Resus: We reached a conclusion on what a buildup is… and that’s a last scrap of it. What comes next is a real battle arc xD

  Mirrond: Battle arc… right ;_; Let’s call it that way.

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  Chapter 11: Political and social study of a certain kindergarten

  Oh for fuck’s…

  Does this mean that not only I won’t be able to act normally in my room… I’ll also have to spend most of my new childhood with a girl that looks like she is going to faint whenever she sees me. Besides… WITH A GIRL?! I mean, she is my cousin, so it’s not like she’s just a random stranger. And since we’re still only five… But that won’t last forever and in the future, quite distant future to be exact, living in a single room with a teenage girl… It’s going to be problematic in so many ways…

  Even after giving it some thought, mixed rooms? Isn’t it rather risky, in a long term? For now it’s more or less ok, but… what happens when ALL of us becomes teenagers? Are the teachers or priests or whoever they are… Are they going to guard us 24/7 to avoid any unwanted accidents? Like, for example, ‘accidental’ pregnancies? And since there’s apparently enough different races to distribute students between their rooms based on race…

  Humans are disliked, I get that, but what about other races? Do they have reasons to safely assume that there will be no mixed couples? Did they even think about such problems in the first place? Up until now the local education was based on private tutors, so it’s safe to assume that kids from wealthy houses had nearly no contact which each other. With an exception of the members of their own families. If this educational reform in Res is actually this world’s first attempt in creating a… more advanced schooling system - even though it still sucks - then they might’ve not even thought about the risks that come from putting a band of teenagers together... Or, maybe they just don’t care in the slightest about us fucking left and right? This might be a bit pessimistic, but ten years from now this school is going to be hell in more than one way…

  Okay, STOP. I’m going too far with my thoughts. We’re all still only five to eight years old… Maybe it won’t be that bad…

  ”Please now, follow me.” The priest speaks, seemingly unfazed by our reaction. Well, truth be told, there barely was any reaction - I was too busy overthinking the whole thing while Meritri, well… She looks as if she really want to disappear, you know, looking at her boots, hiding her head in her shoulders and, well, shaking slightly… but she looks more or less like that ever since we left the mansion so there is no real difference. Although, her fear levels probably risen quite considerably this last few minutes.

  We leave the hall following the priest and after a short walk and a few staircases - a nightmare for me at the moment - we reach the long corridor with plenty of doors on both sides. He leads us to the first door on the left, opens it with a key and lets us inside.

  “Your belongings are already here.” I wonder for how long he trained his face to stay expressionless for this long. “Unpack yourselves. The lessons begin in two hours, so don’t take too long.” Wait… so we are supposed to unpack ourselves? Well, it’s not really a problem for me… even though I must say that servants doing everything for me this past few years was quite enjoyable. It’s still a bit surprising.

  The priest seems to notice something in my face… or maybe he already experienced something like this with every student so far.

  “Our servants will provide you with food and clean your clothes, but it’s entirely up to you to keep your rooms clean. When it will be time to go to your classes just ask other students to lead you there.” And with that he leaves the room, closing the door behind…

  And I thought that the carriage ride was awkward. Anyway, the room in itself is… rather empty in comparison to the rooms in the mansion, but it was obvious from the beginning that this will be the case. It’s rectangular, with a door and a window on the opposite short walls and, respectively, a wardrobe, desk with a single chair and a bed along each longer wall.

  I quickly proceed to unpacking my baggage. The maids and nannies did a good job packing all my clothes in a way that’s easy to take out and hang in the wardrobe. Everything else, like a supply of ink and parchment or spare underwear, I leave in the coffer which I slide under my bed. The whole thing took me about half an hour because of those damn crutches. Thinking that I’m done and have some time to rethink this whole situation few more times I take a quick look at Meritri… and she’s not even halfway through.

  Is that why we were given two whole hours before the classes start? The Temple’s been running this school for half a year now, maybe they just adapted to kids from wealthy families not even knowing how to unpack… or don’t expect much from five-year-olds? Nevermind now. Let’s just help her and get this over with. I can’t be late my first day in here and I can’t just leave her here if she doesn’t make it in time.

