9 Geenom

After the dazzling light stopped its illumination, a young boy could be seen walking out of it. Mormo just went out of the portal and found himself in the middle of a big street. He looked around and saw a group of young children, standing around a giant bearded man, at the far corner of the street.

Mormo walked to them.

At the very least, this group contained 5 thousand children. They didn't talk to each other, and the bearded man just looked over the group with a cold expression.

Mormo knew that he was in the right place, so he just sat on the floor and waited for any development. People kept coming, and after three hours the big street was packed with young children, not even one adult could be seen in the street beside the bearded man.

Everyone was quiet, Mormo couldn't even hear the breathing of the kids that sat next to him.

After some time passed, the giant stood up and began to walk. As he walked, all the other children just followed him.

The group of people left the street and exited the city, they walked into the wilderness. As far as they could see, everything was covered with sand.

Mormo liked the desert more than any other landscape, so he wasn't even a little bit displeased with the situation.

They kept their journey for 4 straight days before a glorious castle that towered to the sky was standing tall before Mormo's eyes. Around the castle, there were lots of small buildings, and within some distance from the castle, Mormo could see a big plaza. The plaza was enormous, it could easily contain millions of people.

The group of young children kept their silence while they moved, but their hearts started to beat faster as they approached their target.

They walked straight to the plaza. When they entered, all the people, who were already there, looked at them with amusing faces for a short time, and then quickly went back to their businesses.

The giant stopped and turned around, he looked more like a troll than a human giant, but his eyes beamed with intelligence. It was the first time that Mormo looked at someone in this world and felt inferior in terms of cleverness, and the bearded man didn't even start to talk.

"Welcome to 'Geenom', the best school in the whole known world. Please, listen carefully to the rules because no one will tell you them a second time for free".

"First of all, everything in your life from now on will be bought with school credits. You can't even enter the school building or any of the classes without paying some credit coins".

"The houses around the castle are not the property of the school, so if you will find an empty one, just use it", as he said that a little smile appeared on his face.

"When you have some credits, you could pay to enter the school for a short period of time, and even buy there some books or guidance. In other words, no teacher in the entire school will even talk to you without paying him first".

"There are two ways to get credits, first, is to buy it from other people, and the second is to gain it when you are doing assignments for the school".

"You can get a new quest in the center of the plaza, it's better to do a quest in a little group and not alone. This way you will need to divide your credit, but you will be much safer."

"Also, you are forbidden from fighting without an official challenge and a stake. If you challenge someone, as long as he has more than 1k credits, he must accept your challenge in seven days, but you must accept any credit stake that he offers as long as he has it. If you don't have the amount your opponent asked for, you can choose either of the two, just give him all of your credits or fight him, and in a case of a loss, become his quest slave until you will give him back all the credit you owe him".

"Lastly, any kind of thieving is absolutely forbidden!"

After he said all of that, he just turned around and vanished into the air.

For a long moment, everyone just stood there and digested the information. Mormo thought about it a little bit. He went around and made some queries about the value of the credits in this school, it was more accurate to say that he listened to the random people that did some activities in the plaza.

He found out that the credits you are getting are an abstract concept, they are just numbers that are written on a sharing stone. Sharing stones is an amazing tool and it is unique to this school.

There is a main big stone, you can write whatever you want on the big stone, and all the other proxies just reflect the original stone. To write something on the main stone you must have the permission of the stone owner, probably the principal of this school if they even have one.

Each quest gives between 2k credit to 200k, when just entering the school for 24 hours costs 15k.

"What the fuck are they even thinking about!!! Why does the 1k rule even exist?? Are they mocking us?" Mormo felt helpless.

There are 10 million "students" in this school, but only 40k permitted houses around the castle.

"Find an empty house, my ass" thought Mormo.

"How is it even possible to enter the castle? As long as I will just get near, after I obtain some credits, people will come to steal them from me. Oh, wait for a second! I have 7 days to accept the challenge, and I, as the challenge receiver side, could just stake a small number of credits".

"Wait, the giant never said anything about the fighting process, when the sides need to stop fighting or how bad the injuries could be. It's better not to underestimate their twisted mind" Mormo thought.

Mormo felt so unlucky, he wanted to cry. He happily would choose to just train alone far from this cursed castle. But unfortunately, he didn't have much time to live and he knew it.

He must try and find something that will prolong his life!

He helplessly went to the quest hall to try and find some quest that will help him gain some credits. Needless to say, he never even considered the option of finding a group that will help him.

Mormo looked over the quests and saw that there are a lot of quests that ask for various strange weeds. They will give you one seed and demand in return a magical weed that will grow from the seed.

The process is kind of easy, each additional seed that you will request because of a failure will reduce the credit you will earn in the end.

You just need to plant the seed and insert some essence into him while it grows.

It's an unpopular method because it consumed too much time, and you earn too little. In addition, you need to put all your time into the growing process, and all the essence you collect will go to the plant. Who is the idiot which will waste training time on growing plants? Well … Mormo is probably one.

He went to the building and signed up for the plant-growing quests. He took 6 different quests and signed the contracts. He got 6 different seeds with a little note that explains some details about each of them.

After he marked his name on the paper, the clerk on the desk said with a mocking smile, "…oh yes, I forgot to tell you, before you finish all the quests you just took, you will not be able to ask for another quest".

Mormo didn't even look at him and exited the building.

He went far from the castle, he run until he couldn't see anyone anymore. He kept traveling until he found a little oasis. He sat near the water and opened the notes.

This seed doesn't require any water, all they need is essence. Each seed needs a different cycling method inside of them, some of the methods were super complex even for Mormo.

What made him confused is that it seems like the growing process mainly depended on him, time was irrelevant to the seed's growing process, only the number of cycling counts.

Mormo knew his limit very well, so he waited in this place for 5 days to see if any dangerous monsters are traveling in this area, or if it was a meeting place for students. After he was determined that he found a good place, he inserted one of the seeds into the floor and started to cycle the essence around him inside the seed.