Du Pont watched groggily as his body was lifted onto a stretcher. He did not even have the strength to say thank you, but when he saw the kind souls helping him, he immediately felt a chill between his legs.
They were two bone-white skeletons. Not a single crack marred their bodies, and faint red light flickered in their hollow eye sockets. The sight sent a chill down his spine.
Fortunately, these skeletons were not the undead that wandered dangerous regions. They simply obeyed the mage's orders and carried Du Pont to the school infirmary. Even the scrape of their bones was absent as they walked, and the silence made Du Pont's heart go cold.
It seemed the Mage Academy he attended was not only remarkably progressive in its curriculum, but also unrestrained in its use of magic. It lacked the stereotypical fear of necromancy found in webnovels.
As the infirmary door opened, Du Pont was carried into a spacious, brightly lit room. The air carried the scent of unknown flowers. The skeletons placed him on a soft, comfortable bed, and a realistic oil painting of a massive tree hung on the wall.
Du Pont vaguely heard a nervous intake of breath, followed by a steady female voice. "Don't worry. Everyone here is simply a patient. There is nothing to fear."
"What you're experiencing isn't frightening. Medically, it's called menarche. Every woman encounters it after her body matures, and it will happen every month afterward. In the future, just keep warm during these days, drink more hot soup, and avoid cold food to reduce abdominal pain. You haven't caught some strange illness."
"Here, drink this cup of hot sugar water, then go back to class."
In his daze, Du Pont seemed to see a silver-haired girl hurry away. Then someone mentioned his name.
"Du Pont, right? Are you still conscious?"
"Yes." Du Pont's voice was weak.
"Forget it. Stay where you are and don't move. I'll be right there."
The crisp sound of footsteps reached his ears, filling Du Pont with an inexplicable sense of nostalgia.
That sounded like high heels.
Before he could think further, a beautiful sharp-eared woman in a white robe appeared before him.
Her delicate face showed little expression. Though not very tall, her slender figure made her appear especially graceful. Her understated makeup gave her a completely different style from the girl he had seen before. The silver badge on her chest was somewhat dazzling, engraved with the name Sophie Morningstar.
The only flaw was the heavy dark circles under her eyes, which remained noticeable even beneath her makeup.
Was she a Half-elf?
Before he could get a better look, a slightly cool hand lifted his face.
"Unconscious... traces of blood in the nasal cavity... physically weak. It looks somewhat like heatstroke combined with hitting your head." The doctor's voice was cold. "Can you understand what I'm saying?"
"I can." Du Pont answered honestly, recalling another important matter.
Perhaps...
"Teacher, there's always a buzzing sound in my head." Du Pont looked weakly into her eyes, his gaze full of confusion and terror. "Could I have been cursed by something powerful? Am I already living on borrowed time?"
"What are you thinking? Who would waste such a powerful curse on an apprentice like you?" the doctor replied blandly. She untied Du Pont's robe and began a thorough examination. A trace of surprise flashed through her eyes, but vanished in an instant. Two minutes later, she said, "You may have hit your head and affected your brain somewhat. Rest well and nurse yourself back to health over the next few days. You should recover in a few weeks."
Du Pont breathed a sigh of relief, but then seemed to recall something and said anxiously, "But I still haven't saved up the scrolls I need to hand in this week."
"I'll write a letter explaining the situation for you." As she spoke, the doctor snapped her fingers. A tray slowly floated to her side. She picked up the silver pot on it and filled a glass, then gave Du Pont a meaningful look. "However, academy rules state that sick leave can only be requested for one week unless there are special circumstances. Your condition only needs a divine spell to resolve. It's impossible to take long-term sick leave."
Hearing the female doctor's words, Du Pont knew she had seen through his little scheme. Still, one week of sick leave was not bad. He nodded obediently and drank the hot sugarcane juice, as though he had not caught the implication in her words.
