I'm not evil, I swear.

She blinked rapidly as she sat among the nobles and particularly skilled commoners who had garnered a scholarship to the royal academy, "System Command: Class Selection."

In hindsight, she felt a bit cheated at having wasted the past few hours if that was the command. Katarina was almost positive she could've guessed it. Still, she had been waiting for less than a day and had indeed spent part of that remember the correct build. It was not exactly a huge loss.

Just then, a door opened and two girls and a boy walked in at the very end of a three hour introductory seminar for the academy.

Every. Single. Face... turned towards them.

They promptly turned bright red, then bowed at the waist as the girl in front explained, "S-Sorry for being late, there was a caravan under attack by Vile-fang Kobolds and we stopped to help them. It took a while to get everyone up and running again, so we were delayed by a lot."

The speaker nodded as memories of the 'auto-attack and movement tutorial' flickered through Katarina's mind, "Human life is worth more than one seminar. You are perfectly fine. In fact, I shall speak with the carriage sent for students about seeing the black box recordings. We might be able to get some extra credit for you, depending on what exactly took place during the kobold attack. Perhaps even a few academy points, if we feel they're deserved."

Looking slightly put out, the shy boy and girl behind the widely grinning girl in front exchanged frowns with each other, "So we'll probably not get much, since we just shielded people a bunch and helped with the healing afterwards. If only I was braver, like Paloma."

Katarina's eyes narrowed, burning the main protagonist's face into her head. She didn't particularly like her, considering she would likely be 'snatching up' Edward as if he hadn't been someone's fiancé for the last twelve years. But she also accepted one major fact. The main protagonist was vital to stopping the revival of the Demon God Qoandrayrrierth or killing his avatar. So it would be best to either stay out of her way, or help her somehow. Unlike Katarina, the protagonist actually did have a cheat ability. Though it was only useful against the demon god and similar 'corrupt souls' that were typically involved with the demon god somehow; though not always.

The cheerful looking girl turned back to her two companions, "Hey! Shielding and healing can save lives! It's important! Without your shields, I honestly don't think I would have been able to hold off the corrupted ogre until the knights traced back the caravan's emergency beacon. And you two did blast three of the kobolds. So it's not like you did nothing at all. In fact, if they do give us extra credit, I might lose a bit for being to risky. I kind of just rushed in without a real plan."

The headmaster interrupted his slightly sheepish looking student, "As... educational as this conversation is, I believe it is time for dinner. We have all either been sitting here listening to me wheeze on about school, or off fighting vile-fang kobolds. So let us head to the cafeteria and meet up with the older students. As for you three, I shall give you each a pamphlet for the new student seminar and schedule an appointment for tomorrow afternoon with one of the teachers to explain things you missed here. I do hope that there shall be no issues with any of you, or anyone else here, in getting to class on time."

He paused for a moment, then asked with a stern but also slightly teasing expression, "Will there?"

Katarina joined the other students as his gaze swept over the first years, "No, Headmaster Isenbert."

He chortled slightly, "Good, good. I appreciate it when my students are more like our lovely headmistress when she was a student, rather than myself. But I suppose I did earn a bit of karma back in the day for all the headaches I caused my own instructors. So, while not appreciated, I can understand a bit of roughhousing. Just try to avoid outright rule breaking. I'm almost a two hundred and five, so there's only so many students almost dying my poor heart can take."

He clapped his hands and smiled widely one last time, "Off to dinner with you all. And remember, I need you all to have your class selection complete by the time of your first dungeon tomorrow after breakfast at nine in the morning. The first bell is at six, as usual. Breakfast officially starts at seven and ends at eight. Though I do usually enjoy a bit of hot tea around six-forty myself."

Isenbert turned away and grinned at the woman next to him, "Shall we? I was thinking fish tonight. Also, I don't know about you, but my throat is sore. We should really think about having the deputy headmistress and headmaster do the speeches next year. My necklace? Oh! Haven't taken it off yet, sorry. Sorry everyone! Nothing to see here, just a doddering old man. I am to doddering. I bet the healer will me a certificate soon. Official Certificate of Doddering Old Fool. Didn't these used to turn off once we stepped off the platform? Or did they improve the..."

Katarina smiled slightly as the headmistress rolled her eye and pulled the necklace off him before handed his necklace to a younger man with a case of similar necklaces. Afterwards, she tugged the headmaster along with an amused look in her eye as he chattered the whole way to the door.

Smiling a bit, the Shadowbloom briefly wondered if she would ever have a relationship like that. Then she pushed in her chair before joining the throng of students slowly moving towards the cafeteria. Just in first year alone, there were a good few hundred students; each some of the best casters of there generation.

And... a few mediocre casters with very rich parents who couldn't take a hint at the sheer price difference between a student with sub-par grades, students with average grades, and students with excellent grades.

"-(It's hard to believe that a decent chunk of the academy funding comes from such a tiny portion of the student population. Although, admittedly, the majority does originate from stupidly large fields for producing various types of wine, mead, beer, whiskey, and such.)-"

But it was mostly the true cream of the crop. Indeed, most had come here primarily to find out where exactly they stood in terms of the other 'best potential Hunters'. Though all except those who bought their way into the academy by their parent's money would probably start as at least tier four D-rankers rather than E rankers and most would start at least as tier one D-rankers or even tier four C-rankers. However, only the best would start up near tier one C-rank, or tier four B-rank.

The corners of her eyes crinkled slightly as she murmured, "What a nice old couple. I hope to be that lively when I... did he say a two hundred and five?"

She momentarily glanced back towards the headmaster as a slight jolt of surprise ran through her, then continued forward as someone bumped against her shoulder from behind.

"-(Is he a full blooded human? He looks like it. Maybe magic passively helps you live longer? Was he over two hundred in the game as well?)-"

After a short wait, the line of new students progressed enough for her to step out into the evening air and onto the academy's red brick paths lined in glowing flowers and the occasional stretch of grass or a bench to sit on. Katarina glanced right towards the main gates and then left to the administrative building. Both the full-campus lecture hall and administrative building had a more contemporary architecture to it; with curves more often than corners and a lot of steel and glass across the outside. Though the insides did have glossy wood flooring likely maintained by the runes inlaid in their edges.

She proceeded diagonally across the courtyard between the four main buildings, glancing at the Victorian-style dormitories before eyeing the central fountain.

Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully, "The puzzles... can anyone?... or only... hum... I have to try it."

She blinked slightly as the person walking next to her glanced over quizzically, then turned faintly pink while doing her best at pretending not to notice their stare.

"-(I should really stop thinking out loud. In both lives I was alone so often I got into the habit of talking to myself while alone. My gamer life more so than as Katarina. But... I need try to get better about not doing it. I mean... what if I'd said something important?)-"

Quickly fixing her gaze on the cafeteria, she half-pretended and half-actually roved her eyes over the hybrid modern, cape cod, and hobbit-style architecture. While there was quite a bit of glass and metal, similar to the contemporary designs of the lecture hall and administrative buildings, there were also pillars of brick with layered tiers from top to bottom. Each tier displaying red, then orange, and then yellow flowers until it got to the roof where it seemed an entire field of sunflowers had been planted; as though the whole building was clothed in a garden of flowers.

They walked over one of several grey stone bridges topped by the same red-brick paths across the central fountain river, which bisected the north and south portions of the academy. It was a decently wide river protected by three sets of grating on each side; leading to five different major rivers all the way out towards the eastern seaside and six from the plains, forests, and mountains west of the academy. Inside the academy grounds themselves, the river connected into two decent sized lakes and a few ponds which acted as safe havens and breeding grounds for small to mid-sized river fish.

She glanced down into the murky waters with a soft whisper, "Fishing Saturdays... mmm... I wonder if they have fish for dinner. Didn't the headmaster mention something about fish?"

Again, Katarina promptly turned pink as the person next to her snorted.

"-(Bad! Inside thoughts should be inside!)-"

At the cafeteria, she got her food without much fanfare and went to sit down. While it was a bit difficult to find a free chair away from other people, there were already plenty of 'friend circles' formed from prior schools. Thus bringing a lot of people relatively close together and opening up pockets of isolation.

Naturally Katarina took advantage of one such spot right away, albeit a bit to close to the waiting line for her own tastes; and brought up her class selection screen even as she took a bite of fish and chips, "Geeze... to think I never would have eaten something like this if I had..."

"-(No. Bad me. My thoughts belong in my head. Although, seriously... if not for fond memories of this food from my gamer life, I definitely wouldn't have tried 'commoner food'. Such a loss for someone with taste buds that appreciate fish. I'm sure it's not for everyone, but seriously... a little malt vinegar on some fish and chips is great.)-"

Trying not to gorge herself to much or to quickly, she started the class selection.

Archmagi started her off as a main class due to having solid specs all around. There was even a 'mana regen aura' that would slowly become stronger as time went on. And, unlike auras in some games, auras affected anyone in the user's registered party regardless of distance; but also all nearby allies within one meter per 'existence level'. More importantly, there were basic and mid-level spells available for each element with the elemental spec alongside basic, mid, expert, and an ultimate spell from the arcane spec.

It was true that people often took archmagi as at least a full-spec and took the support spec, making the aura rather common and useless unless you were the strongest with that aura. However, the aura had a specific effect of boosting the minions of the user and the user's personal mana regeneration much higher than nearby allies or group members. So it was far from useless if you specifically had mana-intensive spells.

For the first of her full spec classes, she grabbed the druid pack spec line to gain a slew of beast-specific buffs, boosts to her minion cap, and for self-buffs including a very important 'Might of the Pack' Ultimate. Though she did not even remotely plan to actually summon any willing animals to fight for her.

