Gossip

After they ate their lunch, they continued to walk around the academy.

The next stop was the market.

„This is the shopping area. There's you can buy and sell things." Zotmund explained. „As I mentioned before, you can collect points on your card. Those points can be used here, it's functioning as money. The points that you get for selling things didn't count in the task points, so you can't get a higher level card with it."

The boys become disappointed.

They went to a little building.

„Here you can rent a stall to sell things. The cost not much, just 10 points for a week."

Belinda looked around. She saw a person selling pills. The cheapest one was 200 points, but its effect was only not letting you feel hunger for 3 days.

„There's anything that necessary for our life here?" she asked.

„Not really. The things sold here can help you, but not necessary if you just intend to study here. They sell pills, weapons, herbs, or other luxury things for your daily life. The academy will give you a cheap weapon that suits you, so it's better to collect points to buy a better one. And healing pills will be needed when you go out for tasks or visit closed worlds. We have a hospital and they can treat you there, but those worlds are closed for 2-3 months after going in, so if you get injured badly, you can die there."

Watching those thousands of points what a better pill cost, the kids swallowed.

„Just how many points can you get for doing a task?" Gregori asked.

„It depends on the task. There are easy ones, like helping in the garden. That's daily 100 points. The hardest ones are hunting monsters. Those can pay sometimes more than 10k points."

„That much?!" Dárius was shocked.

„Yes, but those monsters have high levels. Once there was even a task to kill a dragon."

„Dragon?! There are dragons?" Belinda was surprised.

„Yes. Some books mention it. There's a continent far from ours where dragons live. So I don't think one of them come here. Maybe it was a prank." Zotmund laughed.

„What's a closed world?" Gregori asked.

„Those are similar to this academy. If you look far away, you can see high mountains. You can't climb them, that's the edge of this place. Those worlds have monsters and other dangerous things, but you can find there some pills, weapons, herbs, or even inheritances. There is a world that's open in every 5 years, there you need to fulfill trials and you can get a lot of useful skills that suit you."

The kids where happy hearing this. They couldn't wait to try their luck.

„It will open after 3 years, so you need to work hard to get a good weapon and pills to help you."

The boys nodded.

Naómi lost her interest after seeing a stall selling perfumes. She became crazy to buy some.

Zotmund wanted to get closer to her, so he offered to buy some for her, but got rejected.

They walked around the market and saw a lot of interesting but expensive things. After some time they lost interest and left.

Dárius listened to older students speaking about things related to the awakening, and he couldn't stand his curiosity.

„Zotmund! What do they mean by seeing their inherited memories?"

„What don't you understand? You can inherit memories during the Awakening ceremony…"

„No, no, no! I mean, I heard some people speaking about mentors getting memories…"

„Oh, you mean that!" Zotmund smiled. „That's old gossip in the academy. They said that, when the memories the most complete, then during the Soul calming ceremony the luckiest mentors can see the student's memories."

- They can see those memories? But I didn't remember to see Bertold there…

Belinda was confused.

„You can see our life?! But I'm sure there's not much interesting thing in my 10 years…" Naómi wondered.

„Don't misunderstand! It's not the memories of this life, but from a past life!"

- Past life, you mean…

Belinda's chin fell from the shock. If her life was seen by Bertold the same way how she saw Médea's, then… She recalled an old, ugly memory.

When Belinda was 19 years old, she got to know a 'gentleman' on the net. He said a lot of nice things every time they spoke until Belinda gave in and they became a couple. The man lived on another planet far away, so they never met.

In the Interstellar Alliance, every person got a new robot when they became 20 years old. This robot would be created following the owner's requests. Because of the big distance between planets, a new function became really popular. Wearing a special headband, you could connect to other robots, and they would follow your movement, so spending a night together became possible.

After being begged a lot, Belinda asked for this function. On the day she got the package, they connected to each other's robots and spend a night together.

After the night, the man didn't called her again. She tried to reach him and after a week, her call was finally answered, but the man was in bed with another woman. He told her, he didn't have time to play with her and she was disappointing in bed. He needed to take down better preys.

Belinda completely broke down and went out to buy a lot of alcohol. It was the first and last time in her life when she became drunk. In her rage, she activated the robot's night function and spend a good time with it.

The next day, when she woke up, she laughed and cried. She ridiculed the man. She laughed and send a message to him. „If I'm bad in bed, then you are worse. Even the robot's basic function was better than you!"

After that, she deleted every information about the man and never used the robot again.

Remembering all these things, Belinda's face became pale. Her knee gave in and she sat on the ground.

She turned to Bertold, but he watched something far away showing his back to her.

- Don't tell me, he saw all those things?! I… I… Just let me die!!!

Her soul left her body and her eyes became lifeless.