"All right, finish this cup of sugar water and return to class. Missing even one lesson is a major loss for a third-year apprentice like you. Still, your body is far too weak. Come back tomorrow for a detailed full-body examination. If there's no improvement, you'll have to find a priest to deal with it."
"A priest?" Du Pont felt uneasy. In both sets of memories, anything associated with charlatans had never led to anything good.
"Don't worry. Divine spells at the academy are relatively affordable. The Lady of Magic's envoy would naturally not make unreasonable demands of her people." The female doctor raised one finger. "From what I can see, you'll need no more than a Lesser Restoration. At the academy, that divine spell costs only fifty gold coins. If you don't have the money now, you can put it on credit and repay it after graduation. Of course, interest will accumulate if you take too long."
Upon hearing the number fifty gold coins, Du Pont, whose entire fortune amounted to six silver coins, heard nothing afterward.
Only one sentence echoed in his mind.
How did a poor bastard like him end up studying magic here?—
Mage classes were dull and boring. The mage teaching them clearly had no idea what service awareness meant, and his expression looked as though everyone present owed him a massive sum of money.
Throughout the lesson, he simply lectured on how to quickly construct the spell model for the second-circle spell Fox's Cunning, then how to use the constructed spell model to connect to the Weave.
In an hour and a half, the blackboard had been rewritten three times. The teacher paid no attention to whether the students had learned anything. He simply tucked his spellbook under his arm and left, leaving behind students who were either deep in thought or completely baffled.
Du Pont belonged to the latter.
Although he could now read the Elvish writing on the blackboard fluently, he had no idea how to construct a spell model. The only things on the system were two messages: his understanding of Fox's Cunning had reached 5%, and he had gained 24 Experience Points.
However, he did have some idea of how to connect to the Weave.
He could think of the Weave as the internet, use his mental power to create electromagnetic waves similar to Wi-Fi, connect that mental power to the Weave, then use the correct password—the spell model—to download the spell into his brain. After that, he could cast it using the corresponding gestures and incantation.
However, turning his mental power into electromagnetic waves and connecting it to the Weave was still difficult for Du Pont.
According to his old memories, it seemed meditation was required to accomplish that.
As he was thinking, a chubby boy with short hair sneaked up beside him and asked mysteriously, "Hey, Du Pont, Annie came looking for you at noon?"
"Yes." Du Pont found the boy somewhat familiar. The name on his badge was Charles. "Why?"
"Be careful. A few days ago, I saw her with Conner from next door." Charles's lips barely moved, but his voice reached straight into Du Pont's mind. It was Message. "That guy Conner is the vice president of the Apprentice Association now. He talks like his family has priests or something. Last night, I went to fetch water at the dormitory, and he insisted on lecturing me with academy rules. If they hadn't outnumbered me, I would've beaten him up long ago."
"We just don't need to associate with them. It's not like he has nothing better to do than come pick a fight with us." Du Pont was unsure how close he had been with this chubby boy before, but they should be fairly familiar. Annie had even been willing to lend him scrolls, so their relationship should have been good too, right?
Du Pont replied, "By the way, I haven't been feeling well lately, so making scrolls might be difficult."
Charles immediately pulled a bitter face. "You can't come to me about that. It takes me an hour of complete concentration to make one scroll now. I'm exhausted after finishing one, and the success rate is only around fifty percent. The weekend's almost here, so I can only help you scrape together one at most."
Du Pont smiled. "What are you talking about? Borrowing still means paying it back. That doesn't solve anything. I wanted to ask if you know any way to make some money..."
"Make money? Copy scrolls, obviously."
"If I knew how to copy scrolls, would I be asking you?"
"There's no other way. Helping out in the academy kitchen only pays thirty Copper Coins an hour. Even if you work four hours after class, you'll earn just over one silver coin a day. You'd have to work for a month to earn enough for one scroll." Charles patted Du Pont's shoulder and encouraged him. "Stop thinking about pointless stuff. Work hard this year, and we'll probably reach Level 3 by the end of it. Then Scribe Scroll will be much easier than it is now. We won't get rich, but it'll be enough to get by."
