Welldar B1

Me and Esther were, under applause of the impressed parts of the crowd, guided off the stage. It was kind of hard to appreciate the praise of my peers as the continuously reddening bruise on Esther's cheek kept reminding me of the fact that I had struck her beautiful face. I was of two minds when it came to differences between genders. Politically, we should just all be treated equally and that was the end of the discussion. Socially, however, I thought it quite healthy that there were some different expectations and treatments.

Most desperate and life-threatening situations aside, there were things one shouldn't do, not even in combat. I kept my hands from punching women in the face, the womb or cutting their hair off. In return, I expected that my balls were off-limits at basically all times. Such silent agreements on the basis of honour and in respect of physiological differences created some common understandings on the basis of which ordered interactions could be had.

By the same logic, I thought that it was on men to make the first step in starting relationships, even if that was as little as offering a cup of coffee. Granted, I was less strict on that guideline than I was one the 'do not kick me in the balls' point. Sadly, I didn't get an opportunity to make a flirting suggestion to Esther in time. We were separated by Derilea, who delegated the raven-haired beauty to another woman, likely another member of Taurus' Anomalia.

Derilea ordered me to follow her. Through a tunnel that went out underneath the watcher's area, she guided me to a quiet backroom. I just assumed that, whatever explanation she was about to give me, her daughter wouldn't need it. Once she had closed the door to the small, unremarkable room behind us, she spoke up.

"The introduction ceremony has concluded now, so don't be surprised when you leave and everyone is gone," the headmaster's maid let me know. "They'll be guided to the dormitories and to get their luggage. Even with your assigned mansion, you will still have to get yours from the same place. Now, to get things started, I require to see your Ashod."

An odd name for an odd tool. The Astral Communication Device, originally shortened to As-com-de, and eventually further shortened into the much easier pronounceable word Ashod. I had no idea who had started calling it that, it must have been long before I got thrown into this three-dimensional world, but the name stuck so everyone called it that.

As someone who had been to Earth more than a few times, I had gotten used to them fairly quickly. They were basically magical smartphones and much preferable to the paper based communications used in Hell. Even if the quill copied the words across several kilometres, it was annoying to get new parchment in the middle of a conversation.

Everyone in the university was required to have an Ashod, since it operated as a wallet, communication device and identification. Which also meant that losing it would be a massive pain. On the advantageous side of things, each Ashod was tuned to the owner's Astrality Signature, a sort of supernatural thumbprint. That made any data on there as secure as it possibly could be. Hacking into those devices was a nigh impossible task.

I reached for the small hoister on my belt where my Ashod was secured. Specifically, it rested next to the metal buckle on the front, most students carried them that way. In its dormant state, an Ashod was extremely small and fit with the design. It was nothing more than two thin stones of whatever colour the owner chose, framed by grey metal. Personally, I had gone with a nice baby blue, since that fit with my eyes. Together, the stones formed a tall rectangle. The halves were so tightly joined that the fact that they were two units was hardly visible. I let a little bit of my Astral Capacity flow inside and pulled. They came apart without any issue.

A screen of light appeared between the halves and with it came a lengthening display. Despite the look of it, the screen was actually solid and had simple touch input. It couldn't stand too much pressure though, and broke quite easily. Not too much of a drawback, as restarting the device repaired the screen completely. No permanent damage on the glass, as there was none, only magic.

Funny and ingenious little inventions, these things. Very versatile and so common in usage that production was pretty standardized and cheap. They still found ways to make better ones every now and again. I had invested quite a bit of money into the model I was holding and its processing power was pretty impressive for its size. It could still be improved by hooking it onto a physical extension.

"Here you go," I said, handing Derilea my Ashod. Although I only held one of the two stones, the other was fixed in its relative position. She took it and opened the university network program, AppDark, that every student had to install for numerous things, such as signing up for courses. I had the common decency to look away as she put in a couple of codes to sign in as an administrator. "Sure sucks that they can't analyse your Astral to immediately give you access, doesn't it?"

