I woke up when my skull bounced off the floor. Now a normal person would be pissed off being woken up by his bed being overturned, but not me. It was getting harder and harder each day to get out of bed and falling on the floor was a lot better than the punishments the matron dished out for being late to class. The cold water in the face trick stopped working a few weeks ago, so I had a standing request to my roommate to just tilt the bed until I fell out.

“Thanks, Grim,” I told my laughing roommate. As a half-orc, his sense of humor was pretty dark.

“Your head bounced like a ball. It was funny. Now hurry, we’re late for class, I made you sandwich it’s on the table next to the door, eat on the way.” Grim wouldn't let me near the small kitchen we had in our suite of rooms. It always surprised me that the 7 foot tall 5 foot wide half-orc’s favorite pastime was cooking. Today would be probably one of the last days that we would room together as tomorrow both he and I would take the adventurer's exam.

Going into the bathroom, I splashed some water on my face. Looking at it in the mirror, I saw that my skin was even darker than yesterday. I was always a pale kid growing up, but over the last couple of months, ever since my 18th birthday, my skin has been changing color and looking grayer and grayer. Also, all my hair had fallen out. The local doctor said that it wasn't a disease but probably had something to do with my unknown ancestry and to see what the adventurer exam would say about my race when I graduated.

I quickly got dressed, grabbed the sandwich, and followed Grim down to the classroom. We got there just as the ninth bell started ringing, me silently thanking Grim that he woke me up just in time.

The classroom we were in was a part of the adventurers' boarding school based in Storm’s Cove. A lot of adventurers didn't want to bring their kids along, so left them in the care of the boarding school. Most adventurer guild locations had one attached to their facilities. The school also doubled as an orphanage, as you can imagine the profession is not one of the safest. There were around 30 pupils in the room at the moment. The amount always varied as parents often moved kids to a boarding school close to where they were adventuring. It was a strange sight to see so many ages and races in one room at the same time, interspecies racism having mostly gone out the window a couple of millennia ago after the fifth, or was it the sixth apocalypse.

The matron entered the classroom. Even though she was a three-and-a-half foot halfling with bright pink hair, you quickly found out that she was probably the most dangerous person in the city. Even the current guild master who was a Minotaur knew not to mess with her, although her being his wife might have something to do with that.

“Good morning children, today is a special day. For four of our students, it will be their last day here. They will be taking the adventurer’s exam tomorrow and moving out.” She hopped up behind the lectern that was at the front of the class. She had a few boxes set up so that she could actually stand behind it. The first time Grim saw that he couldn't help snickering, which is how the wall at the back was decorated with an upside-down Grim shaped hole in it. Best to say nobody made fun of the Matron's height after that.

“As Drakon the Unknown, Grim the half-orc, and Missy and Sissy the Gorgon twins will be leaving us, I will be giving a small lecture on adventurers today instead of the regular subjects.” It seemed that today was going to be an easy day as it was a subject that most of us knew a lot about from our parents. For me though as I was adopted as a baby, and then only a few years after my adventurer parents died, I always loved hearing about adventurer life.

“After the first apocalypse, known as the system apocalypse, people started to manifest powers, back then it was all unregulated and everyone from the smallest baby to the oldest trees in the forests started to get weird and wonderful powers. It was total chaos for over two thousand years when the second apocalypse happened. Someone cast a summoning spell that went terribly wrong. The original human home-world called earth was merged with twenty other planets to make the planet we are on now. After the dust settled humans found that they were no longer the only ones on the planet. Over the next tens of thousands of years over a dozen new planet-spanning disasters happened. From wild dungeons appearing and sending out waves of monsters, to the great impact where earth's moon finally succumbed to the higher gravity of the new planet, crashed into the great ocean and the tidal waves wiped out almost all the coastal cities at the time.” Matron started. “These disasters were all called apocalypses, and after a while, we're used to denote the passage of time. Sometime during age six, the great adventure guilds were founded to help civilization survive.”

Even though we had all heard this story over a dozen times we were still trying to listen to every word.

She continued “The Adventure Guild is independent of any kingdom and its main task is to regulate the people who have powers. Because of a great spell devised at the time, nobody would manifest any powers until they became of age and could come to an adventure guild facility to get tested. After the test and finding out the class you are, you are assigned a threat level. Everyone with a threat rating over a certain threshold must either join the adventure guild, go in service with one of the kingdoms, or can decide to have their powers sealed until they are willing to do either of the first two things.”

Matron then went on to tell us about a few of the classes that we might get. “Nobody knows how a person's class is decided, but it almost always suits the person's personality. Also, nobody knows how many classes there are as new rare ones pop up every couple of years. And even on the more common ones, none seem to have the same progression. Take a warrior for instance. Most warriors start out with being able to wear medium armor. Now as they go through their path in life, some might specialize in heavy armor, some might not. There are skills and sub-skills for almost any conceivable weapon, and again as new weapons are designed new skills have appeared over the centuries. Some might get the rarer class of spear-men instead of warrior, and be able to learn more skills with the spear faster to the detriment of not gaining any skills in other weapons. There are classes like duelist who focus on light weapons and light armor, and behemoths who wear heavy plate and use tower shields but move very slowly in combat. It's the same with mages, clerics, and the other dozens of the more common classes.”

“That concludes the morning lecture. Drakon, Grim, Missy, and Sissy you are all dismissed from the afternoon session. After lunch, you should head up to your rooms to start packing. Your first inventory chest should have been delivered just outside your door. It’s a dimensional chest that has almost infinite space. As its bound location on this plane can only be set every seven days it’s not really meant for the road, it’s meant to either go in your house or get put into your guild lodging. Once you have bound the chest to yourself, which you can do by having a small drop of blood drip onto the keyhole, it can only be opened by you, people you designate, your descendants after your death, or in the very rare case by the guild master with approval of a guild tribunal.”

After that, Grim and I made our way up to our room and spent the rest of the day packing up everything apart from the beds, bedding, and a fresh pair of clothes for the next day.