Past Life Hero, ch 12

The next day, Max woke up right on time, his internal clock gently nudging him awake. He sat up, stretched, and thought about how glorious it was to wake up this way in this lifetime. More than anything back on Earth, being able to wake up without feeling like hell on two legs was something he had missed from Albion. However, after waking up feeling great, he realized he had a problem.  The only thing he had to change into was his simple shabby clothing from earlier.

He decided to take a shower despite the dirt on his clothes and grumbled as stopped changing clothes, just going out to the common area in his sleeping gown.

In the shower, he inspected his current body, comparing it to his memories on Earth.  Deep down, he was still a little skeptical that a new, borrowed body could feel exactly like his old one. By the end of his shower, he believed everything, though.  All the little scars he’d gotten from Earth were even there.

Once his shower was done, Max went back to his room and changed into his somewhat ratty clothing. It was still dark outside, so he decided to take a quick walk around the academy.

The way his dorm was structured had hallways off both sides of a entral landing on each floor. One side of the hallway was for men and one side was for women. There was a desk in the landing area, but nobody was on duty. He hadn't seen anything about fraternization policies or anything like that in the handbooks, so he assumed no such rules existed. After heading down the stairs, he discovered that the very bottom floor landing had someone on duty with a simple sash on that read, "Monitor."

Just like the pamphlets that Max had read the night before, the writing on the sash was in the same unfamiliar language that he inexplicably knew now.

The monitor on duty was a man with long hair in his late twenties or early thirties. He was clean-shaven with a nose ring, and if he was from Earth, Max would have thought he looked Latino.  He’d been reading a book and looked up at Max in surprise. "Already awake, huh?"

"Yeah, I didn't need much sleep," said Max.

The man put his book down and said, "Most of the other new Challengers probably will, though.  Get a lot of sleep that is.  Usually, the day after we get a new arrival group, some instructors have to go down each hallway and bang on doors to wake everybody up. If someone is sleeping too much, a professor might even send one of their summons into the room, and that can be unpleasant for a newbie." He chuckled, eyes far away, lost in memories.

Max nodded slowly. "Alright, well, I’m up and can’t go to sleep.  Can’t help it so this is when my day starts.  On that note, what time does the day actually start?"

It depends," said the monitor. "Oh, by the way, what's your name?"

"Ah, I'm Max. What about you?"

The monitor pointed at himself with a thumb and said, "Just call me Chango."

"Will do, Chango. So when does the day start?"

Chango pointed at a clock behind him on the wall and said, "As you can see, right now, it's about four o'clock. Breakfast every day starts at six, but classes don't actually begin until ten in the morning, usually."

"That seems weird," said Max.  “Kinda late, huh?”

Chango chuckled. "That's because this is the Summoner Academy. And even though everyone looks down on us, we're still basically magic casters. All the warrior martial types like to start things before the sun even rises, but magical types usually tend to be night owls.  Research, gatherings, that sort of thing.

Max nodded. "So since all of the new people are onboarding, what time do I need to be ready for all of that?"

"If you're back here before ten, you should be fine. Honestly, probably only half of the newcomers are even going to get breakfast."

Max nodded, said his thanks, and turned to leave. But then he looked back  "Wait a second.  How did you know I was new? This dorm has five floors and I was on the fourth."

"This dorm isn't even close to full. None of them are. And I recognize everybody who already lives here. You're also wearing the clothes of a new arrival.  Everyone tries to change out of that stuff as soon as they can, even if they make it themselves."

Max raised his eyebrows and said, "Fair enough." Then he gave Chango a friendly wave and headed out the door.

There was nobody else on campus, at least not that Max could see, and he was glad he’d decided to take a walk while there wouldn't be any distractions. He had only seen a small portion of the Summoner Academy so far. And after reading the booklet about Summoners, and especially after talking to Chango about how few people were in the dorms, he had expected campus to be tiny, maybe even like a community college. I really need to stop making assumptions, Max thought.

The campus was actually fairly large, bigger than the state college that Max had attended back on Earth. His dorm might not be full, and maybe the others weren't either, but he counted ten of each dorm building. Each of them looked about the same size, too. His hallway had fifteen doors per side, so a total of thirty. And if each one led to two rooms, that would be sixty rooms per hall. There were two hallways per floor, one on each side of the stairwell, so 120 students per floor. With five floors and ten buildings, there were enough rooms for over 5,000 students.

He assumed there were other forms of housing, too.  After all, he highly doubted the professors lived in the dorms.

Max remembered what he'd read in the Quartet pamphlet: that the Summoner Academy was smaller than the other schools in this Quartet, and he soundlessly whistled. The implications were staggering since newcomers to the quartet were from worlds that were being destroyed, under siege by monsters. Max had known for a very long time that in the grand scheme of things, he was small. He’d always understood this to some degree. But now, after thinking about the sheer scale of the Eternal Struggle, and the fact that this Quartet was only one of thousands, maybe even millions, he felt tiny in a way that he hadn't since his childhood and his first life.

The campus’ school area was large too. There were five buildings, each one of them the size of a convention center back on Earth. Signs on each building named them. Max saw two of them: one was “Earth” building, and one was “Fire.” Western style elements, huh? He thought. Or maybe it still could be Eastern. He wasn't sure, but it did seem like the buildings were named after the elements.

Max went wherever his feet took him, and after hanging a left in a courtyard with a dry fountain, he found himself in a garden. Up until this point, he’f felt that the campus was large, but wasn't particularly pretty. The garden was the opposite. It was relatively small, but absolutely beautiful. Whoever took care of this garden definitely took great pride in their work. There were four different seating areas with benches around it, as well as a central area that Max imagined someone could have a picnic at.

At this point, Max began to get pretty hungry and, even though he hadn’t bothered to keep perfect track of time, he assumed that it was probably around six o'clock by now. So, he decided to figure out where the cafeteria was. It took him a while, but he eventually found a campus map behind glass in a hallway. From then, it was relatively straightforward to find one of the two cafeterias. It turned out the college had more than one.  Max went to the underclassmen cafeteria. He had a feeling that if he went to the graduate cafeteria, he'd be turned away.

At the very least he’d look stupid eating there in his field rags.

As he got close to the cafeteria, he thought about the food that he'd received the night before. There had actually been several options to choose from on a rolling trolley cart that a bored-looking woman had been pushing down the hallway, and Max had grabbed something simple at the time.  Something like hot dogs. He wondered what breakfast was going to look like.

Inside the cafeteria, there was a person sitting behind a counter, similar to how Chango had been watching the downstairs landing of his dorm. The woman at this counter held a thick rod of stone, perhaps some kind of wand, and held it above Max's hand. Max didn't see any change with the wand, or on his hand, but the woman nodded her head in acknowledgment of something and waved Max through.

There were four general sections in the cafeteria.  After a quick few minutes of exploration, he realized that the different areas were for different physiologies. There were signs with lists of species that were cleared to eat in that wing of the cafeteria, and Max went into the side that said "human." In this section, there were a number of different options for food, more than he would have expected given the humble nature of the Summoner Academy. He wasn't displeased. After all, Max was pretty easy when it came to breakfast, and he was happy to find that he was able to load up his plate on scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast similar to what he liked back on Earth.

He sat down, finished his food, and went back to the dorm, waiting for the day to officially start. So classes are going to start in a week, he thought to himself. A kernel of excitement grew within him. He hadn't forgotten his family or his friends, but it had been a while since he'd felt this same spirit of adventure.