Even if she did summon animals, the Shadowbloom was sure she would end up seeing them all as fluffy babies to be protected; no matter how big and scary they were. And also, Katarina simply could not trust they wouldn't try to slack off if her task proved uninteresting to them; since summoned animals tended to match their summoner's personalities somewhat. Finally, beasts were both living creatures and living creatures who were not demonic in nature; making them vulnerable to both Warlock buffs and Necromancer buffs.

"-(Hopefully this works, it was patched out for the Online Sever Status characters. But the regular characters could still use it except in PvP matchmaking.)-"

She took Paladin next, going down the support spec for self-buffs and aura spells. Much like the Archmagi mana regen aura, the user and their pets could get bonus healing per six seconds from their 'holy chanting'.

"-(Please tell me I don't have to actually chant. My singing is awful. Wait... no... isn't Katarina's voice supposed to be pretty good? Do I have a good singing voice? Well either way, I still don't want to have to actually chant.)-"

Of course the armor aura, magic resistance aura, and general boost to both maximum mana and rate of mana recovery were also quite nice.

Then she turned to her partial classes. For each of these Katarina ironically forfeited their prime components: Undead control and creation for necromancer, demon control and summoning for warlock, mind control for overmind, alongside monster control and summoning for conjurer. Instead she picked up the maximum mana, rate of mana recovery, and overall minion cap. From there, she grabbed buffs alongside 'Crush Undead' and 'Banish Demon' from both necromancer and warlock. Alongside 'Minion/Caster Hivemind', which improved her control and shared any buff she got with her pets; and 'Augmented Control', which allowed her to control stronger minions for three less or half points, from the overmind class. Then 'permanent physical-object creation' and 'Deflection Field' from the conjurer class.

To finish up, she took the last few pieces from the crafting classes. Golem Maker to allow her to turn created objects, basic clay at first due to her low level, into golem minions she could store and summon. Enchanter to buff her golems directly and then indirectly through equipment. And Runic Blacksmith to buff her golem cores alongside creating armor for them.

Miner she tacked on mostly because metal was a resource that was much harder to create via permanent physical-object creation than any other. Sure, she could likely infuse powdered metal into clay quite easily once she got a bit higher level, but actual plates of armor would be difficult to create directly via conjuring. However, it was not only useful for drastically reducing the amount of time she required to equip her minions. There was a bonus to strength, stamina, and hard-object weakness finding; the last of which basically translated into a boost in critical hit chance against heavily armored targets from crabs to front line tanks. Not terribly useful once she got a bit more true damage going, but decent enough at any point of progression since a critical hit doubled the damage dealt and negated half the armor and magic resist from most sources.

She paused mid-bite and looked over as Paloma sat down next to her, "Hi! I'm Paloma. We saw you were sitting all by yourself over here and we needed seats, so we came to keep you company. Is that fine, or should we scoot to the other side of the table? I know sometimes I just feel like being alone, so it's ok to tell us you're not feeling good."

Katarina stared at her smiling face for a moment, then glanced across to the other two, "Um... sure. This is fine. My name is Katarina."

She slowly turned back to her food with the strange feeling as if she were sitting in the middle of a burning house without even attempting to escape.

"-(Well, duck. Quack. That's... unexpected. Maybe the choice of either staying out of her way, or helping her somehow is being made for me already. It's possible she wont dislike me unless I actively try to get between her and the protagonist. It's true I never saw her act offensively in response to other people bullying so she's probably not super aggressive but, without someone controlling her, I'm not sure how she'll act or react. She might be kind of a bit... wait...)-"

Katarina blinked rapidly and glanced at Paloma.

"-(She... isn't being controlled by someone, right? This is purely a game-like world, and not actually inside of a game. Isn't it? Then again, I doubt anyone would make her go sit near one of the main villainesses of the Otome portion. Unless, of course, they simply have never played before or maybe trying to find a new route. I mean, there's nothing actually stopping you from sitting near her. And she probably wouldn't be aggressive until you started muscling in on her fiancé. My fiancé? Ugh... what a headache.)-"

Biting her lip, Katarina frowned slightly. Then immediately stiffened as a set of fingertips touched her forearm.

She glanced over at Paloma as the curly light-brown haired girl gave her a concerned smile, "Are you sure we aren't bothering you? Or do you need to see a nurse? I can go over and ask the teachers where the nurse's office is. Actually, I think she might be up there now."

Doing her best to smile, Katarina shook her head, "No, thank you. I'm just worried about my build. I think it will work, but I'm not actually sure."

Paloma nodded, "Oh, I get what you mean. Don't worry, you're not alone in being a tiny bit scared. We're all new, and we only get two free reset charges per year. So if we mess up once, we'll only have one more shot to make a good build until our next birthday or even till next year if we're really unlucky. Perfectly normal to be a bit nervous."

She paused, staring at Katarina blankly, "With any luck, I didn't just making things worse and add even more pressure."

Smiling slightly, Paloma looked a bit sheepish, "Er... I'm thinking about taking a bunch of tank classes. Direct damage reduction, active damage reduction like deflect skills, and medium armor. I'm going for a sort of 'quick tank'. Rather than straight up taking a blow and shrugging it off, I want to weave through enemies with a taunt aura and just avoid most of the damage."

She shrugged at the Shadowbloom and grinned, "If I do well enough, I might even be able to deflect blows into other enemies and use the enemies attack against them. Or that's the idea at least. I'll have some pretty low damage area of effect just passively pulsing. But... I plan to build up a lot of single-target damage, so at worst I might have to kite around."

Mouth full of crispy potato wedge, Katarina nodded.

"-(That sounds like a PvP siege battle tank build meant to divert multiple unit battalions while still being damage viable, or a risky PvE tank meant specifically to kill bosses through high single-target damage.)-"

Pointing at her friends in turn, Paloma continued, "Reynaud, Alys, and I are actually forming a party together. With myself as the tank and then two high-damage supports. Ah, speaking of which, did you two decide on what you were going? Er... if you're ok with talking about it."

She slowly did her best to sink into the background of the conversation as Paloma started chatting with the other two. Then refocused and started dumping her pool of free points into intellect. Typically, this would be foolish. However, both Warlock buffs and Necromancer buffs depended on intellect to get the most out of their statistics.

While the majority of skills from both were illegal almost everywhere, on the first continent warlocks had the Demon Council to turn to if they were found out; so warlocks were the second strongest buffers in early game and the first in mid game. On the other hand, Necromancers had the Lich Council to turn to if they were found out on the second continent; so they were the first strongest in the early game and second in the mid game. They also shared first strongest buffs in late-game, as neither had a solid support base on the third continent.

Naturally, Necromancers and Warlocks did still have access to the somewhat hostile underground markets found throughout the game for all your illegal needs from assassination jobs to fencing stolen items. And there were methods of hiding their status even after being found out. But these were not perfect. Most places like the hunting, gathering, crafting, and assistance guilds all used crystals connected to the 'Three Continents Criminal Identification System'. The larger cities even had these crystals at their main gates; forcing known criminals to sneak in themself somehow or pay to be brought into the city if they knew the right people.

Katarina blinked rapidly as her fork hovered over her plate, only to find it empty.

She pouted and her shoulders slumped slightly.

"-(Darn, I autopiloted through eating all my food.)-"

Looking up at the four different counters, Katarina debated going up for seconds. However, she figured it was probably not a good idea. She had already eaten more than her fair share.

"-(I'll need the extra carbs for tomorrow's dungeon run, but still... I should at least try to be healthy. I already skipped out on fruits and veggies for the evening. Probably should've at least gotten some broccoli and melted cheese or something. Wait no... melted cheese isn't very healthy either, is it?)-"

She glanced over as Reynaud rubbed his neck sheepishly, "I'm just not sure what to do with the other two partials, or any of my crafting classes."

Katarina blinked rapidly and glanced over the piece of paper he had placed on the table, "Huh... Main: Witch. Full Spec: Shaman-Healing Spec, Elementalist-Lightning Spec. Partial One: Rogue: Trap Detection, Trap Disable, Stealth, Raise Perception, Raise Acrobatics. Partial Two: Arcane Amplifier: Raise Intellect, Raise Wisdom, Raise Total Mana, Raise Mana Regeneration, Amplify Spell Potency: plus twenty percent power and effect to all spells. Pretty good I think. Witch healing and shaman healing go really well together since they're both heal over time with the former being more for large battlefields. Do you mind an outside opinion?"

Reynaud shrugged, "That's fine. If it's good, then it couldn't hurt. And if it's bad, and I pick it anyway, I can always ask the build professor what went wrong and then change it after getting some solid advice. I do have one change now, and my birthday is only a few months away if even the professor's build doesn't work for me somehow."

Nodding, Katarina tapped her fingers against the table for a moment, "For a pure healing build, I would recommend healing spells like restoration or a similar spell from healing Druid. It would add some extra heal over time, and each would come with a small burst heal. Some of them are instant with a decent cooldown but also single-target, and others require casting but are either full group or circles of healing for the battlefield that only target those who you consider an ally and who consider themself an ally of you. Archmagi could get you some extra minion points and some boosted self and pet mana regen. And then cleric or paladin, if you think you could be devote enough for the former, would provide cleric shields or more paladin health regen for yourself and your pets. Also, a bit more for everyone else in the group if there somehow aren't any paladins in the group despite the popularity. Plus, you could probably use the paladin self-buffs to keep yourself alive in the event of a line-breach or ambush. And then, of course, golem maker for extra minion points you can use on your other pet classes like witch and shaman. Not quite sure what you would want otherwise. Maybe miner for the golem maker class? But that's probably not necessary if you're mostly using it to boost your minion count. I'm planning on taking that for a while, but I'm also using golems; so it's relatively necessary early on. Though I think I might eventually switch miner over to alchemy once I get a bit of a monetary base established to grow my own magical herbs or possibly once I'm able to spare a few minion points to run around with some proper mining golems. Maybe at level 20 or 30. Not really sure."

