Hogwart for the Poor [P]

2:00 AM

Astor wasn’t exactly clear on what he was doing in a place like this… sleeping on a crummy wooden bunk bed, situated in the corner of a cold-ass room with high-rise walls made out of massive stones that give it more a prison vibe than a magic academy. The room he was in was tiny, and yet it still housed two narrow bunk beds, one on each side of the room. Given the setup, he was of course sharing the room with three other people, one above him, while the other two are on the other side of the room. Someone across from him was snoring, loudly, making it real difficult to sleep. Although he tried closing his eyes and shutting off his senses to get some rest, the sound disturbed him greatly, stirring him awake every time he tried to drift off.

“FUCK!” Astor screamed in his head as he let his foot loose against the foot of the bed; never in his life did he expect to find himself in poor man’s Hogwart, attempting to learn magic. Despite everything, he fell asleep for some hours, only to be woken up by a water blast to the face and the sound of a man screaming at the top of his lungs, kicking the bed until he and the other three wakes up and quickly line up in front of their bed.

"Alright, little misses. Today, we are going to do some magical drills that will imprint the process of spellcraft into your tiny little brain. You are all here to learn some magic, so let’s learn some magic. This is not a conservatory where you explore the intricacy of the schools of magic. This is a place where we get you from clueless wizard to battle wizard, otherwise your tuition would be wasted."

"Now get dressed and go to the courtyard and start practicing the drills you were given. Jack, that’s Summoning Magic for you, do not summon any demon lord or pocket raptors, I swear... Astor, Hydromancy for you, ice sculpture, plain and simple, make me something nice for my wife. Mormont, Malefimancy, make sure to keep those hexes off your bunk mate. And Macky, Pyromancy, do not burn the grass like yesterday, or I will have your hide. Now go, go, go!" A thin mage with a massive blond beard spoke as he adjusted his wizard hat and tapping the bed with his long, ornate staff.

After the rude awakening, Astor, looked at Jack with furrowed brows and bloodshot eyes, visibly irritated. “I can’t sleep a fucking wink last night, this is totally bullshit… they said we’d learn magic fast but we’re just paying them to practice and do physical labor for them during the day. The fuck kind of janky magic academic is this?” he griped.

Astor’s complaint wasn’t unfounded, considering they have been here for a week now and while there were special morning, boot-camp routines where they actually get to learn something, they were tasked with washing clothes, washing the dishes, cleaning the loo, and cooking the entire day for the rest of the academy. Even if Astor felt he was making some progress with learning Hydromancy, the entire thing was far too shady.

Regardless, he put on his pants like a big boy and grabbed the tiny wand inside the chest at the foot of his bed and headed down to the courtyard while it was still dusk in the horizon.

Their schedule for the day was tight, they needed to do drills until the sun comes up and then comes the chores while having to read books on magic theory related to what they are learning at the same time. For Astor, who had only ever used Pyromancy, it was incredibly difficult to master the delicacy of its antithesis, water and ice.

@Jack Anders

 

It was a living hell, a veritable living hell. It was also one that Jack had keenly managed to avoid. Throughout the night his avatar had remained entirely motionless, almost as if dead. In the meanwhile, the man had actually logged out of Terrasphere to properly catch a few winks while setting an alarm as a reminder to get up. After all, it’d be incredibly awkward for the NPCs of the game to continue splashing water on him in order to rouse a body lacking a consciousness.

Having awoken from his power nap and logged back in fully refreshed and ready for yet another day of grueling study, the man let out a cheery nod while laughing heartily at his counterpart. It was unfortunate to say the last as he spotted Astor’s fatigued visage. Had he realized that his friend was having difficulty sleeping, perhaps he could’ve prescribed something useful? In all honesty, he could’ve simply reminded the man that a log out function existed… but that too had escaped his mind.

“I dunno man… Seems pretty legit to me. High tuition, little instruction, books readily available for self-study and profs happily slacking – doesn’t sound much different from med school to be honest.” He’d shrug with a bit of confusion at his companion’s rage while secretly enjoying a bit of Son’s misery. After all, this was about par for the course. As far as Bao was concerned, all he had done was journey back in time a few years for an additional bit of suffering.

