When I woke up a blue screen was in front of my eyes that just read “Initializing…,” I waited a few minutes while looking around the room, I noticed Xianthia on a bed beside me, she was awake as well and smiled at me when she noticed I was looking at her. I thought at her “You ok?”

She nodded at me and thought back “ Initializing here still, one of the mages said it can take 5 to 10 minutes for the implant to make sure of the connections before it finishes the process. She said since I was up she was going to assume you would be soon too and went to get Tabby.”

I thought OK back to her and waited for the process to finish or Tabby to arrive. About 7 minutes later a couple of screens started appearing before me, one said Setup complete, another informed me that backup was synchronized. A few seconds later they disappeared, and when I turned to look at Xiantha again I saw above her a screen that said Xiantha, Imp and a threat level line with a “?”. I was not sure what that meant so I resolved to ask Tabby about it when she arrived. Xiantha told me that she had the same screens only for me it showed Alex Johnson, Human with a second line that said Warlock Initiate.

A few minutes later Tabby walked in, and when I looked at her I saw Tabitha La Roux, Human The next line said Elder Warlock, and finally the Threat level ?. I went ahead and asked her why the threat level showed a question mark, and she replied, “That is because you do not know how to assess that information yet. We will get to that later today. First, you both need to eat, then we will learn general spells and abilities. Once that is done you will separate to train. Alex in magic, and Xiantha to assess how she fights, and then offer further training and suitable gear for that.”

She had us follow her from the building, and by thinking about it, I could get an overlay of a map as well as see descriptions for the buildings that we were passing. She ended up taking us to an inn not too far from the administration building called Compass Needle Inn. She told us that for the time being until our training was complete we would be staying here at the Inn. She told us that she had some things to take care of and that once we finished eating to think the command “waypoint general studies” and the implant should give us directions to our first course. The teacher would be expecting them within the hour and would provide instructions from there. With that, she left us, and we approached one of the servers and explained that we were staying there. The server told us to take a seat and to think the command Compass Needle menu, and it should appear for us. She also scanned our eyes for opening the door to the room that we would share here.

I followed her advice and thought menu, and it appeared. I was thrilled by this because of how useful this implant was turning out to be. There were items listed that I had never heard of before, and with our limited time before class rather than trying something new, I chose to get a hamburger and fries for the time being. Xiantha was in worse shape than me, having never seen anything like this before. I called the server over and asked her what she would recommend for my partner, and she told us that Demons usually enjoyed any types of meats, sometimes grains. In this case, she would suggest the burger for now, and maybe for dinner, we could try a sampler to see what we might like more. That sounded reasonable, so we both had hamburgers, and after eating we asked payment, she told us that it was added to what we owed total and taken care of until we could pay everything back.

This was news to us, so we asked her to explain what she meant. She told us that there was a cost inferred with everything that was given to us, and that by accepting the implant and training we volunteered as vassals of Underland for life, or until we paid off the entirety of the debt owed. To see what the debt was we would have to go to the bank and check our accounts. We thanked her for the information and left to go to training.

Xiantha thought at me “ That’s not exactly what they told us before we got the implants. I mean I know we said in the event of an attack we would help fight, but vassals sounds like there is more involved.”

I thought back, “ I know what you mean. Either way, we need the training, and thanks to these implants we have lots of years to get out from under this. We need to find out though what the charges are, and see about working off this debt as soon as possible. We need to make sure we do not incur any more debt than absolutely necessary.”

She agreed with me, and I thought waypoint, general studies, suddenly before me was a yellow line overlaying the roadway. It went up about 1000 feet in front of us then made a right down another road heading past the administration building again to a smaller building that took up more space on the ground than it did going vertical. Surrounding the building were areas with lots of trees of different kinds, there were also tilled areas where people were growing plants by holding their hands over them. There were fenced in areas where people were swinging weapons of various types, archery ranges, even areas where people were throwing spells around. I started to feel dejected because looking around most of those I saw training were much younger looking than I was, around 8 to 15 from what I could tell. The building itself looked like it held two stories and when I looked at it, I saw above the building Underland Academy. The waypoint led us inside the building and up the staircase to a room on the second floor. We entered the room and inside we found an elf seated at a desk.

