60th of Season of Air, 57th year of the 32nd imperial era

Newt found his master a lot less serious than expected. He was a slave and her ward, and yet she joked or tried to. Naturally, Newt assumed this meant Lady Alabaster wasn't the most reliable master he could have gotten.

Thus, his lesson schedule came as quite a surprise. Two hours every day, 'be at the northern training field an hour before noon, and not a minute late or I beat you,' definitely caught him off guard.

As for the answers about finding the seal scribe teacher and the beast tamer chaplain, they were more in line with his mental image of his master.

"Find them on your own. If you're interested in learning seals in more depth, find a master in the Chamber of Runes. Beast tamers are at the Chamber of Beasts." Then she pointed at a long, five-story building dotted with windows to which she had been leading him for the last ten minutes. "This is the inner students' dormitory. It's more comfortable than it looks, trust me. I spent two decades of my eternal youth there."

Newt looked at the massive place. He could see it fitting a thousand people, probably more, but those one thousand people would probably not be happy. Despite what Lady Alabaster claimed, there were not enough windows.

"Your room number is on your key. You have the rest of the day off. See you tomorrow." Her smile disappeared and the cheerful tone became solemn. "Don't be late."

"Yes, Master." Newt half-bowed, but Lady Alabaster was already leaving.

The youth watched her leave at a surprisingly mortal pace, before he turned towards the building that looked like a giant loaf of square-shaped bread, riddled with windows. He drew a deep breath, and took his key, once more glancing at the five-o-three. Newt let out his breath as a sigh and headed for the building's main entrance.

A handful of ancient warnings were carved on the wall, the letters overgrown with moss, which made them even easier to read against the much lighter backdrop. Meditate at your own peril', 'No noise after sundown', 'Alchemy, artificing, and smithing forbidden', 'Don't be the reason we add more warnings'.

Newt didn't understand the first and wondered who came up with the idea of smithing inside a large communal building, and whether the warning about crafting was added later, along with the last one. There was no way to tell, since the sign was much more ancient than the moss making the letters.

An athletic youth walked out of the building. He appeared to be in mid-twenties, and mana leaking from him placed him at the peak of the second realm.

"Hello," Newt greeted him, and the man stopped, "I'm Newstar, just arrived here. I'm looking for room five-o-three, and I'd be grateful if you could tell me where the Chamber of Runes and Chamber of Beasts are."

"Hello, Newstar, I'm Vermillionleaf. Five-o-three is on the fifth floor. Good luck with your roommates. As for the various Chamber buildings, they are down that path." Vermillionleaf pointed back down the path Newt had come from. "The road forks left and right. The houses on the left belong to the elites. Don't intrude unless you want trouble. The right path leads to large buildings of various Chamber complexes. There are no walls or guards separating us, since this is all the inner yard. Now, if you don't mind, why do you have a snake wrapped around your arm?"

Newt glanced up at his upper arm and noticed the baby green python making light hissing snores, which had already become a background noise to his ears.

I completely forgot about it.

"I forgot to put it down. Say, would anyone mind if I place it on a tree somewhere around here? It's harmless to anyone above first realm."

"I don't think anyone would mind," Vermillionleaf shrugged, "but I would put it deeper into the jungle, just in case. Anyways, good luck, nice to have you, and good luck."

The man left at a brisk pace after waving Newt goodbye, he obviously had somewhere he had to be.

He wished me luck twice, no thrice. Do I really need luck that badly?

Newt once again glanced at his python, and decided he would first leave his uniform, pouch, spear, and sword in his room. Then he would find a nice sleeping branch for the python, whose life he had disturbed with his failed practical joke.

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Newt entered a large, empty hall, decorated with signs warning against littering, smoke, open flames, and eating in the communal space. The residents seemed sensible enough and apparently kept the hallway clean. There was a spiral stairway in the corner, and Newt climbed it all the way to the fifth floor, noting that the stairs continued upward to the roof.

Five-o-three was the fourth room to the left, across the hall from room five hundred ninety-six. The hallway was dark, the only sources of light being the two windows on the opposite ends of the corridor. The floor was smooth, polished by centuries upon centuries of passing shoes.

Newt stared at the door made of some dark-brown wood and at the brass number matching that of his key. The hallway was absolutely silent, and the only sound he could hear was the drumming of his racing heart.

Newt placed the key into the lock, turned it, and opened the door.