She paused momentarily as she considered there were two 'supports', then continued, "You could boost your direct offensive power by taking Archmagi and, or Elemental Warrior specifically for their lightning damage amplification. Though Elemental Warrior would force you to attack from shorter range to get maximum effect from its boost; but you could use spears or chains to extend that by a bit. I've also heard that some people get modified staff-spear hybrids that work decently or just fuse a good staff and good spear at an alter for the god of alchemy. For more damage over time, offensive druid would probably be good with witch's weak but battlefield-wide poisons and shaman's weak by very long-lasting poisons. They tend to be a bit of a medium between the short but powerful poisons of rogues and those of the shaman. You could also do something like warlock and just get minion count and drain mechanics. It doesn't do much right away, but the drain adds up over time to deal more than most direct damage spells while also healing you a small amount and restoring a bit of mana to first replace the initial startup-cost plus a bit extra. Also, you can use one of your prestige selections after level 100 to make warlock drains heal everyone in the group, team, or party. You could also pick up 'Banish Demon'. It's an easy way to bind demons equal in power, and return any demon weaker than you to the negative energy plane. You could, technically, also use it to slow and weaken stronger demons; but you're going to be stuck channeling it and the demon is almost certainly going to try killing you. Not really optimal. But it's about as efficient in crowd control as the cleric spell, except it doesn't work on undead and doesn't do small amounts of damage; but if you get druid or necromancer, you can also pick up destroy undead or crush undead anyway. On the other hand, banish demon will return weaker demons five times faster than a cleric can banish them. So, while it's not great against stronger ones, it's fantastic for fighting small but still overwhelming numbers of weaker demons. I mean you can basically just zap them away."

"-(Should I tell him the cheaty-build? He is part of Paloma's party and the demon god is an issue that I need to think about. I'll do it partway. If he figures it out on his own, that's fine.)-"

She frowned and tilted her head, "On the other hand, if you want a pure stat-stick to increase your overall prowess that works on pretty much any set of main and full classes, you could do Might of the Pack from support Druid and some pet buffs. Then either Archmagi for personal and pet mana regen to help the shaman pets, or Conjurer for free material conjuring and also deflection field to defend the pets against AOE like boss attacks or Overmind for the hivemind feature to better control your pets, and Golem Maker as one crafting class. If you use up most or all your minion points on a mixture of Witch Familiars and Druid Companions, you can take advantage of the Might of the Pack buff from druids to give yourself a multiplier to your statistics. It will only kick in after you exceed nine pets though, and your pets will be weaker until you exceed eighteen pets, so you'll want to start with mostly druid pets. But you get plus one point per pet class per ten levels, meaning you can easily have enough for one of each with all of the witch buff-pets and totem gremlins and then have plenty of druid pets by the time you max out. As you get more and more beast pets, the percentage will only go up and up. You could also burn a few extra points to get a bear pet to keep near you and pull aggro for you with roar if you ever got a surprise add mob. Or even multiple bears just to go solo for a bit, if you felt like it. Though obviously, larger pets like bears will reduce your overall damage by a ton since Might of the Pack takes all of the pet and caster buffs, then gives five percent of the total to each pet and ten percent for..."

Suddenly noticing the slightly wide-eyed looks of her table-companions, Katarina turned bright pink once more, "Sorry. I... um... I enjoy theorizing build ideas."

"-(I'm never opening my mouth again. I'll voluntarily become a nun and take a vow of silence. Even if they try to promote me to priestess for being a voluntary nun with good behavior, I'll refuse to break my vow of silence.)-"

Paloma threw up her hands as if to wave away a cloud of smoke, "No, no, no! That's wonderful! I never really considered that sort of thing. I'm a bit worried about the survivability of such pets but, with the conjuror deflection field, that would probably be a lot easier to manage. I do think I'll stick with my own current build though."

She squinted up at the ceiling for a moment, "While a... 'stat-stick' does sound nice, I believe I can get more survivability out of my current build than pure statistics can provide and I don't have a single free class slot."

Alys tilted her head while scrunching her nose, "Did you get a breath extension artifact, Katarina? I swear you said all that in two or three breaths."

Squeaking with an embarrassed look, Paloma shushed her, "Alys! You can't say things like that!"

However, she merely blinked at her fellow brunette, "What... I thought it was a valid question. I'm thinking about getting one in a few weeks. It'll be useful against poison gas or when diving. Filtration canisters are expensive to replace, so reducing the strain on them is really nice. Plus, oxygen tanks are always going to be limited. So the slower breathing I can have without hindering myself, the longer the tanks will last. It'll be great for doing invasion clears off the coast."

Reynaud shuddered slightly, "No thanks. Have you seen the videos of monsters slipping past the Naval Alliance Armada Hammerhead? Sure, the Navel Alliance Armada Cleaners usually kill them quick enough. But three fishing villages and two port towns have been wiped off the map in the past twenty-five years. Three in the past five. Which means it's getting worse. The monsters that manage to survive exiting deep sea dungeons are like natural disasters. Maybe even worse than tornados or earthquakes."

"-(Worse over the last five years... that'd probably be the Demon Lords returning to the mortal realm. It's less than four years until the Demon God manages to get an avatar again, so... not surprised at all.)-"

He paused and rested his chin on a palm, "Maybe. I suppose it depends, since some of those could damage multiple towns but there's never been a deep sea monster recorded getting to a second town. On the other hand, the deep sea monsters tend to have higher kill counts per village."

As the conversation continued away from her, Katarina did her best to sink into the background once more. Then subtly wiped a bead of sweat from her forehead. Being the center of attention was something she had never gotten used to in either life. Though, perhaps the noble daughter preparing for marriage to a prince handled it slightly better than the lower middle-class casual gamer who did their best to never interact with people for longer than necessary.

Once sure their attentions were focused on each other, she turned to her quick bars and started pulling spells to them. Spells weren't quite auto-cast in this game, but there was a 'pulling sensation' that affected the user's limbs as they spoke the incantation scrolling across the cast bar. This made it relatively easy to at least get a functional spell cast, though proper movements and verbalizations could get a bonus to overall spell potency and effect for how close they got it to a intended spellcasting.

Thus it was still important to use proper setups for quick bars, as it could help remind people of the initial word for the chant mid-combat and definitely helped in actually casting them.

Katarina glanced up as people started leaving their tables, "Thank you three for eating together with me. It was nice. I think I'm going to go to the library for now, and then maybe get started on a few preparations for tomorrow."

Nodding, Paloma started in on a bowl of pudding, "Good luck. And thanks for the build suggestions. Whether we use them or not, it's good to know what sort of build other people might be using so we can consider that if we fight in the arenas or come across bandits. This druid thing sounds pretty good. Though maybe situational, since there's at least one or two types of monsters with documented 'current-health percentage true damage'."

She paused with an almost wistful look as Katarina stood up, "Imagine that... an ability with current-health percentage true damage. I bet I could solo a boss with that and maybe one healer in like five minutes or something crazy like that. But it's hard to imagine the God of Balance and Creation would allow either the evil or good gods to add a skill like that into the class system."

Alys nodded, "Ya... probably going to remain monster-only. And even then, it's likely to be specialized monsters. I doubt you'd find it on fast-hitting monsters and probably not on ghost monsters that can come through the walls. Maybe teleporting monsters. Those are said to have a good sixteen, twenty four, or even thirty-second cooldowns on even the faster teleporting monsters. Most have like... uh... sixty seconds I think?"

Reynaud pulled a book labeled 'The Monster Index, Fifth Edition' from a messenger bag on his hip, "Er... ya... says about sixty seconds on average. Ones with higher damage tend to have three-hundred second timers. But bosses and some elites focused on a teleporting theme tend to be twelve seconds or a bit longer. Again, higher damage bosses and elites tend to have bigger cooldowns like thirty seconds."

Paloma sighed, "I wish I had a teleport ability. Useful against casters, sure. But imagine teleporting away right as you're about to be hit by something."

Smiling slightly, Katarina quietly shifted away to turn in her dishes; then immediately started off toward the library, "Whew... survived a conversation with actual people. A good start."

Specifically, after a quick stop in the law section to confirm class laws on warlocks and necromancers, she went to the romance literature section.

"-(A Tale of Two Souls, The Long Journey, Just The Two of Us: Island Survival, A Pirate and a Mermaid, A Tale of Two Thieves, I Can Wait For You, Words Cut The Heart, A Tale of Two Vampires, and A Tale of Two Pirates. That should be everything. Though... I still don't understand the naming choices for these weird romance novel things. Thank whatever higher powers that be for mootube guides, otherwise I'd have never known about these. I'm to much of a filthy casual to read every last bit of the non-lore books, and have no interest in romance books whatsoever.)-"

She paused momentarily and narrowed her eyes.

"-(Then again, I also still don't understand why they call it a 'harem' if the game purposefully avoids anything beyond kissing to avoid a 'Mature Adult' rating or the equivalent of that. Well honestly, the entire Otome section confuses me. Definitely glad I had other people to review Otome games for the quality of its non-Otome aspects first. Again, Mootube is awesome.)-"

Then she went back to the deepest section of the library and press 'A Tale of Two Souls' against a symbol on the wall representing the goddess and god who shared domain over light and love.

Immediately, she found herself inside an entirely different room and Katarina smirked.

"-(It's been a long time since I went through the Otome section of the game, and I only went through once, but I almost never forget something as important as gaming tips and tricks. What I wanted to buy at the grocery store after walking all the way there, sure. That I actually bothered to write down a list of what I wanted to buy and put it into my pocket, sure. At least until I got home with a pile of items I already had or definitely didn't need to begin with and randomly found it while wondering where my keys are. But gaming tips and tricks? Never. Even if it's about weird skippable Otome sections of a game that doesn't seem like it should have one. Like seriously devs, what the duck were you thinking? Quack.)-"

After scanning over the room to make sure everything seemed how it should, she began piecing together the room's puzzle by turning small stone images. She started on the outside walls, then worked her way inward across the floor. Finally, she went up the stone pillar until at last the stone flower on top bloomed and revealed its prize.

