One Morning at Ashcroft

As the bus slowed outside Ashcroft and his peers scrambled to their feet, John hung back. This wasn’t unusual - normally he’d aim to be either the first or the last one off the bus even when they were running late, just to hopefully dodge any encounters with Frank. Today, however, it provided an opportunity to observe a chunk of his classmates as they shuffled past.

On the one hand, this ticked his main Quest up nicely; the bus had been pretty full, and he was pretty confident that he could finish the first objective right here and now. On the other hand, to his growing dismay, none of the people on the bus had anywhere near the Levels he needed for them to count towards his optional Quest objectives. Even Frank, who John had thought would be stacked with levels given his excessively muscular physique, was only Level seven, barely more than twice John’s own.

That fact had made him smile initially; it wouldn’t take that many Quests to match the bully for Levels, and if he used any rewards he got wisely, he might manage to turn the tables on the jock before the end of the year. Still, in the here and now, it didn’t help for his Quest. In truth, most of the others he observed were around the same Level as him or even lower. Several of the mean girls that hung around Vanessa for instance - over half of that group were only Level two! The only really notable person as far as John was concerned was one guy he vaguely recognized as being on the chess team; they shared a handful of classes but had never spoken.

Tactician gave John pause; it tracked with what little he knew of Wesley, and the fact that the guy was Level six seemed to indicate that he was quite good at whatever it meant. Perhaps playing Wesley at chess would give an indication of how much Level difference might matter? Chess was a game, after all, and a tactician surely had plenty of points in Intellect. All of this was largely background thinking, however; John’s main thoughts were occupied with two lines of text on a Status window in the corner of his eye.

He’d easily met the first requirement, he just needed to scan a bunch of things throughout the day and he’d be set for the main part of the Quest, but the lack of anyone on the bus meeting the optional requirements was frustrating. He really wanted that bonus Stat point, not to mention whatever the promised item Reward was. Stepping off the bus, he set his shoulders. Scanning thirty-three people had taken a toll on his Mana bar. While it had crept up earlier on the way to the bus stop, it was now back down to just below fifty. Not that it mattered much, with the breakfast buff still ticking it back up at one mp a minute.

“And it’s not like I have anything else to spend it on right now,” John muttered to himself as he hurried through the corridors. He was going to be late - he knew that already - but while his first class was a computer science double period and he’d basically already finished all the work for the year, he still didn’t want to annoy the teacher too much. She usually let him basically do whatever he wanted in class as he was so far ahead of the rest, so getting on her bad side would be a quick way of getting those rights revoked.

Fortunately, when he slipped into the classroom moments later, she seemed to already be aware of the delayed bus; other students who had been ahead of him were still in the process of getting into their seats and she just nodded for John to do the same. Setting his bag down in the empty space next to his favorite computer right at the back, John let out a gentle sigh of relief.

Despite all the money it cost to attend Ashcroft, the computers in this lab were painfully, gratingly slow to boot. John was personally convinced that they were all running some kind of poorly optimized tracking software to make sure the nerds didn’t try and hack into anything they shouldn’t, but it still seemed out of place… He paused, fingers hovering above the keyboard as the thought crystallized. The computers were out of place; they shouldn’t be this slow.

Glancing around to check nobody was watching, he leaned forward so that he could focus his gaze entirely on the tower sitting alongside his monitor. Observing objects so far had seemed to be very accurate even at range, but he wanted to make sure that he was only looking at the one machine right now just in case. Crossing his fingers, he cast what he was rapidly starting to think of as his only Spell.

The list of things that had been done to the machine almost scrolled off the bottom of the window; each entry had the same scratched-out effect over the name of the person or entity responsible for whatever had been done, but the overall result was the same. This machine had been tampered with by a whole bunch of people besides the IT department at Ashcroft; the slowdown was probably the result of the poor thing being overloaded, just like running multiple security applications at the same time.