"A system that could immediately realize who was holding any Ashod would necessarily be difficult to build, maintain, and dangerously powerful at surveillance. You can remain logged in under normal circumstances, I just need to manually access your device for verification purposes," my joke fell on flat ears as Derilea took it completely literally and retorted with her opinion. A few moments and inputs later, she stayed her hand. "Karitas Desia... I have never heard of you before... That a fellow half elf would beat that... Esther."

Her tone of voice betrayed that there was more to that gorgeous woman I had fought than met the eye. Which was impressive, given how much there was to capture the attention of my gaze. I decided no to try and pry anything out of Derilea though, that felt out of place. "I am not a half elf," I pointed out instead.

Delirea raised a brow and her eyes from the screen, "I see that you are missing the slightly pointy ears, but those can be round enough to be missing in my kind." She glanced back down at my Ashod, her brow went up even higher, "Your identification has you as human."

"Genetically, 100% pure human," I confirmed with a friendly and slightly joking tone.

"Humans don't usually acquire pure white hair unless they have aged considerably. I fail to notice other signs of aging on you. Neither does your hair strike me as bleached."

"While I can only hope that my following words reach you in good humour, my good lady, I have to point out the following" I mused in an overly eloquent manner. "Have you ever heard of the white-haired people called albinos? While uncommon, it is a condition to be found among many creatures, not just those that hail from Earth or spawn there to this day, but among all inhabitants of the endless worlds."

It was meant to sound like a joke, but she took it in a less than pleased way. Her pink lips became a pale line, as she pressed them together and stared at me. Despite my tone, or maybe because of it, she seemed to think of me as smug or, worse, pretentious. It was an issue I ran into every now and again. An expectable issue, given how I liked to elaborate needlessly sometimes. "Albinos normally have red eyes and lighter skin than you," she pointed out. "You're at least lightly tanned, that should be impossible."

"Albinos normally can't materialize objects from their mind," I retorted in a chirping tone. She rolled her eyes and handed me back my Ashod. I made a mental note to dial back this kind of behaviour around her. I had my quirks and I wasn't afraid to show them, but I was willing to bend a bit to get along with people. The least I could do was not annoy reasonable people around me.

"I have activated all the necessary things. You will find a map to your new mansion in the corresponding AppDark tab," she then moved on to quickly explain to me how I was to use my Ashod as a key, how I could give people temporary and permanent keycodes to my door and where in the program I was to let the administration know once somebody had permanently taken residence in my new home.

"And I can let whoever I want live with me, right?" I asked, just to be sure. "Girls, dudes, whoever I want?"

"Yes, you can let your old friends live with you," Derilea immediately caught my drift. Not surprising - If I had been the first person to successfully win a mansion to stay with their buddies, that would have made Welldark a very young institution. "We simply require to know where a student lives in case we need to find them. Outside of that, the institution doesn't plan to inspect your private life. Do you have any further questions?"

"...You wouldn't happen to know where Esther was guided off to?" It wasn't a related question, but one I wanted an answer to anyway. Willt and Arlethia I would be able to find with some shouting and waving around. When it came to the beauty with the hourglass body, I had the feeling that she was the kind that would concentrate exclusively on her university work once things started going. At that point, it would require pure luck to stumble into her. The sooner I got her communication data or knew where she was staying, the quicker I could remove Miss Fortune from the equation and just visit her. I did want to follow that tugging on my heartstrings. Flimsy an infatuation as it currently may have been, it was still genuine.

"Zemerina will have given her the same explanation as I gave you and then sent her to the infirmary," Derilea answered. In other words, chances that I could still find her were basically null. I couldn't imagine that Esther was staying there longer than it took to fix that bruise. Noticing my downtrodden look, the maid did give me one reason to be cheerful though. "The luxurious apartments are all located within the general first year area, they are just spaced out more compared to the skyscraper that everyone else will live in. You will be guaranteed to find her if you just ring all the doors in the area."

