Chapter 61: A short walk…

“The rest of today’s class is yours. Your only assignment is to form teams, if you have one, you can leave.” Cressida brought out her phone and began lazing off… not very teacher-like but whatever. After a few seconds of everyone staring at her, she added, “Oh. Next class, we’re doing some team building and strategy things so if you don’t have a team, you’ll be stuck with randoms.”

And then she went back to her phone. Her… either second instructor or teaching assistant joined her, taking a seat to her left. Slowly, people left their daze and began talking. No one left yet though, since, well, they need teams. However, seeing as we already had teams, Melody suggested. “Do you guys want to go get lunch? Before it gets busy.”

“What time is it?” Elle asked, pulling out her phone and checking, but not sharing with everyone else. Seriously, why?

“It’s a quarter past ten,” Silvia helpfully chirped in.

“A little early,” Fara said, taking out her own phone. “How far is the dining hall?”

It certainly was early, but I’ve eaten lunch earlier because of shitty high school block schedules where we had three lunch periods, a third of the school in each, and of course I got stuck in the first one for half of my week. Whoever designed my high school’s schedules needs a pay un-raise. Honestly, just fire them. I simply can’t see any reason why lunch was at fucking ten-ten in the morning. We even had an hour of like this study session time thing where you can travel around and talk to teachers or do whatever. And it was right after the lunch class! Just move it in front!

That was probably one of the things I was looking forward to in college, freedom in schedules… although with this system stuff the workload is kind of killer. But there’s still more free time, I think. I pulled out my phone and glanced over today’s schedule, which had already updated surprisingly.

Monday

Building C, Room 103 - Leadership - 8:00-8:50

Building So, Room 104 - First Year Team Strategy and Tactics - 9:30-11:20

Building So, Room 104 - Solo Combat I - 12:30-1:50

Building C, Room 112 - Support Tactics - 2:00-2:50

Building A, Room 211 - Accelerated Intro to Computer Science - LEC - 4:00-5:20

Both of the Soren Hall classes already have their rooms switched to 104. I wonder if the course page is any different. Not that I’d be able to tell since I haven’t really looked at the courses yet… probably should do that. Also didn’t bring any notebooks or laptops or anything… which I guess is fine until the Computer Science class, since the other classes are more practical. I probably know everything that’ll be talked about today in the Computer Science class since that was the major I was going to aim for before all of this.

Wait, did Support Tactics change rooms? I thought it was room one-o-something… whatever. Might have changed days ago for all I know. What was I trying to look at again? Uh… oh, yeah. Lunch. I have… an hour and ten minutes. We have an hour and ten minutes. All six of us, probably. On a normal day. Today we have double that.

“Seventeen minutes,” Silvia said, reading off of her phone. “Ten-thirty or -forty when we arrive.”

“Early, but I’m fine with it.” Fara nodded. Everyone else followed suit and we decided to walk there. We formed a traveling blob of two rows of three. Melody, Amane, and I in the back with the other three upfront. It felt a little weird leaving the room first, but once we left, another group of six followed suit. Guess they were waiting for someone else.

Once our walk began, I couldn’t help but ask Melody. “How big is this campus?”

“No idea.” Melody shrugged.

Overhearing us despite how quiet I asked, probably because the wind was blowing toward them, Silvia answered as well. “Nineteen hundred acres.”

1900 acres… is… probably big. Considering a seventeen minute walk is maybe half of campus? I think the dining hall is pretty central. “How big is that?”

“Uh…” Silvia thought for a little before replying, “Around three square miles?”

Cool, cool. I still don’t really know how big that is. But I know it better… so one and a half or so miles to get across campus. Seems about right. One and a half miles takes like, what, thirty minutes to walk? There must be a bus here or some other public transport. Especially since some of these classes are pretty tight, Support Tactics and Solo Combat is only a ten minute passing period, although those buildings are only a few minutes away so I could probably walk. I haven’t seen any buses though… The walking paths aren’t right beside the roads; they weave in and out, so I probably wouldn’t have noticed any if I wasn’t searching for buses. I’m sure there’s some.

Our walk was pretty silent, with everyone simply looking around and admiring the fairly dense trees and the nice wooden buildings. It’s a really pretty, really themed, campus. Definitely more… uniform than the few campuses I’d visited back during the summer before senior year in  high school. Those campuses were basically all just bricks. They tried for themes, but there were always older buildings that didn’t match modern styles. Not that they don’t have their own charms, but it was entirely different.