~[Artifact of Joining: Allows user to fuse seven other artifacts into itself permanently.]~

She quickly retrieved it, then turned the final piece of the puzzle back; causing the stone flower to shut in an instant and very glitchy way as if the original flower had simply disappeared and a new one spawned in its place.

Katarina's smirk widened further, then she turned the stone; causing the flower to bloom once more and reveal another artifact of joining.

"-(So the developer item-spawn-test exploit works here. Nice. If only there was a way to get back in here a second time. Or if you could just enter the puzzle rooms as many times as you wanted. Wait, can you enter the room multiple times? Eh... better to not risk it.)-"

Immediately, she got to work closing and opening the flower over and over again until she had a full stack of them plus five more.

"-(Groups are five players, Teams are twenty, Raid Parties are eighty, and Siege Parties are three hundred and twenty. So even if people decide to leave the siege party, nine hundred and ninety-nine necklaces should allow us to avoid an issue until we out level this stuff. We'll just need everyone to sign a non-discloser pact to avoid them spreading it around on random amounts of pain for the rest of their entire life throughout their entire body at random times every two to six seconds.)-"

She paused momentarily.

"-(Am I evil?)-"

Then shook her head.

"-(It's probably fine.)-"

Despite feeling a bit fatigued already, Katarina went over to the exit archway. However, instead of returning to the library, she pulled out a book technically meant to be used at the stables. Then she placed 'The Long Journey' against the archway.

Again, she found herself in a puzzle room with a pillar in the center and got to work.

~[Artifact of Teleport: User can teleport 5 to 30 meters once per 300 seconds. Or, the user can channel to teleport to any known location on their map once per 300 seconds. These abilities share a cooldown.]~

She wiped her brow and turned back the last puzzle piece, then continued resetting it until she had a full stack plus five.

Now feeling more than a bit tired, the Shadowbloom placed 'Just The Two of Us: Island Survival' against the room's archway and began completing the next room.

~[Artifact of Immunity: Grants the user a buff which enables Immunity to Poison, Non-Magical Disease, Status Bleed, Cold, Acid, Forced Sleep, Forced Shifting, Nausea, Status Blindness, Status Deafness, and Status Fear.]~

And then next; the central fountain's book 'A Pirate and A Mermaid'.

~[Artifact of Ocean Dweller: Grants the user a buff which gives +50% swim speed, grants immunity to skin damage from over-hydration, and allows them to breath underwater.]~

Her fingers were already hurting a bit, but she was a gamer with a mission. So she used the next book 'A Tale of Two Thieves'.

"-(Just complete this puzzle and I can heal myself.)-"

~[Artifact of Spec Theft: While equipped, the user can take one ability from both unused specs of either full spec class they currently possess. These can only be swapped out while outside of combat for at least sixty seconds.]~

Immediately, she added it to her artifact of joining and took both Beast Morph alongside a low level ultimate-class group healing spell. Then she used the latter while trying to focus most of the energy around her hands. Only to freeze and stare at the popup in front of her.

~[Vital Energy Barrier is Full.]~

She blinked and waited one hundred and twenty seconds while staring at her hands in disbelief, then cast the healing spell again.

~[Vital Energy Barrier is Full.]~

"-(Well... duck. Quack.)-"

A bead of sweat slowly rolled down her forehead, "So that pretty much confirms that we're playing on hardcore mode, where you can lose limbs and such if you let yourself fall to 0 HP. And... probably... also have a perma-death if you meet any of the conditions for it, like the blood loss-lethal debuff. Shouldn't be surprised, really. But... I was kind of hoping in the back of my mind... ugh... never mind."

Her fingers throbbed slightly as if to mock her about the sudden reminder of her own mortality. In order to heal up something like this, she would need a 'Regeneration Effect'; which was typically only present after one reached the post-one hundred prestige levels. They were also the sort of thing that could only be used a certain number of times per full rest, a 'Daily Ultimate'. Which typically meant the user had sleep for about six to eight hours if fatigued and between twelve to fourteen if exhausted. Technically, it was possible to use daily ultimate spells about two to three times per day; but that usually required fatigue and sleeping aid potions. Plus, there was an issue of who exactly would be willing to spend the rest of their life just sleeping sixteen to twenty-four hours a day.

In all likelihood, only the capital cities of the first continent would have access to healers with such abilities and they certainly wouldn't use it to fix a bit of hand pain, "Ugh..."

"-(Duck it all. Quack.)-"

Deciding to push through it anyway, Katarina steeled herself and started collecting the artifacts of spec theft one by one.

Afterward, she immediately went over and placed 'I Can Wait For You' against the archway.

~[Artifact of Protection: The user gains a buff which prevents the user's Soul, Mind, Body, Energy Matrix (including buffs of any kind), and Gear from being being altered by beings or artifacts of lower than deity level. Additionally boosts the user's armor and magic resistance by +1 per character level, grants +5% Tenacity, the user takes 30% reduced damage from unicorns, and any Golden Spatula they will will have its shininess increased by 87.4%.]~

Her eyes were starting to hurt by the end and she was quickly reminded of the fact that this body was not used to pulling all-nighters for studying, work, or MMORPG raiding.

Nonetheless, she continued. Katarina was at least mentally used to grinding out reputation, gear, gold, and crafting materials. So while it might be a bit taxing, she fully believed in her ability to persevere regardless of finger pain or eye strain.

With another full stack and five extra, she placed 'Words Cut The Heart' against the archway; then got to work once more as she arrived in the next room.

~[Artifact of True Strike: Grants the user a buff which causes all attacks the user does to deal 3% of its total pre-mitigated damage as true damage, have +5% hit rate due to guidance, and treat incorporeal beings as corporeal targets.]~

"-(I'm in the home stretch now, if I can just get through this last one... then I can do the one without a repeatable exploit and go straight to bed.)-"

She nearly dropped 'A Tale of Two Vampires' when it materialized on her aching hands, but quickly applied it to the archway.

~[Artifact of Omni Vamp: Grants the user a buff which causes all damage the user deals to restore Hit Points to the user equal to 3% of damage dealt if single-target, or 1% if Area of Effect.]~

"-(Ugh... why couldn't this be painless like in the game.)-"

Groaning slightly as she placed the last one into her inventory, Katarina went over and used 'A Tale of Two Pirates' on the archway.

Unlike the others, rather than some fancy artifact that would be either useful the whole game or until it was made obsolete by some aspect of the questing or leveling process, this simply gave the finder cold hard cash.

Quite literally.

~[Currency Acquired: +10,000 Large Gold Coins.]~

"-(I'm still annoyed the devs don't let you just farm this as much as you want. Sometimes you just want to be Scrooge Mcduck in a videogame.)-"

It was a sizable amount for the first continent. More than enough to fully fund a decent sized guild house with all the first continent bells and whistles. But it was also somewhat small change after the third continent. Currency went up by ten over the coin before it. Ten large gold coins were one small platinum, then there were large platinum, small mithril, and large mithril. But weapons on the third continent could cost three or more small mithrils at the low end of the level charts and several large mithril at the high end.

Still, even if it would eventually be barely useful, it was quite a bit on this continent. Much like the larger currencies there were small copper and large copper, small and large silver, and small gold. With this much of a startup new-game plus players, and lucky first-timers who were a fan of in-game books, could easily get themselves a nice bed of cash flow. Well... assuming they were careful. The market could be quite brutal in this game, as it depended heavily on a wide range of things. Even sudden catastrophes, such as blizzards striking, had been taken into account by the game.

"-(I'm not entirely sure if the game suddenly being added to a real world would make the market harder or easier to manage. There logically shouldn't be tons of in-game events where you could randomly lose half your crops every single month to disease, have bandits steal from your caravans regularly, or something along those lines. Not that those aren't a concern, but they definitely shouldn't happen anywhere near as often as they do in the game. But hopefully I should be able to do ok, as long as I'm careful, even with that stuff.)-"

After collecting her gold, she cast a cleansing spell over herself alongside a straightening spell to fix her clothes and hair in a way she liked; as it had gotten a bit disheveled after hours of leaning over the puzzles.

Leaving through the archway, Katarina found herself at a four-way intersection designed to look suspiciously like an X with dark red bricks. It was morning already and the sunlight creeping over the horizon was turning from a yellowish orange to sky blue.

"-(Did I miss the first bell?)-"

She had exited to the south eastern gardens surrounded by entire fields of what looked like faintly glowing magical variants of delphinium, catmint, cosmos, foxgloves, hollyhocks, peonies, and phlox. From around stone and metal posts shedding dim blue mana-crystal light along the paths, wisteria hung like curtains. All in all, the south eastern gardens were a pink and green paradise with touches of purple and blue.

"-(Hum... pretty sure each of the gardens are actually for alchemy. Not really a profit maker for the academy, since they tend to be bought with academy points earned for random things like getting top scores in their year or performing well in a race, or providing special services to the school in some way or another.)-"

A slightly tired smile grew across her face as she went towards one of the mana aura stones near the dormitory buildings and stopped at a vending machine along the way.

It was a rather unusual modern-fantasy hybrid looking construct with slightly opaque magically conjured crystal instead of glass, but the overall design was relatively familiar.

Placing a hand on the front plate and charging mana to it, the machine lit up, "Welcome!"

She ignored it in favor of pressing the 'Add Academy Points' button and inserting a large gold coin from her inventory.

