Chapter 11: Scholar
Hodell accepted the warm glazed card and gave a small nod.
Then he followed the assistant through the academy once more.
By now, night had fully fallen.
Elegant light pillars stood along the roads, casting a soft silver glow over the stone paths. Students who had not yet returned to their dormitories hurried past in twos and threes, their quiet conversations carrying the bright, casual energy of ordinary youth. The scene could not have been more different from the lifeless silence and suffocating oppression of the Erhai School.
For the first time in a long while, Hodell drew a full breath.
Some of the tightness in his nerves loosened.
At a fork in the road, the assistant finally stopped.
"Student Ryan, my task ends here."
His tone remained perfectly controlled, but there was something blade like beneath it.
"Remember your purpose. And… check your personal belongings regularly."
As he said the last sentence, his gaze dipped meaningfully toward Hodell's lapel.
Then, without waiting for any reply, he stepped backward and disappeared soundlessly into the night.
Hodell lowered his eyes to the glazed card in his hand.
A faint light rose from it, and a small guiding arrow slowly took shape across its surface.
He stared at it for a second, then let out a faint breath through his nose.
"Quite clever," he muttered inwardly. "The name also sounds like one of those expensive apartment complexes from my old world."
Following the directional glow, he passed through the quiet gardens of the academy beneath the night sky. Bamboo shadows swayed in the moonlight. Fountains murmured softly in the distance. After winding along several paths, he finally found Building Seven of Buxton Court.
He pressed the credential against the lock.
The door slid open without a sound.
The room inside was not large, but it was neat and comfortable. There was a bed, a writing desk, a private bathroom, and beyond the window, a stand of bamboo shifting gently in the wind.
Hodell closed the door behind him, then leaned his back against the cool panel and exhaled a long, slow breath.
At last, some of the strain inside him eased.
"Unlikely," he thought, "but better to check."
He inspected the room carefully from end to end.
The corners.
The window frame.
The bathroom.
The underside of the desk.
The wall lamps.
Nothing unusual.
No obvious monitoring arrays.
No hidden crystal eyes.
No suspicious energy fluctuations.
Only then did he finally loosen his shoulders a little.
He carefully hid the potion, then turned his attention to the unopened reward.
[Randomizing reward type…]
[This time, your reward type is: Item.]
[Please choose one of the following items.]
[Race Change Card: Randomly changes your race.]
[Basic Skill Upgrade Card x1: Instantly raises a skill of the corresponding rank by one level.]
[Small Vial of Potential Potion: Grants 1 additional Potential Point.]
For a single instant, Hodell truly considered the Race Change Card.
If he changed his race and slipped away, then who would know who he was?
But that thought died almost as quickly as it had appeared.
Random race changes were the kind of thing that sounded excellent right up until the moment someone turned into an octopus monster, an unstable energy life form, or something with seven mouths and negative social prospects.
If that happened, he would not be escaping.
He would be delivered straight back to a laboratory and labeled "new research subject."
Absolutely not.
The Skill Upgrade Card was solid. It could save experience, and experience was always useful.
The Small Vial of Potential Potion was also valuable, even if it was only a single point. In [The Legendary Mechanic], Potential Points became increasingly difficult to obtain as a character developed. Every point mattered.
In the end, he chose the potion without much hesitation.
Potential Points had only three main sources.
Leveling up.
Mission rewards.
And maxing out skills.
After the first Class Knowledge, every subsequent piece of Class Knowledge required Potential Points to unlock and raise. Basic knowledge cost one. Advanced cost two. High end cost three. Cutting edge cost four. Ultimate cost eight. And later on, there could even be extra consumption rules for off branch development.
Just thinking about it made his nonexistent liver ache.
After a quick wash, he lay down on the unfamiliar bed.
His body was tired enough to sink straight into sleep, yet his mind remained unnaturally clear.
The Erhai School.
The academy.
The General Administration.
Cloud Dream River.
Future missions.
Future dangers.
Future opportunities.
Thoughts overlapped one after another until the night finally dragged him into rest.
The next morning, Hodell woke up on time.
After changing into clothes that matched the style of an academy freshman, he stood before the mirror and gave himself a proper look for the first time.
He looked entirely human now.
His features were sharp and clean, though a little finer than before. The most noticeable change was in his eyes. The old amber vertical pupils had settled into a deeper hazel shade, and although his sideburns were still a little thick, they no longer had that obvious fox like roughness. They fell casually across his forehead and softened his appearance.
"A little less masculine," he judged silently, "but definitely better looking than my old face."
He adjusted his clothes, picked up his identity credential from the table, and opened the door.
Morning sunlight spilled across the paths of Liuli Cloud Dream Academy.
Young mage apprentices carried books and materials as they moved in small groups toward different teaching areas. Their voices were bright, their steps unhurried, their expressions alive.
Hodell blended into the flow of students and headed naturally toward the Third Teaching Area.
The classroom there was spacious and bright.