  Meritri seems completely absorbed in the task, despite not making much progress. She doesn’t see me coming up to her and seems surprised when I, without a word, begin unfolding her clothes and hanging them in her wardrobe. She even jumped a little and I think it was my mistake for not making any obvious noise in the process, but I can’t do anything about it now.

  The unpacking continues and I notice that whoever filled her coffer in the first place did considerably worse job than with mine. Maybe it’s just a matter of slightly different contents but it‘s actually harder to… maneuver? With mine I’ve just been taking things from the top, again and again. Here, however, that’s just not possible. Everything is tangled into one ball of dresses, learning supplies, underwear and lace. Mostly lace.

  All the while I’m trying to tame this mess my shy little cousin is just standing there, acting all shy and useless… and blushing? Well, fuck. Technically I just made my way to her baggage and for the last ten minutes or so I’ve been sorting her personal belongings. Yeah, sorry. No time for feeling embarrassed now. Our classes are going to start soon and as I stated earlier - I’m not about to be late on my first day here.

  “Hang it in your wardrobe.” I tell that to Meritri after freeing first piece of garment. She hesitates for a moment but takes the… dress, I think… from me and does what I told her. It’s really fortunate that she didn’t back out on me now. Her messy baggage and my walking problems might’ve resulted in me wasting more time trying to help her than she would take on her own.

  After much more untangling and unraveling than I would ever expect to experience my entire life… We’re done and still should have just enough time to get to our class. Even if we have to ask someone, where exactly that class might be, first. That HUD clock is as handy as I expected it to be.

  “Time to go, Meritri.” I try to give her a nice and… encouraging… smile, and I receive a slight nod in return. Meritri, please, do me a favor and fight with your shyness. I beg you. I mean, am I really THAT scary?! Although, now that I think about it, I never actually cared enough to ask anyone if she reacts the same way to others… Kiera’s and Ni’ren’s behaviour in the carriage suggests that Meritri really is that withdrawn on her own, but I can’t just not take it personally. Nevermind now, this is not a good time for worrying.

  And so, we leave our room. Or, to be more precise, I leave and she - with slight reluctance - follows after me. I can’t close the door because that priest took the key, but I guess it’s like that for everyone so I don’t mind too much.

  The corridor is almost empty. With just one kid beside us still here. My first thought when I see him is ‘oh for fuck sake’… The boy I see standing there looks like a poster model for Hitlerjugend recruitment… absolutely perfect and stereotypical young Aryan. Slightly higher than me, probably two or three years older, with blond hair, blue eyes (he is looking right at me) filled with pride…

  Oh, and he has wings. Crimson-colored, featherless, flesh and bones, wings. And spiral-shaped horns pointing backwards from above his ears. Short horns… but still! Realistically, what am I supposed to do right now? Talk to this demon looking blondie? On my amplified intuition I blame the word ‘Succubus’ screaming in my head. Or rather ‘Incubus’, as that’s a boy… although I’m not sure if that word is used around here, as Shadow’s blessing still name him ‘Succubus’. That’s a really weird feeling... to know something without knowing why you know that.

  Everything in this boy screams trouble, but because there’s no one else around here to ask about the route to the classroom… I have no other options than to ask him. Even though I am nearly sure this is a bad idea...

  “I’m sorry, could you tell us where the classroom is?” I try to conjure a genuinely polite look on my face. “It’s our first day.” I add, as an attempt of explanation.

  “Sure. Come with me. I’ll show you the class all right.” I smell a rat… plenty of them… but I don’t really have a choice now, do I? It’s either going with him or trying to find it on my own and this place is not a small one. Besides, I have a feeling that if I were to refuse his offer he would do something unpleasant. Maybe it’s because of the fact, that he gives off such a… SS-feeling? Without horns and wings he would look like Hitler’s wet dream.

  “Thank you.” Well, being polite won’t make it any worse, right?

