Chương 67: Midterms, a Time for Revelry

As his father fought the beast in the great cosmic sea, LANCE fought a different battle far below, on the planet's surface — midterms! Returning from his island to the academy had been a heck of a travel. He fought off several bandit incursions, a mega-squid attack, and the worst foe of all, boredom! Seriously, it was so tedious traveling for hours and hours every day without so much as a book to read!

Praying served as a nice bit of distraction, sure, but other than that, it was he and the open road and whatever his mind cobbled together for entertainment. When he returned from the open road and stepped foot back onto the safe ground of campus, his sign-up sheet had ballooned to several pages more than the pages he had nailed to his door already. To many, such a list of requests would have been tedious. To him, it meant something to do.

Lance chucked his belongings into his dorm and got to work right away on the list. He looked it over and scribbled out anything which was what he called 'fan adoration.' Desires for a date, kissing, sexual relations, anything that wasn't actually helping others with a problem they had, excluding virginity. Without those fillers, Lance had about three dozen less 'tasks' to concern himself with — great!

As he focused on the tasks at hand, he thought about what he could do to hasten his travel from the island to campus. Neither were that far from each other, not in the grand scale of continents and oceans and the stars themselves; yet they were far enough to prevent easy travel, which was his problem. His father had recommended some suggestions for quick travel but in the many things which had happened since that first excursion and right now, he had forgotten what they had said.

Part of him hoped the academy would invest enough in creating for him a stable portal, that way, he could simply walk through the portal whenever he wanted and have an instant bridge between his two realms. A stable portal, though, was about as likely to happen as the Horror was to just leave them be...

As he finished one task, locating someone's lost, which was to say, drunken son out on a bender, he thought about simply investing an insane number of Boon Points into Stamina and building himself to such a point where he could run and swim between his two realms. Frankly, he doubted he could invest enough points where the distance between the two places could be closed by his martial prowess alone.

As he finished another task, which involved clearing out a woman's basement infested with snake-gremlins, he wondered if dumping points into his Magical Prowess and then learning a [Teleport] incantation would be realistic. He could surely do it with some practice. Yet his father had said to him multiple times how complex a teleportation spell could be to learn, especially for someone who specialized more in the martial forms than magical.

He sighed, though groaning was more his speed these days, especially with his father's increasingly aggravating stances. He finished his tasks and earned a level up, earning a full ten Boon Points.

"That's it, it looks..." Lance whispered to himself as he ran down the request list one more time.

"Yup. That's it." He returned to his dorm, bathed, and cleaned his clothes. Not for the first time since his life had become more 'active,' did he envy his father's cleaning incantations. Incant one spell then poof, all clean and ready to hit the town. It tempted him to learn the spell, but he didn't want to spend his Boon Points on such a thing nor spend his precious time learning a spell which would be purely to save time cleaning.

Cleaning, in the end, was just that — something he did when he was bored or needed a mental break. A knock at his door came after he finished his manual cleaning. He answered the door and found Penn Vic standing there all smiling.

"Penn! What a nice surprise. What can I do for you today?"

"Midterms are soon. I was wondering if you needed help in any of your classes? I know healing isn't your forte..." she answered. This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it"Absolutely, come on in, I could use a nice study break." He and she studied late into the night. Penn's mastery of healing glyphs were far above her grade level. As an added bonus, her 'ticks' no longer played a decisive role in her life. That made studying all the easier, now, did class.

"Oh, gods and hogs," she said, stretching after a few productive hours had gone by.

"I think you're getting it. Let's take a break. I wanted to say something, actually. Well, two things, in fact."

"Sure — go ahead! I have enough of a handle on the form of healing, for now. Enough for the midterm, anyway. What's on your mind?"

"Well," Penn paused as if gathering her courage.

"I wanted to thank you for being such a gentleman, one. When you saved me from those cultists and I — erm — 'offered myself,' to you? I know you would have been a dandy lover had you accepted, but I am happy all the same you rejected my advance. I would've have felt silly over it the following morning had we shared our bodies. So, thank you." Lance bowed his head.

"Yeah, no problem. I've taken oaths and I have some common sense about consent. Any man of a noble nature would've done no different. What else did you want to discuss?"

"Well, as for my other point, I wanted to let you know I applied to the Planetary Defense Council's internship program!"

"Oh, that's nice! I didn't think you would. Josh seemed more interested in you gaining more experience, then applying. What changed?"

"Nothing changed." Penn spoke in a brief confident way.

"But I was getting tired of doing nothing. I have experience for them to draw upon. Why not have them see? So, I applied and wrote into my application all that I knew how to do. With some luck, maybe I can find myself a role, there."

"What about the money? Or your family? Don't you or they need your help?" It was a sudden shift. He hoped everything was all right.

"No. My father will understand the internship. He might have wanted me to return for the summer but if my absence furthers my training which furthers, in turn, the family, he will understand. He cares more about the familial legacy than anything else... that's how all nobles are, in the end." He couldn't say he knew any of that but he also only in fits talked with Penn about her personal life.

Embarrassed though he was, he didn't keep all of her life straight in his mind when he had his own family stuff weighing heavy.

"I hope you're accepted, then! I know Josh, somewhat, and his boss, Frank. Frank's friends with my dad, sort of... I will put in a good word for you." Penn's eyes went wide.

"Oh, no, please don't, Lance! I want to get in on my own prowess. Not on a buddy's word!"

"Honorable. I will honor your words, then. I guess you will just have to get in by the fury of your skills."

"Thank you," she giggled.

"I get enough special treatment from my father. If I don't learn to get by in life on my own, what kind of future am I setting myself up for?" Penn spoke truth. She wanted to do things by her own two hands. Same as he, really. Like her, he had a huge advantage — his father's modification tool. And yet, he still wanted to do the same as the rest. It was good to never forget your roots. That much he understood. Chit-chat took over at that point, and he escorted Penn back to her dorm after sharing a bottle of wine.

When the sun came up, he wasn't tired in the slightest. He studied for the rest of the morning until he had his first midterm. His history class came first and he aced the test. Fifty multiple-choice questions followed by two essay responses. Easy. The healing course came next. It was a practical demonstration. He had to heal someone at the hospital who had a broken bone. He expected something harder to heal than bone, like muscle, so when it was a simple bone, he breathed easy in knowing another course was aced.

And then came the basics of combat and movement class... nothing much to be said about that one other than he aced it, too. His final class ended in the blink of an eye. He honestly couldn't even call the test challenging. He was in and out in twenty-five minutes. Honestly, that was the unspoken problem with his father's training excursions, they put him so far ahead of his classmates, he wondered why he hadn't bullied his way to a more challenging class, yet.

His father said to linger on his coursework, so he did, but what would his father know about contemporary college life? He was in school last when their country still had an absolute king instead of a constitutional one. Having finished his final midterm — all in one day would've been brutal to any normal student, but to him, it was preferable — Lance returned to his dorm thinking of what he would spend his free time on with no homework being assigned. Should he blow off some steam and head to a party?

Then he could get blown off but in a different way. Such musings went out the door when he saw a prefect at his door.

"Can I help you?" he asked the prefect.

"Ah, Lance. I have a notice here that the Supreme Dean would like to see you — immediately."