Tiered curved seating rose upward in clean rows, and many students were already present, talking in low voices before class began. Hodell chose a seat toward the back, not too conspicuous but not suspiciously withdrawn either, and sat down.
His gaze moved calmly across the room.
Not long after, a boy with curly brown hair and scattered freckles leaned over from the side.
He wore a grin that looked practiced, easy, and shamelessly familiar.
"Hey, new face?"
He lowered his voice and winked.
"Come on, buddy, give me the inside scoop. Which elder in your family holds a nice position in the General Administration? Or what family are you from?"
Hodell reacted at once.
A trace of awkwardness appeared on his face at exactly the right degree, and he gave a helpless little smile.
"Neither. I'm just an ordinary student from Muai County."
"Muai County?"
The boy froze for a second.
The name clearly meant nothing to him.
Then his face turned into a very obvious "Do you think I'm stupid?" expression. He bumped Hodell lightly with his elbow and lowered his voice even more.
"Oh, come on. Anyone who can squeeze in at this point is either borrowing somebody else's resources or polishing their résumé before a future placement. I understand the rules. Stay low key, right?"
He patted his own chest in exaggerated assurance.
"Relax. My mouth is sealed. Carlo."
His whole expression screamed, I have already seen through everything.
So there really is this kind of gossip chain.
Hodell mentally cursed the Erhai School once, then responded with another small smile.
"It really was just luck. I happened to meet a mentor who appreciated me enough to recommend me."
Carlo instantly wore the look of someone who believed he had extracted a half confession.
"I knew it."
He slapped Hodell lightly on the shoulder.
"Fine, fine, understood. From now on, let's look out for each other. Oh, right, want to hit the cafeteria together at noon? I know where they keep the limited supply energy pudding. If we are late, it is gone."
Just then, the professor entered.
The room instantly fell silent.
Carlo snapped upright, but not before throwing Hodell a meaningful look that clearly said, We are not done talking.
Hodell withdrew his gaze and looked toward the podium with a perfectly attentive expression.
Inside, however, he was full of complaints.
It really does feel like I just finished the most depressing summer break imaginable and got shoved right back into class.
At that moment, the system flickered.
[You are currently focused on the pursuit of knowledge.]
[You have obtained the subclass Scholar. Accept / Decline?]
For a fraction of a second, Hodell nearly lost control of his expression.
Scholar?
Finally!
A subclass!
Main classes and subclasses were entirely different things. There were only five main Super classes in [The Legendary Mechanic], but subclasses were numerous and diverse, and they generally did not require formal Class Knowledge books to unlock.
That was one of the core attractions of the game.
The sheer number of possible class combinations created enormous diversity. In the later stages, personalized builds became everything. Without fixed guides, no two characters developed in exactly the same way.
A character could theoretically possess an unlimited number of classes.
Every twenty levels created a bottleneck that required advancement to continue, and the total level cap depended on version progression. In Version 1.0, the overall cap had been Level 60.
Players had to worry about that.
NPCs did not.
Han Xiao had already proven that much.
And because subclasses scaled their experience costs upward along with total level, the earlier one obtained a useful subclass, the more efficient it was to develop.
Of course, there was a downside. A character could end up with an inflated total level filled with subclasses rather than real core combat value.
But for an NPC with no true level cap?
Why would he care?
Hodell immediately recognized [Scholar].
It was one of the rare subclasses that had explicitly appeared in the original story. More importantly, it was an attribute class. Every level gave a major increase to a single attribute. It granted no free attribute points, but it did provide Potential Points.
[Scholar] increased Intelligence by ten per level.
Ten.
Any player who knew it existed could, in theory, obtain it fairly easily, and the return was outrageously good.
Hodell had a very strong urge to start dumping levels into it immediately.
Then he suppressed it.
No.
Better to check the details in private.
If his attributes surged too sharply right in the middle of class, and someone sensitive noticed, it would be asking for trouble.
Still, his thoughts would not stop moving.
Han Xiao did something similar in the original, didn't he? Paid a little money, joined some research society in a hub city, filled out a form, maybe flirted with the receptionist, and in less than ten minutes the class triggered.
His mind wandered again.
Then why did I never trigger [Agent] in the Erhai School?
After all, I did spend months in what was obviously an evil organization.
The morning passed in lecture.
The second class before noon was a practical lesson centered around magic conductive equipment. The classroom shifted from a normal lecture hall to a workshop lined with precision devices, crystal conduits, and energy circuit arrays.
Students naturally formed several small groups around the equipment set up throughout the room.
At the center of each station floated a basic [Energy Resonance Meter].
It was an introductory training instrument designed to test energy precision and fine control. Its core was a levitating crystal sphere. The user needed to continuously input energy and guide it through preset rune paths inside the device. The more complete the route and the steadier the control, the brighter and more stable the crystal's glow would become.
Hodell had only just stepped in front of an unused instrument when a slightly cold, unyielding voice spoke beside him.
"Ryan, right?"
He turned.
The speaker was a boy in a standard academy uniform, though it had been washed often enough that the fabric had gone a little pale. His gaze was sharp, and the scrutiny in it was obvious.