"Good—" The greeting died when he saw the spikeback pen that was the common room before him. No, spikebacks were nice, orderly creatures compared to the beasts which had left piles of clothes everywhere, dishes of half-eaten food, and judging by the smell, they did not leave them in the last day and a half.

And socks, the socks looked like the tenants had had a snowball fight with abused socks.

Newt was not a neat freak. Servants cleaned after him when he was younger, but when he was with Dandelion and the gang, he cleaned up after himself. There were no servants to clean his equipment and clothes. Then there were the three years he spent covered in grime.

Newt pushed away the thought, closed the door, and checked the room number again.

"Five-o-three," he mumbled, as if his chant and the clean corridor could alter reality, then he reopened the door. No magic had happened; the mess was still there. He glanced back, and the engraved writing confirmed he could not use open flames to cremate his problems. He had been in the building less than five minutes, and he already found the rules unreasonable.

Newt walked in, shuffling discarded clothes with his feet, wondering where to start. His nose made its demand known first. The piles of bowls and plates needed cleaning, and their contents needed disposing.

Newt opened the window to ventilate the fermented disaster zone, placed his new, clean, temporary robe on the windowsill, and got to work. Like a great confluence to create a smelly, muddy river, the assorted food scraps merged into a single bowl.

Newt left the building. Once on the lawn, he covered the bowl, excluding its contents, with Magmin Scales, then Magmin Flame flashed, purging the budding abomination into ash and steam. Newt shook the ash onto the lawn, hoping the grass would appreciate it, and went back to his shared room where he washed the dishes.

With the dishes done, he gathered all the clothes onto one big pile in the corner. The robes ranged from dark-blue and black to yellow and white, and included some with painted motifs, which Newt found girly, but decided not to judge his roommates.

He had just started flicking his fingers at the cushions to punch the dust out of them when a door opened behind his back.

"Who's making that racket?" A cracked, raspy voice sounded.

Newt spun, face to face with a young woman. Her underpants were pink and frilly, her modest chest wrapped in white cloth, her skin sun-kissed, her face locked in a shocked expression.

Newt's face was no better. His mouth hung open enough to fit a raptor's egg in, his eyes bulging like they were trying to leave their sockets. With a mahogany colored cushion in one hand, and a slumbering green snake coiled around the other, he was the stranger sight of the two.

The indecent young woman screamed, "Someone with a tiny python broke in!"

"Stop screaming. It's either tiny or a python, can't be both," a groggy, but definitely female voice said from another room, followed by a door slowly opening and revealing an even more indecent young woman.

The hungover, ebony-skinned girl put the provocative Dahlia to shame as she lazily eyed the situation.

"Oh, he has a snake." The ebony-skinned girl rubbed her eye, nonplussed. "What are you doing? Get the hell out, we're not welcoming visitors."

While Newt stared at her bare chest, his other roommate slammed her door shut, snapping Newt from his shock.

"I'm—" his mouth went dry as he struggled to find words. Any words.

Do what Dandelion would do.

"Greetings," he grinned, but the smile lacked Dandelion's charismatic nonchalance, revealing embarrassment, inexperience, and insecurity. "I'm Newstar, your new roommate."

He raised the key and waved it, trying and succeeding to shift the bare-chested woman's attention from himself to the proof that he had every right to be in the room. Silently, he blessed the key-shaped aegis.

"I just joined today under Lady Alabaster. As for what I'm doing." Newt looked around at the considerably cleaner room, the wet, sparkly dishes next to the kitchen sink, and the mound of clothes. "I thought nobody was home, so I started cleaning and airing the place."

An awkward silence descended and stretched.

"Nice to meet you. Is the third roommate also a girl or is this—" Newt almost said, 'mess your doing', but stopped himself in time and found a better way to end the sentence, "place where the two of you live alone?"

"My brother also lives here," the woman said, not even trying to cover herself. "He's out training and comes by once every two to three days to sleep and clean up."

Newt wanted to ask what the hell were the two of them doing, but again held back the biting remark. Unfortunately, the woman, who still had not introduced herself, seemed to have read it from his expression.

"We are back from a tough mission. Roselilly's boyfriend died, and we don't really feel like living anymore. His stuff is still in his room. Sorry if this sounds depressing, but I don't really care."

The woman then turned around, closed her door, and left Newt all alone in a three-quarters-clean room.

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