Fifteen Credits I Never Got Back

I promptly left the classroom after the trio killed my mood in pursuit of a place where I would not be bothered by people. It was better this way. The faster I was out of sight, the better it'd be everyone involved.

Not that they'll even acknowledge me in the first place.

For the record, I wasn't leaving for their sake — the commoners in my class. Couldn't give a shit about them. No, I left because if I didn't, I'd eventually get harassed. Not by them, of course, but by their owners.

I'm absolutely sure they have some kind of bet or challenge going on among themselves.

It's been a recurring annoyance ever since the end of my first year here, and it's never stopped since then. They're slick about how they go about it, but in the end, it's all the same.

Some of the more rotten bastards in here have tried to get me to bend the knee, to shake their hands and "accept their friendship."

An ingenious cover for their game, might I add. Helping the isolated, unsociable (commoner) boy by befriending him only made them look better in the eyes of the professors at Afon O'Mir. How sincere and noble of them, the saints that they were.

And oh boy, have they tried their damnedest to win me over.

One of these assholes, a guy of former royal blood, tried to buy me out at one point in time, as an example. He just walked up to me with a big smile on his stupid face, put a check for three hundred thousand credits in my blazer's chest pocket.

Three hundred thousand credits were enough to put me through college, buy me a modest house, and a fancy car with a couple thousand credits left to spare. And that was just a gift, mind you. A small attempt at buttering me up with some pocket change.

I've been offered much, much more than that since then.

When they realized that not even a blank check would get me to jump, they moved on to other things. Women were naturally the next thing they tried on me. Got some of the most beautiful girls, all of them commoners, and set them all upon me in secret.

But by then, I'd learned my lesson. I would not fall for the same trick twice. Not again.

It was all so painfully obvious to me, but the girls didn't seem to mind it. In fact, most of them even enjoyed the challenge. This school's full of people like them, the competitive types who are always out to prove something, so it made perfect sense to me that they eventually turned it into a competition.

Who could make Katche Wisfern fall in love with them first? Sure, it was a difficult challenge, but the promised reward was worth the effort, or so I had heard.

A single favor from any of the sponsors who'd started the challenge. That alone was priceless. It was a golden ticket with infinite possibilities. The person who won would've assuredly been set for life had they actually won it.

Made little sense to me, though.

Why did they do it, even after knowing that I'd never fall for them?

Had they actually been that full of themselves, or was it the allure of the prize that drove them to try, despite the impossible odds?

Was it both? Or perhaps, something else entirely?

After they realized that money and women wouldn't do it for me, they switched over to offering power in an all too predictable fashion. They offered me positions in their parent's companies that other people could've only dreamt of.

And if that wasn't enough, they also promised to help me enter the Old World, as they referred to it. The exclusive, little club that they'd been born into.

To put it simply, they'd offered to get me married into their families.

They'd arrange a fiancee for me to marry, and before I knew it, I'd become one of them. Well, not as pure as them, per se, but I'd still be a part of a different, higher world unknown to the masses...

I'd thought everything over, but I still haven't come to a complete understanding of why they'd started this mess.

Was it because I was an eyesore to them? A bug to them that wouldn't accept his place in their world?

Could it have been because they found me interesting? I personally doubt this.

Perhaps some of them genuinely wanted to befriend me but didn't know how to do it properly, so they defaulted to the only way they knew how to when it came to people like me.

It was not uncommon for teenagers to miscommunicate their intentions and feelings, so this possibility was not entirely out of the question. I could see this happening, especially with two people of completely different backgrounds and upbringings...

Ahhh, I nearly relapsed again. Almost let my guard drop because of a hypothetical that sounded nice.

But I know better. I will not make another mistake. Keep your eyes peeled for the deceiving liar that is Hope. Don't trust their lies.

When I reached my sanctuary on the other side of the campus grounds, I finally felt modicum relief. My beautiful Eden, the newly minted Kalden M. Deloux Library, awaited for me.

