Exploration

Jacob quietly unpacked his things in his new room, doing his best to ignore his roommate.

Of course, unpacking might be a little generous considering he had precisely one suitcase full of stuff. Not to mention it was most;y filled with clothing, books, and a few electronics.

Since he had so little, he finished unpacking quickly and once again took stock of the room.

At first glance it seemed like a typical dorm room, but there were hints of a higher standard of living. The most obvious was the private bathroom attached to the room. It was nothing fancy, just a sink, toilet, and shower. But considering most communal living arrangements like this had shared bathrooms, it was a significant upgrade.

The room's layout was simple, 2 beds took up opposing corners of the room, and at the foot of each bed was a small desk/cabinet combination that acted as both storage and study space.

The room also gave off a slightly alien feeling, like a hotel room.

Then there was his new best buddy, Shin. He was currently in the same position he had been in when they met, sitting at the desk at the foot of his bed, his eyes hadn't once left the book he was reading, even when he had 'greeted' Jacob. 

Jacob didn't really want to make friends with his new roommate considering their first interaction, but he literally knew nothing about what he should be doing.

"You wouldn't happen to know where new dreamers are supposed to go, would you?" Jacob asked tepidly, awaiting another projectile attack.

Sure, enough another projectile was sent his way. Luckily this one was lobbed rather than pegged and was much smaller.

It was a pamphlet titled 'Dreamer Orientation Guide'.

"Read it." Said the taciturn little turd.

"Cheers…" Jacob responded vaguely to the curt answer while looking at his new source of intel.

Jacob studied the pamphlet and heard a muffled "you're welcome" from the other side of the room.

The pamphlet held some vital information for him, first was a more useful map of the campus than the one he had used to find his dorm.

From it, he learned the general layout and was pleasantly surprised when he discovered that analysis could quickly bring up a copy of the map in his field of vision. In addition, he could also check his position at any time, which of course gave him an idea.

Soon enough he had a working mini-map that floated just outside of his vision unless he called for it mentally.

Unfortunately, constantly updating the map with his position seemed to strain him similarly to when he used his 'processing' ability so he instead set it to only update when he actively went to check it.

With that sorted he started to make plans. The pamphlet informed him where classes started the next day, letting him know that he was very close to being a late entry into the course.

All that was left was to explore the campus and find some way to kill time until then.

He could just stay inside his dorm but...

He was in a supernatural university halfway across the world, there was no way he was going to just stay in his room.

That wasn't even mentioning the depressing company he'd be forced to keep if he did.

He decided to check out a few things, first was the courtyard he had seen when he arrived.

He wanted to see if there were still people showing off their abilities. It wasn't every day he could see a magic show with real magic.

'Well I guess I will be seeing one every day now huh?'

The second place he wanted to visit was the library, then the training area.

From the map, Jacob could see that the courtyard and by extension the entrance to campus was located roughly near the centre of the grounds.

Looking at the time, he saw that it was about 2 in the afternoon. It was plenty of time to explore and be back in time to sleep for the 8am start of his morning class.

So, he left his room, throwing a short goodbye over his shoulder as he did.

He arrived at the courtyard quickly, mostly owing to him using his mini-map constantly. 

Partially to test out its real-world application, but more because he was enjoying messing around with his ability.

When he did arrive, he saw that the many people who were spread out earlier had grouped together. All of them were crowded at the centre of a large open grass and stone space in the courtyard.

What got his attention wasn't the people in the crowd cheering at something or other, but the girl leaving it.

She was a petite girl who wore somewhat plain but practical clothing and with short dark hair. Those were the only things he could make out from a distance. But what drew his attention was the glowing blue text floating in front of her as she walked, a blue text that she seemed to be manipulating with a similarly coloured finger.

Before he could call out to her and try to determine more about her ability, she was gone.

Shaking his head, he consoled himself by rationalising that if there was one person with the same ability as him, then there were probably others who shared his ability that he could learn from.

Walking over to the crowd, he tried to understand better what was causing such a stir.

Eventually, he got to the middle of the area only to find a guy his age manipulating a mound of earth in front of him into various shapes, then teleporting to stand on them.

The whole time he did so, he threw punches and moved the earthen sculpture to add more variety to his attacks. He had it become spikes or bludgeons to hit the same empty air as his fists.

"Isn't he a rank 0? How does he have two abilities? Not to mention they're from totally different realms." Jacob heard from the crowd.

"Roozlen clam members tend to get more than one mana affinity, lucky bastards" another crowd member answered.

Of course, the reason the young man was showing off was pretty easy to see. It was basically a reason as old as humanity itself.

At the forefront of the crowd were some admittedly attractive ladies. Jacob had very little sense of what most guys his age considered attractive, but even he had to admit that they were good-looking.

Now that he thought about it, pretty much every dreamer he had met was decent-looking in one way or another.

At the very least pretty much all the men were better looking than him and the women certainly weren't ugly. Not to mention he had yet to see anyone who was overweight. 

Although if everyone here had to go through something like his haunted mansion then it was no wonder they all stayed fit.

Despite the lack of unattractive people, there were definitely people who were a cut above the rest in terms of appearance. The man taking centre stage was a perfect example of that.

His performance was impressive. Jacob knew next to nothing about fighting, but he could imagine being in the place of the air that was currently taking a beating. He had no idea if he could respond to the attacks, let alone fight back properly.

Then he tripped.

He had no idea if it was because of the constant jostling group of people or just his clumsiness, but he tripped.

Not only did he trip but he did so directly into the guy performing martial arts.

Pushing him straight into the path of a 'jab' done by his earthen backup.

The man attempted to slow the earthen blow and succeeded somehow, but not entirely as it still hit him squarely.

To make things worse, he wasn't hit in the chest or the stomach or even the head, he took the blow directly to the pelvis.

More accurately, a little lower than the pelvis.

Jacob had just pushed the man into a direct sack wack of his own creation.