  We follow the demonspawn through the hallways and staircases… I honestly didn’t expect so many of them, and I could swear the we did at least two full circles sometime along the way. But in the end we stood before a door to what the blondie called our classroom.

  “Go on, I’m right behind you.” Ok, there’s no more doubts about it - it’s a trap. I would try to weasel my way out of this, but my intuition is telling to me to just go with it? I guess it’s a choice between two bad outcomes. I hope playing along will lead me to a less harmful one… At least he’s just a kid, so it won’t be anything lethal… probably… so, let’s go.

  We enter the classroom. I go first and Meritri gets in right behind me. It really looks like a classroom. With chairs and desks, but all of them empty. I turn around only to see closing door and hear a click of a lock… I’m impressed, how did he get a key to this room? Not important now.

  “Here’s your classroom blueheads! Enjoy your stay!” Honestly? I’m not even mad. Sure, one beautiful day sometime in the future, I’ll have my revenge, but since I knew that something like that was going to happen… I only sigh loudly and sit down on a nearest desk. Banging at the door would only make this more enjoyable for him, and I’m not going to give him any satisfaction.

  I can hear him leaving. The door aren’t soundproof, so we’ll hear if anyone is walking by our temporary prison. All we need to do is wai… oh damn.

  While I was busy thinking, Meritri was… not doing very well. Shock is painted on her face, along with slowly growing fear. Damn, time to act, or she’s going to start crying… which would make staying in this classroom much more painful.

  “Don’t worry, it’s just his bad joke…” I really am bad at this… Also, I should probably stop pointing that out every time. “Now we need to wait until someone walks by this room. Then we make a little bit of noise, and we’ll be free to go.” Why am I even trying? She doesn’t seem relieved at all. If you’d ask me she looks even worse after I said all that.

  “Ok.” Or… maybe she is relieved? It’s harder to read her emotion than Shadow’s… and that’s quite an achievement.

  And so we waited. Considerably longer than I would like, but beggars can’t be choosers… About half an hour later - classes already started five minutes after our lockdown - I heard footsteps on the other side of the door.

  “Hey!” I shout, while pulling the door handle. “We are locked in here, let us out.”

  “What do you mean ‘locked’? How did you get in there?” Judging by voice - young woman or girl, it’s hard to tell. Definitely not that horned bastard tho.

  “Someone locked us here.” I decide to try avoiding openly saying who did it, and that he knew that we were inside when he locked the door. I don’t think that blaming him would change anything… at least considering how high standing humans have here. Let’s try to avoid an open war… at least for now.

  “Oh! Ok, just wait there… I’ll get the key and let you out!” Now let’s just hope she - whoever she is - has nothing against humans. I turn towards Meritri.

  “See? I told you that someone would come.”

  “Yeah.” She actually looked at me and gave me… a very weak smile. Yup, she’s still on a verge of crying. Well, it’s still some sort of progress, right?

  Ten minutes later, our savior returns.

  “I have the key! Honestly, this janitor guy lost them somewhere. I had to run all around to find the spare one and whoever you are in there, you owe me a big favor now.” And then, finally, the door opens.

  And on the other side, there’s a priestess. Young one, in her late teens I’d say. She’s swarthy, has long, straight, black hair and… I know how it sounds but… air seems to be slightly damper around her.

  Oh.

  “Oh, you’re just kids.” Yeah, let’s call it that way. “And… humans? Are you these two Veles kids that were supposed to join our school today?” I only nod in answer. Thankfully I don’t notice any shifts in her mood after realising that we’re humans. So maybe we will finally reach the classroom without any interruptions… “Come with me, you are already late.”

  She’s smart enough to understand that we didn’t lock ourselves in there. Her lack of reaction is however quite logical… I mean, it’s not like anyone would actually care about ‘childish jokes’ such as this one. Besides, she can’t really do anything about it… and if she’d try, it would only make it worse for us. But at least she guides us to the right classroom! I think I’ll like her. She seems to be a decent person.