~[Would you like to acquire +100,000 'Academy Points' at the cost of 1 'Large Gold'? Note: this currency can only be spent at supported vending machines or stores within the Royal Academy of Bricuria Kingdom.]~

She pressed yes, then quickly searched up three specific items.

~[x2: Stamina Restore Potion Acquired: Spent: 336 Academy Points.]~

~[8-hour Physical Recovery Booster Potion Acquired: Spent: 16,128 Academy Points.]~

~[1-Hour Mana Regen Amplifier Potion Acquired: Spent: 2,016 Academy Points.]~

"-(It's not efficient at all in the long-run, considering the side effects of overdosing on potions. But for mitigating one all-nighter right now, it's fine. I just can't do this often, that's all.)-"

Opening her inventory, Katarina pressed the use button on the stamina potion... and immediately regretted it as her body automatically went through the motion of chugging the potion.

Staring at the 'Dirty/Empty Potion Bottle' in her inventory, she shuddered slightly.

Firstly, the sensation of losing control over her own body was horrifying. Even if it was only for a few seconds, there was no possible way for her personally to feel good about such a thing. The only good thing she could find from such an experience is confirmation that she wasn't into the whole 'BDSM' thing, and didn't have to go to the trouble of trying it herself.

"-(Not that I was brave enough anyway. The mere thought of it is horrifying. I don't know how people actually let someone do that to them. What if they're secretly a murderer? Like planning to sacrifice them to a dark god or something? Even going to a group session isn't exactly safe, since it could be a full cult. That's a nope for me.)-"

Secondly, the flavor of the potion was awful. It was like someone had ground up bugs, plants, and monster parts into a cauldron before boiling it. She paused and considered the crafting materials for potions. Then turned a mottled green across both cheeks.

"-(Oh... that's... sort of what it is... isn't it. That certainly kills a lot of the 'romance' of magical potions and elixirs.)-"

Bracing herself, she removed the physical recovery potion from her inventory and manually drank them under her own action to avoid having to experience that horror, "Ugh... worse than the most bitter of vegetables all blended together with 'aged meat' and 'aged cheese'. I think this thing has to much boiled down into it. I mean... do they just boil off an entire cauldron into one serving?"

Despite her griping, Katarina already felt a bit better thanks to the stamina potion and knew the recovery potion would likely heal smaller wounds like muscle pain in less than an hour.

"-(If I remember correctly, these potions can fix anything as long as nothing's actually missing and the person doesn't die within the thirty seconds it takes for the blood loss to stop. Well... and the person actually sits still long enough the wound doesn't re-open.)-"

She eyed her remaining points for a few moments, then sighed and placed her hand against the vending machine once more.

~[x5: 8-hour Physical Recovery Booster Potion Acquired: Spent: 80,640 Academy Points.]~

She frowned slightly, "880 points left... I guess I could buy one more stamina potion and leave it in my inventory. Even if I don't end up using them today, I might need them eventually. And then I can grab some HP pots to keep me from actually needing the physical recovery pots."

~[Stamina Restore Potion Acquired: Spent: 168 Academy Points.]~

~[x3: Vital Energy Restore Potion Acquired: Spent: 540 Academy Points.]~

Nodding, the Shadowbloom glanced between supplies, "It's good to have emergency supplies."

"-(Even if it makes me feel like a filthy pay-to-win player. I mean, cosmetics sure... I could buy those all day and not feel bad except for my wallet. But usable items? Still... my life could be on the line. There's no place for pride in real life. Morality? Sure. A reasonable amount of honor? Sure. But pride? Never. Pride isn't worth dying over.)-"

Katarina glanced at her remaining academy points, "One hundred and seventy two. Eight points. Seriously? Couldn't have just given me one more HP pot?"

Sighing, she browsed the store.

"-(Isn't it in the lore that Paloma likes chocolates? Ya... she gets some really small morale-based HP and damage buff for an hour if she consumes one.)-"

Rolling her eyes, she bought a bag of them; forgoing an extra stamina potion in favor of ensuring the MC had a steady supply of them. At worst, it would help her level up a little faster thanks to the damage increase. At best, it might just barely safe her life someday.

~[x172: 4(688) Chocolate Bites Acquired: Spent: 172 Academy Points.]~

Katarina turned away with a faintly pained but pleased look in her eye and continued on toward the mana aura stones.

"-(And now, with any luck, I'll never buy anything from the academy vendors ever again. Well... unless I convert some gold to silver and copper, then just buy a full stack of chocolates to keep Paloma charged up with buffs every once in a while.)-"

Surprisingly, there were already a few people sitting on benches amongst the circle of mana aura stones and fiddling with various things.

"-(Must be prepping for the dungeon. Ducking early risers. Quack. Just look at them being all cheerful and smiley at this time of morning.)-"

~[Acquired Proximity Buff, Mana Aura Stone Mana Regeneration: Increases the user's current mana regeneration by x10.]~

She grinned slightly, then immediately grimaced while pulling out the mana regen amplifier potion and downed it as quickly as she could manage.

~[Acquired 1-hour buff, Mana Aura Stone Mana Regeneration: Increases the user's overall mana regeneration by x10.]~

"-(Oh... that wasn't so bad. Kind of... minty... a very herbal flavor. Then again, I'm pretty sure it only calls for flowers. So... maybe that's it.)-"

She glanced at her character page and smirked, "Times one hundred. Nice."

Sitting down, Katarina got to work in summoning clay bodies for wolf golems, "Eh?"

~[Please Design Your Golem.]~

"-(What the duck is this? Quack.)-"

Before her, an entire interface was shown.

"-(Is this... mentally controlled? Can I just straight up make golems?)-"

Imagining a white and grey wolf with red and black accents throughout their fur, she was pleasantly surprised by a realistic looking wolf appearing in the display, "Er... add to queue?"

~[Unable to root Runic Arrays into Clay.]~

~[Confirm Enchantments: Core: Tier 1 Moisture Resistance, Tier 1 Flight, Tier 1 Speed, Tier 1 Agility, Tier 1 Vitality. Main Skeletal System: Tier 1 Armor. Musculature: Tier 1 Strength. Skin: Tier 1 Magic Resistance.]~

"-(Bleh, looks like I'll need to get proper crystal cores after all. To be expected, but... still bleh.)-"

A summoning circle appeared before her, seemingly gathering blue specs of energy to slowly piece together a ghostly three dimensional image. Blinking slightly, she glanced between the image and the screen before ticking a checkmark into the 'store within the minion storage when completed box' on her conjuration window.

"-(Alright, I guess I just go ahead and start making the next one?)-"

She stared at the screen for a moment, frowning heavily as she idly imagined the next wolf; careful to make it slightly unique.

"-(This is... different. So not only am I playing with permadeath, I'm also playing with things that are completely unexpected. Luckily it's something small that introduced that fact to me. I could've come across one of the Demon Lords who decided to just waltz into the academy and kill everyone here while they're sleeping. That would've been a nasty surprise. 'Sorry, not sorry, got tired of waiting for the demon god's avatar to respawn'.)-"

Katarina shuddered slightly.

"-(How would I even stop that?)-"

After forty minutes of crafting, she glanced up as the bell began ringing.

"-(Two, four, six... seven times... looks like I missed the first bell like I thought.)-"

She waited a minute for the next to finish, then yawned widely and made her way to breakfast.

"-(Hopefully the starter dungeon is as dismally weak as it was in the game. It probably will be if the lore about 'maintaining the dungeon crystal size by carefully chipping away at it' is accurate here.)-"

Feeling a bit guilty from the night earlier, she got a big slice of what looked to be a mixture of potatoes, cabbage, onions, carrots, peas, and beef mixed together and fried in a pan.

"-(Isn't this what the British call bubble and squeak? Or is that different? Well, either way, I did want to try it done by someone who knows what they're doing. So I guess this is my best chance. I don't know how I managed to get all my attempts at making it both soggy and burned. Usually I'm a better cook than that. Albeit... not the best ever.)-"

She grabbed a fried egg to put on top of the vegetables, some sausages, toast, and a cup of coffee. Then started munching a piece of toast with a cinnamon-heavy apple butter while finding a place to sit alone again.

"-(Ugh... I need to make sure to exercise plenty. The urge to eat tasty food is so strong. I mean, I don't mind being chubby, but I can't let myself get actually fat just because there seems to be plenty of exercise in dungeon. It took forever to work it off last time. I mean seriously, I was walking and biking... well it was a treadmill and stationary bike with a mountain or forest trail on mootube... but that still counts as burning calories and carbs. So it's not fair. I did my part and the fat was supposed to stay off but it didn't.)-"

Glancing up as another four trays were placed at her table, Katarina desperately fought her eyebrow's attempt to start twitching, "Hello, Paloma."

"-(Don't twitch, don't twitch, don't twitch. I must avoid becoming labeled as a villainess.)-"

The brunette grinned widely, "Hey! We saw a familiar face, so we came over. This is Griogair, a fellow tank; though a bit more direct tanking than myself."

Katarina smiled slightly, "Nice to meet you."

Nodding, Griogair sliced a bread roll in half and loaded it up with lettuce, sausage, and mustard as he murmured, "And you."

"-(Darn, I can't introduce hotdogs it seems. There's more and more items that seem familiar. Either someone already transmigrated to this world, or the people in this world aren't complete idiots like in a lot of Isekai manga.)-"

After a few moments, she glanced towards Paloma while requesting a trade request and added the chocolate bites when her fellow student accepted the request with a raised eyebrow, "By the way, I saw these in the vendor this morning and thought of you."

She blinked slightly as Paloma froze and stared at her, "You saw sweets and thought of me?"

