A Life of Studying

Ciel had gotten a job. She was to report in ten days due to travel restrictions, so in the meantime, Ciel would study with the books Leonard had loaned her.

"Can't I just teleport there?" she'd asked Leonard a few days ago, to which he responded by rolling his eyes.

"If you can afford the teleportation fees, sure, but they aren't cheap. They're only free here because the Galactic Magic Association runs the place."

Ciel had considered asking her new boss to pay for it, but after being shown the price herself, Ciel's heart skipped a beat. Too many zeros. So, instead of teleportation, she'd be taking a spaceship.

The waiting room for the spacecraft was in another area in the Community Center, which she'd stayed at for three days prior since she couldn't exactly go back to Earth.

She sat on a cushioned chair, in a gated area, seperated by destination. It was much like aircrafts in her previous life. As she sat, she began to reminisce the last three days.

----

"He's requested that you solve some problems," Leonard had said as he passed her the phone. Before answering she'd turned it over a few times in her hands. High-tech was how she'd describe it. The phone was something she'd never seen before. Magic radiated from it, connecting calls and applications, so the phone itself was as thin as glass. Without missing a beat, she held it up to her ear.

"Hello," she said, "this is Ciel."

The man on the other side fell into a fit of coughing. After a moment, he began to speak. Ciel didn't rush him.

"Ciel, hello. My name is Elias, I'm a mechanic working at Balen. I'd like to ask you a few questions."

She'd quickly run through them with him.

After listening for a while, she began to pick up that the questions he was asking weren't those that were usually asked when speaking on mechanical engineering. Many of the questions revolved around solving problems that she knew could only be solved with incredible difficulty. Some of which, the answers hadn't been found even now, one thousand years after being asked.

Questions like these couldn't have been solved by just anyone. After all, even though someone could learn calculus with relative ease, discovering it was a whole other ballpark.

Thankfully, Ciel's last few years of research weren't for show. She was more than delighted to answer questions of this caliber and could still do so with relative ease. There was a reason geniuses didn't live long, but Ciel was one who'd lived for millennia.

By the end of the interview, the man was ecstatic.

"A perfect fit, I always knew it. No wonder you were recommended by Leonard."

After that, Ciel managed to negotiate terms. They would provide food and housing, and also pay for her subscription to the Virtual World. The mechanic didn't own a virtual pod, but there was an opening to a Community Center not too far from his home.

Ciel glanced at the small dot on her wrist. Whenever she touched it, it would glow ever so slightly. It held all of Ciel's citizenship information, only accessible to high enough ranking officials or Community Center Void Managers like Leonard. It was also the reason she'd been able to understand languages that she didn't know.

Lastly, it was her death sentence.

The ground reflected Ciel's appearance. Her long silver hair had been cut and the mask she wore obscured her face. She knew it was safer to travel as a boy than a girl if you were alone, and since her power had diminished to just about nothing, she'd cut it as a precaution. Thankfully her voice along with her face was androgynous enough.

Still, she wore a mask and cloak just in case a human trafficker caught sight of her and decided that they were looking for a pretty little boy this time.

For the rest of the three days she spent at the Center, the majority of her time was spent taking whatever test Leonard had placed in front of her. She'd spent her nights in Sleeping Pods, paid for by Elias, as she waited for the day her ship would arrive. Today was that day.

"You can pass with full marks in basic mathematics," Leonard had told her, "however you're not great in history or magic engineering. You'll also have to learn how to use a Technoid. Elias should be able to help on the magic engineering side, but for history, you'll just have to cram."

And that was how she'd surrendered to her fate of studying.

She didn't worry that much about it though, it was just that she had nothing better to do.

There was always a Plan B. Escaping the government was especially her forte because back when she'd lived for such a long time she hadn't had proper identification either. After all, no one would believe she was born more than a million years ago and so didn't have a birth certificate. In spite of that, given the chance to be easily accepted into the world she was now placed in held a sort of warmth to it. And if she was given the help anyways, why not take it?

Thinking back on it, the world had been really into cultivation back then, and using magic on people directly was seen as something dating back generations. Even imperial families would fight over who had more magic potential. Who knew that the culture developed afterward would throw away so much history.

Reading through her books, Ciel slightly pitied all the martial artists who'd been taken out of textbooks and replaced with inventions of machinery. At the same time, she was thankful, she'd begun to forget all the Young Masters and Young Misses who'd made this and that martial technique. The only thing she'd really kept up to date with was mechanics.

Over the years magic had gone from body tempering to working on magical circuits. This allowed people to travel from planet to planet with ease, but at the same time made people grow farther and farther apart. Territories were settled and wars were waged over more and more resources. But there was one thing there never was enough of:

Water.

Finding planets with water on them was equivalent to finding life, and for every hundred planets found, few were able to be settled on. New species had fallen into the mix too, mixing intelligent life. But humans reigned on top. The End, as it was called, had pushed humans to make discoveries years before any other intelligent life had, and so they dominated the known universe.

New, intelligent life forms were divided amongst the already created social structure. Men before women, pure humans before halflings, halflings before beastmen(no human blood running through them).

Leonard was a halfling, but because of his strength, he was respected among his comrades. Still, if he'd been born a full beastman, it couldn't be said that his fate would've turned out the same.

Gradually, the wars quieted and people fell to peace.

But was it really peace? Ciel wondered. Or the calm before the storm?

"Community Center to Balen, boarding. Doors will be closing in fifteen minutes."

Hearing her gate, Ciel put the thought away in her mind. Leonard had loaned her a small backpack along with the books and practice tests, so she shoved everything on her back.

Following the crowd, she boarded her flight.

Since she hadn't been able to buy a phone, she held out a paper ticket to the flight attendants. They scanned it and she passed by.

Much how Voids worked, missions handed out to normal individuals were only paid for after they were completed. On account of Elias's desperation, he'd allowed accommodations for her and would take money out of her final reward to pay for the Virtual World. It was a hefty sum in the end, so calculating costs, Ciel would be able to pay for a week's worth of food afterward even with the deductions.

When Ciel entered the spaceship, she realized it resembled that of a large train. Rows of seats lined the walls for people to sit and handles hung from the ceiling for people to stand; a large space remained in the middle for people to walk through or sleep in. Ciel had been early to grab a spot, but she wasn't the first. She managed to grab a seat in the middle, storing her bag underneath her chair and taking out her books.

She was already on her second practice test.

On one side of her sat a large man with a small child, her other remained empty until a woman sat down not soon after. Ciel was curious about the woman. She had hair like satin and she came alone, but the pressure around her pushed people away.

The man with the child quickly noticed this, but at the same time didn't know where the pressure was coming from, so he moved. His seat remained empty.

Ciel kept quiet and took her test.