Kay shifted in place on the bench in the school hallway and leaned back against the wall again after he got part of his belt to stop pinching against his leg.

“Do you think there will be that much of a change?” Lauren asked lowly from her spot next to him.

He looked up at his bodyguard and captain of his personal troops. Usually, when they were in Avalon, Lauren wasn’t part of his immediate guard detail since she had work to do running the entire Blood Guard, but since Project Chord was as secret as they could make it, Lauren was the only one that could go with him as a guard. He’d partially expected her to switch off with someone else when they’d gotten back above ground, but she’d just grabbed a few more of the Guard to make a full detail and stayed in place. She slowly panned her gaze back and forth across the empty hallway, checking for threats, but paused to glance down at him when he didn’t respond for a moment.

“You mean the gu- … stuff we were just talking about with Cindy?”

“Yeah. The way she was talking about them when the two of you were discussing the difference between your original worlds… It was a bit frightening.”

Cindy had been excited enough to hear about his version of Earth versus hers that it’d gotten them both past the pangs and aches of homesickness that usually kept them from discussing the topic in too much depth. From what they could tell, their two versions had been largely the same until the early two-thousands, when things changed heavily. On Kay’s Earth, the attempted terrorist attacks against a number of important locations via hijacked planes had been mostly stopped, with all of the planes being successfully stopped by a combination of preexisting security features, brave individuals that had put themselves at risk to save others, and really bad luck on the part of the terrorists. On Cindy’s Earth, it had ended entirely differently.

With the Twin Towers in New York City destroyed, a piece of the Pentagon crushed, and a huge chunk of Washington DC flattened from one of the planes crashing right before it got to the White House, America had been devastated by the loss of so many lives and government figures. The subsequent military action taken by the American military to “root out the terrorist threat” devolved into a multi-way war in the Middle East that Cindy told them had come mere minutes from outright nuclear war.

That apparently led to a second Cold War that sent military research into the stratosphere and the creation of many technologies that Kay had only heard of in sci-fi books. The widespread use of energy weapons started leading to the loss of knowledge about standard firearms, and many historical societies, including the SCA that Cindy had been a part of, had started adding historical firearms knowledge and training into their repertoires. At that point, Cindy started gushing about black powder firearms, including both technical information and actual usage historically and in theory.

“Hmm.” He leaned back far enough to rest his head against the wall, “Well, honestly, yes and no. There are going to be some changes from it, but not to the extent that we saw back on our versions of Earth. Firearms took over as the weapon there because there was no magic and no System. A weapon that killed just as well as a longbow but with a quarter of the training just made sense. But Skills, Classes, various kinds of magic, enchanting, new materials…” He waved his hand in a circle, “All kinds of things here make it a much different prospect. People that have other Combat Classes aren’t going to become obsolete, and we’re not going to see that much of a fundamental change in war or combat here.” Kay gave her a serious look, “I think there is going to be change, though. At minimum, we’re going to see the same level of change as any other new Class Line popping up has. The fact that we’re going to have at least three Class Line Progenitors here is what’s really making me worried. I also think there’s going to be some good results, too, though.”

Lauren looked down at him out of the corner of her eye. “What’s that?”

“Lower tier people with no Combat Class Slots or who don’t want to focus on fighting will hopefully get a better way to defend themselves in a pinch, hopefully. Guns really do take a lot less training to be at least decent with them, and that could give a lot of people an option to save themselves from a monster or something that they might not have had. I don’t think it’s going to change anything about how much work you need to get a tier one Class with them,” He added, “Or how much work it’ll take to tier up, but if you don’t care about a Class for it and only see it as an ‘oh shit a monster’ emergency weapon…” He shrugged.

“Thank you. That answered pretty much everything I was wondering about.” She nudged him with her elbow as she looked away, “You should focus more on not bringing up secret stuff, though.”

Kay froze. “Shit.”

“The rest of the detail is out of earshot, and I have a silencing charm on,” She held up a hand and showed him a small piece of paper with runic writing on it that was slowly burning away from the bottom, “So there’s no one to hear it right now, but it’s something to practice more.”

He sat back with a groan. “I know, I know. Eleniah’s been on me about that for ages, and Isla’s started getting me on it too.”

“They’re both right.”

“Oh, trust me, I know they are, and I think I’m getting better at it, but it’s…” He trailed off into silence for a moment. Eventually, he sighed, “It’s just another skill I’m not that good at that I need to improve. The rest doesn’t really matter at this point,” He muttered.

Lauren smiled a little and didn’t say anything.

They stayed there for a bit longer, not really talking, while they waited for the class Eleniah was teaching to end. Eventually, the door across from the bench he was sitting on opened, and a number of kids started pouring out. They were all somewhere around six years old, and most of them were talking animatedly with their friends as they headed out into the hallway. A few of them noticed Kay and stopped with starstruck expressions.

Kay let the floating mass of blood he’d been practicing with flow back into one of his storage containers and waved with a grin. At the level he’d gotten to in Blood Manipulation, it wasn’t easy grinding out more levels, so he’d started making non-euclidean shapes that flowed from one eye-catching display into another.

