Who Needs Magic in a Fantasy World Anyway?

Chapter 34: School and Other Things

"Grab another log, Cryner!" Austin yelled the next day, though Koko didn't mind his volume as she yawned loudly before complying as she grabbed one from nearby, surprising the two other students that had already been carrying it. "Grab your own!"

"Eh? I already have two of them though..." Koko replied, yawning yet again as she felt exhausted from her night's exploits and wasn't fully conscious. Of course, it didn't help that she'd been woken up an hour after she'd gotten back by Austin to do a training drill like people would in the military. And the worst part of it was that the training wasn't even hard enough to keep her awake as she was doing much more than this when she hadn't even left her estate yet. Running ten laps around the academy, rock balancing and now log carrying... all of it was completely boring and Koko waned nothing more than to go back to sleep.

"Maybe some more weight will keep you motivated!" Austin yelled, grabbing two more logs that were both taller and thicker than Koko before throwing them at her. However, even if they both balanced themselves perfectly on the logs already on her shoulders, nothing changed as Koko still felt as if she were on the verge of passing out.

Five, six, seven... twelve, thirteen, fourteen... By the fifteenth log, Koko was finally beginning to feel the strain from the weight, though thankfully both the logs and Austin's yelling were now enough to keep her awake now. However, even if she was slightly thankful for it, she suddenly grew self-conscious as all of her classmates were staring at her with wide eyes.

"Are you alright?" Richard asked in concern as he walked towards her.

"Y-yeah, I'm alright!" Koko attempted to finish waking up. "I normally carry twenty of these for my normal training, so this isn't bad at all!"

"S-she's a monster..." Another of their classmates said with wide eyes, though she couldn't blame them as everyone else was having to have one log for every two of them.

"Twenty it is!" Austin yelled, and Koko suddenly felt more weight being added to the already large pile of logs above her. "Why you spent so much time increasing your strength rather than your MP, I'll never know. But since you're trying to fall asleep, then why don't you try running a lap around the academy with these?!"

Cringing as Austin threw one more log onto her pile for good measure, making the total twenty-one, Koko sighed to herself before beginning to run towards the academy while managing not to drop any of the logs as she'd had plenty of practice carrying this many before. However, when she'd said twenty, she'd been exaggerating as she'd only been attempting to ease Richard's concern. And now that she had three more logs than she normally carried, Koko was wide awake as she struggled to carry them all around the academy. However, she couldn't even rest when she completed her lap as Austin still thought that it was to easy for her and made her run another five.

By the end of the exercise, Koko fell into an exhausted heap, letting the logs fall on top of her when she finally completed her laps. Thankfully the didn't hardly hurt her at all thanks to how high her HP was, though that didn't stop someone nearby from yelling before all of the logs were suddenly blasted off of her and she felt herself being shaken.

"Koko, are you alright?!" Richard asked, once again, for some reason appearing twice in the same day as they had never spoken this much before.

"I'm fine, just a bit tired." Koko yawned again while waving him away. "I think I'll ditch for the rest of day and take a nap."

"You're not going anywhere other than to the classroom to study." Austin suddenly appeared beside them while glaring daggers at Koko. "You're probably staying up late every night, aren't you? I'll be damned if I'm going to let your lack of sleep interrupt my lessons, so I'm going to make sure that you stay awake and study even if I have to hold your eyelids open myself while you read! You got that?!"

"Someone's cranky today..." Koko said in monotone as she gazed up at her instructor, who now bared his teeth at her before bending down and grabbing onto the back of her uniform's collar and dragging her towards the academy's main building. From then on, Koko sent several agonizingly boring hours of being forced to sit through boring lessons about the characteristics of giant rats until she was thankfully released from her torture by the bell ringing above them. and now that she had her freedom, Koko zombie-walked to her dorm room before falling on her bed and immediately falling asleep. Though she sprang out of bed a few hours later as she knew that she still had a job to do and that time was wasting away.

Sprinting to Goldgate as fast as she could while hoping that she still had time before sunrise, Koko cut across the farm fields and soon found herself once again running on the rooftop of the city before finding the temple. Though this time, rather than watching over it for Celdric, Koko jumped to where the man had appeared from the balcony the day before and looked for the entrance there.

Examining the area around the entrance, Koko was surprised when she eventually realized that there wasn't one before she wondered just how the man had appeared there the other night. However, while it had confused her for a moment, Koko smiled to herself as the moonlight gave her plenty of opportunities to see the scratches on the stone beneath her, a clear indication that there was in fact a door here. Even though it wasn't obvious, Koko knew that the door existed, and so she started looking around for any way to open the secret door before she finally stuck her hand down the mouth of a creepy guy's head that decorated the mortar of the building and felt a thin chain running across the back of her hand.

Pulling on the chain, Koko nearly jumped when an entire section of the roof suddenly flew open, nearly hitting her as the room underneath it was revealed. Thankfully, the hinges and springs seemed to have been well oiled and the secret door had only made a slight noise when it opened, keeping the sleeping priest beneath it from noticing the sudden change before Koko lightly dropped into the room and began looking around.

Watching Celdric nervously while waiting for any sign that the man was waking up, Koko took several steps towards the man's desk before she reached it and started looking through the scattered papers. However, with the simple amount of trash in the room, she had no idea as to what was a document and what was just a wrapper to a meat bun.

Filing through the papers as quietly as she could, Koko suddenly turned and readied the sleep dart that Ganton had given her as Celdric suddenly moaned from his bed. However, he soon rolled over and went back to sleep, snoring softly as Koko continued her search. Though after having gone through everything that was out in the open, Koko now took a deep breath and prepared herself before she actually started opening the drawers of the desk.

Finding nothing but quills and ink containers in the first drawer, Koko continued into the second where she found a surprising amount of copper coins. However, they weren't what she was looking for and she quietly closed the drawer and opened the third one before she finally found what she'd been looking for. Inside of the drawer was a stack of letters, and after opening the first one, she quickly took the others before closing it and turning around to see that Celdric was still sleeping.

With the objective in her possession, Koko jumped out of the still open secret door and began making her way out of the city, confident that she now had enough evidence to convict the man for his crimes. However, only time would tell if it would be enough to open the eyes of the girl who thought of the man as her father. And seeing as she'd only just recently gained an actual father herself, Koko doubted that anything would be enough to change Christina's mind. But she still had to try...