When I looked at the elf, I saw above him

Liath Halsin, Elf

General Studies Teacher

Threat level ?

When he saw us walk in, he directed us to have a seat and explained what he did. He informed us that normally students start here about 8 years old and they learn from general studies things like history, math, and spelling. They also learn certain general spells that are not affiliated with any specific school, like the ability to see better in the dark, or being able to send out mana pulses to get information back on people and animals around them. He also told them that he trained in the use of the implant and that normally students took his courses for two to three years. He then said, “You two though are different. You, Alex, are already too old to go have to sit with 8-year-olds. You would be a distraction, and a lot of the information would be similar to what you learned in the upper realm. Xiantha, you also do not need all of the information. You are bonded to Alex so he will help you gain the knowledge that you might be lacking. What we will do instead is give an intense lesson over things that are important to know, then the rest you will learn as needed.”

I felt grateful that I would not have to take two years of schooling and I did not mind teaching Xiantha either to help her avoid it as well, so I agreed with the teacher quickly.

What followed was an intense two days of training. First, he helped us find out our statistics, he told us to think “status”, and it should appear.

Alex Johnson

Human, Male

18 years old

Threat level 1

Strength

8

Stamina

9

Dexterity

8

Intelligence

12

Wisdom

9

Health 90/90

Mana 120/120

I asked Xiantha what hers was and she told me

Xiantha

Imp Demon, Female

17 years old

Threat level 2

Strength

8

Stamina

8

Dexterity

14

Intelligence

10

Wisdom

11

Health 80/80

Mana 100/100

The teacher explained that items could be created by artificers that could artificially increase statistics, but to permanently raise a statistic, you would need to take action such as casting difficult spells, running, and weightlifting. Different things would increase statistics over time. He also explained that our statistics make up the threat level. A baseline human would have between 40 to 45 statistic points total. That would be threat level 1, at 50 statistic points you would reach Threat level 2. This was why with my 46 total points I was level 1, and Xiantha was level 2 with her 51 points. He explained that every 5 points in statistics represented another threat level.

He then told us how when we looked at someone currently their threat level appeared as a ?, To fix that we needed to learn how to send a directed mana pulse at the person we were looking at. He explained that it worked similar to echolocation and returned with an approximate reading of what the total statistics of the object in question was. He also said that with training, you could feel when a mana pulse was done to you, so it was generally considered rude to use except when fighting. It also could signify that you are about to be attacked.

He then spent the next few hours directing us to locate our mana in our bodies and how to direct that into an aimed pulse. He explained that over time it would become almost second nature and that multiple pulses could eventually be sent and read with the help of the implant. He then taught us how to share information between our implants either once, or continuously so we could check on each other, or get threat information without sending out separate mana pulses. After that, he taught us how to use utility spells like

Dark Sight, alters eyes to receive more light to see better in the dark. Bright light can damage eyes while active.

5 mana to cast, then 10 mana per minute afterward.

He said that would be really useful if we needed to hunt while underground without giving ourselves away with torches or flashlights. Overall we spent about 8 hours with him in training and once we finished he excused us saying that he would report to Tabby and she would direct us in the morning.

We left him then and followed the waypoint back to the inn for the night, both of fairly exhausted. The inn room was bustling with activity, and our server from earlier was still working. We had to wait for a table to free and luckily it was with her again so when she got to us she remembered the sampler and got it started for us. We ended up trying several new dishes including some type of lizard from an elf world with vegetables from trees there that were similar to Earths potatoes which was my favorite since it was fairly spicy. There was meat from cats, birds, and fish. A lot of it was recognizable on sight but not by name, and the flavors were different than what I was used to with the various seasonings as well. After that, we talked, and people watched for a little while before retiring to bed.