Chapter 5: Chapter 5: Mistakes were made.

The rest of the morning flew by with no further complications. My prior knowledge of the lecture’s topic meant I could only half listen whist still making pertinent notes, allowing to focus on grinding out my new skills.

With my mana regen where it stood, I had the mana to ping off an analyse every four minutes solely relying on my regeneration. Roughly one hour (and 15 classmates analysed) later, I received another notification.

Analyse has reached Lvl 3!

Activation cost: 2 mana -> 1 mana

I was sorely tempted to keep practicing with Analyse with the hopes of being able to use it for free eventually, but instead switched to Identify in the hopes training it too. The results I received back were often less than helpful. My first target, my pen, for example, returned the following.

Black ballpoint pen.

It is a pen.

Still, I persevered, and after three more scans, I levelled up the skill and unlocked my first upgrade.

Identify has reached lvl2!

Items scanned now display their base durability. If an item uses a finite resource, Identify will now show you the percentage of that resource remaining.

Curious about the new changes, I scanned my pen again.

Black ballpoint pen.

It is still a pen.

Durability: 5/5

Ink remaining: 13%

‘Huh, neat.’

Identify Lvl3 took another 15 scans to gain, in which time I discovered that the little ‘I heart safe sex’ sticker was somehow buffing me with two points of wisdom whilst equipped. Reading through the skill-up notification, I nodded as I saw it too reduced the mana cost to 1 per cast.

We all made it to the 11am break without anyone nodding off, an achievement in and of itself. We all filed out of the room, grateful for the half hour we got to stretch our legs and make use of the facilities.

The girls didn’t have any plans, so I showed them to one of my favourite little coffee shops tucked away on campus. Aware of the opportunity for brownie points up for grabs, I offered to get them both a coffee. The bashful way both girls accepted the offer was a delight to observe, and the warm smile each girl gave me as I brought their drinks to our table was enough to melt my heart.

We talked through the lecture as we sipped on our drinks. Both girls seemed pleasantly surprised by my familiarity with the topic, and Sophie floated the idea of the occasional joint study nights. Neither Annie nor I had an objection, so we went ahead and organised one for a few days’ time.

As the conversation shifted to more casual topics, I was in full on multitasking mode. Whenever I had the mana, I scanned passers-by with Analyse. From the looks of my experimentation this morning, it seemed like scanning someone or something for a second time wouldn’t generate skill Exp. It was vital for me to find new targets to scan, as I would rapidly run out of flatmates.

Whist I waited for my mana to recharge, I updated my calendar app, adding reminders for all the upcoming tests, quizzes, and assignments I knew about. Whilst I was at it, I added several reminders that would help me live my best life on campus in other ways, at least for the next few months.

‘Does using your prior knowledge to put yourself in the perfect position to get jumped by a super-hot girl desperate for rebound sex make you a bad person? Maybe? Am I gonna do it, anyway? Yeaaaah…’

It was then, whilst I was in the middle of pondering this and other such moral quandaries, that the girls announced they were going to take the last half of our break to have a look through the nearby campus bookstore. Finished with everything else, I shrugged, then joined them.

Initially not enthused by the thought of overpriced textbooks, I still tagged along, simply happy to be spending more time with the girls. My attitude did a complete 180 as I ran out of new people to scan in the small store and instead shot off an Identify at a textbook.

Identify Successful!

Item name: Chemistry textbook.

Item type: Skillbook.

Item Description: A skillbook that allows you to gain skills at least tangentially related to the field of chemistry. With luck (and enough intelligence), it is possible to gain multiple skills through the use of this tome.

Brimming with excitement, I switched my attention over to a second window that had popped up alongside the first that went into greater detail about skillbooks worked. I was surprised to find that the way they worked wasn’t all that different from D&D and other similar tabletop style roll tables, system generated D100’s included.

From what I could gather, each time I absorbed a skillbook, I would get a single die to roll on a table of skills. For each threshold of my intelligence attribute I passed, I would get an additional dice to roll, the current total being two.

There was a cooldown after each book was used, starting at a day, but unfortunately doubling with every subsequent skillbook absorbed, no matter the type. To limit things even further, it appeared that each type of skillbook could only ever be used twice.