Not surprising of course, since who the hell has the money to maintain and update every single building every time something changes or every time they build another? No one… other than this place it seems. Unless they just never renovate. But the insides of the builds are all new, and the outsides all feel new.

Now that I think about it, it seems like the entire campus was built a day ago, always. I haven’t seen a single piece of trash outside of a trash can. It’s incredibly clean. Maybe they use some system magic or something. Definitely impressive for such a large school regardless… how large is it? I swear I’ve asked Melody this before… I can’t remember.

It was… a hundred A tiers, so probably like a thousand B tiers, and then a handful of C tiers… Imma just say two thousand per year. So eight thousand total.

Holy shit, this is a small school. Nineteen hundred acres for eight thousand students? It’s nothing!

I remember some schools I visited, the ones not in the center of cities, being like a thousand acres, and those had like twenty thousand students. And the schools that are in the center of cities are usually like five to ten thousand students but they only have a few hundred acres. How the hell did Solstice get so much land?

Obviously the royal family. They can just… give land. And when was this school established? A while ago for sure. Probably wasn’t such a large city back then. Still… this place is huge for such a small student body.

That’s undergraduate though. I wonder if there’s much research here… I’ll ask Melody later. She’ll probably know given that her family has a building named after them. They probably do some research here if there is any.

After a few more minutes we reached the dining hall, which was fairly empty. Most people were probably still in classes, and those that weren’t probably thought it was too early to eat. The building was open though. I think it’s always open…

We walked in and Melody and I headed to the buffet section with Silvia, while Fara and Elle went and got some cheap unhealthy fast food and Amane managed to find a shrimp pasta salad. Then we all sat down and began eating.

I must say… that shrimp pasta salad looks really good… like really good… and Amane looked so tiny and cute and I want to bully her into giving me her salad.

What the fuck did I just think? Since when was I a sadist? I’m not Melody! I’m the bottom! I want Amane to suddenly flip and force feed me her salad! Yes, yes. That. Feed me mommy Amane… oh god stupid brain.

Ahem. Anyway, that salad looks really good. Filled with pasta of course, and then some tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, shrimp, and olives. The dressing looked like some vinaigrette and everything was topped with some shredded cheese. Probably parmesan or something. Or feta cheese? Is that what people put on salads?

Looking up between bites, Amane caught me staring and immediately shoved her blushing head downwards, speeding up her nibbles. I’ve never wanted to steal food so much… it looks so good… “Where did you buy that?”

Amane looked up, then pointed at a shop way down in the corner. Huh. It’s called Saladizarre. Bizarre salads? The storefront didn’t particularly stand out, probably why I never noticed it. They just had a generic bowl logo and a plain wooden front that matched the rest of the building.

By the time I had returned to Amane, she finished her salad, then she lightly pushed herself out of her seat and mumbled, “...I’m gonna go get dessert.”

“Okay,” Melody replied, then returned to some conversation she was having with Fara and Elle. They were talking about some university club. I should probably look and see what clubs there are. Not that I need to join any to… look good on a resume or anything. I think the X tier part covers that, but clubs are part of the experience. Probably. I don’t really know. People say that. I was never a big club participant in high school. Joined a few, but no leadership or anything.

After we all finished lunch and Amane was done with her dessert, I got an unexpected notification.

Shared Spatial Inventory Level Up!

Inventory size has increased to 10cm x 10cm x 10cm.

Might just be the shortest message BDSysteM has ever sent me. I wonder if the size increase is linear or exponential. Guess I’ll find out whenever it levels up next.

Melody also received the message, seeing as she looked over at me immediately, and then BDSysteM spoke. Melody would, for some reason, like your permission to share the inventory ability to everyone.

I locked eyes with Melody and nodded… since… well… there isn’t really a reason to hide it? It’s not directly linked to submission, minus the sharing part… which could just be explained as S tier stuff.

Melody decided to show everyone by opening up the magical storage portal in the middle of the table and shoving her phone into it, which could actually fit diagonally now. Pretty cool. I don’t know if two phones will fit, but it’s progress.

Everyone stared at the portal until it disappeared, and everyone stared at Melody. Fara hesitantly asked, “Spatial storage?”

Melody nodded. “Scar and I have a shared spatial storage. Just thought we’d let you know.”

“Okay.” Fara nodded. “Sounds useful.”

Well that was anticlimactic.