"I see," I nodded. Not quite the answer I was looking for, but I liked my odds of success. For the specific instance of finding her, if nothing else. Since there was nothing else I could do here, I respectfully bowed my head. "Thank you for the help."

That seemed to somewhat take the edge off her earlier impression of me and she rewarded me with a kind smile. "It is my honour and obligation," she said and then opened the door for me. "I assume you have some friends to find and a mansion to claim."

Indeed, I had. With some last words of niceness, I was out the door and went back into the arena hall. The crowd there was already mostly removed, leaving me with the somewhat odd experience of seeing that giant room empty. Then I hastened to follow the other students outside.

As expected, it wasn't too hard to find my friends. Willt and Arlethia were waiting for me by the main entrance and shouted my name the second they saw me. I parted from the tail-end of the crowd. My steps carried me away from the gated arch that signified the entrance of the gothic building. The many clock towers of the university suddenly started ringing. There was a wonderful unity between them, minimal delays made it sound like all of the bells were one and their full, divine notes echoed over the campus. The hour they declared, nine in the morning, a lot less respectable in my opinion.

While I walked, I looked over to the others, hoping that, by a small chance, I would spy Esther somewhere.

The large body of first year students was organizing itself into many smaller groups. Friends, for the most part, but also a fair few gatherings of strangers that got talking. Mostly over the fact that they would be sharing a room soon. Everyone was now looking at the details of their room numbers and who else would be occupying an apartment with them.

I overheard a couple of happy men pumping their fists and bragging towards their friends at being put in with some particularly hot girls. There were pictures attached to the names, after all. The boring, standardized kinds that were usually found on passports and other kinds of identification, sure, but pictures nonetheless. Even with neutral expressions, they revealed the beauty of the women and, just barely, the visual size of their bust. I only got to know all of that since I checked my own Ashod, out of curiosity.

I was out of that system now, but I had been sent what would have been my room already. The girls attached all looked rather attractive, but none were like Esther. Not just because that raven-haired woman was so fantastically gorgeous, but also because they lacked that special presence. That could have been the photos' fault, to be fair.

"I cannot believe that you won that," Arlethia greeted me by shaking her head, her red hair flying around. "Like, I was rooting for her to trash you, but there you are, standing smug like always."

"I am actually feeling rather downtrodden, but why would I expect proper empathy from a demon that feeds on men?" I sighed dramatically and gestured in a long winded motion, "Ah, what have I done to deserve this fate? To meet this woman of my dreams just to be ripped from her, a moment after I had already laid her down beneath me, by the claws of bureaucracy?"

"That's an odd way to say 'We got separated after I toppled her over during a showmatch'," Willt joked, looking at his own Ashod. "We do owe you though, me and Arlethia would have gotten separated after all." They both showed their screens to me, revealing two room numbers that were several floors apart.

"It would have been astronomically good luck if you hadn't," I pointed out, checking out who else they would have gotten put together with. "And it would have been quite funny if you had been and then I lost that match. I would have offered myself a beer out of pity. You look really angry in your photo by the way, Arlethukinia."

"Stop using my full name!" the red succubus responded, feisty as always.

"Why do you mind?" I hummed.

"Because it's creepy and we are... you know, friends..."

"Aww, you make me blush."

"Shut it!" she yapped at me. "And I am oh-so-sorry if I have a case of resting bitch face! Get used to it!"

"Just keep shouting or smiling and I won't," I joked and got my response as an attempt to strike my forehead with a chop. Blocking the strike with my forearm, I smirked at her and did my best Christian preacher impression, "Thou shalt not strike thy friend, young lady, lest Satan finds his way into your mind through your violent tendencies."

"I am a fucking demon!" Arlethia growled but knew better than to try a second time. If she ever were to get me, it would be by surprise. "Fuck it, let's just go, you have a map, right?"

"Don't we all?" I mused pedantically, since that thing was installed on every Ashod.

