Ravennittes
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System Architect - Ch 24
🕑 Added 2024-09-06 16:00:07 +0000 UTCWhen I awoke the next morning, I immediately began to collect my things. Mom was due to arrive around lunch time and I wanted to be ready to go when she did. I had bits and bobs all over the house and garage that needed to go into my suitcase. I left my laptop for last so that I could do quests on it while waiting for Mom.
I went to the beach with my cousins and grandparents one last time. Grandma Rose went back to the house early to prepare lunch. We joined her an hour later when everything was almost ready. I heard a knock on the front door five minutes before noon. I excitedly opened it to see Mom standing there awkwardly. She smiled and came inside.
“I missed you, Eddy,” she said, grabbing me in a big hug.
“I missed you too,” I replied, gasping for breath.
“Had a good time?”
I nodded.
“Great! Smells like your grandmother has made something wonderful for lunch.”
“Thanks, Dear,” Grandma Rose called from the kitchen upon hearing the compliment.
We were all ushered to the table where Grandpa Milton and Uncle Dave had put all of the food. There were bowls of soup and a salad in front of each chair—the soup bowl sitting on top of a large plate. I sat down between Mom and Aunt Kat.
I ate through the soup and the salad quickly and was rewarded with more food. I got a large helping of mashed potatoes and pot roast with a bit of candied carrots on the side. By the time I finished eating, I was absolutely stuffed. I took a break to walk around between dinner and dessert to maybe find some room for the pie Grandma Rose had made. It took some doing, but I managed to inhale a slice before immediately regretting that decision.
After lunch, Mom helped clean up while I loaded the suitcase and backpack into her car. When everything was stowed for the trip home—and the dishes were clean—I went to give everyone a hug. Marcus refused the hug while Olivia hugged me back harder than I hugged her. She cried a little—though I’m sure she wouldn’t admit to it.
“Have a safe trip home,” Grandpa Milton said when I gave him a hug.
Grandma Rose echoed that sentiment a moment later and lifted me up for a kiss on the forehead. Aunt Kat and Uncle Dave gave me a group hug and wished me well. I waved as Mom buckled me in. I kept waving until the car had turned onto the road and Mom shut the window.
On the ride home, I felt a mix of emotions. I was excited—and nervous—about school while I knew that I would miss my family now that the vacation was over. Mom brought up college and how I needed to sign up for classes soon. She wasn’t sure on the exact dates, but she reminded me that—if I wanted the choice options for professors of the classes I needed to take in my first semester—I needed to jump on them as soon as they became available. I agreed with her.
Mom gave me her phone to use on the drive home. I looked over the classes the program suggested by semester and noted all of the ones that were required as well as the free classes where I had the opportunity to choose my own—from a curated list, of course. I then cross-referenced all of the professors teaching, when the classes were in session, and the reviews of the professors that I could find. I found a few pitfalls in the professor department that could be avoided by carefully selecting the class times to ensure I had the least worst options overall.
When I got to Mom’s house that evening, we ate takeout and unpacked my suitcase. I double checked the schedule that I’d come up with in the car and had Mom look it over as well just in case. There was some back-and-forth over why this class or why that time, but overall the schedule passed muster. In bad that night, I logged into the school portal for the first time—setting up the user and all of that fun stuff—because I noticed that classes had been posted about a week earlier. I made my selections—with one change due to availability—and submitted. As soon as the data packets shot out, I got a lovely chime.
Excel in School
Pass all classes
Success: 1000 Exp for each subject passed with a bonus depending on grade in that subject
Failure: 1000 Exp applied to monster strength for each subject failed
Expires: 3 years, 10 months, 25 days, 5 hours, 12 minutes, 8 seconds
I accepted the quest. I had no doubt in my mind that I would be able to do well in the courses I had chosen. I wasn’t sure if the quest was one that paid out at the end of the semester or at the very end. Given how far into the future the expiration was, I suspected I was going to get a large chunk of experience in a few years’ time and nothing before then—from this quest at least.
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Over the next month-and-a-half I focused on completing daily, weekly, and monthly quests. I didn’t figure out any novel ways to gain experience than I had already found so I kept my nose to the grindstone. I ended up with about 10,000 more experience at the end. I was still at least a year away from the first upgrade I wanted to get.
