Erin woke up early that morning.
Losing her ice powers felt very real in her nightmares, thankfully nothing of the sort could ever happen—
Until she tried to cool down her water— reminding her that all of that did in fact happen last night.
Drinking water also reminded her that there was a daily quest saying that she'll gain experience if she drank 2 liters a day.
Determined to see if the system tracked water absorption in real time, Erin drank a few cups of water, and saw the number go up. Getting impatient for her cup of water to refill in the sink, she drank the final liter from a refrigerated bottle she found in their kitchenette.
Erin genuinely didn't know who the bottle belonged to, but she didn't care. There's been enough times when someone's stolen one of her leftovers in the fridge despite her name on it, it was only fair.
[Congratulations, you've completed a daily quest]
[5/100 EXP]
"This is going to take forever…" Erin grumbled out loud, placing her palm on her head while sitting on her bed. She held a hand to her stomach, not really liking the fact that she drank so much water for breakfast.
{Quinn} Kinda strange how I know when you're drinking water…
{Erin} Oh my god shut up.
{Quinn} Remember this is just as weird for me as it is for you.
{Erin} It's not the same. You know exactly what it is I'm doing, meanwhile I know nothing about you.
{Erin} Not that I'd actually want that.
{Quinn} If it makes you feel better, I just got out of the bathroom.
{Erin} Ew, I didn't need to know that.
{Quinn} Sorry, I don't know what I'm doing.
{Quinn} and I'm sorry for acting like that last night.
{Quinn} I don't know how to talk to girls, and I'm now suddenly linked to one.
{Erin} Just talk to me like a person— god— it's not that hard.
{Erin} Girls aren't aliens.
Before Erin could continue to read anymore messages from idiot boy, Layla got up from her bed looking exhausted.
"Beast weapons class is killing me," Layla pouted while stretching back.
Erin looked over to her roommate, who was already leaving for the bathroom.
"Hey, Erin…" Layla spoke sleepily, not really paying attention to Erin holding her water bottle.
Erin was reminded of her classes. She was glad that she decided to take the beast weapons class instead of the elemental one. Placing the water bottle back in the fridge, Erin got ready for the day.
—
Quinn woke up and did his morning routine. He had almost forgotten his incident with Erin until he saw a message screen about a daily quest with drinking 2 liters of water.
"That's right…" Quinn mumbled, which caught the attention of his roommate, Fex.
"What's right?" asked the black-haired boy with red eyes from the sink.
"Uh, I um…" Quinn didn't know how to respond, "I just remembered something I needed to do for class, don't worry about it."
"Okay man, good luck with that," he said before scooping gel from his obnoxiously large tub onto his hair.
Quinn took notice of his other roommate, Peter, who was yawning while struggling to get used to the early morning schedule. Stretching his arms, Peter looked over to Quinn, weakly waving.
"Hey," Peter almost whispered, "Think you can walk with me today?"
"Of course," Quinn replied.
Quinn and Peter quickly got out of their dorm room, ready to head to the cafeteria, when he got another notification that caused him to jump slightly.
[Erin is being hit by direct sunlight. All stats will be halved]
{Erin} AAAAA YOUR STUPID BOOK DID THIS TO ME.
{Erin} Stupid fucking sun.
{Erin} I'm gonna fucking murder someone.
[New quest: stay out of direct sunlight for 8 hours]
{Erin} Oh GREAT, why couldn't I have been given this quest last night? I could've gotten another 5 exp.
{Erin} Some tiny ass amount of exp, how am I meant to level up?!?
{Quinn} This seems really strange for an ability book.
{Erin} No shit, Sherlock.
[Erin is no longer being hit by direct sunlight. All stats will return to normal]
{Erin} Finally, I can think straight.
Quinn really needed to figure out a way to mute the messages.
"Did you say something?" Peter asked.
"No— It's nothing," Quinn quickly replied back.
He ordered his food, thankful that no one thought to steal his money at the moment, and sat down to look through his newfound system tabs.
There was the shop tab that he still had yet to unlock, along with an empty inventory, and the messaging tab. When looking through the messaging tab, there were settings to not have the messages read out to him, but he couldn't seem to disable the notification sound. He didn't want to test out the empty inventory just yet as he was sure Peter would notice if something in Quinn's hand just disappeared.
{Quinn} Good, there's a setting to turn off the messages being read out loud.
{Quinn} Just check the settings.
Erin opened up her side of the system, searching for whatever the settings were.
{Erin} Where is it?
{Erin} I don't want to hear your stupid voice anymore.
{Quinn} Top left, there's a gear symbol, if you focus on that then there's some checkmarks.