"-(Why is she looking at me strangely?)-"

Shrugging, Katarina loaded up her fork with more vegetables, "Yes, I had some spare academy points and decided to just spend them since I wasn't sure if I would ever bother getting more. I really only had one purchase I wanted, so it seemed a bit pointless to keep them. Then I saw those and distantly remembered, or maybe misremembered, you mentioning something about liking or wanting to try chocolate last night. So I figured I'd grab some for you. Though it's entirely possible I didn't hear anything like that and you hate chocolate. So.... meh."

Paloma frowned slightly while glancing between a single chocolate in her hand and Katarina, "Thank you very much."

The Shadowbloom felt a strange sense of foreboding crawl up her spine as Paloma slowly smiled.

"-(Why do I feel like I just made a mistake? Did I just make a mistake?)-"

Suddenly, Alys pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed heavily before giving Paloma an amused yet pointed stare for several seconds. Then she nodded as Reynaud seemed to finish thinking about it before shrugging and giving a nod of his own.

The odd exchange continued as all three suddenly glanced over at Griogair with raised eyebrows.

"-(They're definitely using group chat to talk about inviting me, aren't they? And that guy said no, or maybe even said something bad about me. Wait... is he familiar? He's familiar. Isn't he one of Edward's friends? But not a 'pseudo harem' member. Doesn't he marry a cute little baker? I don't remember. Ugh... why couldn't you be more important to the game?! Like... I don't know... a side quest or something. I'd remember everything about you for sure.)-"

Narrowing her eyes, Katarina desperately fought the urge to puff up her cheeks. It was really a bad habit, since it made her look like a spoiled child in the game scenes, but it was admittedly a habit and those were often difficult to kick. The teachers at the preparatory academy hadn't really cared much about their students so long as they learned and weren't physically in danger, and there obviously hadn't been any kind of parental figure to correct her behavior.

"-(Maybe I should let him know that I know? Then again, it might be better not to. Ah, but what if I end up getting drawn into a situation because everyone else thinks things are fine between us? Ya... it's better to make it clear I know something's up.)-"

Pursing her lips, Katarina scrunched her nose as she had seen Alys do the night before, "Strange, my intuition says there's a bad person saying nasty things about me behind my back. I wonder who it could be? Well... maybe I'm wrong. I could just be paranoid due to how much time I spend alone."

Paloma giggled nervously, "H-How odd... well... um... I... this is great savory pie, you should try it later; maybe pack some up for lunch and we can slow cook it in the campfire pan."

Katarina lifted and eyebrow and glanced down at her plate.

"-(Isn't that just deep dish pizza?)-"

With a slightly guilty look in his eyes, Griogair cleared his throat with a sheepish look in his eyes, "Yes the food here is quite good. The sausage sandwiches are excellent."

Blinking rapidly, Katarina glanced at his 'sandwich'.

"-(Saus... isn't that just a hotdog? Wait... are hotdogs sandwiches?! No, they... wait... are they?! Bread with things between them... ARE HOT DOGS SANDWICHES?! Oh... my... gods... it's like a subway sandwich but with sausages of different types like beer sausage or cheese sausage. Are hotdogs... a form of sandwich? Logic says yes, but my heart says no...)-"

So distracted by her sudden miniature existential crisis, she soon found her fork hovering over an empty plate once more.

"-(Well... duck. Quack.)-"

She deflated slightly, almost glaring at her plate.

"-(Why don't I ever just slow down and enjoy the flavor of my food?!)-"

Sighing slightly, she set her fork down and sipped her coffee forlornly.

"-(Could go for some Yorkshire Gold tea about now. That would be quite, heh... spiffing.)-"

After a few seconds, Paloma gently placed her hand on the Shadowbloom's arm, "Hey, are you ok? You look a bit... sad."

Katarina shook her head, "I'm fine... I just autopiloted through eating my food again. I missed most of the flavor, and it tasted pretty good... so... bleh."

The brunette looked surprised, but grinned at her after a moment, "I see. Bleh, huh?"

Frowning, Katarina palmed her chin, "Very bleh."

"-(This is almost as bad as raid-wiping on a boss you know you should be able to beat, and really need the items... from...)-"

She blinked rapidly.

"-(Wait... raid wiping... means... everyone dies. Wow, that's a lot worse if the world is real. Glad I didn't say that out loud. There would almost definitely be someone within earshot that had a family member die like that and they'd probably just... hate me... forever.)-"

Jerking slightly as Paloma grinned and turned to her, Katarina quickly refocused as the brunette asked her, "So, we've been talking in group chat. And we would like to ask if you would join us? We've got two tanks alongside two supports that can both attack and heal to some extent, and Reynaud can detect traps relatively easily for at least the first few dozen levels. So almost anything would be a good fit. Since you seemed to have a decent idea of builds, plus you seem nice, we thought you might be a good addition."

"-(Like I thought yesterday, the choice isn't really mine. If I don't accept, I could risk antagonizing her and being labeled a villainess later. None of the options for a villainess seem even remotely appealing to me personally. Then again, it's not necessarily a bad thing. Defeating the Demon God is a high priority for me and I can help her if I'm in her group, team, or party. Plus, once I've been in her group for a while, I can start looking for opportunities to leave her group amicably. Assuming she's even bad enough that I want to leave. It's entirely possible I'm worried about nothing and I'll grow to like her in time. I mean, Edward is likely the main issue here anyway and...)-"

Paloma poked her arm, "You ok?"

She blinked rapidly, then nodded, "Oh yes, I just... have an odd feeling I shouldn't join up with you four. I'm not really sure why. But it's probably nothing. There can't be any harm in joining for at least a little while. I accept. Though I reserve the right to leave later, if I feel it necessary."

Grinning widely, Paloma gently bumped her shoulder against Katarina's as Alys rolled her eyes with a slight smile, "Great! Welcome to the group!"

~[Group Invite: Paloma, Evasion Tank Specialty. Optional Information Displayed: Commoner Originating of Borgarhofn, Mother: Sarafina of Borgarhofn-originating of Jilethemar, Father: Khouterlum of Borgarhofn-originating of East Withercinders.]~

She blinked rapidly at the 'Optional Information'.

"-(That's new.)-"

Paloma frowned heavily, "Katarina, Casting Specialty? Huh... usually people have more information available."

Her eyes widened and she waved her hands as if clearing smoke, "Ah! Not that I care or anything. Privacy is important."

Shrugging, Katarina darted her eyes through the options menu; wondering where that was even an option to begin with, "It's fine. Not everyone is on good terms with their family. So I just don't care to display any of that. As far as I'm concerned, the preparatory academy is my point of origin."

Paloma frowned heavily as Reynaud and Alys shared concerned looks and Griogair lifted an eyebrow.

After a few moments, the green-eyed tank placed a hand on her forearm, "Well... maybe in a few months... things might cool off? I could go with you during the first break and we could try talking with them."

Katarina frowned at her, "That would be nice, if I knew where my parents lived. But I haven't been to their home since I was six. My mother basically sold me off to her friend for political power and then dumped me in the preparatory academy. Neither of my parents have been to see me since."

Leaning forward as the other three sent wide-stared at Katarina with rigid spines, Alys asked, "Basically sold for political power? I... don't understand. Slavery is illegal in Bricuria."

Katarina gave her a deadpan smile as if staring at a naïve child, "Technically, I can say no to the marriage. But doing so will mean I'm completely abandoned with nothing. Not even an orphanage to fall back on by helping part-time for room and board until I can get on my feet. Arranged marriages aren't uncommon among nobles, and typically are done by the bride's mother and the groom's father. Though plenty are... scheduled... by both parents of one meeting with one or both parents of the other. The marriage is supposed to officially take place at twenty-two, with the idea of having children sometime between twenty-four to thirty-five. But plenty of higher-leveled couples have children as late as forty or fifty. Longer lifespans and sturdier bodies, you know?"

"-(Wait! So magic does make bodies sturdier. And... apparently I already knew about it? Huh... why do I forget such random but useful stuff? What else is buried in my brain somewhere?)-"

Paloma stared at her with an almost heartbroken look, "So... there's no love at all? Was he at least nice when you met him?"

Smile turning a bit softer, Katarina rolled her eyes, "Plenty of arranged marriages end in love. Though admittedly there are plenty that are basically hell for one or both parties involved. And... if I ever meet my fiancé... I'll tell you what he's like. I know he has blonde hair and blue eyes, and his name starts with E."

"-(And that his actual name is Edward, but I want as many excuses to simply walk past him... ahem... 'without recognizing him'... as possible.)-"

Slumping in her chair as Griogair stared at Katarina with knitted eyebrows, Paloma groaned, "I... I don't understand... how can... you make this sound so normal."

The Shadowbloom shrugged, "It just... is for nobles. It probably isn't right. But... that's what happens. You're given a choice, but one isn't really much of a choice. I think I should be able to pull it off though. I've gotten a bit lucky with finding money in different places and saved it all. There's no reason I shouldn't be fine unless I get a bit unlucky. And who knows? Maybe I'll meet him and we'll like each other and everything will be great. Probably not, but maybe."

"-(I once found a small silver coin wedged between some rocks and couldn't find anywhere to spend it at the preparatory academy. So... it's not technically a lie that I've gotten a bit lucky with finding money. It's certainly in a very different place than the gold I 'luckily' knew about from the game forums.)-"

With a sigh, Paloma shook her head, "Well... you could apply for a room at one of the Hunter's guilds. You would have to work around the guild three hours a day for room and board though with the option to extend your hours with actual pay."

Katarina shook her head, "No. Nobles aren't actually allowed to do that. I guess it's possible nobles are assumed to have a solid base they can fall back on already. Basically, the instant I sign up as a hunter, my family's name will pop up in my files. So I'll be blocked out of trying to 'take up space I do not actually need'. It's a bit cruddy, and I half-expect it was set up by some of the nobles who wanted to avoid their own children using that as an escape route from their arranged marriages. But there's nothing I can do about that."

