Long Island

Chapter 7: Return

"So you are stuck with the npc you choose till you learn or drop! And like if you can't get out of the village, you can't know if you can learn from somewhere else. So you can't drop it either!"

"Ah! That's harsh Manish. We will now have to choose who we learn from carefully. So what other information you got Rajan?" asked Himali.

"Hmm, lets see.." saying which he got out his cellphone and started to look at his information notes as he called it. "There seems to be a lot of people joining the battle schools and magic schools, and they say that learning is pretty hard as well. Battle school is pretty difficult in itself and requires you to hit the dummies with instructors coming in and helping with their forms occasionally. But most of it is hitting the training dummies. No information of anyone having got the strength stat."

He looked at a bit more ...

"Ah this is the one I wanted to talk about. Magic is different in this game. Seems like it is not based on Intelligence like other games as we all got that stat. Also there seems to be an age limit of 9 to enter the magic school. But those who join do not immediately learn magic. They are given books to read. A lot of stuff about channeling and perceiving, etc which I didn't understand. And they have to train their body as well for some reason."

"So did anyone learn magic already?"

"Hmmm well the post only says so much. The girl who posted it is still doing the reading. Though a few people should have reached age 9 by now. In any case, it will be interesting what people do find when they actually learn magic.

Oh! and there seem to be people putting up price lists of all items in all the starting villages. It seems like the economy might rise as people have started earning money."

"As expected of the information house. Good job Rajan!" Sneha said teasingly.

Swamy listened to everything as usual, not saying much.

Swamy excused himself, saying he had to go somewhere for a while and left the table.

"Alright see you later in class, Swamy!" and everyone went back to their talks.

Swamy started walking towards the sound rooms in the music department. He had gotten some extra time today and he thought of practicing a bit more. He was still age 5 in the game. Infact his age hadn't increased since he left the village. And he still hadn't learned cooking or flute till now. He did feel that impressing Lady Altia was tough. She never complained about the food, so Swamy could never say what was wrong with it. Another of those things he will realize as he experiments. And ofcourse playing the flute seemed to get harder as he kept remembering Lady Altia's notes of that night.

But so far Swamy had never thought of changing teachers. Even if he hadn't found out about this restriction he would still have tried to impress Lady Altia. Which is why he was practicing in that empty sound room, in the extra time he got. And what's more his training in the game had got doubled.

Swamy shuddered a little as he remembered the last two weeks. Ever since Lady Altia decided to double his training, two weeks in real life had passed. And on every day of those two weeks, he discovered a new kind of hell.

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Raka was trying to block for his life.

The first time sparring after he got the strength stat, Lady Altia was surprised at his sudden increase in power. Every strike he made went 'THWACK' instead of the light 'thump' it was making earlier.