Connection

After ascertaining some basic facts regarding my power levels and abilities, Akash had retreated back onto the open air balcony that made up a majority of his classroom.

The plant alien had jammed its vines back into the ground and explained that the nutrients in the soil would help heal him, in actual fact I hadn't done that much damage and had instead just taken him off guard with my overwhelming defense.

Then he had given me my training regimen going forward.

It sounded a lot like school.

There was going to be a lot of group learning with a wider class of students that were at the beginner level, because while my powers may have been strong I was still completely reliant on the system to use them… and that had a habit of going for the overkill option before anything else.

I was a bit like a ticking time bomb at the moment. Or a grenade with a dodgy fuse.

Stick me in the right situation and the system would take over, decimating anything that it deemed to be a threat.

I needed to get good enough at controlling my powers and magitech in general so that the system didn't really see me as being under threat any more.

If I could do that, then the people around me would end up being a whole lot more safe.

That was all to come, though.

Within minutes after my fight with Akash had come to a close my stomach made itself known once more, gurgling loudly.

I'd been in this universe for the better part of a day at this point and I still hadn't had anything to eat.

That was how I found myself wandering the corridors of the complex looking to find my way back to my room or, at the very least, to the canteen.

I'd never had a very good sense of direction.

Back on my original Earth I'd had to primarily rely on things like Google Maps to get around, even in locations that I'd visited multiple times in the past.

Now, lost in the cavernous corridors of a magical castle on an alien world, I truly had no idea where I was or where I was meant to be going.

"So rumour has it there's a human of all things joining the Academy," I heard a voice say from around a corner.

I drew to a stop as quietly as I could. With so many aliens around still leery of the human race I didn't want to give myself away. If they tried to start something I wasn't sure what would happen.

"Ugh, they'll let just about anyone in with a shred of mana in them these days," A second voice said, the disgust in their tone was obvious.

"Eh, it is what it is. I didn't even think their kind had magic. That was why they waged their war on the rest of us in the first place, wasn't it?" The first repeated.

"It's rare but it happens, not like that stupid princess who came down here with him," The second snorted, "She can't even open up her door without a key!"

For some reason that irked me even more than the attacks on my human heritage.

It was one thing to have a go at someone you didn't know because you were scared of them, it was another to make fun of someone because they couldn't do the same things that you could.

I turned on my heel angrily, no longer worried about being heard by the pair of unknown aliens around the corner.

I was going to find Niva, and I was going to help her… If I could. I was sure I could. When my thoughts lingered on the idea, the feeling I got from the system suggested that I could.

I wound through the corridors once again, passed Akash's classroom and walked in the other direction.

Before long I found myself back outside the doors that lead to Niva and I's rooms.

I raised my hand to knock on her door, but hesitated.

Was I doing the right thing? Sticking my nose in where it wasn't necessarily wanted? She didn't trust me either, after all. It was perfectly possible that she wouldn't want my help, even if I could give it to her.

That wasn't going to stop me.

I took a breath, swallowed my anxiety, and knocked a few times on the door.

There was a moment of silence, and then the soft steps of socked feet on the flagstone floor of Navi's room.

The door swung open and Navi sighed when she realized it was me on the other side.

"Oh," she said, "It's you… What do you want?"

"Can I uh… Can I come in?" I asked, "I don't really want to talk about this, you know, out here. Where anyone could end up listening in."

She looked at me for a few moments, her eyes narrowed in disbelief, before finally stepping aside to allow me access to her room.

By the looks of things she'd already had a bunch of her things teleported down from the orbiting space station into the room as it looked much more personalized than mine had.

If anything, the room looked as if it had been lived in for months.

"I thought you'd only just come down here with me," I remarked, with a nod directed at the various personal effects.

"Just get in here already and tell me what you want to tell me so you can leave and I can go back to being angry at just about everything," Niva huffed.

I didn't want to piss her off any more than she clearly already was, so I stifled the smirk that threatened to break out across my lips as I crossed the threshold into Niva's room.

She shut the door behind me with a slam and shoved her way past, taking a seat on the only chair in the room.

"So I met with one of the teachers today," I started, "And when I was trying to find my way back to here I overheard two of the students talking about both me and you."

"About… Us?" Niva cut in, her face a sudden grimace of disgust, "Ew, gross, you're a human there's no such thing as an us."

"Okay, one that's not what I meant, two, overreaction much?" I shot back with a shake of my head, "Look, that's not the point. The point is, they were making fun of you and it kind of pissed me off."

Niva stopped glaring at me and cast her gaze to the ground instead.

"So what, you just came to tell me that some random person was talking about me behind my back?" She said, "If that's the case you might as well just leave now because I don't want to hear anything else."

"I'm here because I want to help, damn it," I snapped, shutting her up, "My mana, my abilities, they work in… in weird ways, ways that I don't understand. But I want to try and help you."

Slowly Niva looked back up from the ground, as if she couldn't believe what she was hearing. As if she couldn't believe that a human would actually want to help her of all people.

"Look, insanity of that statement aside, it's literally impossible," Niva sighed, "You either awaken or you don't, that's just how it is in this universe. I wouldn't expect some otherworlder to understand."

I felt another nudge from my system, like a presence in the back of my mind telling the rest of me that she was mistaken.

I leaned into it.

She wasn't going to listen to me, so there was no point in trying to argue with her. Instead I was just going to go ahead and do it.

[Connection Protocols Online: Invite 'Niva' to your party?]

I took a deep breath and thought the word 'yes' in the direction of the system. Surely that would be enough to get the job done.

[Niva has joined your party!]

[Niva has been upgraded to class Celestial Knight!]

I had no idea what a Celestial Knight was, but I could only assume it was a good thing.

A lance of blue energy pierced from my chest and into Niva's before she even had the chance to react.

The blue light covered her entirely and then slowly sank underneath her skin.

It was done.

I could feel it.

She hummed with power. I could feel it through the distance between us. It made my hair stand up on end.

"What… What the hell did you do to me?" Niva asked, staring at her own hand as little arcs of blue energy flickered between her fingers.

"I helped you," I replied, "Just like I said I would. Now there's actually a reason for you being here, you know, other than keeping tabs on me I mean."

Niva looked as if she were about to cry. I'd just changed everything.