A small gift from the richest and probably most powerful family on the continent, period. The elven family who controlled the most desired resource on the planet. To them, this library likely cost them nothing to make. Maybe even less than nothing, if that was possible.

It'd been built for the academy during my first year because of a generous donation by an alumnus of the school. The library had been built to house a collection of rare books and scrolls from the past, so it naturally generated very little interest in the students at Afon O'Mir.

What the library contained was out of date knowledge that had long since become unusable in these modern times. Spells, rituals, and alchemical formulas that no longer functioned as intended after the death of Nothric, the sole god of the world.

But I wasn't here to read a bunch of old, musty books. I came here because this was the only place that was truly devoid of other people. The library was eventually sealed to the students after the academy noticed that it had been left unused.

Students greatly preferred the library beside the main building, the Goldcrest Library, because it had an indoor cafe and lounge for them to relax in, whereas the Deloux Library had nothing of the sort.

After all, it was meant to house rare books, scrolls, and other artifacts. Can't have an idiot spilling his coffee over a rare tome, right?

I sat around the front of the deserted library and calmly waited until the coast was clear before I headed around the back of the large building. What I was doing wasn't strictly following school regulations.

Thankfully, the back of the building was covered by a small forest park that'd been created for the academy, so I didn't have to worry about getting spotted on the other side.

When I reached the backside of the library, I strolled over to the fire escape door and took my shoes off in preparation. I couldn't leave any track marks that I'd been inside, or else someone would eventually figure out about my continued intrusions.

After I set my shoes in my backpack, I called out to someone I didn't want to see.

"Pina, come out."

A tiny specter formed out of mana took shape in front of me and turned into a beautiful little fairy.

Her long, azure hair was darker than a moonless night. A pair of eyes shone like the rainbow that'd appear after a harsh storm, reminding me of someone I didn't want to remember anymore. Because of her appearance, I only called for Pina when it was absolutely necessary, like right now.

"The same as always, Katché?"

Her voice rang like a cute bell, which only frustrated me even further. It wasn't Pina's fault, though. I knew that it'd be wrong of me to lash out at her. She had no control over her appearance. The fault laid solely on me and no one else.

"Yeah, the usual. You can return after you're done. Thanks."

She nodded and started working on the task I'd given her. The artificial fairy quickly connected to the Nexus, which served as the source of all magic in modern times.

Her query reached the Nexus almost instantaneously and was processed in less than a blink of an eye. My request for the civilian-grade application of the spell, Mute, had unsurprisingly been accepted by the Artificial Magic Development Interface.

Most people simply referred to it as "Andy" instead because 'Amdy' sounds a lot like, well, the name Andy. Someone mispronounced the proper acronym a long time ago and it eventually took off. Go figure.

Andy's an artificial simulation of our former God, Nothric. A shade of the real diety that once lived, created by the Fifty Wisemen to take up the job of the former.

Once upon a time, mortals offered their faith and prayer to Nothric in return for his assistance in the form of spells and blessings, if he found their pleas convincing enough.

These days, faith and prayer have been shelved in lieu of access requests. We do not pray to the false god we have created in hopes of having our pleas granted, for we own God in its entirety. God obeys us now.

Of course, this dramatic shift in power presented its own host of problems. We couldn't have people casting firestorms and meteor showers around willy-nilly, otherwise, the planet would've blown up centuries ago.

What we needed were rules and restrictions for the people. There are people who have been granted a bigger leash than normal civilians, who can only cast civilian-grade versions of spells, and those are government-licensed mages.

They're the ones who can really play with magic without limits, unlike civilians such as myself. The only thing I can do is toy around with civilian-grade spells for petty stuff.

My spell, Mute, was as simple as they came. Its intended purpose was to block out incoming sounds around one's head. Doesn't get any simpler than that. Sound-proofing magic for when you wanted some peace and quiet or needed to study without distractions. One of the first spells I was taught in Afon O'Mir.

Its operational range isn't very large since it's only meant to cover the head, but that's more than enough for my intended purposes. The only thing I did to the original spell was to modify two elements in the magic formula.

