Disastrous New Age

Jimmy and Lucian walked to the student dorm.

"This is the student dorm." He pointed at the huge building and looked at Lucian. "I will bring you inside but then you need to sign in yourself.

Lucian nodded that he understood.

Then both of them went inside.

"Oh hey Jimmy. Is this a new guy?" asked one of the students passing by.

"Yeah. I'm quite happy right now." Jimmy had a huge smile on his face. Then he looked at Lucian and said, "You really saved me today."

"What do you mean by that?" asked Lucian.

"I don't have to guard the gate and don't need to guard it today," he explained.

Students of the academy had to guard the gates to the academy. Every day there were two students who were guarding the gate.

If one person came to enroll into the academy the students guarding the gate would decide who would take him to the testing facility and then that student didn't need to guard the gate anymore and could do his own thing.

"Oh so that's how it goes. No wonder you looked so happy." Lucian finally understood why they competed for who will bring him inside.

They walked up to an old person inside the student dorm.

"This is our janitor and also the one who takes care of this dorm. His name is Henry." Jimmy told Lucian. "Now I'm going to leave, you can talk to Henry and ask him about everything you want to know."

Jimmy said goodbye to Lucian and went to the upper floors of the student dorm. It seemed like he went into his room. On his way a lot of students were greeting him.

Lucian then walked up to Henry. "Good afternoon sir. I'm a new student here and I have come to get a room here."

Hearing Lucian greet him, Henry smiled. "Welcome to the male student dorm. Since you are new here let me first tell you the rules of this place."

He cleared his throat and said, "First of all, no fighting. If you want to fight, you can go to the arena."

"Secondly, if you want to get some equipment or items for your job, you need to make some contributions to the school. That includes winning some tournaments between academies, selling a rare item drop, after you get access to go inside the portal and more. You will also find out more ways later."

"Thirdly, you need to attend one of the of the two classes in the evening. One of the classes is martial arts class and the other is Job class. Job classes are divided into what Jobs there are. That means there is a Blacksmith class, Alchemy class and so on."

Then he paused for a second and continued. "This is not a rule but I suggest you study too, so can get better standing in the academy. The higher points you get from tests, the higher you will be in the student list and the academy will allocate more resources to train you."

"You will also be more famous and get a better room. Jimmy, the student who brought you here is ranked in the top 10 on the list. That means his grades are good and his martial skills are also good."

Then Henry turned around and grabbed a key. He handed it to Lucian. "This is a key to your room. Your room is on the first floor. Inside a room are two beds, so that means you will have a roommate."

"This is everything you need to know for now. Go to your room and prepare for tomorrow." Then he also handed a class schedule to Lucian.

Lucian took the schedule and went looking for his room. He look at his key and frowned. There was a '666' number on it. It was the number of his room.

'What an unlucky number.' He thought to himself.

It wasn't hard to find a room. All rooms were in order so you just needed to follow the rooms and you would soon come to your room.

Lucian arrived in front of his room. he tried to open the door but it was locked. It seems that his roommate was not inside.

He unlocked the door and went inside.

"Who are you?!" A scream was heard. In the same moment something flew into direction where Lucian was and crashed into him.

Lucian was shocked. 'What is this?' He looked at the person and immediately said, "I'm your new roommate."

"Oh." he realized that he did something wrong so he quickly apologized to Lucian. "I'm sorry."

Lucian waved his hand. "It's okay." Then he pointed at the chair that was thrown at him and was now totally broken. "Just don't throw things at people. Especially not chairs."

That student nodded.

"I'm Lucian. Who are you?"

"I'm William. Sorry again for throwing a chair at you. I get scared easily." said William.

"You should get yourself treated unless you want to kill someone with that." Lucian didn't really know what to say beside this. "Anyway, now you know that I'm your roommate so don't throw another chair at me."

"Okay." William nodded.

After that Lucian could finally look around the room.

There were two beds a table and a chair. There were supposed to be two chairs but one got thrown at him.

He laid on the bed and looked at the ceiling.

After a while he turned at William who was still laying on the bed and asked him, "Do you know where I can register for the evening class?"

William turned to him and answered, "Tomorrow after morning classes you can go to the teacher responsible for the evening class you want to attend."

"So where is that teacher?" asked Lucian.

"I will go with you at that day, so you don't have to worry about it," replied William.

Lucian was happy that William would go with him. He still wasn't used being in this place so having someone to show him the way was really nice.

Lucian then thanked William. "Also what do you do in your free time here?"

"Sleep." William responded.

"Uh. Anything else?"

"Others usually go to the gym to train their martial arts or sign up to additional classes to level up their Job," explained William.

"Isn't there an evening class for that?" Lucian wondered.

William nodded. "There is but people want to get stronger here. The stronger they are the more attention they get from the academy."

"So that's how it is." Lucian finally realized after hearing what William said.

"Yeah, now you can do your own thing."

"Aren't you going to go to the gym?" asked Lucian. He wondered why William didn't go anywhere.

"I'm going in 10 minutes. Wanna go with me?" William asked Lucian and looked at him waiting for an answer.

"Yeah I wanna see how it is there."

...

15 minutes later at the gym.

"We are here."

The arrived at the main place in the building. There were a lot of different training places here. Even more were in other rooms in this building.

"This place is huge!" exclaimed Lucian.

There were a lot of students here practicing martial arts. There were about thousand people here. Some of them were practicing one kind of a martial art while others were training another kind of martial art.

Then Lucian saw William waving at a person.

"Hey Instructor Jones. I brought a new face."

Instructor Jones turned to look at William and Lucian and smiled. "Hey William, you finally decided to come here huh?"

William nodded helplessly.

"Since you brought a new person here, help him choose a martial art to train and explain him some things about some competitions here."

William nodded again helplessly. Then he brought Lucian to where the martial arts books were. "Here choose one of the martial arts."

Lucian looked through the books there. There were all kind of different martial arts. Taekwondo, Kung Fu, Taiji, Karate...

"What is this one?" Lucian pointed at one of the books on which was written 'Hokuto Shin Ken'.

Seeing this book, William called Instructor Jones here. "There is another one of these books here. Someone is joking around again."

Instructor Jones took the book away and threw it in the trash. "Someone is really joking around again." It seemed like this wasn't the first time something like this occurred.

"Now you can choose a book without any problems."

Lucian nodded and was still browsing through the books. Then he found a book on which was written 'Archery'. He picked it up and asked William, "Is archery a martial art?"

William wasn't surprised at Lucian asking this question. Actually a lot of new students that saw this book asked the same question.

"Yes archery is a martial art." nodded William.

"Why is that? Is thought that archery is a sport?" replied Lucian.

"That's what most of the people think. Let me explain. The term 'martial art' refers to any fighting system in military and was used in Europe in 16th century. So that's why it is a martial art. Of course it is not fully accepted as a martial art but for now it is still listed as one" explained William.

"Oh so that's how it is." Lucian was surprised by this explanation. Just like William said, people think that archery is only a sport.

These days people think of the term 'martial arts' as close combat fighting. That's because of the movies where there are a people fighting using Kung Fu and other martial arts. Because of that, archery was almost totally forgotten as a martial art.

Also when hearing this term people usually think of East Asia because of the number of martial arts being there. The most famous martial arts are also from Asia.

"Okay I'll choose this one." Lucian decided that he will start learning archery.

Then he heard someone laughing from behind. He turned around and saw a man smiling at him.