  “I’ll explain to your today’s teacher what happened. Don’t worry about it too much.” She gives us a smile and thumbs up before opening the door to the classroom and letting us in.

  What a terrifying sight that is. The room is painted in bright colors with a few bookshelves along the walls. Small, square-shaped tables are scattered everywhere with… a collage of mostly humanoid monsters sitting on the small chairs next to those tables. I’d really like to be open minded and just proceed like everything’s normal… But I just can’t.

  Let me get this straight. I just waltzed into the room full of what supposed to be kids roughly my age… and all I can see are… YES - MONSTERS! There’s a Minotaur sitting with two human-like girls with literally fiery-colored hair and sparks all around them. There are two boys who looked like they are made of stone or marble statues. Three girls have long leaves instead of hair. And I didn’t even mention the Beastman! I guess that the slaves in my family mansion were chosen because they looked mostly human. Well, that’s not the case here. At one table there are three… fox headed kids. With actual, scaled up fox heads! And, of course, the reason why I’m late is also here. Smirking at me. I wonder if he suspects that at some point in time I’m going to kill him for that? Probably not.

  But it seems like I’m not the only one who's surprised by this sight. Meritri seemingly got rid of the fear of me because she’s currently hiding behind my back while clinging to my shirt.

  * * *

  It’s evening and the most tiring day of my life is finally nearing it’s end. I lie in my bed, trying to sleep… but as always, I’m too busy thinking to actually fall asleep.

  Majority of the day was deadly boring. Although, surprisingly, when it comes to reading and writing I’m slightly ahead of everyone. I guess that having a private tutor and plenty of free time has its advantages.

  It only, however, made this whole day even more boring since I’ve spend it learning something I already knew, which was already mentioned reading and writing with some rudimentary mathematics. And, yeah, the questions are really otherworld’y here. For example - if Mr. Hargharow has ten turynas and eats three of them, how many turynas Mr. Hargharow has in the end? If that’s not torture than I don’t know what is… And no. I have no idea what’s ‘turyna’, except for the fact that you can eat it. And that Mr. Hargharow likes them.

  From what I’ve seen throughout the day, Kiera and Ni’ren tend to stick to themselves. Most of the others ignore them, with an exception of those three girls with leaves instead of hair. And even in their case it isn’t really friendliness. More like a lack of disdain.

  Meritri at the same time sticks to me. I kinda expected her to join Ni’ren, but for some strange reason she chose me. Although she still prefers to stay silent, and blushes all the time… I don’t understand her at all, but it’s not like she’s a bother so… ok.

  Oh, one more downside of being ahead of your class? You tend get too much into answering questions… and apparently step out of line. The blond-demon seemingly didn’t enjoy playing the second fiddle to me and after the ‘classes’ - composed mostly of free play time - ended, he and his equally horned sidekick - the minotaur - cornered me and tried to intimidate me? It went more or less like this…

  “What are you doing, bluehead? Didn’t you understand your place? Next time I can find you a lonelier room to spend some time.” There goes my previous ‘he’s still just a kid’ argument… Bastard really acts as if he thinks he’s a gangster or something. The bull headed kid was only looking at me angrily and nodding to his boss’s words. Still, a minotaur that don’t like you in particular is actually quite scary.

  And that’s how, back in the present, I come to a certain conclusion. If I let things progress normally I - and other Veles kids… and it would be a shame, maybe with exception of Kiera - will be bullied for at least ten years or so. And there is only one way out of this. I need to persuade - or rather forcefully insert brains into the heads - of several of my classmates - and then change this whole class into a war zone… which might also allow me to acquire some potential - and highly valuable at that - allies for the future.

  Yeah… right. This pretty much sums up everything.

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  Resus: The Kindergarten War! The bloodiest! The wildest! The… meanest?

  Mirrond: Eh, I really can’t wait until MC gets older… but as you have an allergy for skipping longer periods of time (well, I have it too) we have to write it ;_; The most bloody and terrifying kindergarten ever. Maaan, now I am happy I never went to one.

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