Closing the window and bringing up the Quest again, John was delighted to see that the number of “things that are out of place” had ticked up to one out of five. With a great deal of excitement, he flickered his gaze to the next nearest computer and observed it as well; if they were all like this, there was a good chance he’d get that extra Stat point before the end of the first class. Sure enough, a near identical pop up appeared - the order of a few of the listed things was swapped around but it was just as weird.

Glancing back at the Quest, John’s heart sank. The readout remained stuck on one out of five, which meant the Quest was tracking unique things, not multiple things of the same type. Observing everything else in the classroom didn’t help much beyond tanking his Mana still further - he scanned every poster, every computer, even the ornaments on the teacher’s desk, but nothing popped up as unusual. He even threw a quick Observe at the teacher in the hopes she might be at least Level nine - but to his surprise she was only one Level above Frank, still a Level too low to count. As a result he headed, for his next session, maths, in a despondent mood.

With his thoughts full of the fact that the morning was half over and he’d not even got halfway to clearing the optional objectives (even if he had the main Quest checked off and so was heading for a chunk of xp and a Stat point at midnight regardless), John wasn’t watching where he was going and almost walked into someone.

Dodging at the last second, he stammered an apology to the stunning redhead who had been in discussion with one of her classmates. Neither of the girls even glanced up from their conversation; his Agility keeping him from running into them had allowed John to fade into the background as per usual. That was the one thing he could say for Vanessa and Frank: bullies they might be, but at least they noticed him.

As the pair continued on their way, John threw out an Observe on both of them; it was starting to become second nature by now whenever something happened in his attempt to find things for the Quest. The results caused him to freeze, before walking very carefully and quickly around the corner and into his next classroom, a cold sweat beading his skin as he did so.

The faint glow of the Quest updating to show that he’d now found four of the needed five people for the optional Reward didn’t really help with the knowledge that two of his peers were running around with combat-sounding Classes over four times his own Level. The presence of another one of those guild tags added to the mystery; John was sure they were guilds now, but what on earth could the Hands of the Crown be? It would have made sense if they were living in a monarchy or something, but this was America.

His thoughts spiraled around those two revelations as he half-heartedly did whatever problems the tutor put on the board. It wasn’t as if this class was any harder than computer science, it was just that here there wasn’t a screen to hide behind to get on with whatever he’d rather focus on instead of working out quadratic equations. Fortunately, the rest of the class took up most of the tutor’s time, and as such he was able to daydream in between problem sets.

“If there are guilds, joining one might be an idea. Assuming they’re friendly. And if they’re not… god, I do not want to think about what someone with twice Frank’s Level in an actual combat Class could do to me if they’re hostile.” The first set of thoughts sent a shiver down his spine, and he resolved to only observe at a distance in the future, there didn’t seem to be any range to it as long as he had line of sight, and that should prevent anyone spotting him, in case people at higher Levels got some kind of scrying detection ability or something.

The sheer Levels of the two women had him scratching his head, however. How had they gotten that strong? Could they have Quests like he did? Almost everyone he’d seen had Levels under ten, except the three people with guild tags. Was that the secret to getting stronger quickly? Again, he needed more information than he had. Patience, that was what he needed to cultivate now.

Checking the clock to see how long it was until lunch, he idly flicked an Observe at the teacher; Level six, nothing special. The clock too was just a standard one, nothing to see there. John solved another problem without any effort and set his pen down. There really wasn’t long now until lunch; the old sand timer his teacher used instead of a stopwatch was almost done. John’s eyes locked on the thing, sitting on the corner of the desk, and fought the instinct to facepalm. Making sure everyone else was occupied with finding the solution for x, he leaned slightly to one side and cast Observe.

John shook his head and sighed quietly to himself as the bell rang for lunch. From over-leveled hotties to a magical egg timer. Grabbing his bag, he debated asking where Mrs Flynn had got the timer in case the closet held any more magical items, but opted against it. It’d be weird, and in any case she’d found it years ago so the odds of her even remembering where she’d found it were low. On the plus side, however, it had at least ticked off another object out of place for the Quest, officially putting him over halfway to getting all the Rewards.