Stepping through the portal was mildly disorienting. From the outside, it had appeared as if he'd be walking straight into a dingy storage closet barely large enough to squeeze two people inside. Instead, he found himself at the end of an impossibly long school corridor that only resembled the real one he'd just been in in the vaguest sense.

At first, it seemed like it might stretch on forever. A look through Eagle Eye disabused him of that notion, not that the sight at the "end" was particularly reassuring. A hazy black wall blocked the corridor what had to be at least half a mile from the start, and it looked… alive. Within the swirling shadows he was sure he could see grasping hands reaching back towards him.

Creepy.

Between him and the end of the corridor, though, stood dozens of doors lining the walls on either side, with windows into what would presumably be classrooms occupying the space between. When he tried to count them, he found his mind getting tripped up, always losing his place somewhere around twenty—there was an odd optical illusion to the doors, like some of them were winking in and out of existence when they were in the periphery of his vision.

Looking back, behind him stood the portal itself, now a solid blue rather than the translucent one he'd stepped through, much as it had been back inside the bus depot portal world. On the walls on either side of him were class schedules etched onto giant wooden slates. There were hundreds of classes listed down, divided into days of the week, and each day contained far more than one could reasonably complete in twenty-four hours, let alone actual school days, if they were classes in typical one hour blocks. They weren't, though. John let out a sigh as he read a few of them.

Drama: Method Dying, Paranormal Education, Necromathematics, Ritual Sacrifice 101, Eldritch Literature, and what looked to be several hundred more examples, listed alongside the room number they were located in, though there weren't times scheduled. It reminded him of the place named that had been present in the Underworld and the bus depot. Knightsgrave, Mary's Bone, South Killington, etc. Was every portal world going to have weird shit like this?

John catalogued all this in a handful of seconds, but he probably would have taken it all in faster if he wasn't still dealing with the dizzying disorientation of seeing the world through two bodies. He'd been half-expecting the connection to his Burning Blood Clone would have been lost immediately, but no. It was still standing there by the portal, watching Daniel's trio, unmoving, unblinking. His working theory was that Astral Projection was the thing allowing this to happen, but there was no point speculating on it right now. He wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Controlling the clone was as easy as moving his own body, and he directed it to give a thumbs up towards his comrades, still staring at Daniel's trio. A slight issue arose then: he felt more than heard some vibrations nearby the clone, and only after a bit of focusing on its less than stellar vision did he realise the others were talking amongst themselves. He hadn't noticed its poor hearing before, since everyone had been waiting silently.

There was a bit of negotiation between Doug and Daniel which John didn't hear a word of, but eventually Daniel and his crew took the lead in entering the portal, with Doug and co following close behind. John had his blood clone move out of the way as they stepped through the portal.

Meanwhile, he rushed to the side with his real body, moving to lean against the wall, one foot kicked up, arms crossed, head lolling back. He rolled his neck to the side to give them a flat look as Daniel, Marius, and Farah finally entered. They stilled as they saw him.

"What took you so long?" he asked.

+1000 Aura

It was a completely unreasonable question, as they'd been waiting for him to give a signal, but he'd needed to have some way to greet them upon their entrance that didn't involve an awkward silence, and this was the first thing that came to mind.

Aside from that little hitch in their step, they wasted no time in moving to stand against the opposite wall. Doug followed, with Jade, Lily, and Chester coming up behind him. They immediately fanned out, standing in a line at the end of the corridor with the solid blue portal behind them. They stared along the school corridor with varying levels of wide-eyed bafflement. John couldn't blame them for that. He'd pretty much done the same thing. He was sure they'd all get used to this kind of nonsense eventually, but he reckoned seeing things like this was going to keep taking them off guard for the foreseeable future.

On the other end of the portal, John's blood clone stared. From outside, absolutely nothing had changed about it. It was still just a translucent sheet of ethereal glass occupying the doorway of the closet. No indication that people were inside. He had to hold back a grimace in his real body at that confirmation; without a way to tell if a portal world was already occupied, he was now certain an awkward situation would arise in the future.

Briefly, he considered dismissing his clone or attempting to have it cross the portal just to see if it could. Instead, he had it move back along the corridor to a window that looked out onto the fields behind the campus. Might as well use it as a lookout, since it was already out there. It could both tell him if anyone else was coming, and when the monsters had arrived and passed by.

Back inside, John turned the head of his real body towards his comrades, eyeing them. "You all ready?"

Doug arched an eyebrow, but did surreptitiously glance either side at the others. Lily and Jade were on his right, closest to Daniel, Marius, and Farah, while Chester was on his left, quite blatantly standing at an angle where none of the trio could see him.

Looking at them like this, John couldn't help noticing how… ragged they looked compared to Daniel's group. They'd changed out of their ruined clothes into anything they could find that fit, and they hadn't been thinking of fashion much. Chester now wore a grey tracksuit beneath his hockey goalie armour and army helmet. Lily's chain mail shirt and motorcycle helmet combo didn't exactly mesh well with the scuffed jeans and beige timberlands. Doug, of course, had found himself another pair of swimming shorts—John still hadn't worked up the courage to ask what the fuck he was thinking with that ensemble. He didn't even have shoes on. Jade was the only one who could match up to Daniel's group, with her suit of medieval armour, but it still looked awfully mediocre when compared to Marius' red knight ensemble.

Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

John briefly wondered about how his own outfit compared, but decided it didn't really matter. It was better to mog them with strength than appearance, and he figured he looked decently cool anyway, even if it wasn't much of a "warrior" outfit.

Eyeing the ruby red armour and the flowing white mage robe, John couldn't help wondering. "You guy's outfits," he started. "Were they loot from monsters or enemies? Or did you buy them from the market?"

Daniel stared at him. "The market?"

"Never mind," John said. "So you looted them?"

"In a manner of speaking," Daniel said slowly. Both of his comrades glanced at him, but he looked like he was trying to bore a hole through John's head with his vision alone. That voluminous hood was an odd thing; the mage shouldn't have been able to see a thing through it, yet he unerringly tracked everyone's movements. "You guys don't look like you have any special gear. No offence."

John shrugged. "Haven't needed any."

+1000 Aura

"Good for you." Daniel shook his head. "I'm sure you've noticed monster corpses leave stuff behind in the portal worlds sometimes, right?"

"Greens and above, yeah."

There was a pause. "No. Well, yes. Greens and above leave more complete stuff, like Marius' armour, but you can harvest resources from blues too, if you get to them before their bodies fade away." He lifted his hand, and, like a magician pulling something impossible from his sleeve, a small cluster of black spheres dropped into his palm. "Like these."

John nodded. Those were part of what he'd received when he'd looted the corpse of the yellow-souled bat monster. That felt like ages ago, now. "I've found a couple of them, yeah."

"They can be useful." Daniel hesitated, staring. "If you come across any, and you don't have any need for them, I'll trade you for them. I'll even make you some good stuff like ours, for a price."

John arched an eyebrow. The Crafting and Alchemy menus were rising in his priority list. "We'll see." He turned to look down the corridor. "So what's the gimmick in this place?"

"Classes," Marius said.

Daniel nodded. "There's a schedule on the wall there. It helps a bit. You 'attend' the right classes in order, depending on the day, and the veil lifts, letting you move on to the next block."

"How many blocks are there?" John asked.

"No idea. We haven't been all the way through yet. Risky with just three of us."

"Hm." John tried and failed not to judge them for that. "And the classes themselves? What do they actually consist of? Do they adhere to their names, or is it just set dressing?"

Back in the bus depot and the Underworld, there hadn't been any immediately obvious point to the names. South Killington hadn't particularly shown anything to distinguish it from Blackhall, thematically speaking. But maybe it would be different, here.

Daniel glanced down the corridor. "Not exactly. The classes will all have monsters sitting at the desks like students. They'll watch you as you enter, but they won't attack until you reach the lectern at the head of the room."

"And they just rush you as a group?"

"Pretty much."

"That doesn't sound too bad."

+1000 Aura

Daniel just stared at him, saying nothing.

"Many monsters in a closed space," Marius said slowly. "The doors close, trapping you in with them, and don't unlock until all the monsters are dead. No blasting your way out, either."

John just shrugged, causing Doug to let out a soft snort. They were only blues. If they were sat at desks like students, that meant there couldn't be much more than thirty of them per class. He could handle that many easily.

Glancing back at the schedule, though, he frowned. "What happens if you don't follow the schedule?"

Daniel's answer took an oddly long time to come, and there was a notable strain in his voice when he spoke a single word: "Detention."

"Detention?" John repeated quietly, ruffling his brows.

"Haven't been in detention in seventy years," Doug mused. "Then again, I haven't been in a school at all in seventy years, either."

"So, what? The portal makes you write lines?" Jade asked. He couldn't remember the last time she'd spoke, and the realisation of her silence had him inspecting his comrades, all of whom had been equally quiet, aside from Doug. Were they nervous? Of the other, potentially hostile humans, or the school?

Daniel exchanged looks with his comrades on either side of him. "No. The, uh, headmaster comes to get you. Takes you to the detention room. Punishes you." He audibly swallowed. "You're better off running, if you fuck up the schedule. Just escape the portal. There's no fighting that thing, and its punishment fucking sucks."

"What's the punishment?" Lily asked.

Daniel didn't answer.

"I take it the headmaster isn't a blue?" John asked.

"I don't know what you mean by that, but I can guess. Yes, the headmaster is much stronger than anything else in this portal. Let me repeat: there's no fighting that thing. If you fuck up, get the hell out of the portal."

Well, John thought. I guess that's this portal's boss.

Previous experience suggested it could be a red. If he wanted to destroy the portal, he was probably going to have to defeat it in single combat, or at least hold it off long enough to destroy whatever was actually holding the portal together, like last time.

John looked at his comrades. "I'll handle it."

"You sure?" Doug asked.

"We'll try the normal way first," John said. "But if the headmaster shows up, I'll deal with him."

+1000 Aura

And with that, he turned on his heel and started off down the corridor. He only made it two steps before pausing. "Can someone tell me what class we have first?"

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.