Course Selection

Fran looked at the packed course schedule before her and fell into deep thought.

Was she being too greedy? She had already selected over twenty courses, and quite a few of them conflicted with one another.

Fran heaved a sigh.

"Looks like I'll have to trim a few."

With a swipe of her small hand, she began by deleting the courses that clashed with the majority of her schedule.

"'Introduction to Magic Crafting' has to go. What kind of insane course requires over sixty sessions? It's honestly better if I just grind my proficiency directly."

"'Rune Exploration' can go too. Even though it grants credits, the teachers might not even know as much about runes as I do."

"'Analysis of Common Metal Materials'—how did I even end up picking this? Wouldn't it be better if I just learned to be a blacksmith?"

Finally, Fran finished deleting all the conflicting courses. Seeing only eleven classes remaining on her schedule with no overlaps, she felt a sense of relief.

"Hey, Fran."

Fran looked up to find Bella and Lai, who had arranged to meet her to compare schedules.

"Uh... hello you two."

Bella caught a glimpse of Fran's schedule and said in surprise:

"Why did you pick so many courses?!"

"Is it a lot?"

Fran was a bit confused; picking over a dozen courses was quite common back in her university days in her previous life.

Besides, back then, she had to pick a dozen courses every half-year, whereas here at the academy, it was a dozen for the entire year. When spread out over a year, it didn't seem like that much at all.

"Let me show you mine."

Bella handed over the paper in her hand, where she had placed checkmarks next to the courses she intended to take.

Fran scanned it and saw only four courses selected. She asked curiously:

"Why did you only pick four?"

"I joined the Sword Chant School, so I only need to study relevant subjects. The ones on this list require credits to select."

Only then did Fran understand why she had picked so many.

A normal apprentice struggled just to get in touch with a school. Once they learned the relevant content, they would only study the required courses to achieve entry into the school and become a high-ranking apprentice; if they failed, they would be kicked out of the academy.

Normal apprentices weren't even guaranteed to meet the entry requirements for a single school, so naturally, they couldn't pick a pile of courses like she did.

But she was relying on her system panel, thinking that having more skills wouldn't hurt. She had chosen courses for techniques she was completely unfamiliar with and that weren't on her panel yet.

Having figured this out, she still stood by her choices. Maximizing the utility of her panel was the key; she didn't have the energy or time to focus on just one thing.

"Instant Casting Techniques, Material-less Casting Instruction, Elven Swordsmanship Instruction..."

Fran looked at the courses Bella had checked and realized she hadn't seen these on her own course selection list.

Furthermore, the content was completely different from what she had chosen. Her selections were, by name, theoretical courses—words like "analysis" and "application" appeared at the end of all her course titles.

But the ones Bella chose were all tutorial-based, the kind that taught you how to actually do things.

"This is a course list only available to us in the Sword Chant School; other apprentices can't see it. If you want to pick them, I can get you a copy."

"Can others pick them?"

"Yes, everyone who takes these classes is either a student of the Sword Chant School or someone they know. It's like that for everyone."

Fran couldn't help but offer a wry smile. It was that damn nepotism again; even picking courses required connections.

"Then thanks."

Fran canceled the 'Application of Combat Skill Release' course from her schedule. She had only picked it because she heard that excelling in it would reward a rare combat skill, but now that Bella had access to better courses, she would naturally choose those instead.

School instructors were always better at teaching than the general faculty, not to mention that most of these internal school courses were taught by official mages.

"I'll go with this Elven Swordsmanship Instruction."

Fran knew that anything called "XX Swordsmanship" was actually a combat style, encompassing many combat skills, footwork, and attack frequencies.

Although, generally speaking, one needed a matching breathing technique to truly call it a complete style, it was impossible to learn an entire style just by taking a single class.

In this era rampant with nepotism, people were so stingy that they would set up barriers just to prevent others from obtaining even a single combat skill.

She estimated that at most, they would teach two combat skills and some footwork before stopping. After that, it would depend on whether you had connections; if you did, you could find the subsequent training.

However, the main reason Fran was interested was her panel. After she had practiced the incomplete breathing technique to mastery last time, she discovered:

Now, whenever she wanted, she would automatically activate the Swift Wind Breathing Technique, as if it were innate. The negative effects of it being incomplete were completely removed.

She didn't even know what the missing parts were; she felt she had mastered the thing entirely, though explaining how to teach it to others would require careful thought.

So, she wondered if she could "digest" the entire Elven Swordsmanship style just as she had practiced the breathing technique.

On the other side, Lai seemed to catch on to her thoughts about picking courses to learn a variety of other skills.

"Are you planning to learn these things first while you look for other schools?"

"That's right, I still want to see what the other schools are like first."

Lai, however, did not seem to think much of her choices.

"But you're trying to learn way too much! Potions, and then this 'Fundamentals of Construct Spells' thing—who chooses like that? For normal people, mastering even one of these in two or three years would be considered a success, yet you want to learn so many."

"What if I manage to learn them all?"

Lai didn't pick up on her comment, instead bringing up another matter entirely.

"I still suggest you drop most of your classes... haven't you been looking for information on other schools?"

"Yeah, do you know where there's a summary of information? I really need that."

"There isn't one, but I do have a major piece of news regarding a certain school."

Fran became interested; she was currently very sensitive to any information regarding these schools, and she had even chosen a few of her classes based on mere rumors.

For instance, one of her chosen courses, [Fundamentals of Construct Spells], mentioned that apprentices who achieved excellent grades could be recommended to the Construct School; meanwhile, the instructor for [Explanation of Common Alliance Creatures] would occasionally recommend students to the Necromancy School...

"Let me think, it should be a course available to all academies that doesn't require credits, I think it's called [Weapon Forging]."

Course selection was divided into classes available to one's own academy and classes taken alongside other academies. Generally, you could easily get into your own academy's classes, but for this kind of course...

"I've checked, that class seems to have been full for a long time..."

Fran had seen that course before and had wanted to take it to practice the craft of forging weapons, but since it was already full, she had dismissed the idea.

"You should use your credits to force your way into the class. Let me tell you, this seems to be the first time this school has come to the City of Apprentices to recruit apprentices."

When a free course is full, apprentices can use their credits to forcibly add their names to the roster; this was one of the minor uses of credits.

Fran was moved by Bella's words. If they were coming to the City of Apprentices to recruit for the first time, perhaps the spells of this school were incredibly powerful!