students, and one man facepalmed.
Even the professor snorted. “Did you think we were gonna brew theoretical concoctions, genius? Also, you do realize that I don’t give refunds, right?”
Well, it wasn’t my money to begin with, he thought. “Yes, I am aware.”
“And you’re going to have to pay for that.” She pointed at the broken device.
He shrugged, pointing at the special-rank Entrepreneur badge on his chest. “I have money.”
“I’ll charge you extra for being a braggard.”
Freddy chuckled at that. “Worth it.”
She shook her head with a sly grin. “Well… Given that you have zero qualification to touch anything in this lab, you can stand in the corner and watch, I guess.”
“Roger that. And uh… Hey, if you need a test subject—”
“Just shut up and stand there,” she snipped. “If you disturb the class again, I’ll kick you out.”
“Okay… I just thought I’d offer.”
Despite the fact he didn’t participate in any of the lessons, he learned quite a bit about alchemy there. Mainly by watching the high-level professionals do their work with all the fancy gizmos. He made sure to memorize exactly what they were doing.
The days continued to pass by, and with that, his first exam arrived. He landed himself a whopping 17% on the Foundations for Runesetting exam, which was better than he expected. The cutoff for a passing mark was about 80%, so he only had to study about four times as hard to pass.
Luckily for him, he was automatically enrolled into the class a second time on the empire’s dime. Hey, she might be rough, but the empress certainly didn’t hold back when it came to her “favors.”
Unluckily for him, the playtime was over. The dawn of the ultimate studying era was upon him. He turned up to university on a gloomy Wednesday morning, all too aware that on top of his already brimming schedule, there were another two classes starting today: Etherology 101, and Imperial History: Early Post-Rift Era.
The history class was the easiest class he had to date, but the three hours it took to wrap up wounded Freddy’s soul.
Next up was the class he had been most looking forward to, primarily because it was the backbone of the entire higher education of archhuman society—Etherology 101.
Hopefully it’ll help me patch some of the holes in my knowledge.
The class was scheduled for the early afternoon. Freddy checked the details, including where it would take place, and then took a brief glimpse at the professor’s name.
“Wisdom?” he muttered out loud, double-checking. “It just says Wisdom. Is that a typo?” he wondered. Shrugging he made his way over to the class.
The crowd entering the lecture theater was massive, more so than any other Freddy had seen so far. Makes sense. This is a class that concerns right about everyone.
“Oh, man!” someone shouted beside him. “I can’t believe I actually get to see Wisdom in person! Man, I’m so excited I feel I’m going to puke!”
“Calm the hell down, dude…” a girl beside him said, waving him down.
Freddy cocked an eyebrow. So that wasn’t a mistake? He snorted. It’s probably just a nickname, then. Baller nickname to get as a professor, though. Either that or it’s an eidolon, he thought jokingly.
Lining up to class, Freddy took a seat in the middle of the room, and then waited for their professor to arrive. There was an excited muttering in the air, unlike that of any other class he had taken so far. There had certainly been excitement for some of the star professors. And Freddy could understand why. To teach a class at the University of Starhold, one had to be a real elite in the realm of education.
Many of the professors were authors of famous theories, pioneers of world-changing breakthroughs, or retired heroes of war. He didn’t quite appreciate it as much as he should have, given by the fact he had never gotten educated before, but for many of the students here, they had been hearing of the teachers here for years, reading their textbooks, studying their theories, watching recordings of their classes.
It made him mildly bitter to feel like such an outsider.
“Holy crap, look at that dude’s badges!” one of the new students scream-whispered as he pointed at Freddy.
It still happened sometimes.
And yes, it massaged the hell out of Freddy’s ego.
In a slightly better mood than before, he waited for the class to begin.
Then, the doors opened. But it wasn’t a person who walked into the room.
A humanoid form about as tall as the average human trotted into the room, its visage etched into reality like a drawing. It took the shape of a man with a comically oversized, balding head, wearing a massive pair of glasses, donning a beard that reached the ground.
It made its way towards the podium, robes dragging on the floor behind it, and then turned to face the class. As it smiled gently, it spoke in the soft voice of a caring old man. “Hello, everyone. From this day onwards, I am here to ensure that your foundations in everything ether receive a firm strengthening. You need not worry about your passing. Simply listen, and you will know.
“I am Wisdom. Welcome to Etherology 101.”