‘Eh, I guess if there were no limitations, I could order a bunch off of some internet retailer and go to town. In hindsight that is absolutely a good thing. The size of one’s wallet should not be a limiter on power, otherwise the world would be exclusively run by rich buggers. Waaaait a minute…’

Grumbling at the nature of the world but hopeful that things were now different, I closed the tooltip. Deciding not to be stingy with mana, I had a look around, scanning a few of the better looking textbooks as I went, practically drooling over some of the skills potentially up for grabs.

‘Oh, wooooooooow…’

Practically vibrating with excitement, I hurried from section to section, my arms soon full of textbooks. ‘Magic! There’s magic! Gunna be a wizard!’

‘Wait. How the hell does someone roll a decimal point on a D100?’ A little extra digging revealed that getting a roll of 100 on the last two tables would prompt me to roll an additional D10, on which only the 10 would earn me the big reward.

“Err, Casper, what are you doing?” Annie asked, amusement plain in her voice. When I turned to look, a sheepish expression in place, she and Sophie were standing in the middle of the store. From the size of the grins on their faces, they must’ve been watching me bounce around like an excited puppy for some time.

“I can see that you’re enthusiastic,” Sophie added, barely suppressing a giggle, “but you do realise only half those books are remotely relevant, right?”

“Errrrrrrm…” I eloquently replied, trying to come up a half decent excuse that allowed me to keep my gathered loot. As a biology student, I could easily get away with buying the biology and the anatomy books, but the other two?

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A memory of an old friend in the year above who’d help me study for my A-level chemistry class came to mind. ‘She just so happens to be studying chemistry on the other side of the country now, right? Sorry Kate, looks like you’re being thrown under the bus for this one.’

“Well, the biology and anatomy books are for me. The chemistry book is a specific edition for an old friend who complained to me about their local shop being sold out recently. As for the Physics book...” I said, my voice trailing off as my brain scrambled for an excuse for the last textbook.

‘Maybe my little sister?’ I thought, only to pause in confusion. ‘Wait, I don’t have a little sister, so why am I suddenly so sure that I do?’

Because you do.

I blinked, surprised by the unprompted system message. Images of a short, bespectacled anime girl with ridiculously long white hair tied up in twin tails filled my mind, and I felt the uncanny certainty that this was, in fact, my sister.

‘Uh huh…’

I ruthlessly squashed the first thoughts that came to mind, feeling incredibly guilty where my brain went, only to pause as a second system message followed the first.

She is both 18 and adopted.

‘Well, that’s convenient...’

“The Physics book is for my little sister. She’s in the year below us, but is a self-made genius, despite what people have tried to pull to drag her down,” I said, feeling a swell of pride for my sister’s perseverant nature. This bit of system fuckery thoroughly wigged me out, as I’d never met the woman and thus shouldn’t know the first thing about her.

Quite willing to entertain any form of distraction, I played up my response to the Annie and Sophie’s gentle ribbing, bantering back and forth with them as we all headed back to class, my four prizes secured in my inventory.

The second half of the morning’s lectures started off smoothly. I continued to grind out experience for my two scanning skills when my mana filled, using the time between casts to chat quietly with the girls as we worked together on the small project we’d been assigned.

Miss Wittersham sat at her desk at the front of the room as the class worked, tapping away on a laptop when she wasn’t answering the occasional query.

People were sitting around in small groups, the low murmur of the students filling the hall. Already familiar with the task, I was happy to take more of a passive role and help the girls reach the right answers, giving the girls the occasional gentle nudge in the right direction by ‘stumbling upon’ resources online that had repeatedly proven themselves useful for me on my last go round.

As time flew by and lunch grew closer, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was frequently coming under more and more intense scrutiny from somewhere within the room. Every time I looked up to find the source of the feeling, it would recede, only to come back shortly after I’d stopped looking.

I was just about ready to pull my hair out from the frustration when I felt a gentle tap on my side. Turning, I looked at Sophie, the source of the poke, and raised an eyebrow. The redhead checked to see if anyone was watching before gesturing me towards her conspiratorially. Curious about what she wanted, I leant forward, my movement quickly mirrored by Annie, who’d also caught the exchange and was just as curious.