Some of the kids waved back with big smiles, while others walked off, whispering with others. One boy started slowly walking away without taking his eyes off Kay, eyes wide with wonder. Then he ran into a wall and fell back onto his butt. Kay was about to go check on him when a few other kids ran over and pulled him up. The kid who’d fallen grinned at them while blushing with embarrassment, and they all walked off.

As more doors started opening and more young people started moving through the halls, Kay’s detail moved closer, both shrinking the amount of space they needed to guard and also getting out of the way of the people trying to get through. The part of the school building they were in if the large complex literally carved from the rock of the cliff, could be called a building as opposed to a bunker or something similar, was for the pre-System kids, anyone that hadn’t reached their species’ age of maturity and gotten their first Class.

One particular young woman did an aggressive double take when she saw Kay and froze in place, staring at him. The flabbergasted stare turned into a fierce glare less than a moment later, and she very slowly prowled down the hall and into one of the classrooms.

“Was that…?”

“The girl who demanded you train her, yes.”

“The ten-year-old, right?”

“She’s eleven now, but yes, you’re thinking of the right person. She’s been showing up to the Guard’s training on a regular basis.” Lauren chuckled and shook her head, “It’s been enough of a disturbance that Tyuah actually took her aside and had a talk with her.”

“How’d that go?”

“Tyuah told me she was quite stern with her and told her about how much trouble she was causing and how she was hurting her chances of ever learning Blood Manipulation or any of your other Skills.” She paused and looked down at Kay, “Now the girl’s declared herself Tyuah’s personal squire and spends all her free time following her around, trying to be helpful.”

Kay tipped his head back and laughed. “Really? That’s hilarious!”

Lauren grinned along with him, “Yes, Tyuah was quite put out for a moment, but she’s starting to take it in stride.”

“A squire, huh? How do Knights work in Torotia?”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, a Knight Class. Back on my Earth, a knight was a low-level noble with a title who might also be a warrior, but they were stereotypically seen as heavily armored warriors with melee weapons.”

“Oh, you’re talking about the difference between a knight and a knight? I’d heard that there was some Outworlder thing that linked those two, but I’d never actually run into it before.”

Kay’s expression went flat for a second, “That was the same word twice to me.”

“Oh. Well, a knight, as in the noble, is a person with a title for it, and they might have a Class related to that, like you have your Lord Class, and a knight is an armored melee fighter like you mentioned.”

“Does it help anything if you’re both?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Well, we’ll probably have both in the future, so we can just test things then,” Kay sighed, “I was also wondering if we’d end up with any Blood Knights or something.”

Lauren thought about it and asked, “Do you want to? It’s your prerogative to do anything like that.”

“Maybe.” He hedged. “We’ll see. Oh, looks like Eleniah’s class just emptied.”

They headed over to the open door, his detail making a loose circle around Kay as they went, and he paused in the doorway when he saw one last child having an animated conversation with Eleniah. She’d told him before how her first love had always been teaching and that she particularly loved teaching the younger children, even if she was experienced at teaching people of any age. He could see that clearly by the delighted smile on her face and the gleam in her eyes as he watched a little boy animatedly explain some topic that Kay’d obviously not heard enough of the conversation to understand much of.

“And then Urma threw him into the lake, and he got eaten by the giant monster fish!” The kid finished, throwing up his arms dramatically.

“Wow!” Eleniah exclaimed, mirroring the arm movements, “That’s so exciting!” She glanced up at Kay with a grin and reached forward to pat the boy on the head gently, “Thank you for telling me such a great story! You have your Class exploring class next, right?”

“Yeah!”

“Well, you’d better go before you end up being late, okay? You can tell me more tomorrow for our next class!”

“Alright! I’ll see you then!”

The kid whirled around, obviously preparing to run out the door, and almost tripped when he froze, staring up at the group of people in the doorway. “… Lord Kay?”

“Hey,” Kay said with a smile, “How’re you doing today?”

The kid grinned, “I’m doing awesome! Miss Eleniah is the best teacher ever!”

“I know, right? I’m actually here to get her help with some stuff.”

“So Miss Eleniah really is your teacher too?”

Kay nodded, “She is.”

“That’s so cool!” The boy shouted, jumping into the air with excitement, “We have the same teacher as Lord Kay! I’m gonna go tell everybody!” He sprinted to the doorway, then stopped and very politely asked to get through. Everyone stepped out of his way, grinning fondly at him as he resumed sprinting down the hallway.

Kay turned back to see Eleniah watching the boy run off with a gentle smile on her face. “Do you mind? I really do need some help, but I don’t want to interrupt you doing this kind of teaching.”

“Of course, I don’t mind. I love teaching kids, but that doesn’t mean I’ll suddenly stop being your mentor,” She pushed herself out of her chair and started stretching her back. “So, what do you need help with?”

“I think it’s time I pushed for tier five,” Kay replied.

Eleniah’s eyes lit up, “Oh! So you’re finally going to get off your ass and really push for power, huh? It’s about damn time!”

Kay turned his head to look at Lauren. “Why are there so many damn snarky people around giving me shit all the time?”

“There’s only actually two of them, my Lord.” She said back with a straight face, “They’re both just really loud with it.” She paused for effect, then added, “Of course, you did pick them up yourself, so it’s your own fault, really.”