Hodell had already memorized the faces in the Third Teaching Area, so he knew the boy at once.
Eric.
A student from a once respectable but long declining family, the kind of background that sat awkwardly between commoner and noble. He had entered the academy on undeniably strong grades and was, in every sense, the type who had clawed his way upward by academic merit.
"It's me," Hodell said. "Do you need something?"
Eric's gaze swept briefly over Hodell's expensive casual wear.
His tone carried no warmth.
"Nothing important. I am simply curious."
He glanced toward the surrounding equipment.
"The rest of us are here because we passed rounds of selection and proved our basic energy affinity and control. You, however, transferred in at this stage."
His eyes hardened.
"So I want to know whether you actually possess the qualifications to operate precision equipment like this. I have no interest in watching someone's amateur mistakes affect the practical progress of others."
He did not say it directly, but the meaning was transparent.
You got in through connections.
Do not drag the rest of us down.
Several nearby students from ordinary backgrounds glanced over. Carlo's earlier theory about "borrowing somebody else's resources" had clearly not been unique. People had already formed their own assumptions.
Troublesome.
The well dressed students from notable families already had their own social circles. The commoners and scholarship students had their own solidarity and pride. As a transfer student with an unclear background, he was standing in the open between both worlds.
Still, Hodell could understand Eric's attitude.
If he himself had struggled to earn a place through pure merit, he would not be thrilled to see someone inserted at the last moment either.
Carlo looked like he wanted to speak up and smooth things over, but after seeing Eric's expression, he hesitated and swallowed the words, settling for a concerned glance in Hodell's direction.
Hodell did not get angry.
Instead, a faint smile touched the corner of his lips.
"Your concern is perfectly reasonable, Student Eric."
He nodded once.
"Qualifications cannot be proven with words."
Turning toward the [Energy Resonance Meter], he spoke evenly.
"According to the manual, guiding energy through one full cycle of the basic rune route with sixty percent stability counts as passing."
He placed a hand lightly on the instrument.
"Then let me answer your doubts with my actual performance."
Without waiting for Eric's response, he calmly pressed his palm against the meter's energy intake plate.
In the early stages, there was little essential difference between the five major energy types in terms of raw control fundamentals. As an Esper with [Energy Simulation], Hodell had every reason to feel confident when facing this sort of introductory micro control equipment.
He closed his eyes slightly.
Under his maxed basic energy perception, the instrument's internal rune routes immediately became crisp and transparent. He could see the flow paths, the turning points, the pressure nodes, and the likely instability zones almost at a glance.
In a single thought, energy flowed out from his palm like a thin stream and entered the instrument.
The hovering crystal sphere flickered weakly at first.
Its light wavered.
Eric's mouth twitched, as though he were just about to say, I knew it.
Then the next moment arrived.
The unstable glow suddenly settled.
Not gradually.
Decisively.
The light became clear and bright at a visible speed. Inside the crystal, the complicated rune circuits lit one by one in smooth succession. The energy moved through them as though guided by an invisible hand, clean and precise, with almost no wasted motion.
Seventy percent.
Eighty.
Ninety.
The quiet conversations around them faded away.
More and more students turned toward the exceptionally bright crystal sphere. Even the professor, who had been moving between groups to offer instruction, stopped and looked over in surprise.
That was normal.
People loved a spectacle.
And Hodell, whether he wanted to or not, carried an aura that made people look twice. The mystery of a late transfer student, the suspicion of an unusual background, his good looks, and now this level of control all stacked together into something difficult to ignore.
Finally, the indicator stabilized.
Ninety five percent.
A few suppressed gasps sounded through the workshop.
That level of completion was impressive even among students who had spent weeks practicing.
Hodell slowly withdrew his hand and opened his eyes. Then he turned toward Eric, whose expression had shifted several times in the span of a few seconds.
Still wearing the same calm, composed smile, he asked,
"Does this count as having the basic qualifications?"
Eric's ears flushed slightly.
The suspicion in his eyes had been replaced by surprise and a trace of embarrassment. His lips moved as though he wanted to say something, but in the end he only gave a small, stiff nod of acknowledgment and turned away.
Carlo was the first to recover.
"My God, buddy!"
He nearly jumped in place, then slapped Hodell on the shoulder with obvious excitement.
"You call this coming from Muai County? Ninety five percent! That is ridiculously low key!"
Hodell only smiled and did not explain.
After that display, the atmosphere around him changed noticeably.
The earlier glances filled with scrutiny, indifference, or resentment softened. Several students from more modest backgrounds, who had been observing silently, began to step closer.
Among them was a quiet brown haired girl who spoke in a soft voice.
"Ryan… the way you handled the energy overflow at the third node just now was very clever."
She hesitated, then asked with visible sincerity,
"Could you share how you thought about it?"
.....
[If you don't want to wait for the next update, read 10–50 chapters ahead on P@treon.]
[[email protected]/FanficLord03]
[One Piece, Naruto, Bleach, Soul Land, NBA, and more — all in one place.]