Paloma growled and buried her face into her hands with her elbows against the table, "That makes no sense at all! If it's legitimate, it's blocking the children of nobles from getting help. And if it's nobles paying off the hunter guild's lawmakers, then it's wrong and should be illegal to do!"

It seemed no one could find the right words for a reply, as they sat in silence for a while longer; quietly sipping their drinks until the eight-chime bell called the end of lunch.

Katarina patted Paloma's forearm and stood up, "Don't worry, it'll be alright."

However, the brunette merely whined softly, "I should be saying that to you!"

Smiling, she glanced at the four of them as they stood up, "I'll see you all in an hour."

"-(Maybe I'm not taking it seriously enough, since I'm a bit emotionally disconnected from it. I can't deny that it feels like something I experienced in an immersion suit game. It honestly almost feels like I could just pull my helmet off, unclip my belt, and slide my way off the frictionless platform anytime I wanted. There's just a little bit of sensation that doesn't feel quite right; making it obvious I'm not wearing a jumpsuit with slip-socks.)-"

As she and the crowd around her exited the cafeteria doors, Katarina stepped off to the side and whispered the support druid spell 'Beast Morph'. A simple spell that allowed the caster to turn into any animal they had basic understanding of; including those they had basically only seen in full detail. Immediately afterward, a black house cat initiated a conjurer summon to create a collar and pushed her head through it.

~[Item Created: Simple Purple Collar with a Gold Tag; Tag Inscription: Front: Academy Mouser Catrina. Please Treat Respectfully. Please do not feed, outside of scheduled, meal times. Back: Please do not take, outside of barrier. Please do not close, inside classrooms or other, spaces as it hinders, the work of academy mousers.]~

"-(That'll do, pig. That'll do. Keep this up and we'll get you a talking spider guide.)-"

She waited a bit longer, then followed Griogair as he carefully made his way through the crowd.

It wasn't long before the crowd thinned a bit, allowing the tank to pick up his pace a bit. Though he ultimately fell into step beside a familiar looking blue-eyed blond and a group of nine others. The twelve of them, cat included, veering off towards the training grounds.

After they were on their own, Griogair turned to Edward, "A bit of an update on that girl you met at the festival in Borgarhofn. Earlier this morning, she invited Katarina."

Edward's eyebrows rose, "That Katarina? Her? You said you'd protect Paloma! I told you she's far to naïve of a girl. Even with the somewhat cautious woman, Alys, by her side... she's far to trusting."

Rolling his eyes, Griogair shook his head, "You do remember they're the same age, right? And Paloma is three years older than when you met her. Plus, I said I would 'try to protect her' since 'I wanted to meet the girl that had garnered such interest from you'. I can't do anything when I'm out-voted three to one, and I didn't promise absolute protection anyway."

The prince sighed, "Right, fine. That's fair. Sorry for overreacting. Paloma just has this... aura... about her. I don't know how else to describe it. Still, I don't like an evil woman like Katarina with a heart as black as her hair and eyes being around her. She's such a sweet and playful girl. I already feel bad enough about having to reject her invitation, since mother and father said I had to at least stay in a full group with my friends to be safer."

"-(Wait... why does Edward even have an opinion on me already? I... that doesn't make sense. Does he think I requested the engagement somehow?)-"

Griogair frowned heavily, "Katarina... doesn't... actually seem that bad."

Eyebrows raising, Edward opened his mouth to retort, "She's probably tricking..."

The tank shook his head, "No. I don't think she is. Katarina, unless she's lying... which I admit is possible, doesn't even seem to know your name. She knows that you have blond hair and blue eyes, that your name starts with an E, and supposedly thinks that her parents 'sold her off to your parents for political power'. Furthermore, she doesn't know where her parents live. All in... I'm not exactly seeing this 'pure evil from birth woman', that you've been describing for the past six or so years. True... it's possible she's lying to some extent. But... why? There's no reason I could see for it."

Edward seemed taken aback for a few seconds, then he grit his teeth, "She must be lying. Trying to garner sympathy. And I don't believe that political power nonsense one bit. Our parents are friends! I call her mother auntie, her father uncle, and treat her siblings like my own little brothers and sister! What more political power could her family stand to gain?! They literally have the favor of my parents!"

Katarina's tail puffed up slightly as her eyes widened.

"-(Siblings? Brothers? Sister? Since when?!)-"

Tail quickly curling around her, Katarina's ears laid flat atop her head.

Frowning, the tank shook his head, "I don't know. I'm not even convinced she knows. She was six at the time and it wouldn't be the first time someone didn't read messages sent to them because they were angry at the person who sent it."

Katarina fought the instinct to leap at the red-ish black haired tank and give him a good clawing for 'assuming they had sent letters at all'.

"-(I can see the mail service misplacing one or two letters, but twelve years worth? Not a chance. How can I be expected to believe they would've misplaced every letter sent to me over twelve years? Especially when I know they've at least gotten the monthly dresses and makeup kits sent to me properly. And why wouldn't they have come to see me if I wasn't replying? I was six! And seven! Even when I was seventeen, they should have come and checked! The fact that they haven't even come to see me after twelve years is... horrifying. Who does that to a child?)-"

Katarina yowled and fell on her side as a form seemed to appear next to her. She was on her feet again a moment later, rapidly turning away to run, only to back up straight into the arms of a second figure. Before she could so much as hiss, two sets of hands roamed over her ears and back as she became more aware of a boy and girl dressed in medium armor.

The boy cooed at her softly, "Such a pretty kitty."

From the far side, the girl picked at her tag, "Academy Mouser Catrina? With a C? Heh... what awful person named you with a pun?"

"-(Eh, maybe you'll get the joke one day. Well... it's still pretty awful. But I digress. NOW LET ME DOWN!)-"

She pushed on the girl's face with one front paw and the boy's with the other; then quickly scampered away after they dropped her thanks to a well-timed claw extension on the tips of their noses as she pulled her paws back.

"-(Boom. Precision strike. Honestly, they're lucky I wasn't a real cat. Could've been much worse.)-"

After backing off a bit, Katarina eyed the two of them.

"-(Both are carrying two two-handed weapons? Advanced class, Bearzerkers maybe? That would mean it's mandatory for them to have Berserker and Weaponmaster as full specs and Druid as one partial to unlock it. With their stealth skills, assuming I wasn't just being oblivious, they might be full-ninja Bearzerkers with rogue-assassin-thief build.)-"

Her ears twitched slightly as a hand started scratching between them, "Were those two idiots bothering you? Don't worry, you're not alone. They bug me all the time."

"-(Then again, I could just be overthinking things. Maybe the second two-handed weapon is a spare? It can't be an alternate weapon, since it's the same type. Storage is locked inside of dungeons and combat, inventory is locked inside of combat, and quick-slots are locked inside of boss fights. So, it isn't a bad idea to equip an extra weapon to your body, even if you can't use it at the same time as the others. Though it does make a bigger target for thieves.)-"

She glanced up at Edward momentarily, then looked back towards the two fighters she distantly remember to be named... her tail puffed up. Slowly, she glanced up at Edward again. Then she bolted away from the group.

"-(Ugh... couldn't it have been anyone else? There's eleven people there overall. Though, I guess it's my own fault for not looking at where I'm going. Even if I was a bit panicked at the time thanks to those two knuckleheads. Bleh... if those really were full-ninja Bearzerkers, apparently they're total nonsense even outside of combat. Whoever thought wielding dual two-handed weapons being able to activate assassin, rogue, and thief skills was balanced is just an idiot. There's no way those things should be able to use dual-blade attacks like backstab or auto-crit if the target is unware.)-"

She paused briefly, then blushed faintly beneath the hidden-cheek safety of her fur.

"-(Though I guess I'm not one to talk, really. Might of the Pack abusing probably isn't better.)-"

After a bit, she changed back on a relatively out-of-sight bench near the mana aura stones and got to work on the last two of her twenty wolves.

"-(Things seem to be as expected with Edward. Although... do I actually have siblings? And why does Edward outright hate me? He can't possibly have some bias against people with black hair and black eyes, right? I mean... well... maybe he could. People believe the most random things.)-"

She frowned heavily and fought the urge to slump against the stone.

"-(Although, I guess neither matters. Whether or not I have siblings, I can't contact them without knowing a name to put on the letter. Nor would I know it would even reach them rather than being thrown away by my parents. Not to mention the matter of what I would put on the letter. And whether or not Edward hates me because of some random bias won't change the fact he hates me regardless of what I do. So the only option is to ignore most of the information I got from there, focusing on the fact that Griogair is a spy for Edward.)-"

She grumbled and crossed her arms, "Annoying..."

Sighing slightly, she looked up from the slowly gathering blue hologram-escue image. The mana stone at her back hummed softly, almost as if trying to lull her to sleep. Meanwhile, her eyes traced liquified and re-solidified dungeon core chippings on a stone in front of her.

Such things were typically stowed away in a single fortified location, which then distributed mana throughout the town via cables. But the less expensive bits, such as low-density shards chipped off the academy's 'starter dungeons', were often turned into either mana-stones like this or purposefully made inert and used to line the mana cables as an insulator.

She glanced back down as her nineteenth wolf finished, immediately starting the last. Then began designing a bear. Katarina's wolves were already medium sized golems, typically requiring four points due to a higher complexity runestone. And the bear itself usually required a total of sixteen; the second largest possible golem. However, with the augmented control of Overmind reducing minion control by three or half, she could effectively use medium golems as small and large would only cost twice as much as a typical medium.

After getting a general bear shape with the same metal wrapped stone claws and teeth of her wolves, the Shadowbloom added scale-like pieces of stone with metal wiring buried underneath the 'skin' of the bear to protect its skeletal structure without hindering movement. Overall, it was far more delicate than solid metal; but also far cheaper in terms of mana cost and time. However... the sheer amount of metal, even with it being the weakest metal alloy used in Bricuria, increased the bear's creation time to match several of the wolves.