[Messaging settings]
[Have messages read out loud]
[Yes] [No]
{Erin} Found it.
{Erin} Can you say something?
{Quinn} Is this the only time you'll want me to speak to you?
{Erin} FINALLY!
{Erin} I can focus now.
Quinn shook his head, and continued eating. He wondered where Erin was at in the cafeteria, but with how many students there were, and how large the cafeteria was, it was unlikely that he'd spot her amidst the crowd.
"Hey Quinn, I'm kinda struggling with my earth ability book," Peter brought up, "and I notice that you haven't learnt an ability just yet… I was just thinking…"
His voice trailed off, and Quinn turned to look at him. Peter was very similar to himself, he too also wore glasses, but they were in a bit better condition than his own pair. His friend also had black hair and pale skin just like himself. One of the bigger differences between the two was that Peter had freckles and Quinn didn't, along with him having monolid eyes. If people didn't know any better, they might just assume the two were siblings at first glance.
"What was it you were thinking?" Quinn asked.
"Well… It might help if we both learned the earth ability together…?"
Quinn didn't respond right away, as he was thinking about it. He was kinda counting on his ability book to grant him one, as he didn't want to be a slave to the military since they hoarded all the higher level books away from the public. However, his ability book went to Erin, and now the two were linked together. It'd be a lie to say that Quinn wasn't considering taking the military's offer of accepting their books, but as soon as he learned the earth ability, he wouldn't be able to learn another one.
"I'll have to think about that," Quinn eventually responded.
After they were done, Quinn went to his beast weapons class, where he had fallen in love with the art of fighting, his teacher and war hero Leo Suiyan motivating him to keep going. Since Quinn did not have an ability, his next best option was to practice his fighting skills as it was his only way to go up against any ability users that thought of him as a weak target. There was only so much he could go when being confronted with someone with a strong ability, but Quinn didn't want to be an easy target.
As everyone entered the class, Quinn saw Erin enter the room. The two made eye contact for a few seconds, before she moved over to her part of the class.
This had unfortunately gotten the attention of a nearby student with messy orange hair.
"Holy shit, you stared at the ice queen, and she didn't freeze you?"
Quinn just nervously laughed, and didn't respond to the student.
Leo Suyian, the blind swordsman who dominated the battles against the Dalki back in the first war, stood in the front of the class preparing another lecture about honing in on their fighting skills. There were some intriguing techniques that Quinn took close attention to, before Leo instructed them to pick out their beast gear if they haven't picked yet and to get into groups of two to spar.
Quinn had yet to pick out a weapon he wanted. He had already tried out a sword, a spear, staff, mace, and a few others but nothing really seemed to click for him. As he stood in front of the large array of beast gear, a system message appeared.
[An enemy ability user has been detected]
[You have received a new quest]
[First fight: defeat your first opponent]
[Reward: 60 EXP]
Looking behind him, Quinn could see Erin fighting with a larger man almost twice her size. She seemed to be zooming around him, too quick to catch or hit, until she managed to land a few heavy blows to his chest, sending him flying.
[First fight has been completed!]
[60 EXP received]
[65/100 EXP]
[Additional quest reward]
[Skill unlocked: LV 1 Inspect]
Quinn saw Erin stand there for a second, then he saw that she was looking at the skills tab.
{Erin} Maybe this system isn't so bad after all.
Erin turned to look back at Quinn, then walked over to where he was. He quickly pretended to still be examining the weapons because honestly? Erin kinda scared him.
"Pick one out already." She sternly said.
"Sorry, it's just that I've already tried out so many of these by now, but I still haven't decided."
Erin looked at the wall of weapons then started using her Inspect skill at a sword. Quinn could now suddenly see the same messages about the weapons in front of them.
[Blueslicer Sword]
[Strength + 2]
"Does this help?"
"Hmm…" Quinn mindlessly scratched at his ear, "Yeah, it does."
Quinn walked around as Erin inspected each of the weapons, they all listed different stat improvements which were mostly about strength, but there were a few that increased speed too.
After a bit, Quinn could tell Erin was getting annoyed. She could be out there collecting EXP but was trying to be helpful. Eventually, they came across a pair of black gauntlets with little horns at the top. The fingers were pointed like a claw.
[Strength + 3] [Defense + 2]
[This weapon is compatible with the skill "Blood swipe". When used with the gauntlets blood swipe will have an increase of 5% in power.]
"Bloodswipe?" Quinn whispered, before the gauntlets were shoved into his arms.
"Can we get to fighting already?" Erin began, grabbing a basic tier sword.
Not wanting to waste Erin's time anymore, Quinn quickly put on the gauntlets, and joined her out onto the mats.