Arianne’s father woke me up the next morning by shouting and banging on the door again. I immediately got up and got dressed before I went down to the first floor. Arianne was standing at the counter waiting for her father to come down so that they could start serving breakfast. I decided to walk up to her and ask a question that I should probably have asked yesterday at the arms school.

“Hey, morning Arianne.” I said and waved my hand.

“Morning, Mr Grandwell.”

I flinched at the name. I just couldn’t do it. I didn’t mind Garlyn, but Grandwell was just too much. “Please, just call me Garlyn, kay?” I asked, maybe a bit too desperately.

“If you say so.” She said and giggled.

“Anyways, I sort of wanted to ask you a question. You see I went to the arms school yesterday and enrolled. My first session is today at noon, but I forgot to ask when that is specifically. You wouldn’t happen to know, would you?”

“If they said noon, they probably meant at twelve then.”

“Twelve. Okay, what time is it now? Do you have a clock or something?”

She gave me a funny look and pointed at the wall behind me. I looked there before I turned back to her with my eyebrows raised. “You’re serious? That’s a clock?”

On the wall behind me hung a rectangular wooden board with a line going down the middle. On both sides of the line there were several characters that I didn’t understand carved out which formed a rectangle. On each side of the board one of these characters were currently lit up with a pale blue light. Just as I was looking at it, I saw the character that was lit up on the right side of the line stop shining and the character next to it light up instead. I’d noticed the board before, but I seriously just thought it was decorative…

“Yes, of course that’s a clock. Have you never seen one before?” She asked.

“No, of course I’ve seen a clock before. It’s just that the clocks where I’m from doesn’t look like that. They’re more… round.”

“They’re round? That’s weird”

I got slightly defensive. “No, it’s not. Your clocks are weird. Our clocks are logical and easy to understand. I have no idea what yours is even saying.”

“I’ll teach you then.” She said and walked over to the clock. She spent the next few minutes pointing to the different characters on the clock and explained what time they signified. It wasn’t that different from the clocks I was used to be honest. The characters on the left side of the board signified hours and the characters on the right side of the board signified minutes, with it changing every five minutes.

When her father came back and she went away to help him with the food, I sat down and examined the clock a bit more. Right now, it was pointing at the character signifying eight in the morning. Then she came with the food and I hurriedly consumed all of it. I wanted to ask Arianne a few more things in general but I decided to wait until evening. Instead I decided to go up to my room for a few hours and keep practicing controlling my mana.

I only knew how to use two spells at the moment and I desperately wanted to learn more as soon as possible. Considering that I was going to learn how to fight I also wanted to learn the spells that were more combat-oriented. The problem was that most spells I could think of probably required me to move the mana outside of my body, which I couldn’t do. But that’s why I had to keep training.

However, there were some spells that I hoped I could do without moving mana outside my body. There was one spell called ‘Spatial Edge’ that involved creating a fissure in space at the edge of your weapon’s blade to make it cut through things easier. Even though that spell was supposed to be used with a weapon I was thinking that it might work if I just created the fissure at the top of my hand instead. It’d be a bit like when I performed ‘Dimensional storage’ but I wouldn’t connect the fissure to my storage this time.

What I was training right now in was to collect all the mana at the top of my hand instead of just one finger. I’d started training it the night before and after a couple of hours of training this morning I felt that I could manage to gather a decent amount of the mana at the top of my hand. It wasn’t as focused as when I used ‘Dimensional Storage’, but I’ve had more time training that so that wasn’t weird.

When I finally felt ready to use try it, I gathered the mana in my right hand and tried thinking of creating a fissure like the one that I’ve created before. But I didn’t want it to my storage this time, nor did I want it to stay in the air after I’d created it. I wanted the fissure to be small and follow my hand.

I looked at the tip of my hand and smiled as I saw that space seemed to almost warp around it. It wasn’t very noticeable, but it was there. I then took a crappy leather shoe which I had taken out from my storage earlier and tried cutting it with my hand. My hand split it in two like a knife through butter. The spell lasted for maybe a dozen or so seconds before my hand returned to normal. When I tried casting it again though, I found that I had to wait for almost a whole minute before I could use it again without suffering the ‘cooldown’ drawbacks. I actually couldn’t remember the cooldown for the low-level version of the spell, so I wasn’t sure if that fit with how it was in the game or not. At max-level that spell just becomes a permanent buff so it had been some time since I last had to cast that spell.