Willt shook his head but chuckled. "Just lead the way, if you tease my girlfriend more, I think she might explode."

_________________________________________________________________

Welldark was more than a university. It was an entire island floating in its own pocket world. A mass of land that existed in a space that was originally uninhabitable. Only the headmaster putting in some favours with a few gods had changed that. They had helped him with all those pesky necessities to sustain mortal humanoids: gravity, water, air, a floor to walk on, those things.

From the outside, Welldark looked like a snow globe. A perfect sphere, with water in the bottom half, the two landmasses swimming on top and a bunch of air above. None of it escaped and massive enchantments kept it in a steady, self-sustaining flow. Aside from the university at the centre of the entire construction, there were the living areas designated to the five different ranks (Wood, Bronze, Iron, Silver and Gold, all with their extra flavour word), the first-year housing and, finally, Welldark City.

That list could make it sound larger than it really was. In its entirety, the main island was maybe ten kilometres across, with public transportation one could easily cross from one side to the other in about an hour. If I had to take an educated guess, I would have said that there was a pretty loose concentration of roughly 10'000 people on this island. Every year, about 1'000 people arrived and a normal student graduated after three years. That put the average attendance of students at 3'000. Adding to that the inhabitants of Welldark City, responsible for teaching, running the mechanisms, keeping everything clean, providing study materials and so on, and a fair number of tourists, attached families and so on, that's how I arrived at that number.

Given that size to people ratio, and the fact that most were bunched in at definitive locations, 'loose' was maybe even overstating it. If one took a stroll over the expansive green strips, running into someone else was pretty unlikely. Other Cosmic Universities were more comparable to places like Tokyo on Earth, a whole bunch of people crammed into stacked apartments, having little more than cubicles to themselves. Yet others were basically jungles, with camps serving as classrooms.

I much liked the style of Welldark. It was just the right mix between populated and wild for me. There were forests, beaches, grassy hills and even a large mountain, all left alone but tamed enough by intelligent design and the presence of humanoids that there was no true danger present from any of the creatures that dwelled there. Similarly, there was a functioning network of roads, streets and rails that connected the dormitories with points of interest, gardens, water, electricity, inter(dimensional)net. It had a nice mixture of land and city life. Nature and convenience. It was all just how I liked it.

Just another reason to choose Welldark over places like Balelight, which were basically one giant, streamlined palace where everything was orderly cut and glittered. Great for those aristocratic races that liked their pomp, like pure-blooded vampires, angels (fallen or not) and other higher hybrid races. For me, way too uptight. I would probably have gone into Welldark even without the divination telling me that I would have some interesting happenings here.

On this island floating in the abyss, there was no proper way to say where north was. Strictly speaking 'north' didn't exist. However, taking the university complex at the centre, it seemed the creators of the map had decided the first-year housing complex was the stand-in for the north. East of the university was the Wood Division area, settled right next to the water. Between those two locations was the Bronze Area, a slightly nicer and larger neighbourhood. South, surrounded by lots of green, were the Iron Ranks. Southwest was something called the Asylum, the purpose being likely exactly what it said on the box. West were the Silver Knight's dormitories. Northwest Welldark City and, separated by a channel from the main island, was the Golden Eagles' palace.

I strongly doubted that it was anything but a deliberate decision, that the skyscraper that served as housing for the new students overlooked the areas of the two lowest and the single highest class. A constant reminder where they would land if they failed to perform at least averagely while also teasing newcomers with the promise of luxury for those at the very top.

We had been approaching the first-year housing along with other student's for a while now, simply following the map. Now, a fork in the road led me and the couple with me away from it. I was honestly quite happy to stop looking at the boring skyscraper. It was a large, upright rectangle with dark tinted windows panelling every bit of the outside, making it look like a smooth pillar. The only exceptions were vertical cut-ins at the left and right side, travelling up the centre of each floor. The gaps were filled with balconies. They would be a blessing for everyone who liked to barbecue and everyone who didn't want smoke in their apartment.