The writing project had mostly stabilized. It wasn’t failing like I feared it might, but it wasn’t popping off either. I used some more money for advertising that helped somewhat for a time—and I made more back from subscriptions, too. I hoped the effort would at least inspire better authors to give the ideas a chance. Getting the word out was the main goal, especially since the money wasn’t good.
I was happy with the progress even if it felt glacially slow in the moment. Looking back on the three months I’d spent thus far, I’d accomplished a lot. It was enough to make me smile even if there were things I could have done better had I known more going into it. That’s what future attempts would rectify.
I took a deep breath and opened the door of a small auditorium that served as the classroom for my first class of the day. Dad had dropped me off that morning and Grandpa Milton would pick me up later. There’d been much discussion on the logistics of getting me to and from classes as well as figuring out the financial aspect of it. The funds I had stashed away in in crypto were enough to cover two years at the community college, but I was going to need some more support or a scholarship at a larger university to complete my studies.
The auditorium was very steeply sloped with a handful of semicircular rows of chairs behind long bench desks. The room was about half-filled with students. Most of them were teenagers though there were a handful of older folks who started their education later. And then there was me—a five-year-old child. I was out of place and I felt it.
I picked a random open seat about halfway up and near the center aisle. There was no one directly next to me, but the one person closest to me—a man of about twenty—gave me a confused look before shaking his head. I pulled out my laptop and the textbook for the class.
Over the next five minutes, the rest of the students wandered into the room and found their seats. The room filled completely. A man and a woman in their late teens ended up on either side of me. Their initial looks mirrored that of the man earlier, but neither said anything and ultimately decided to ignore me. Finally, the professor came in. She was dressed in a floral dress and spoke with a high-pitched voice.
“Can those in the back hear me alright?” she asked
There was some murmuring of assent from the back.
“Good,” she continued. “Then let’s begin…”
The class ran about an hour. During that time, I took notes and did my best to learn from the professor. I was happy to discover that I gained Exploration Experience from the class. It wasn’t much—just a single experience point—but it wasn’t something I had expected. That was something I thought about between classes. If learning was counted as exploration for the purposes of the function, then I was set to gain a trickle of experience simply by going to college. The bonus at the end would dwarf the experience drips from the classes, but I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
The rest of the classes that day went much the same way. I got sometimes strange looks from those nearby but no one gave me any problems. That was, until the following day when I had my first lab. It was part of the required science course and I had it once a week. I’d chosen chemistry because it was the easiest of the options available to me and I wanted to get the class out of the way sooner rather than later.
“Hey, you can’t be in here!” the teacher’s assistant called out when I entered.
I gave the man a quizzical look. Of course I was meant to be in the lab. Where else was I to do the work?
“This is a dangerous place. Where are your parents?” the assistant continued.
“I’m a student,” I said while fishing around in my backpack for my student ID.
“Please wait outside, it’s not safe.”
The man attempted to grab my hand but I avoided it. Finally, I located the ID and showed it to him.
“I am registered for this class,” I reiterated, showing the ID.
The assistant took a look at it and took out his own. He spent a minute comparing both before giving mine back.
“Stay here and don’t go anywhere,” he warned.
I watched as he exited the room for a few minutes. Other students filtered in while I stood there waiting. Eventually, the professor came in with the assistant and looked me over. Then he looked down at his phone and scrolled. When he found what he was looking for, he nodded to the assistant and whispered something into his ear. The professor then left the room.
“Professor says you’re in the class. I don’t see how, but since you are, please find an open seat.”
I could feel the eyes of everyone nearby on me. I walked around the room before I came across a chair. It was one of those tall metal stools that are uncomfortably tall and a pain to get on. For me being a child it was even worse. I had to toss my backpack onto the lab table before climbing up onto the stool. There were two women and a man seated at the same lab table. I got out my things for the class while the stared uncomfortably at me. I was thankful when the assistant began by passing out instructions for the lab.
The lab was simple and introductory. It was a simple group task to measure and weigh various items in an attempt to calculate Avogadro’s Number directly. I noted down these measurements in my lab notebook carefully. We had to plot the data and run a closest fit line using excel. With that done, I spent the rest of the time in the lab class to write up the experiment in the format outlined in the syllabus. When I finished, I handed it in to the assistant before exiting the lab and calling Grandpa Milton to pick me up as the lab had been the last class of the day for me.
