Inside of the Electives Tower

Viper narrows her eyes on the students walking into the classroom from her spot hidden just in the back corner of the lecture hall as she waits for one particular student to enter the class. Because no matter how much she tried, she could never catch Scarlet after she made it back to the campus grounds from her visit to the front lines. The girl was always either training, studying, or in class. Never free to speak.

In the end, the Class IV Guardian ended up resorting to just waiting till the class she teaches to find her and make contact with her after the class.

So where is she? Why hasn’t she entered the class yet? All of the other Top class and Advanced class students taking Achievements are here already, so where is she?

Viper glances at her terminal to find that the class starts in just another two minutes before she looks up, only to find the girl in question finally walking into the class with her hands in the coat pockets of her rather unusually styled magi-tech gear. Gear that’s basically just regular clothing including a shirt, pants, and a coat, and apparently the only thing she ever wears around campus.

Then again, it looks mostly like casual clothes and gives the protection of magi-tech gear, so I understand why she does it, given that everything I’ve heard about her paints the girl as extremely practical and a bit of a battle junkie with a dislike for most things ‘girly.’

Suddenly the girl stops moving and begins looking around the class for a second with a frown, as if searching for something.

Does she have a friend in the class she’s looking for? But I thought most of the students here were ones she ripped to shreds in the tournament… actually, some of her teammates should be in this class now that I think about it.

Viper’s eyes widen when the girl’s gaze finally stops on her.

Wait, she was looking for me?!

After her brief surprise, Viper starts grinning like a madwoman, only wanting to make the girl her apprentice even more now than before.

Meanwhile Scarlet just frowns as she stares at the spot where Viper is at, seemingly unsure of something – as if she’s not actually seeing Viper but knows something is there.

Very powerful instincts by the looks of it. Or just some sort of detection skill?

Either way, Viper wasn’t going to let the girl be taken by one of those other nimrods.

Her grin vanishes as she takes a step forward, a pale violet fog appearing beneath her footstep the moment she does so. But none of the students manage to see her despite this, and she simply walks towards the front of the room, no longer looking at Scarlet, who now seems to be even more confused and unsure of what just happened.

Then – once she makes it to the front of the room – Viper blinks once, her violet serpentine eyes flashing once with a violet glow before a wave of violet fog suddenly bursts out of her and then vanishes just an instant later, following which the eyes of all of the students in the room instantly turn to her.

“Welcome to my class, Top and Advanced class students.”

Scarlet

Not long after that incredibly annoying prickling sensation of someone powerful watching me disappears, the professor appears in the center of the room amongst a small amount of violet fog. And her gaze immediately locks onto mine when she says, “Welcome to my class, Top and Advanced class students.”

“Did all of the professors here just decide that they’d make a flashy entrance to their classes, or is it a requirement?” Tar sarcastically comments, and I can’t help but agree with him. Because even my professor on Thursday for indoor combat had a flashy entrance of quite literally breaking through the wall and having it repair itself again while they walked towards the center of the room.

A very, very flashy entrance. And very unnecessary as well.

Then again, these professors are probably just doing it to show off to the next generation of Guardians.

“If you don’t already know me, my name is Lily Wright, but most people just call me by my title, Viper,” Viper says, putting her hands on her hips as she speaks and finally taking her gaze off of me to look at the others. “It’s good to see that almost all of the Advanced and all of the Top class students decided to attend this class, because it is – as you can probably guess by it being locked to the Advanced class students and above – something every Guardian is gonna want to take if they want to be able to work the System into giving them better achievements.”

Viper glances at me again as I finish making my way to a seat in the back, away from any other students, choosing not to sit next to Michael, Emily, and Denise to focus on the class. Only for a certain annoying death magic user to get up and walk over to me, sitting down right next to me without a care in the world.

I frown at him, but he just nods, so I sigh and focus on the professor again.

“I will say this now though,” Viper continues, turning her gaze away from me and scanning the class instead. “There is no way to fool the System. It has been tried by thousands of people, all older and more experienced than you, and not a single person has succeeded. The only things we can do are learn the possible Achievements that can be gained from the System, a list of skills and their requirements, and a few things that do manage to skirt around the rules a little bit. Such as a parent trying to limit the danger of a Fracture for their child’s benefit by bringing them into it and forcing them to fight the demon without any assistance. This would give the child rewards depending on how much higher a level the demon was as long as the parent truly has no intentions of helping the child should something go wrong.” She pauses here, her eyes narrowing. “Even if the child were to die.”

That’s a rather brutal way of raising a kid.

Tar – who had been speaking a lot more during these lectures – doesn’t say anything. Which makes my frown grow deeper for a second, only for it to fade away completely when the professor continues speaking.

“Now, there are plenty of accidental methods that can give someone powerful achievements but still allow them to survive,” Viper says, her gaze going straight towards me again as she raises a single brow. But she quickly moves her gaze away without singling me out, “But those can’t be planned, otherwise the System would know about it and reduce the reward depending on what the plans were. It may even refuse to give a reward entirely if the entire thing was planned and there was no risk involved at all.”

Exactly the reason why most Guardians don’t just power level their kids or something.

Because the System would know.

“The System is probably the closest thing to omnipotent in existence, even if it can’t actually do anything outside of its programming,” Tar suddenly says, speaking up again.

Yeah.

“Now,” Viper says before tapping away on her terminal and making a long list appear on the screen as she smirks. “To show you the list of skills and their requirements that you’ll be memorizing.”

And – as if on cue – a bunch of groans echo through the room.

Well, this won’t be fun.