I lowered the Y-axis parameter, so it'd activate around my feet instead of my head and inverted the part of the spell responsible for the sound dampening of outside sounds.

Inverted, it now blocked sounds from the inside of the operational range, not outside.

Andy would eventually catch on to the illegally modified requests and ban the use of the spell but by then, another version of the spell will have already come out on the Nexus on one of the popular cracker sites. The cat and mouse game would never end.

Since I can't exactly talk binary code, we needed interpreters who could act as mediums between our digital god and ourselves. Pina is one such being and my personal connection to the Nexus and by extension, Andy.

An artificial, man-made fairy. A flash-cloned spirit, since the real ones died off after Nothric bit the bullet, along with a lot of the other spiritual creatures of yore.

When the spell activated around my feet, I stomped my feet on the ground. Not a single sound could be heard aside from the rustling wind. Perfect.

Finally ready, I took out my key, opened the fire escape door and entered the library, my final refuge from the cruel world outside.

A long hallway led toward a vast library of ancient books and crusty, old scrolls from another era. Columns of outdated knowledge and forgotten history lay unattended and would remain here for all eternity, unloved by the modern people outside. Hell, they were repulsed by the books and secrets they held.

No wants to look up their race's war crimes and embarrassing rituals of worship, you know. That's a real ego killer right there.

But that wasn't why I was here. I don't hide out in this library to dig up dirt on other races. No, I'm not that petty.

I silently walked past the large library on the first floor and made my way up to the second floor. This was my haven of solitude.

The second floor has the other half of the library's rarer books and a couple of personal study rooms that students were supposed to rent out and use. They were all closed, but I didn't mind.

I had a set of keys. My own keys, mind you. I would never steal faculty keys and use them for my own purpose, no sir.

...But I'm not against "borrowing" them for a little bit and getting a locksmith to make duplicates, though.

There are no rules against borrowing faculty property.

In any case, I was tired of dealing with other people, so I hurried up and made my way to my personal abode.

Study Room A-8.

Furthest room in the library, all the way at the back of the long hallway of locked study rooms. It was my favorite, by far. The scenery afforded in that room was worth the trouble of sneaking into this library every day.

I hummed a catchy tune and spun my keyring in happiness as I closed in A-8 and then shuffled through my keys to find old faithful.

Click.

Unlocked, I entered my untainted kingdom and then...

I saw her.

Long, honey-blonde hair that shone like the purest gold underneath the midday sun through the window.

Piercing blue eyes that seemed so dark they had a deep violet hue about them. It reminded me of the night sky before the last gleam of sunlight.

An eye-catching body that was perfect in the sense that it was absolutely my type. I could tell she was bombshell even beneath her academy uniform just from the contours of her slim figure.

If I had to be frank, I was absolutely stunned. My mind turned to butter. I had not expected something like this to happen in a billion years.

I stupidly gawked at her like a fish that had never seen water before. Her beautiful face and the warm, golden fields in the distance past the window created a scene that deserved to be put on display in an art museum.

For a second there, I genuinely thought that, perhaps, God had not died, after all. An angel hath descended upon the earth.

That was until I noticed what she had in her hands...

A bag of chips, Zeetos, that looked awfully familiar. Spicy-Lemon flavored. My favorite flavor.

And that bottle of Titan-Dew, too. It was my favorite soda.

...Or rather, it had been. The bitch stole my snacks!

The tender feelings in my heart died the moment I realized that she had stolen the stash of snacks I had left in the room.

"...Do you need something? This room is occupied," said the girl. Her tone was cold and unconcerned, as if she had barely registered my existence.

It drove me up the wall. Ungrateful and a dirty little thief. What a terrible combination for someone so beautiful.

"Yeah, I do. You owe me fifteen credits, Miss Thief. Ten for the Titan-Dew and another five for the Zeetos," I said with an equally dispassionate tone.

Suffice to say, our first meeting was not the best.

Not that it would get any better in the coming days...