The dormitories came back into view, and that was when Raelis and Clea split up, heading to their respective dorms.
Raelis approached the dormitory building and stepped inside.
The first thing that caught his attention was the reception desk, staffed by a bored-looking man flipping through a newspaper.
On the right side, there were a few chairs and a narrow hallway lined with room numbers. It wasn’t decorated extensively, as the academy focused heavily on efficiency over looks, except when it came to the uniforms.
But the left side was slightly different. It was an open space with several dozen isolated training rooms scattered throughout the hallway.
There were numbers on each of the rooms, but they meant something else entirely.
From what I remember... the number on a training room door indicates the mana density inside. The lowest is 1, and the highest is 10.
It was similar to the training room in the Varekan imperial palace, but this one focused more on overall training rather than just heat resistance.
So by default, this one is better, Raelis mused, then made his way to the front desk.
"Hello, could I get my room number? My name is Raelis Varekan, first year."
The receptionist set the newspaper aside and gave him a nod.
The man opened a drawer, pulled out a hand-drawn portrait, and compared it to Raelis.
If he had to guess, it was probably made by a mage with an art-related bloodline.
"Hmm... the picture matches," the receptionist muttered, then retrieved a key and placed it on the desk. The number 112 was etched into the metal.
"Raelis Varekan. You’ve been assigned to room 112," he added, clearing his throat.
"Curfew is set at the tenth hour of the night. Should you arrive at the dormitories any later, entry will be denied and you are to make do elsewhere. The training rooms remain open from the sixth hour in the morning until the ninth hour at night. If you overstay without permission, you will be penalized."
The receptionist picked up the newspaper again, his expression turning to one of boredom as he continued.
"No fighting outside of training rooms. Lunch starts after the second bell, at the twelfth hour of the day. Let’s see..." he trailed off, scratching his head. "Oh, right! Most importantly, respect the dorm assignments. Men stay in men’s dorms, and women stay in women’s dorms, is that clear?"
Raelis didn’t know if he imagined it, but this seemed very directed at him.
Even so, he nodded and stashed the key in his pocket, ready to leave for his room.
Before he could, the receptionist tapped the table and added one more bit of information.
"Each dorm’s got four floors. First-years like us get the bottom. Second floor’s for the second-years, third for the third-years... and as for the fourth? That one’s reserved since only the top ten of each class get to stay up there."
With that, he gave Raelis another wave, smiled slightly, and lazily returned to reading the newspaper.
The rules won’t be that hard to follow. Raelis turned to the grandfather clock to the side. It’s the fourth hour of the day, so I might have to pay the training rooms a visit a little later.
He made his way through the halls, and soon after, he arrived at room 112.
Raelis took a deep breath and unlocked the door.
The door opened with a soft creak, revealing the room ahead.
The room was plain, but cozy. A single bed sat in the corner with its sheets already laid out and made. There was a desk near the window, with a chair tucked under it. A shelf hung on the wall above the desk, holding just one book, which happened to be a book detailing Furnace Academy’s history.
There was a narrow wardrobe by the door, a small kitchen space on the opposite wall, and a single bathroom tucked off to the side.
Lastly, the room was lit by a single Magitek lightbulb that he could turn off with the switch beside his bed.
It wasn’t anything fancy, but it was more than enough to survive.
He laid out his suitcase on the bed and began unpacking all of his clothes, then storing them in the wardrobe. To his surprise, there were two spare black and white academy uniforms neatly folded at the bottom, in case he damaged his current ones.
As for the knives, he kept them inside the suitcase, which he tucked under the bed.
Just like that, Raelis was settled in.
Raelis sniffed himself, then glanced at his disheveled reflection in the window.
I should really hop into a bath, shouldn’t I?
After a solid hour of scrubbing, Raelis found himself on the bed. He sat in a lotus position as he channeled the mana within himself.
The reason was that he could finally form his third ring.
—Flame Core: 2 Flame Rings (Ready to form the next Flame Ring)
Flame: ??? Primordial Flame (★★☆ — Mastery: 100%)
It wasn’t a very difficult process since all it required was his full focus.
And at the moment, focus was the one thing he was most confident in.
Just in case, he made sure the door was locked, and right after, he sat back down in a lotus position.
Then, with a sudden burst of mana, he channeled all of the mana surrounding his two flame rings and allowed it to fill his heart.
He took a deep breath and navigated the mana throughout his entire body once, twice, three times. It was a process to make sure the forming of a new ring wouldn’t put his body into shock.
So after he was done with the basic preparations, he compressed all the mana back into his heart.
Slowly, he sent out a pulse from his heart and shaped it into a smooth ring that wrapped around it. It didn’t interrupt the rotations of the other rings, and after a few seconds, the ring faded away.
Still, Raelis did it again, then again, until eventually, he felt as if he had found the perfect place for the ring to rotate around his heart.
I need this to be perfect, since if I choose the wrong spot, then in the future, I will have trouble forming other rings, which could cause a bottleneck later on, Raelis thought, and with one final pulse, solidified the ring’s position.
He adjusted it bit by bit and finally, he pushed all of his remaining mana straight into the ring foundation he had formed.
And like that, the ring began to heat up and slowly take shape. It drained his mana rapidly, but that was the entire point.
So after just a few minutes, he had fully exhausted his mana and plopped back onto the bed, heaving a breath.
He checked his heart once more and smiled in satisfaction.
There were three flaming rings circling it, slowly filling his mana reserves back up.
And of course, the system’s pop-ups soon flooded his vision.