Beyond M-Eclipse: Easy Mode LIVE

———Jeff———

“So what is Combat Reading…” I muttered as I clicked around, looking for the explanations.

“Come on now, it shouldn’t be hard to find.” Qyunda said, getting impatient.

“Ah! Here we go… Physical, Magic, Dexterity, Agility. Ranking from K to EX…” Huh. What do those letters translate to?

“You know what, just press the button already.” She said, clearly not feeling like waiting any longer.

“Yeah sure.” We can worry about what it all meant later anyway.

*Shine*

“Hmm… C+/D/C/C.” I muttered out the result shown above this glass thing.

“That doesn’t sound… good.” She complained. It does look quite meh, but we don’t really know what it all meant.

“Alright then, mine next.” Malk said before swapping places with her, not questioning the letters. Guess I’ll just press it again.

*Shine*

“...It’s the same ranking?” I said, wondering if it’s bugged or something.

“Either that or they’re equal.” Useph suggested. I guess that could be true…

“Oh! There’s a compare button!” I mentioned. It said ‘Compare to the previous reading?’. Maybe it’s a special prompt if something like this happened. Guess I might as well. “...Looks like Malk is above in Physical while Qyunda is higher in Magic. The other two stats are too close to worth pointing out, it looks like.”

“What? That’s such a cop-out.” She complained.

———Orrel———

*Flip*

“Hmm…” I mumbled as I kept reading through.

“These are all interesting, if also rather terrifying to think about.” Gregori remarked. He’s certainly not wrong, as I also hold such an impression.

Now are any of these actually important to studying and getting grades? No. Are they giving information that recontextualized a lot of things about how we believe the world ticks? Yes. It’s hard to look at the world the same way with all the information through these texts.

“I’m surprised they put these kinds of books out for us students to read.” I can’t help but be baffled by that. “It could mean a few things. Perhaps these are not true facts, or maybe they have something more shocking out there, and this is considered rather trivial in their minds.”

“What the hell will those books even be about?” Gregori asked, clearly finding it hard to believe.

“That evades me, so it’s best to not dwell on it.” We still have the books in front of us to talk about. “So, what part were you talking about specifically?”

“As much as I would like to talk about it, the fact remains that these are unsubstantiated.” He quickly put out that little fact. “I’m reading through the history books right now, and these seem to cover the stories within the Divine Calendar year.”

“Divine Calendar… Isn’t that the calendar system that ended at its fifteen thousandth year?” It’s a really weird thing in history. Covering that amount of time before the Common Era, but nothing beyond that. No one even knows why it was changed so suddenly, aside from ‘a shift in faith’. No one in our current time knows the hows and whys.

“Indeed. It is a rather odd era in human history, something that no one really knows why it started or ended.” He replied. “Still… Is it just me or does it feel like we’ve read something like this before?”

“You also get that feeling?” Guess it wasn’t just a ‘me’ thing.

“Yeah, makes me wonder if it’s from the same person writing it or what, exactly.” He pondered. “This is all a bit too much to go through in one day though. Don’t you think so?”

“Indeed.” That’s all I replied with. It’s pretty easy to tell we can’t get through the whole library in only a day.

———Kenni———

“Come on now. I already explained myself thoroughly, didn’t I?” I said while scratching the back of my head, then eating the mapo tofu in front of me.

“That doesn’t mean we can’t bitch about it, you should know that.” Qyunda said, squinting her eyes and looking at me with a sharp gaze. “Did you seriously get in through a fluke?”

“Who really knows at this point.” I said, not seeing the point in interpreting the intention of those masterminds. “Maybe Karra knows.”

“No I don’t.” She quickly denied the accusation. Give me some breathing room here, gal.

“Alright guys. I think we shouldn’t be arguing amongst ourselves here.” Jass interrupted the conversation, which is a rare sight. It’s pretty clear why that is, though.