I spent a little while using the spell and getting a feel for it before I determined that it was probably time to head out. I went downstairs and looked at the weird clock. If I read it right, it was just after eleven so I shouldn’t have a problem with making it there on time. Yesterday it had almost taken an hour, but I got lost and had to ask for directions a few times. This time I knew the way. Sort of.

Before I left the inn, I walked up to Arianne’s father and told him I’d be staying for a while. I paid him up front for five more days and then I left. I should probably know the name of the guy by now, but I haven’t really talked to the him and I’m the kind of person who finds it awkward to ask for somebody’s name this late.

The streets were packed with people at this time and I observed the environment around me as I walked. Like earlier days most of the people walking around were human, but I saw the occasional non-human like dwarfs or halflings here and there. This time I’m also positive that I saw an elf! He wore a fine red robe, had long golden hair and golden eyes that I swear were glowing. I recognized him as a Sun Elf from ‘The Wayfarer’s Realm’. He also had a much more mundane human at his side that I presume were a guard, considering the fact that he had a long sabre that hung at his side. Both of them entered a large building that was finely decorated from the outside with red tapestry. It reminded me of some of the faction buildings that existed in the game. My guess is that it was an embassy of some kind. If it was an embassy for the Sun Elves, it’d be better to avoid that place. In the game most of them were arrogant assholes that spent most of their time praying to fire and setting fire to stuff.

When I walked my attention was also caught by the tall tower in the middle of the city. I still didn’t know what it was, but I was planning on asking Arianne about it tonight. Hopefully I could learn a few things about this place from her, considering that I couldn’t go to a library or bookstore to find stuff out. I think I’ve already demonstrated to her that I’m a complete doofus when it comes to this city so she shouldn’t be too surprised by my questions.

When I finally reached the Grimwick Arms School and entered the main lobby I saw the same man and woman as yesterday, but there were also a few other people here too. Sitting around a round table at the side of the room were two guys around my age just chatting and not far away from them was a couch where two middle-aged man laughed together. When the woman saw me, she waved to one of the middle-aged men and he bid his friend goodbye before he rose and walked up to me.

“You Gralyn Yates?” He said and stretched his hand out towards me.

I grabbed it and shook his hand. “Well, Garlyn actually. But yeah, that’s me.”

He was about my height, which is to say, he was relatively tall. He had a short brown beard that covered much of his face and bangs that covered much of the rest. He looked pretty muscular. More than me at least, but I’m not sure if that means that he’s stronger than me or not.

“Nice to meet you. I’m your instructor. Name’s Manilo Nimmen, but you can just call me Nimmen.” He said and withdrew his hand, then signalled me to follow him. “Come here, we’ll talk whilst we walk. You’re early and technically I have a break, but I can’t say I mind. I don’t get to many students nowadays so someone like you who basically took up all my free slots by yourself is a bit of a godsend.”

“I’m just glad I get the chance to train as much as possible.”

“Hah, that’s the right attitude. Do you have any experience with the halberd from earlier?”

“My dad taught me how to fight with it when I was younger, but that was a while ago so I’m not sure how much I remember.” I answered. I didn’t know whether or not Garlyn’s halberd proficiency from the game would make any difference for me, so it was better to play it safe.

“Not to insult your father then, but we’ll start with the basics just to be sure. I’ve had enough students who started out with the wrong kind of training and I know how problematic it can be to fix it when it’s too late.”

“That’s fine. I’d prefer if we started from the basics anyway.”

He led me outside and to one of the large training halls that were part of the school. There was one huge room that you saw as soon as you entered the building and several doors at the side of the larger room. Nimmen led me to one of those doors and inside I saw a medium-sized room filled with wooden dolls and weapons on the sides. Leaning on the wall next to the door was three different halberds which he walked up to and pointed towards. “These are the halberds I brought for you. They’re all of good quality so pick one and we’ll see how it works for you.”

I looked at the halberds and was a little disappointed. They were all just ordinary halberds. A long wooden shaft with an axe blade topped with a spike and hooks on the other side. The size and shape of the hook and axe differed a little between the halberds, but not by much. I expected this, but it’s still disappointing. Compared to the halberds that I’ve, hopefully, got hidden somewhere in my inventory these were all really plain. But I’d just have to live with that until I got something better. Preferably something magical. God, I really wanted access to the rest of my storage.

I chose the halberd with the largest blade and grabbed it. To me it didn’t feel heavy at all and I could easily wave it around. It wasn’t as clumsy as I would have expected. I turned to Nimmen and held up the halberd. “I guess I’ll take this one.”

At that he smiled and took grabbed another one of the halberds himself. “Good. Then, let’s start our first lesson.”