His chatter would quickly subside however as a shrill voice began barking orders. More than happy to oblige with the endless repetition of recasting the spell to call upon a familiar, he’d simply repeat the process again and again. It was a rather dry task where one would materialize, then dismiss, then rematerialize. As for the purpose of such monotonous actions? According to their instructor, the more familiar one was with summoning… well a familiar, the more stable the creation became, resulting in overall lower energy maintenance needed to retain the arcane entity. The principle made sense on a fairly basic level, and thus the man had no qualms with continuing this seemingly self-voluntary form of madness. At least he had been given an explanation for how the magic worked. To this date, Bao still wondered on how certain anti-psychotics altered the human mind.

@Astor Balthas

 

Whatever attempt the blonde made with the supposed delicate magic was not working, conjuring water was the easy part… but manipulating water? As if he has the skill to do something like that. With frustrated grunts gracing his lips, he would swish his wand again and again, failing to control the water accurately and simply hurling it at the two known as Macky and Mormont, who immediately voiced his frustration. However, their complaint stopped immediately as soon as they met Astor’s demonic face and the massive fire ball swirling inside his palm. Unlike those rich failures, Astor was already strong in Pyromancy and THAT was the exact problem he had, he was so good at fire that he can’t simply rewrite his brain to use water or its hardened form in any manner that was suitable for that element.

He reached his absolute limit when the drill instructor came out rubbing his blond beard, and fiddling with his hat, shouting nasty words at the four as drill sergeants often do. “Still not done yet? When are you going to stop being piss stain on your dad’s trouser? Get good already, there are so many books to obtain knowledge from at this place that you can’t possibly not learn what you paid for, haha!”


The tiny taunting laugh was what did it for Astor. Snapping the wand in half, the furious fire mage opened his palm menu and navigated to his inventory whereupon he retrieved his grimoire before hunting down the elder wizard with murderous eyes. Shouting an incantation that belonged in the Hydromancy school, a thin layer of ice slowly glazed over his arm as he pointed it at the mage.

“Agyo gos faelatine ven du arthe lamin!”

Moments later, a blast of ice came forth from his palm, growing into a monstrously-sized cluster of sharp ice fragments.

“Is that good enough for you, huh?” Astor shouted, completely losing himself in the rage that was coursing through his veins from the lack of sleep the night before.

The wizard easily surrounded himself in a magical barrier that deflected the attack, walking out of the ice field unharmed. Approaching Astor, he brought his staff down on the detective’s head. “Oy, what are you doing, if you have time to cast something like that then do it properly next time, why are you getting so worked up for?”

The hit completely deescalated the situation. Well, at least Astor was one step closer to his goal. Only one more day, he thought. Only one more day…

“I’ve never been to med school but that sounds like a shitty ass way to learn anything… let’s go wash some stinking clothes, man. Only one more day before we get out of his hell hole…” Astor muttered as he headed into the keep with his sleeve rolled up.

 

A fit of laughter was had as Jack relished in the amusement provided by his companion. Hands placed across his gut, he’d quickly wave a hand towards the detective’s direction while directing his most recently conjured familiar to assist the hardly scratched health bar appearing within the party interface. “Hold still, this might do more harm than it will good!”

It was then that visible changes began to occur within the small creature perched atop his shoulder. The small salamander let out an uncontrolled and brilliantly blinding flash of light as its form modified into something a bit more intimidating. Considering the creature’s size however, it wasn’t too daunting. By this point however, the salamander began radiating a faint light as its minute physical changes occurred, making it resemble a dragon.

The dark haired man then beckoned for his now active companion to assist Astor. As the creature inhaled heavily, its chest puffed comically while inflating in a balloon like fashion. With a might exhale, a large wave of glittering, white smoke drifted towards the blond man in an attempt to heal him. Eyes squinting hard, Jack let out a nod of approval as the 0.0001% damage previously taken from the smack to Astor’s head was quickly restored. It was hard to tell whether it was thanks to his familiar or thanks to Astor’s own natural regeneration however…

Letting out a shrug, the man nodded with content at the result. At least it was a step forward. He hadn’t expected that to work on the first try to be honest. If it wasn’t for the fact that the support’s repertoire only consisted of healing magic, he would’ve perhaps even expected it to hurt his friend a little. Thankfully it hadn’t.

His attention quickly waning due to this new found progress, he’d nod once while moving towards their next set of tasks that he had paid to partake in – laundry...