Du Pont thought about it. The currency exchange rate in this world was probably one gold coin to ten silver coins to one thousand copper coins. By that calculation, an extra scroll was worth around three gold coins.
If one copper coin was equivalent to one yuan in his past life, then he had to hand over goods worth thirty gold coins every week to the academy—nearly thirty thousand yuan—just to avoid being kicked out of this Mage Academy?
The number made Du Pont's teeth ache.
Not to mention that his father had already paid the tuition when he enrolled, wasn't the price for attending these paid classes outrageously high?
At that thought, a bold idea sprouted in Du Pont's mind.
What if he dropped out?
Though he was only a Level 2 apprentice, if he worked hard, making one scroll a day should not be a problem. Based on the kitchen assistant wages Charles had mentioned, ordinary people in this world did not earn much. Making three thousand a day would make him one of the elite no matter how he looked at it.
With the ability to make money, he could find a quiet, peaceful town and retire there. This world apparently did not have monogamy, so he could buy a big house and marry several wives from different races. He could have plenty of children when he had nothing to do, teach them to become mages, and let them go out into the world to achieve great things before returning to support him. Wouldn't that be far better than exhausting himself here and burning through brain cells?
Wait, wasn't that exactly what the headmaster of this magic academy had in mind? That was seriously messed up.
With that thought, Du Pont's desire to live an easy life grew stronger and stronger, but a memory suddenly surged into his mind.
To enroll him, his family had paid six years of tuition totaling three thousand gold coins. Much of it had even been borrowed from loan sharks at high interest, all so that he could become a mage, rise above his social class, and restore the family's former glory.
Even if his useless father had to shoulder that debt, setting aside whether he could teach people magic after dropping out, he had just incurred a debt of one thousand gold coins to that damned system.
In other words, he had done nothing since crossing over, yet he was already carrying high-interest debt worth over a million that could keep compounding?
And it was the kind he could not default on?
The thought made Du Pont grit his teeth in hatred.
As an experienced construction worker, how could he not know the rule that you should never sign a contract you could not understand? But the system's temptation had been too great, awakening his gambling instinct. He had not expected the damned thing to be even more underhanded than a safety inspector, skipping straight from prison to death.
Seeing Du Pont's constipated expression, Charles assumed he was under too much pressure and comforted him. "Don't look so miserable. If things don't work out, buy a few scrolls to get through this first. You can work overtime on Sunday instead of resting and pay it back later."
Then he put on a furtive expression and lowered his voice. "By the way, I recently found a pretty good aromatherapy massage parlor. A new batch of Half-elf girls just arrived. They're beautiful, sweet-voiced, and have delicate hands. An hour costs only five silver coins, and they even provide fruit and mead. After class, let's go relax. We'll definitely be twice as efficient when copying scrolls afterward."
Ah, five silver coins for a massage from a Half-elf girl?
Du Pont had already seen what a Half-elf looked like in the infirmary. That face would absolutely qualify as minor-celebrity level on Earth, and her figure could rival a Victoria's Secret angel. The only slight flaw was that she was rather slender. If she had children, she might not produce enough milk for them.
He had no idea what the Half-elves at the massage parlor looked like, but the owner would not hire anyone too ugly to work in a place like that. At the very least, they should fit mainstream tastes.
Back in his old life, he had encountered a client who loved collecting women from different ethnic groups. He was interested in distinctive beauties from ethnic minorities and other countries alike. Even as he grew older and his own equipment stopped working so well, he would grit his teeth, take pills, and persist.
"It's just a hobby. What's the difference no matter what you play with?"
Now that he was in another world, would the details of other races be vastly different from humans?
Du Pont's heartbeat quickened slightly, but harsh reality soon crushed his excitement.
He only had six silver coins in his pocket. If he spent them all, even food would become a problem afterward. How could he still be in the mood to experience the customs of another world?
He was poor!
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