Elective Selection

The hustle and bustle of the crowded courtyard was honestly a little overwhelming for Jacob.

Growing up in rural Australia there was never a gathering of people with this level of chaos. Add in his natural inclination to avoid people and an already stressful situation was made downright uncomfortable.

Even after he left his hometown he had never gone anywhere with such a dense population.

A hand quickly found its way to his shoulder as Erwin leaned in and said, "first on the list is dream realm history."

Jacob nodded before being guided over to one of the slightly less popular tents.

That was how it began, before long Jacob had been introduced to all three of Erwin's suggestions.

The first elective choice that Erwin had made was one that studied the history of the dream realms. While the catch-up course they were on would inform them of the dreamer history of Earth each individual realm had their own history as well.

One of the most important tasks a dreamer could undertake was better understanding the dream realm that they had access to.

After all each dream realm was devoid of intelligent life and yet all of them showed signs of civilisation, items and structures that had survived and become ruins were present in every realm.

One of the primary goals of dream realm historians was to understand what had happened to the realms and most importantly how they were connected.

It was a good choice from a career perspective.

As a dreamer with access to a non-standard realm the information and knowledge that he could potentially provide had a chance of being crucial to the historians.

The position itself would come with good pay, as most dreamer professions did. But more importantly, it was a respected career that allowed more freedom than others. Especially compared to working for a clan directly.

Not that such a thing would be easy since clans rarely recruited those with differing mana affinities.

There were also risks with such a promising career, mainly in that historians would have to venture into their realms to uncover more of the past.

They could also choose to invest in teams and the like but that carried its own set of risks.

Regardless of the profession's many upsides, they were weighed evenly with the threat of death that went hand in hand with exploring dream realms.

The second elective on the list was the spirit research class.

This one was decidedly less interesting for Jacob but from what he could tell Erwin was leaning towards it.

Apparently, he had long considered it a potential source of inspiration regarding his off-brand form of summoning and Professor Howinster's words had nudged him further towards the option.

Unfortunately for Jacob, his ability had little to nothing to do with spirits hence his hesitation to spend half a year learning about them.

The final elective was what Erwin referred to as a safe choice, customs and cultures.

It was one of the least popular electives there.

This elective was supposed to be about learning and appreciating the customs and cultures of different clans and their traditions.

In actuality, it was a political elective created to help build connections and learn how to successfully manage other people.

Perfect if you wanted to join The Order which worked with all five clans or if you wanted to become a foreign correspondent for the clans themselves.

The reason Erwin called it a safe choice was because those who passed the course were always given the opportunity for a job within The Order.

More importantly, it was usually a desk job that never required the workers to go to the dream realm, making it 'safe' compared to professions like historians.

Despite all this Jacob found himself looking at another elective, 'Challenger Training'.

From what he could tell it was a very popular course, primarily because of the keyword 'Challenger'.

This was something he had learned about towards the end of his first general knowledge class, tourneys.

Tourneys, or tournaments as they were usually called now, were kind of the Olympics of the dreamer world.

If the Olympics were held multiple times a year and were used to solve political disputes.

The simple way of putting it was this.

A long time ago the clans fought whenever they had an issue, and a lot of people died. So The Order was created. But they still needed a way to decide things within their political world, but without all the death.

That's when the idea of tournaments came about, each clan would enter some participants who would compete in a series of challenges. These could include duels, feats of strength, races, and the like.

The challenges they faced would vary rather than just be straight brawls. This was becasue an argument was made that pure combat strength shouldn't be the only factor considered about an individual.

After all, an assassin-type dreamer from the Jin clan would be at a distinct disadvantage compared to a Vass clan AOE fire ability dreamer.

The winners would be given the glory and bragging rights and the clan who produced the winning challenger would be given concessions politically.

Over time more and more tournaments were held, some were small and only held with a few people from two clans and some were massive held between all 5 clans. 

Those tourneys became massive spectacles seating thousands with many more watching live.

Eventually, tournaments became something of a celebrity sport within the dreamer community with high-ranking challengers usually being quite famous.

The challengers themselves ranked from copper which was considered the rookie league where no real decisions would be made, through bronze, silver, gold, platinum, and diamond. The league above was exclusive to those who proved themselves truly outstanding and were called legends.

Funnily enough, they were banned from all tournaments except the legendary tournament that happened every decade.

Primarily because it wasn't very fun watching one person absolutely dominate everyone else to the point where it could hardly be considered a sport. 

But what attracted Jacob wasn't the fame, the fortune or even the skills he could gain from the challenger's training elective.

Although they certainly didn't hurt.

It was the data.

If he were to join this elective, he would be able to analyse combat styles and unlock the combat system within his ability.

He had no idea exactly what kind of surprise awaited him inside the locked portion of his ability, but it was the only way he had managed to improve it so far other than just learning things.

Not to mention that from what he could tell challengers, by definition, needed to be ready to face a variety of challenges.

He had managed to pass his nightmare trial, but he hadn't fooled himself into thinking it was skill, he had gotten lucky and made the right call on a few occasions.

That was the only reason he had survived the haunted mansion.

Considering he truly had no idea what to expect from his dream realm he figured that adaptability could very well save his life.

With that in mind, Jacob wrote down his application for Challenger Training.