Reaching for the Stars

Chapter Nineteen

Though compared to my rooms that were practically not much better than a servant's rooms at the Dagon residence, it isn't too hard for them to be better. I had been expecting to have to share a room, so having a private one is already a step above that. It had a small area with a table and soft cushions to sit on around it, likely where I could eat or maybe play games with friends. There were many empty bookshelves, likely places I could put books, or maybe my own private supply of herbs, a small desk near the far wall, that I could sit at and write things down, then in the next room over, there was a large bed with soft looking blankets, and separating the room with a foldable room divider, there was a large wooden tub, empty at the moment but when I glance out the window next to it and see a well on the ground, I know that I would either have to haul up water by the bucket, or more preferable once I had spiritual energy to spare, draw water up from the well and directly into the tub.

Heating that water with spiritual energy as well instead of using a fire, though this room was lacking a fireplace to use, which made me wonder what they did in the winter. Though I suppose as long as I didn't do anything foolish enough to end up being kicked out, I would eventually find out exactly what they did in the winter to keep their rooms warm.

This two-room space, that was now my quarters, was much more than I was expecting, I had been expecting a room a fourth of this size, with a small bed and maybe a single bookshelf, that I would also have to share with a roommate, not to mention even though one hundred and fifty gold Valenian coins roughly made three hundred gold Khiradian coins, it was more than a fair price, considering all the materials that will be used up in the process of training herbalists, it was rather cheap actually, even five hundred gold Khiradian coins might not be enough to last a budding herbalist a year, and that was without the benefit of a teacher to guide them as well.

Of course, the low price might be because hardly anyone passed the test, and that herbalists were honored beyond even the normal amount of respect they received in the Khirad empire, I stroke the soft bedding with awe, so shocked by all of this, of course the feeling doesn't last long as Orpheus opens his mouth and ruins it. "I told you, you could do it." He jumps up on the bed and looks at me all smug.

"You bastard, I can't believe you brought me to an academy where the test is to take an unknown poison and cure myself, did the failed Qi Block pill not show you how abysmal I am at herbalism?" He fluffs his tail up in front of me, a purposeful taunt, just daring me to try to do something to him again, I could tell he was just aching for a reason to use his superior strength on me again.

"You passed, didn't you? Speaking of that though, how did you figure out the antidote? Was it why you seemed to space out for five minutes there?" He looked very curious, being the nosy little shit that he was, I knew he wouldn't let me not tell him.

"I wanted to see the books Marcellus' left me, but I knew that I couldn't take them out there in view of the professors, so I was just stroking my wrist in thought, and I guess I brushed the spatial tattoo by accident, because the next thing I know I am in this luxurious room, and the books I wanted are right in front of me, I spent at least two hours, if not more in there reading, until I found the one I thought matched, and the antidote to go with it, I think I was somehow inside of the spatial tattoo because I stroked my tattoo again with the thought of leaving and somehow I was back in the real world, and though I had spent hours in that strange space, only five minutes had passed in the real world." I wait to hear a response from him as I still stare out the window, absentmindedly thinking of that strange space I visited.

But he remains quite, which is quite unusual for his snarky self, so I look back at him and see him staring enviously at the tattoo on my wrist. "I've heard of some spatial rings which can do that, make a small room that one can mentally go to, but I've never heard of one that can bend time, where one can spend hours in a space and only minutes pass in the real world, it is a pity it is bonded only to you." I could hear the underlying words, if that spatial tattoo wasn't physically bonded to my arm, I had no doubt that Orpheus would take it from me.