“You know man, for all the griping and bitching we do… we’re actually learning something. I mean, look at what you did to that instructor, right? And that’s with zero levels in hydromancy! Just imagine what it’ll be like once we power level a little. I could do without the laundry though. I swear to god one of those older fucks shits a little every time he farts. There’s always these disgusting stains…”

He’d let out a muffled laugh that sounded like a mix between disgust and mockery while sifting through his assigned basket of clothes. It was then that a thought came to mind. “You wanna turn this into training too? Why don’t you try washing everything with water magic… and I’ll practice controlling this lizard thing. Maybe it can fold laundry for us?” Truth be told, Jack simply didn’t want to touch the soiled linens of dirty old men anymore. He was incredibly fed up with it.

@Astor Balthas

 

“Man, do you want to try that? That sounds like it has a lot of potential,” Astor said. Though he would first have to figure out the optimal movement to get the clothes clean with the water. Too much force and the shit will go everywhere, too little force and the stain will never get out. With that in mind, an idea popped into Astor’s head.

“Give me a second.”

And so, he went off to find two large wooden buckets before he pressed them together to form an enclosed space, wherein he put the dirt clothes in with a bar of soap. Afterward, he used Pyromancy to heat up the center of his plan in order to melt the center of the bucket that sat on top. Then, he would make holes on the bucket that sat on top, to make sure water had somewhere to escape. Afterwards, he closed the hole with his hand and held onto the two buckets as tight as he could.

“Vyn asarin, neh lamureh…” he recited.

With that water began to spew forth from his hand, which made the clothes spin from the force of the waterjet. Any excess was able to escape from the holes he had made on the top bucket. Although it was difficult to control at first, he eventually was able to mimic a washing machine with alternating spin cycle.

“Alright, I think I got it dude, it works like a charm,” he chimed.

After he finished washing the dirty clothes, he hung them up on the clotheslines strung from one end of the wall to the other. Considering the sun, or lack of it, however, Astor figured it’d be a lot easier to heat up the air so it would dry the clothes faster. So with his grimoire, he did just that. Never in Astor’s life has he imagine he would use his magic for something like domestic chores, but there was a first time for everything.

When he came back to grab the other load of clothes, he figured he would practice more by evaporating his waterjet with fire so it became hot steam, which only helped them finish their chore faster.

Finally, it was done. Astor wiped away the sweat from his brows as he turned to his friend. “Alright, your turn, maybe teach your summon how to retrieve clothes and fold them, I think that should do the trick. So while it folds the clothes we can just sit back and enjoy life or somethi-iiing,” he yawned, stretching out the last word.

@Jack Anders

OOC: I'll do an exit post after your post.

 

A small snort filled with great amusement sounded as the man watched his companion’s contraption perform the task intended. To be honest, he had originally just intended for the blonde haired mage to simply blast the clothing with water in order to purge it of any impurities. Were any of the articles to be damaged... Well, the academy could simply take that as a final middle finger from the two men prior to their departure. This separate approach was refined however and left Jack rather impressed.

“Damn man. You sure you don’t wanna quit being a detective and open a laundromat instead? You’ve got the makings for it. Less bullets flying your direction too unless you’re one of those storefronts that just pretend to be a laundromat…”

While having their discussion, Jack’s familiar had already begun to work. The small figure had floated off his shoulder and begun gently nipping at an article of clothing. Though it seemed to struggle a bit initially, it’d eventually manage to hoist a shirt from the line while wobbling its way over to a nearby flat surface.

Content with how things were progressing (albeit slowly), Jack nodded with approval while grabbing a pair of nearby lawn chairs and seating himself. “I don’t think these things were meant to be used this way…” He’d comment with a bit of laughter while watching the creature throw the garment with a sigh of relief. The depressed magical entity would then lazily roll on top of the shirt in order to flatten and spread it out. Only having after having maximized the top’s surface area did it grab at the sleeve and impose it onto the other. It’d again move towards the bottom lining of the shirt and tug it over to create an article perfectly folded in half.

“Hmm, maybe next time I’ll change the creature’s figure to something uhh… more suitable for the task.” After muttering a short incantation, the lizard slowly morphed into a small humanoid figure resembling a gingerbread man. The familiar now gratefully waving at its conjurer, Jack waved back dismissively with one hand, indicating it to continue the assigned task.

“I’m gonna take a nap. Wake me up when it’s done please.” Addressing the familiar one final time, the mage slowed his eyes and slowly began to drift off…

@Astor Balthas