A couple of weeks went by before the class was slated to take place. He’d have to stay on the big island while he was doing so - that’s where the entrance to the MAZE was anyway. It had a big building built up around it. He had seen it before in pictures, but never in person. Kua took a trip to see it once during school, but that was forever ago. After the most recent wall broke and the wendigo thing happened, they did some renovations on the building. A “just in case” sort of thing, as far as he knew.
His mom was crying as she said goodbye, and even his dad shed a tear. Rain was trying so hard not to cry. They were making it so hard. He kept trying to remind them that it wasn’t like he was gonna be gone forever, and that phones still existed, and that he’d be extra careful, but his mom just squished him into a hug. She had a hard time letting him go.
Since a lot of people in Hawaii lived far away from the guild building, they had dorms there to accommodate people at a small cost. After all, taking a plane or boat every day wasn’t sustainable. He certainly wasn’t going to do that. He imagined some people probably did anyway, since they were stubborn and wanted to live at home or not pay the cost.
Well… the guild paid for the cost. At least at first, or during training.
He spent the whole boat ride over looking at his phone and trying to commit to memory as much of the introduction package as he could. He… definitely, totally, absolutely didn’t forget to look at the package before now. Nope. That’d be irresponsible…
Yeah he forgot.
Oh well. It probably wasn’t too important. A lot of this stuff was gonna be hands on, right? He hoped he’d be fine.
The other two winners were already there, bright and early. The cute first-place girl with wavy auburn hair and eyes, and the third-place boy with a forgettable face, nearly black eyes, and a short mess of black hair on top of his head. Rain was shorter than both of them - not because he was short, he was actually pretty average height at 5’8”. The other two were just almost 6’ tall.
The boy had a smile on his face and was chatting to another new student he didn’t recognize, though to be fair he didn’t recognize anyone but those two and Miss Jane in the distance. He looked like he didn’t get enough sleep… or sun… but he looked happy.
The girl had a similar smile on her face, but she resonated personality. She felt like the sort of person who would be totally popular among everyone in her class. He betted she was an overachiever type, someone who was good at just about anything they picked up.
One thing he noticed throughout the small class was that just about everyone here was beautiful looking. They were all above average in terms of appearance. Even the girl to the side that was in a wheelchair - something he was surprised the guild allowed - she was beautiful. Heck, even her chair seemed to compliment her. Maybe this was just normal among guild-people?
Since they could level up and since their stats were, probably, on average higher than 10, it made sense their charisma would in turn be higher. It was just weird to see and to think about.
Rain was lingering at the entrance, and Jane seemed to notice. She had on casual clothes, blue jeans and a white tube top that made it hard not to look at her abs. Damn she was fit. He had internally thought she was just a pencil pusher sort of explorer. The kind that had adventured in the past, but hadn’t in years.
This was not so for her, and her physique showed as much. He tore his eyes away from her deep toned skin to meet her gaze. She beckoned him forward, “Heya darlin’! No need ta be shy, just come right on in. We’re waitin’ for one more fiy, ‘nd then we be good to go.”
He took a moment to understand her words. Fiy must have been a word for girl or guy. Rain ducked his head an inch or two and hurried to the group, “Sorry, sorry. Had to come from Lanai. Boat was slow.”
She laughed, patting his shoulder as he passed and joined the small group, “Oh geez, mon cher, don’t be so apologetic! You’re fine. There’s still a fiy, a girl, that needs ta show up. S’all good. We ain’t rushin’. We ain’t big like some other sections. Y’all are family as far as I’m concerned.”
Rain looked at the others. If there was only one more girl, then she was right about this guild building not being a big one. The whole state was only home to about 1.4 million people. Explorer wasn’t exactly a common job. This class seemed to be made up of only seven people - the three winners, including Rain, the wheelchair girl that had dark blue hair in a long ponytail, the girl that hadn’t yet shown up, and two boys that looked like they were twins who both had short dark brown hair and eyes.
It only took another ten minutes before the missing girl got there too. She caught everyone’s eyes with her curly white hair, icy blue eyes, and especially the pointed tips of her ears. She looked like an elf!
She seemed to know this was the most common response, and held up a thin hand before anyone could say anything, “I’m a half-elf.”
Jane laughed, the sound as honeyed as she seemed to always be, “Ya been through this before, I take it?”
“All the time. My dad was from the MAZE. My mom is a regular human explorer. No I wasn’t born in the MAZE,” she explained, heaving a sigh. She was petite, thin, and pale. She looked just as exotic as Jane, but in such a different way. “My name’s Rhea. Nice to meet you all.” She bowed her head slightly before she sighed again and paced over into the group.
