The Hidden World

Sixty Minutes Before

 

Yuki woke up from his light sleep. Checking his smartwatch, he saw that it was 7:00. He had gotten six hours of sleep. He returned to his dorm room at 1:00 and put his disguise back on after his late night excursion around the city as he looked at the various stores and restaurants.

 

He went out in his elf form and it seemed that it made him fit quite well into the city. Unlike when he was walking around as a human, he didn’t receive any odd glances.

 

‘Time to get ready for class,’ he thought to himself while yawning. He rolled out of bed and stretched.

 

[Good morning, Yuki,] Akira said to him sleepily. [Have fun.]

 

‘Good morning to you too,’ Yuki replied.

 

He went into the kitchen and looked through the cabinets to find anything that he could cook for a quick breakfast. But there was nothing but cereal and dishes in the cabinets. Yuki had checked the refrigerator the night before so he knew that there wasn’t much in there either. He had used up what little money he had gotten from Medina on his dinner the night before.

 

‘I need money to go shopping,’ Yuki thought as he grabbed the cereal and a bowl. ‘I don’t know how to get money though.’

 

He sat at his wooden dinner table as he tried to think up of ways to earn money but nothing came to mind. Finishing his breakfast, he decided to sort out his economic struggles later and get ready for class.

 

Looking at his watch, he saw that he still had forty five minutes before he had to leave for school. Nodding, he went into the bathroom to clean himself up. This took him thirty five minutes to do.¹Small thing to note. Yuki took longer than a girl to get ready. >w<

 

When he walked out of the bathroom, his body was clean, his hair was shiny, and his teeth were brushed. He then went to his bedroom to change into whatever was in the closet.

 

Yuki opened the his wardrobe and started to sigh heavily. Inside it were two sets of clothing, a girl’s uniform and a unisex uniform.

 

‘This again,’ Yuki thought. ‘And how did these clothes get put in my room? Did they do it when I was out last night?’

 

He grabbed the unisex uniform and put it on quickly. Doing a quick check of himself in the mirror, he then set out to his first class of the day. When he left the Dormitory, it was 7:50.

 

Walking at a steady pace, Yuki followed the map on his watch that led him to a building named the Main Hall. This was where Yuki was to attend his homeroom everyday according to the schedule in his smartwatch. The Main Hall was quite a small building, contrary to its name. It was split into four floors, each floor representing a year. The floor Yuki was on was the first floor, the one for first years. Looking at the map, it seemed that the years were split into two classes. These classes were advanced and normal, represented by an A and B respectively.

 

Yuki’s watch led him to the door of a classroom with a tag that declared it as 1-A. He hesitated outside, unsure whether or not he was supposed to enter.

 

“Are you the human student?” a voice called out to the right of Yuki.

 

Yuki glanced over and saw a man wearing an expensive looking suit. Looking back into the classroom, Yuki noticed that there was no teacher yet and assumed that this man was the homeroom instructor.

 

“Yes,” Yuki replied. “Am I supposed to go in?”

 

“No, not yet,” the man replied with a small smile. “I’ll go in to introduce myself to the class then bring you in. Headmaster instructed us to give the students some advice before hand.”

 

Yuki listened to this with no reaction but inwardly started sighing to himself.

 

‘I hope this doesn’t cause any problems for me,’ he thought.

 

The possible teacher took Yuki’s silence as agreement and walked into the room. From outside of the door, Yuki heard the man introduce himself as Nataru Katem. Judging from the gasps that came from the other students, it seemed that this man was quite famous. Or at least his family was.

 

Then Nataru started to tell the class about Yuki. Yuki noticed that he seemed to be avoiding using pronouns when talking about Yuki. When Nataru motioned for Yuki to enter, he walked in quietly and observed the faces of the students that were sitting. He found one familiar face with her mouth wide open. It was the girl that had intervened the day before when the three thugs were attempting to rob Yuki.

 

Looking at the other people in the room, Yuki noticed that many had interested looks on their faces but a surprising number were hostile.

 

‘Do they not like humans?’ Yuki thought. ‘I wonder what was taught to them about humans.’

 

“You can sit over there,” Nataru said to Yuki. He was pointing toward a seat in the corner of the room.

 

Yuki nodded and strolled over to his new seat next to the windows. As he walked by the other students, he could hear snippets of their conversations. He no longer needed the translator to understand. Yuki discovered that he understood the language of Ethros and could speak it flawlessly. It was most likely due to him being an elf.

 

“That’s the human?” one elf whispered.

 

“Do all humans look like that?” another one said.

 

“What gender is the human?” a dwarf asked.

 

“I heard that it was put as unspecified,” someone piped up.

 

“Really?”

 

The rest of the conversations of were of the same thread. Yuki ignored them, expecting this type of reaction already. He sat down on his chair and waited for the teacher to continue, head on desk.

 

“Now that everyone is situated, I’m going to go over what it is we will be doing for today,” Nataru announced. All chatter stopped and everyone focused on the instructor. “The first objective of the day is to determine your class and what courses you should take.”

 

There were excited whispers among the students.

 

“I will explain to you all what classes are,” Nataru continued. “Classes are the titles given to you by the Universal Records. The UR takes all of your strengths and weaknesses and classifies them into a class. This class will give us at the Academy a guideline as to what courses you should take to supplement your talents.

 

“Normally, people have a choice as to the class they want to pick. The Records will give you options based on your strengths and you will be able to decide what class among those you want. The majority of you students here will only be allowed to choose one class. But there are some among you where the UR allows them to pick more than one because their strengths are not encompassed in one job.”

 

Nataru took out a rather large orb out of his suit pocket and placed on the table with a thud.

 

“This is a class crystal,” Nataru explained. “You will inject mana into it and it will give you your class options. But there is something that I should warn you all about.”

 

“When you are given your choices, you have free will to pick any of the jobs that appear there. If you want to be swordsman your whole life and you see it there than you can pick it. However, there will be some choices that are colored. Most of the classes will be of white color. Then there are green and red choices. You can probably already tell what these colors mean. A green class means that it is recommended that you choose that. A red class means that it is not recommended. As your homeroom instructor, I highly advise you to pick a green class. You can pick a different class but the ones in green are recommended for a reason. If you do pick a different class, never pick a red one. And I repeat, never.”

 

He swept the room with a critical eye.

 

“A red class means that it was barely left out of the choices. A red class would mean that you would struggle in it and reach your fullest potential. Some of you may already know, but the class that you pick alters your development. It will give you enhanced growth in certain stats and skills. By picking a class that isn’t very suited for you, you are only hurting yourself. Do you understand?”

 

The class nodded. Some muttered out words of acknowledgement. Yuki did nothing.

 

‘I wonder what possible classes there are,’ Yuki thought. ‘I need more information about this world. I should look for a library or something like that.’

 

Then Yuki remembered the notification that had appeared when he had learned Magical Eyes. The alert that he had partial unlocked Ancestral Knowledge.

 

‘I should see how useful it is later tonight. Since I’m an elf, it should have some useful information,’ Yuki planned.

 

“Since you all seem to understand then we can get started,” Nataru announced to the class, breaking through Yuki’s thoughts.

 

“Let’s begin.”