“Casper, what did you do to piss off Miss Wittersham?” Sophie asked in a concerned whisper, “she’s been shooting evils your way every time she thinks no one is watching!”

“I noticed that too!” said Annie excitedly, blushing deeply as both Sophie and I gestured wildly for her to keep the volume down. Wracking my brain, I tried to think of anything I could’ve possibly done in the single morning I’d been at the helm on this world that could’ve irritated the beautiful teacher enough to shoot me sour looks. Quickly drawing a blank, I shrugged in response to the girls’ curious gazes, shooting off an analyse to check for myself. This scan must’ve pushed me to the next skill level, completely shattering my re-scan theory, as I got way more information that I’d been expecting.

Analyse Successful!

 

‘What the fuck did I do!?!’

For the rest of the lecture slot, I kept my head down, working on being the very picture of a model student. Our group talked in hushed voices, putting our heads together as we tried to figure out what I’d done.

“It has to have been something you did at the end of the last lecture,” Annie suggested quietly, “she was completely fine with you last week, and for all of this morning’s lecture.” I agreed with her on that, as the scan this morning had showed her to be mostly neutral towards me.

‘I was perfectly well behaved during that lecture.’ I thought, growing more and more nervous as time went on and the lecture drew to a close. ‘The only thing I did other than sit and take notes was… use my mana. Oh. Oh shit.’

I felt the hairs on my arms stand on end as my paranoid mind helpfully supplied the implications of such a revelation, should it prove to be true. The rest of the lecture was no fun for me at all. I mostly sat quietly, wondering what Miss Wittersham, who, knowing my luck, was probably secretly some powerful demoness or maybe even a powerful witch, would do to me for casting magic on her. Not once, but three times.

When the hour bell finally chimed, I rose to my feet with the all the finality of a condemned man. I waited for the rest of the students to file out of the room, wishing nothing more than to be able to follow them to freedom and safety, no matter how temporary that safety may be.

The girls gave me hugs for moral support, promising to wait by the hall door for me to discover whatever the problem may be. Their help meant the world to me, and it was that borrowed strength that, upon reaching the main aisle, gave me the mental fortitude needed to turn left towards the front of the room rather than to the right, which would’ve brought me to the exit.

Looking up as I walked down the steps, my eyes met Miss Wittersham’s, her mouth slowly closing as I approached. What had no doubt been a shout to garner my attention should I have chosen to try for an exit died on her lips, shifting to a carefully blank mask as I made my way towards her.

Nodding to a door at the front of the room, Miss Wittersham stood and started walking, leading me into a small, attached office. She took a seat at the room's desk, gesturing for me to take the seat opposite her as she fished a pair of elegant glasses out of a draw and put them on.

“Mister Miller. To what do I owe the pleasure?” She asked, studying me over the rim of her glasses. Thinking for a moment, I settled on honesty.

“Well, Miss Wittersham. I can tell I’ve somehow managed to upset you, and I dearly wish to discover what I’ve done, so I may either explain my actions or apologise for them.”

“Hmm, perceptive, very well. Mister Miller, were you aware that the university sanctioned add-on you downloaded for your calendar is set up as a two-way street unless changed to be otherwise in the app settings?”

Colour drained from my face as I paled, my eyes going wide. The add on she was referring to was something the university was making use of to update students’ calendars across multiple platforms. It was something I’d downloaded during my freshman week last time and thus something that was already installed on my phone when I’d woken this morning.

I’d already been using my calendar for months (in the last timeline) to track whatever inane thing I’d wanted to make a note of, a habit I’d formed early during my first month in the original world after a suggestion made by no other than the woman sat in front of me.

I’d chosen to switch off the setting that would share my calendar data with the university last time when I’d turned it into a memory aid, something I’d somewhat ironically forgotten to do this go round.

“I see you did not,” said Miss Wittersham, misreading my reaction, “then please could you tell me how you’ve dated every quiz and assignment that has been planned for your class this term with almost complete accuracy? Information that you should not have access to.”

‘Oh.’

“Furthermore, could you please tell me how you knew what would be involved in each of my assignments? Topics which, for some of these entries, I’d been seriously considering but had yet to make the final decision on.”

Her voice was like cold and hard as steel, her piercing blue eyes practically pinning me to the spot as she awaited my response.

‘Oh no.’

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