"-(Now for color... this is definitely grizzly sized, but... duck it, quack, I'll just paint it black. Paint it all black. Like rolling stone going after a red door. If someone doesn't like my black bear being grizzly sized, they can sue me. Not that I'd even bother getting a lawyer for that.)-"

Calling it a job done, Katarina pulled the conjuring tab off to the side and opened her spell modification tab.

Her pupils dilated.

"-(What... the... fu... duck, quack.)-"

The basic fireball she had queued up should have had a 'point pool' and sliders for cooldown, mana, direct blast damage per cast, fire-wave damage, fire-wave radius, maximum flight distance, and number of projectiles.

But there were no sliders in sight.

Instead, there was an entire array of runes, "Oh... shi... duck, quack."

"-(I forgot my past life never had to deal with this. And I'm terrible with... wait...)-"

Tilting her head, she eyed the circles within circles of runes. For a basic fireball, there were only three layers of circles; but even that usually made her head spin about how they interacted. However, Katarina noticed a suspiciously familiar pattern akin to the puzzle temples littered throughout the open world of the game.

"-(Each of those puzzles are meant to be the work of ancient wizards enhancing various spells to their absolute maximum potential. The prize at the center of the temple being reserved for only those young minds that can piece together the information leading up to the final chamber and use it to finish the spell puzzle. If that's correct, then...)-"

Her eyebrows furrowed as her lips pursed, "This there, then this up here, I need to add a new rune here, and then this one shifts over while adding these here. A new rune to link these, then..."

Three minutes later, Katarina smiled happily as she glanced over the numerical statistics of a nine-layer circle array of runes with over triple damage and radius on six projectiles; but only a thirty second cooldown.

"-(Well that's a lot better than sliders. A bit mana intensive and the cooldown is half of forever for a basic spell, but that's what all my maximum mana and mana regen are for anyway. Big, big spells.)-"

She paused, then squinted her eyes, "Also..."

"-(How long were these ancient magic people working on a single basic spell to make it this OP? This is better than some of the higher level spells after they've been slider modified.)-"

Her eyes widened.

"-(Wait... is this just what old, old people with magic do for fun? Make super-powerful spells? That's almost scary actually. Who knows what crazy spells they might have if that's all they do and these are their basic spells.)-"

Shuddering slightly, Katarina idly set her bear golem to start generating.

Another few minutes passed by in the blink of an eye as she went through spell combinations for basic spells from all of her classes; water manipulation, wind burst, stone knives, ice arrow, lightning stream, acid spray, lava manipulation, arcane bolt, necrotic bolt, life bolt, unholy bolt, holy bolt, vampiric roots, and healing burst. Unfortunately, she couldn't mess with a lot of things considered to be 'class features' like mana regeneration aura from archmagi or life regeneration aura from paladin. However, those were fairly powerful already; so reducing their area of effect to basically zero in exchange for more personal and party buffs would likely have been over powered anyway. Possibly drawing the eye of the god of balance and creation.

"-(Not entirely sure what would happen if I managed to make myself effectively unkillable, but I'd rather not make the literal highest authority around angry at me.)-"

She stretched slightly before beginning to summon her golems from the minion storage. Then she set each of her buff types except warlock and necromancer to include herself automatically, before registering those two for all of her pets. After casting each buff she then toggled the 'Hivemind' to replicate all of buffs, including the paladin's self-buffs, on to all of her minions. And finished up by toggling 'Might of the Pack'; converting the positive effects of every single buff into a singular life energy-based buff, but leaving the debuffs on the original target. Incidentally, golems were immune to the only debuffs from the pool; meaning they basically did not count.

"-(Probably better to get the mana regened to full now. I don't want to have anything embarrassing happen that could be easily avoided, like not having any mana when we enter the dungeon.)-"

Strangely, an overwhelming sense of awareness slowly filled her.

Katarina blinked, and they blinked with her.

The Shadowbloom felt her hair standing up on end, and watched as her golems fur slowly puffed up like the fur of real animals when they were scared and trying to seem larger.

More and more, she became... aware. Of herself. And her surroundings. And mana in the air. And the pulsating mana aura stones. And her fellow golems waiting for instruction just as she waited for instruction.

She wrenched herself back.

"-(Oh... duck. Quack.)-"

She shook her head and jittered slightly on the bench, "I didn't consider..."

Again, she shook her head.

"-(This feels weirder and weirder, the longer I have hivemind active. All this endless waiting. A constant sense of anticipation, but without any joy or fear or any other emotion.)-"

Afraid she would go mad, Katarina frowned and considered her problem. At first, pushing them away seemed like an attractive idea. However, then she thought about the purpose of the hivemind. One Mind. A joining of countless individuals to make a whole.

So she brought them closer, rather than further. Fit them over her own mind like countless gloves surrounding her mind, while also wrapping them all up in her own mind like rocks in a net. Adding her thoughts into their heads and, to a much lesser extent, their thoughts into hers.

But she was the core of it. The queen bee creating new golems and president making the final decisions, wrapped into one being. The very source of their prime directive.

Drawing upon them, she gave it a test drive; running the rules and regulations of rune arrays for spells that she knew through the hivemind. Then used it to scan over her knowledge of the enhanced spells she had found within puzzle vaults across the open world.

"-(New rules and regulations. Rules that the average person doesn't know about, or couldn't understand due to lacking foundational knowledge building up to it. I wonder if I could use these rules on higher level spells? Or even to create custom spells? Most spells we learned between ten and eighteen don't have any kind of class or similar requirement. Is there any reason I can't create other classless spells? I mean... maybe I should avoid combat spells. But still...)-"

She jerked slightly as footsteps entered her circle of golems and continued up closer, "Katarina Shadowbloom?"

The student nodded to what looked like one of the academy's 'cleaners', a job which involved both helping to keep the students in check and also actually cleaning up as if a janitor/butler, "Ah, hello sir. How are you today? Oh, Katarina is fine."

While they did have a review system using camera-like rune orbs around the school, it was better to be on the good side of the cleaners. If you were lucky and one or more cleaners liked you, they might even let small things slide that would ordinarily earn a small amount of detention points. These were points that had to be 'spent' before thirty days passed even if you had less than a full hour of detention, and could only be spent by attending detention for one full hour. Of course, there were still actions that automatically earned one or more full detentions and repeated offenses earned exponentially higher points, but multiple small issues during one bad day would usually only lead to a single detention.

The cleaner bowed his head slightly, "Quite well, and I hope you are as well. I have been requested by the headmaster and headmistress to bring you to them for dealing with an urgent matter."

Katarina blinked rapidly and checked the time.

"-(Oh geeze, I was buried in the hivemind for a while. It's almost nine already. Also, what's with this urgent matter thing? Wait, did I jinx myself earlier? Did a demon lord actually sneak into the school and start killing people? Does Paloma have plot armor here?)-"

Standing up, she eyed him hesitantly, "Did something happen to my group? Is Paloma alright?"

The cleaner lifted an eyebrow as he turned to lead her past the dormitories, towards the administrative building, "I believe she is fine. I do not recall anything happening to anyone on campus. Though my knowledge might be... outdated... or incomplete perhaps."

She nodded, still a bit confused, and followed along behind while sending her golems to the waiting area for the first dungeon.

"-(Wait... did something happen to my family? I mean... I don't think my backstory was ever expanded on in the game. But it didn't really seem like either Edward or I were upset during the first year; though I might not really be upset about either of my parents dying. Maybe I would? I... I don't know. It feels like I should and shouldn't care at the same time. If it did happen, maybe I did care and I just kept it inside 'to be a good noble with an image of strength'. Though, it's possible this is something that never happened inside the game.)-"

Along the way, she thought back on the past few hours and considered the coming conversation.

"-(All I have to do is not say anything weird. It's not that hard to get through a conversation like a normal person, without spouting endlessly about builds or something. People do it every day. Should be a piece of cake. Probably. Assuming I don't automatically do something weird and meme-y like saying 'I art normal human, hello fellow human, he he he he'. That would be bad, unless I accidentally uncover an alien conspiracy and get told off for not acting like a human properly. That would be good. But also very unlikely. And maybe a bit bad as well? Bad and good? I don't know.)-"

The cleaner stopped next to a door inside of a waiting room; which oddly lacked a receptionist like it had in the game, "Right through here, please."

"-(Maybe they're on break?)-"

Katarina bowed her head to him for a moment and entered into a wide and spacious office. There were two large desks slightly tilted to face each other and four rows of eight comfortable looking chairs with built-in cup holders. Off to the left, there was an entire room with an oval meeting table surrounded by more chairs. Around the main room, there were four doors and she knew two of them led to short hallways which in turn entered into individual bedrooms. Meanwhile a third led to a larger bedroom that was in use by the current headmaster and headmistress but, oddly, she had never actually found out what the fourth door allowed access to in the game. Though she suspected it to be some sort of filing room.

She blinked and glanced around. Strangely, the items usually put out on display via thirty or so pedestals along the edges of both rooms were encircled by curtains. This was something that had never happened in any of the game scenes.

"-(Maybe they're under repair? Or haven't been cleaned for the year yet? Why do I feel like I'm being watched? Wait... am I being watched?)-"

She paused halfway across the room as what seemed to be capital city guards stepped into the room behind her as more came into the room from the doors and the curtains opened to reveal another thirty.

"-(Well that's overkill.)-"

The headmistress stepped forward slightly, as it was her duty to deal with female students, "Katarina Shadowbloom, you stand accused of the most heinous crime of Necromancy and consorting with demons as a Warlock. How do you plead?"

Her eyes widened slightly, "Eh?"