When I came to, the first thing that met my eyes was a wooden ceiling. My jaw ached, crying from the blow. The world seemed to spin as I pulled myself up to sit in the squeaky bed I was resting in. The room seemed rather large, although cloth sheets divided the space. Except for the empty bed opposite to me, I could observe nothing else. If not for the loud whispers that drifted throughout the space, I would think I was alone. Fuck, I am in the infirmary… in Heimskur Hall… A building specifically for theology students.
A young looking priestess approached me rather bored looking, looking to be doing her rounds to check in on patients.
“I see that you are awake, Sir Vir Kipu.”
Her eyes had some wariness within them, afterall, Vir was a little shit. He had to earn the title of “thug” somewhere. She flipped through a set of papers on her clipboard, every now and then giving quick subtle glances at me to make sure I wasn’t going to try anything.
“Let’s see here… You went unconscious after Sir Justin Adolat stuck you in your duel. You have been here for roughly forty minutes. We have used the blessings of the Seven Deities to heal your jaw bone, mitigate any issues with your brain functions, and reduce the pain. We expect a proper tithe to show your gratitude to the Deities for this miracle.”
I was waiting for that painful last sentence. The Seven Lights Church, the dominant religious institution of the kingdom, always expected tithes for their services. The amount given was proportional to one’s status, so while the poor only gave a little, people of status like myself were to pay much more coins. It was a punishment for deaths in-game, getting worse as the player became more experienced.
“...Bill my family one gold and five sil– I mean, two gold. I misspoke, apologies.”
The veiled menace shooting from the priestess was about to suffocate me if I did not up the amount, only barely contented with my new offer. With a heavy sigh, she only nodded.
“You may stay here for an additional hour before you leave.”
The priestess leaving to check on the other sick or injured patients, I fell back into the squeaky bed. I was to use this allotted time to think and plan. Justin must have rattled my brain enough to give me a concussion, so I guessed. Must have made him extremely mad. Yet, I felt some happiness in that. Seems like the body remembered much more than how to wield weapons, it held onto Vir’s strongest emotions. If I wanted to make this body truly mine, I needed to rid myself of at least the affections for the princess. Even if I liked her, it was an impossible task to win her heart. Only Justin and herself mattered in her world, everyone else were just tools or threats to their “fated” relationship. I needed this body to give up on the Sisyphean task of wooing her. But that should be easy enough when I “exile” myself back home in the isolated north. Distance and time are the best medicine for my condition. I was just playing my part in the story, the hero and the heroines can take care of the rest. I could just live a simple life without the threat of demons hanging over my neck. Sure, it’d be a little awkward suddenly being a son and brother to a bunch of strangers, but I could make it work.
Grinning, I lifted myself out of the bed, creaking horribly, and got my footing with some difficulty. Stumbling towards the exit, the infirmary was rather unpopulated, but with the events of the game, this was going to be the least busy it was going to be in a long time. Yet my next hurdle presented itself, the layout. When entering most of the academy’s buildings in-game, the game creators didn’t bother to make maps for them, rather they just made a menu to go to places of interest. That is to say, I had no sense of how to exit this building. I neither knew where Vir lived, probably some average looking dorm considering Vir was poor for an aristocrat and was not too high in the bullshit “meritocratic” school rankings that were only excuses to baby high ranking nobles, giving them top of the line facilities, and suppress commoners, giving them no help. Sure, it was fun to climb in-game, numbers are a gamer’s love after all, but in real life? Hell no.
As I guessed my way through the maze-like hallways. I could feel eyes staring at me. Pity, disappointment, contempt, and to an extent joy, particularly among commoner students (Though fear soon emerged when I happened to look at them). Vir already was not entirely well-liked due to his antics, just barely skirting around the rules to avoid trouble and being a general embarrassment to my peers among the upper crust. In the minds of the commoner students, I was practically a demon myself, abusing my authority over them to bully them and make them my lackeys. I wasn’t really bothered however, it was more annoying than anything. Since no one wanted to associate with me, anyone I tried to ask for directions avoided answering. Yet through trial and error, I escaped the labyrinth.
The grounds were relatively sparse as it was around seven in the afternoon. This space I knew since I had to run around constantly. The dorms that Vir would inhabit were likely out on the eastern edge of the campus where a lot of the average students lived. There was a help desk in or around each of the clusters of dorms in each cardinal direction just in case someone lost the keys to their rooms or needed to file some sort of complaint. No matter how much they would love to avoid me, they cannot leave their post. Plus, they have the excuse of just doing their job if anyone thought they favored me. Yet first I needed to fill out some paperwork to officially drop out at the Campus Administration building at the very center of the academy.
I spent two hours there, three quarters of it just waiting in the lobby as the slow wheels of bureaucracy turned and thirty minutes signing dozens of papers waving my rights to refund my tuition, accept that I cannot inherit any land titles due to royal law stating that one must graduate to be able to become a aristocratic landowner (Honestly I did not care about this one), and various other agreements to protect the school from any retribution. The staff must’ve really wanted me out since I know they could take days to do a simple request, two hours was quick for them. The help desk took a mere fifteen minutes, apparently when you are so infamous that everyone knows your face, you do not really have to do much to prove my identity.
Acquiring a spare set of keys, I was practically skipping over to my room on the… second floor… uh… I spent around ten minutes just looking at the stairs before I conjured enough bravery to grip the side rails for dear life, carefully going up a step at a time. I knew it was going to be even worse traveling down tomorrow morning, but I refused to think about it for my own current self, damning my future self. The rest of the journey was uneventful as it was last. Most would be in their rooms either studying or sleeping at this time of night so there was nobody giving me shit. Arriving at room 2133, with a click, I unlocked my door, not even bothering to look around the room. I just wanted to dive into bed at this point after the mental exhaustion of the “hellish climb” I did. Tomorrow would be the day I would be free from this soon to be warzone, or so I thought.
