[There are still no mice.] The baby Windspeed Hawk complained.
He was right, even with super vision, which could see into the infrared spectrum and would pick out urine trails of rodents, there was no sign of mice. That should probably have been expected of a magical dorm, but it was a great tragedy in the mind of the bird.
[Alright, buddy, we will go to the cafeteria and find some meat.]
Karl headed for the main floor again, and made his way to the buffet of the Cafeteria.
“New student? I don’t know you.” The old woman behind the counter asked.
“Yes, ma’am. My name is Karl.”
“Polite, that’s not bad. Alright, grab what you like, but only the white plates are allowed to be taken back to the rooms, and must be returned during your next meal. Eat all you like, magic affects all you kids differently, no need to be shy about your appetite.”
[MEAT!] The Hawk shouted happily in his mind, drawing his attention to a pile of raw fish set along one side of the long counter. It looked like a grocery section, where you could pick out your own ingredients to take to your room, while the first half of the counter was prepared dishes.
“Then, pardon my hunger.” Karl replied, and took a pair of white plates to fill for their dinner.
Pasta and meatballs with cream sauce, roasted pork, some sort of vegetable that gave off an incredible feeling of energy, and then an entire plate of raw meat for the Hawk.
“Well, that’s one of the more interesting plates, for sure. But if you’re in a room with a kitchen, you can cook it as you like. In the future, you can just ask the cook to prepare it if there’s a special way you like your food.” She explained.
“Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind.”
Karl retreated to his room while the Hawk pleaded pitifully to be fed. If this was how adorably needy all baby birds were, no wonder their mothers would go to the extremes of even chewing food for them. Fortunately, the Windspeed Hawk had an extremely sharp metallic beak and could bite through bone with ease, even as a newborn.
The meat chunks were all boneless, which the bird found disappointingly lacking in crunch, but the meat was all monster meat, high in nutrients and energy, and its body was growing at a visible rate under the pile of nourishment.
It somehow managed to chew through five times its body weight in ten minutes, and it was still pleading for the meatballs on Karl’s plate as he finished his meal.
[Fine, one meatball. But after that, you need to wait for dinner.]
[When is that? I’m starving.] The bird complained, then burped loudly and fell asleep.
That certainly didn’t seem like starvation to Karl.
By the time that it woke up, the Windspeed Hawk had grown to the size of a sparrow, and was happily flying around Karl’s mental space, an exuberant distraction as he cleaned the balcony of leaves, which were set aside to be sorted for drying, and then watered the plants.
Everything here should be a magical resource of the most basic level, so even the leaves would likely be worth something if they were properly dried and preserved. The problem was that he wasn’t sure if this garden was sanctioned by the school, or if they would view all the resources here as looted school property.
[Is it dinner yet? We should get crunchy food this time.] Hawk suggested.
[Sure, let’s go down and see how everyone else is doing after I finish writing a letter.]
The bird was confused by the concept of a letter, but Karl wanted to write home to his parents to let them know that he was alright and settling in well at the Academy. The students wouldn’t be home until the end of the school year, but he didn’t recall any rule saying that they couldn’t send a letter or a text message.
Not that either Karl or his parents could afford a cell phone, but that wasn’t the point. Maybe he would get them one once he was finished training and started to get the elite stipend. If it was enough, he could probably even move them out of the mines and let them retire.
It only took a few minutes to finish the letter home, and Karl put it in the box by his door, which could be accessed from either the inside or the outside. That was where he had received and left the paperwork on the train, and it was where letters were picked up if you had to send them at home, so it should be the same here, Karl assumed.
The dining hall was packed with new students, mostly in rather rough shape, with torn clothes, covered in mud and grass stains, and a few sporting visible injuries.
Karl joined the line to grab dinner, then took a second plate, scooped an entire roast chicken on it, and transferred it to the beast taming space while nobody was watching him. Then he took another, added a collection of cheeses and snacks to it, and brought it to an empty table.
“You were the gauntlet guy from the first group, aren’t you? I didn’t get a good look at your face earlier.” A girl with blonde hair and a heavily bruised face asked as he sat at the table next to hers.
“Yeah, might I ask, what happened? Everyone looks like they were beaten half to death.” Karl asked.
“We were. I went with a group that understood going together for safety against the Earth Mice, and our lead warrior chased them off with a skill, but when we got to the second field, the plant monster was already going insane.
So, we thought it would be safer to go around, and we decided to try the treeline to the right.” She paused and gently touched her face, then flinched.
“The one with the monstrous boars?” Karl asked.
“Oh, you already know?”
Karl nodded. “That’s why we went through the field. I saw the marks of the boars on the trees, and recognized them from outside the mining town where I grew up.”
The girl laughed. “It’s me, Jasmine. I guess you really didn’t recognize me with my face like this.”
That explained why she didn’t introduce herself when she started speaking, he should have already known her. Karl looked her over again. He was absolutely certain that when they left, the Jasmine that he knew had not been a blonde, and that she had been at least twenty kilos heavier than she was now.
“You look different. It must be the hair.” Karl mumbled, not wanting to insult his classmate by mentioning what she used to look like.
Maybe it was puberty, but he should have noticed a change like that, he was sure of it. There were a few other familiar, but also not familiar, faces in the crowd. It was like everyone was a bit different than he remembered, and most of them had improved in the best of ways.
Come to think of it, he didn’t remember sitting quite so tall at the table, and his uniform pants didn’t quite reach his shoes anymore. That wasn’t right, they definitely did this morning when he got off the train.
Maybe his Academy experience wasn’t going to be a bad one after all. A little more height and he would catch up to his classmates.