Jane clapped once, loud enough to make the lot of them jump, “Right! Well y’all are here now, so let’s get started, shall we? Follow me, mon chéris.”
She took them to a classroom, which looked disappointingly normal as far as Rain was concerned. Jane slid one of the chairs out of the way as she passed and patted the table for the girl in the wheelchair. Without missing a beat, she moved to the front of the room behind a little wooden podium.
Everyone shuffled into seats. The twins were chatting with each other and the winning boy along with them. He either knew them, or the three of them were just really social. So weird. The winning girl plopped down into a seat next to the one in the wheelchair. Rain ended up next to the half-elf girl, Rhea. She was the only one he actually knew the name of so far.
Luckily, that was about to change.
Jane went through a miniature role call that was clearly meant to give everyone a chance to learn everyone else’s name without an awkward icebreaker game, “Alrighty then. Let’s see here. I’ve got a… Liko and Inoke, the twins. Rhea, you already introduced yourself. Allie, Rain, and Kalia - the first, second, and third highest scorers for the SAT this year. Last but not least, we have Juniper, who recently moved to Hawaii from what I know! Ya a transplant like me. Humidity’s like Louisiana f’me, but it must be a pain f’ya.”
“It’s a bit to get used to,” Juniper responded, her voice soft and sweet, “The biggest thing for me is just to make sure to take a shower twice a day. Otherwise I feel like my hair is frizzing up.”
Jane flicked her fingers through her wild red hair with a big grin, “Oh hon, I know that pain.” She laughed and shook her head, “Right right, I could talk hair all day, but I s’pose we should get started here.”
“Y’all got ya package via email, though there’s a little bit that ya gonna get here t’day,” she explained, “I’m here f’ya first day, but I’m not y’all’s teacher. Ya teacher’s flyin’ in, but their flight got delayed n’ stuff. Not a big deal.”
“So fer the state a’Hawaii, there’s ‘round about 84,000 explorers. Total. It’s not that big’a state, and in the MAZE, there’s a lotta places to go. This means that, as far as the MAZE is concerned, the cities on the inside of it are a lot smaller. We got a big one right on the inside of the doorway, n’ another one one floor down, but other than that, it tends ta be a lotta small towns. ‘Course, that 84,000 doesn’t account for the natives of the MAZE, just the Hawaiians in there. Add in the natives and that number is a bit higher, but it’s still a lot smaller than you might see at some larger guild branches, stateside.”
“I’m tellin’ y’all this so ya know ta be more careful once ya get in there. The fewer people, the less maintained the room. That doesn’t mean it’ll have worse monsters or whatever, but ya won’t have as many people around ta heal ya or help ya fight if ya get in trouble. Fewer higher-leveled people, too.”
She stretched her arms over her head, “That aside, let’s start on a little practical thing, yeah? Y’all’ll be weak in the MAZE to start off with, so there’s a few things we wanna start y’all off with. Real trainin’ isn’t gonna start today since your teacher isn’t here, but I can get y’all started on some skill training. We be startin’ off easy. There’s a skill called observe, and it’s exactly how it sounds. Ya look at somethin’ and ya observe it. It doesn’t give ya much information, just a name or whatever, but it can help a lot fer strategy.”
Jane walked over to a large trunk in the corner of the room that Rain hadn’t even noticed at first. She brought out of it a basket of random items. It looked like someone raided a kid’s toy closet. There were play scarves, little wooden blocks, toy trains, some toy cars, lots of random stuff.
She brought it to each of the students and told them to grab something. Rain ended up with the scarf.
The basket was set down beside her podium and she leaned into it, continuing her explanation, “Now I want y’all ta stare at that object and write down what it’s called. We’re gonna be doin’ that until y’all get the skill. It’s the bread and butter of any explorer.”
What proceeded was the most boring hour Rain had ever experienced. He didn’t normally take notes, and having an entire exercise based around taking notes was therefore not his favorite thing. He was just happy there were only seven of them to get the skill before they could stop the tedium.
He managed to get it about halfway through, middle of the pack. He’d rather eat his desk than do that again.
Unfortunately it seemed that he was completely out of luck no matter what his stats said, because they were going again! But now, they were supposed to write more details about the object that they knew about, anything they knew. It was supposed to get them another skill called inspect.
He didn’t care one bit. This entire exercise was mind-numbingly boring.
This time, thanks to his waning attention span, he got the skill almost last, right before one of the twins got theirs. It took longer for everyone to get it, it seemed. Somehow, the other students still seemed chipper about everything. He wanted to take a nap. He couldn’t help but feel like he didn’t belong here among all these people who actually really wanted this. Meanwhile he was just doing it because he needed to.
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