18 Registration

The next morning, John woke with a groan as his alarm went off at 5. The shower last night had been hell. Somehow the shifting frequencies of light had managed to cook his skin everywhere, despite his uniform covering his entire body! Have you ever had a sunburned Mr. Happy? It's not so happy, let me tell you... Not to mention that every time John took a step he leaped a few feet into the air, or the fact that he had to clean off blood from his perforated eardrums after a particularly horrible wail.

If John hadn't memorized the entire manual, knowing that the route the Qi took to refine the body simultaneously healed it from all the damage as he cultivtaved, John would've thought the manual was a joke designed to torture over ambitious fools who start cultivating for no good reason. Thinking about how he'd have to train with his eyes open starting from the 6th level he shuddered. At least when he finished with this, he would be immune to all illusions caused by sound or light.

Standing up shakily he made his way to the shower where he cleaned up, wincing as what felt like an entire layer of skin fell off and went into the drain. "Guess this is why they have industrial sized drains in these showers." John said as he toweled off. Looking in the mirror, he was surprised to find that after the sun burnt skin had fallen off underneath it was a perfect skin so free of blemish's he thought his mirror had somehow installed photoshop.

Shaking the inane comment away, he put on some sweats and made his way back to his room to meditate. In the future, he might replace this with cultivating but until he met with the registration office today he didn't want to risk it.

0800 came quickly, and John found himself in front of the registration office along with nearly 300 other students, all of whom wore badges proclaiming them as members of one of the 4 main clubs. The doors opened just then, and a matronly woman stepped out yelling, "Get in line! We don't have much time to get through this so I hope you've already figured out what classes you're planning on taking!"

Perhaps due to his habit of getting up far too early for most teenagers to think about moving, John was at the front of the line and the first one through the door. For that honor, he got to choose his adviser. There were 10 of them in this morning, twice the normal number so they could get through this mess as fast as possible. To his surprise, Mr. Carter was among them. Today, he was dressed in a green button down shirt and jeans. His jeans were torn in several places, while his shirt had a red stain on it that he picked at, tasting it as he waited for John to sit down. Unable to believe how disgusting his teacher was, John walked sat down and resolved to never examine Mr. Carter's clothes too carefully.

"You're here fast, do you get up early?" Mr. Carter asked, his sharp eyes betraying an intelligence that just didn't match his appearance.

'I wonder if that's on purpose.' John thought. "Yes I get up at 5 A.M. every day to clean my room and meditate."

"Really?" Mr. Carter looked fascinated. "Why did you start doing that?"

"I decided to become a cultivator much later in life than most, so I had to work thrice as hard to catch up."

Nodding, Mr. Carter wiped his hands off on a towel and opened up a program on his computer. "I see here you tested out of the entirety of high-school level literature, history, math, and science. Combined with how you had overloaded on taming classes you have literally only 1 class, cultivation."

John nodded, "Yeah, I didn't expect this to happen either."

"It's more common than you'd think, every year there are people who know what they want to do and so they overload on those classes only to find themselves testing out of them. Anyway, since you're such an early riser I'm moving your cultivation class to 0530 every day. If you use the cultivation room between 0200 and 0800 they're free for members of the 4 main clubs, so cultivate then and save your academic credits."

"Really? That's awesome!" John said, "What are academic credits anyway?"

"Not enough time, you'll learn later today." Mr. Carter waved his hands as he navigated around his computer. "I'd advise you take Beastology 101, it'll be helpful in a few months. That takes up 1 class Monday from 0800 to 1100. Then, you'll need to take Herbology and Survival Cooking if you want to even think about surviving in anything more difficult than a low-level danger zone. That takes up 0800 to 1100 Tuesday and Thursday. Also, since you're training the Soul Wave technique you'll want to take the Advanced Illusions class from 1900 to 2200 on Saturday. What other classes where you thinking about taking?"

John had thought about what classes he wanted to take last night since he was too sore to do anything but lay in bed with his eyes closed. The ones Mr. Carter had chosen weren't ones he would've but he understood the need to take them. "Marksmanship and Stealth."

"Fighting classes take place every day, Stealth 1200 to 1400 Monday through Friday. Marksmanship in the same building 1400 to 1600. They'll forgive you if you're a couple minutes late so long as you were in class."

John nodded in understanding, "I wanted to take a class on Formations."

"Beginner Formations and Runesmithing, Formations and Enchanting go hand in hand. 0800 to 1100 Wednesday and Friday respectively. What else?"

"I'm not sure, what would you suggest?"

Perusing the classes, he finally said. "On the weekends, I'd suggest that you spend most of your time in the Tamer's Club taking higher level courses than are available to freshman, or in the forest hunting for academic credits. That being said, I suggest you take a class on ancient languages that takes place on Sunday night from 1900 to 2200."

"Why ancient languages?" John asked, surprised.

"Most danger zones and forbidden zones are build on ancient cities. Since the fall, all of humanity and most of the Beasts have been forced into a small continent of what used to be called Australia. Of course, during the fall the integration of mana caused the world to expand massively meaning that Australia is nearly 10 times as large as it used to be, but it's still the smallest continent in the world. High level danger zones and forbidden zones are almost all located overseas where you might find long lost treasures or safe places to rest if you know the languages. Thankfully, learning languages is easy for cultivators, and in a few months you should be able to test out of the class."

"Sounds good." John said, nodding his assent.

Hitting the enter key with an air of finality, Mr. Carter turned to grab a piece of paper that'd just been printed off and looked John in the eye saying, "Work hard, remember what we talked about yesterday. This is the opportunity of a life time."

Still completely mystified by Mr. Carter's so called opportunity of a life time, John decided to stand up and make his way out of the room before his head exploded. Since this was the first week of school, classes weren't where they'd normally be. Monday was devoted to getting everyone a cultivation method and Tuesday to ensuring everyone was registered and finishing up orientation. Looking at his schedule, it said he had until 0200 to be done with registration after which he needed to be in the main auditorium of building 1 to learn about academic credits.

Yawning slightly, John decided to get his cultivation for the day over with since it was still free for the first week. Making his way over, he wasn't the only one there this time but given that there were 10 of the special light and sound rooms set aside for freshman use and only 15% of the freshman class could access building 3, he got right in.

"At least I don't have to worry about the stink this time." John said as he sat down. This time, when the light and sound started he didn't jump out of his skin. Instead, he calmly grabbed a hold of his Qi and began to circulate it slowly. It still took him nearly half an hour to make a full cycle, his body covered in sweat and sunburn by that time, but after completing the the first cycle the second cycle went much faster, taking only 20 minutes.

After cleaning up, John met Steven and Mike for lunch before heading to the main auditorium in building one to learn all about academic credits.