“Not like we have much else to do.” Gregori said, not helping the situation. “So what were you guys doing? Using those exotic rooms? How did that go?”

“Well for one, you can check your power as grades or numbers. Whatever that all means.” Jennla said before taking a glance at me again.

“Yeah, I saw that too. I have no idea what those letters really meant.” Jeff chimed in. “Like how big is a C? Or a D?”

“Can’t say we have found anything related to that yet.” Gregori mentioned, then his expression shifted. “...Actually, I guess there is a book that seems to mention grades, but we didn’t look into it. There were more interesting topics to read about.”

“Seriously?” Malk said, clearly wanting to complain, but refrained from saying any further.

“Come on now, we have plenty of time to look into it. Is it really that important of a topic anyway?” I asked, wondering why they’re thinking about these arbitrary grades and numbers.

“It’s not exciting at all to you?” Jennla said. I think I made it clear that it’s not all that exciting at this point and time due to lack of points of comparison, so there’s not much of a punchline or impact to these letters and numbers.

…You know what? I think that’s a losing battle at this point. Let’s just continue eating.

———Wiina———

“By the way, has your mom been complaining about coming here about the sleepover?” I asked, knowing that she had complained about it a few times already.

“She just sorta gave up at this point.” Honestly, that doesn’t sound too good.

“Like… In a bad way or…” I really don’t want to be the reason their relationship became strained.

“Oh! Nothing like that, don’t worry about it.” She quickly clarified. Should I try to… No, that’d be too intrusive. Let’s just take her at her words for now, there doesn’t seem to be any odd behavior that could indicate deception anyway. “Anyway. Is it just me or does it feel like not a lot happened…”

“Of course it wouldn’t. As the principal said, it’s a free day for people to roam around doing whatever. Aside from discovering new facilities, not much else can come from that.” The main point was so they can tour around and know how to navigate the area. “I think everyone is still quite apprehensive. It’s an entirely new territory, with new technologies none of them have ever experienced… The closest thing would be that VR device for EX-VR, but that’s an entirely different can of worms.”

“...So what’s the plan then?” She asked, clearly expecting something rather ridiculous to happen.

“There’s going to be some school activities related to magic, that’s about all I know.” It’s all rather vague with how Walsuna talked about it. Just have to wait and see. “I think after the teachers get involved and explain some aspect of the school in more detail, that’s when things are going to get messy.”

“...How much do teachers even know about all this anyway? They’re still mostly regular people, right?” That is of course a reasonable question to ask.

“Don’t worry, they get a rundown on how it all works. Would be really embarrassing if the school staff can’t even use school equipment, let alone the students.” Of course I don’t actually know how much was done in that regard, I wasn’t involved. Still a student at the end of the day. It would be rather… awkward if I am both a school staff and a student at the same time. It’s not impossible for me to do, technically speaking, but there’s a bunch of reasons why I shouldn’t.

“That’s fair…” Karra replied, not having much else to say on the topic.

“So yeah. I think we’ll see a lot more interesting things happen when school activities kick into high gear. Right now there is basically no incentive to do anything with all these new magical techs.” That’s the gist of it. Day one is going to be a slow burn, or perhaps week one would be a better fit. From what I gather, nothing related to these new facilities will be officially used until the second week.

“...Speaking of that. These techs are magic… how does that work?” She asked while scratching her head. It makes sense for her to be confused. After all, magic is something much more spiritual, it lacks logic, and is impossible to comprehend and understand fully.

…No. It’s less that it lacks clear cause and effect, and more that it is basically a one size fits all kind of substance. It barely has any limitations, and how you apply and use it will vary greatly between each person.

It’s like having a blank canvas. You could draw anything, but there is nothing else but you and your brush. If you lack creativity or skill, you will just draw incoherent scribbles with no meaning or intent.

“It’s not something that could be explained thoroughly. In the simplest terms, they engraved spells onto the object, and there is a trigger and cost with usage. Magic can be used in place of technology, kinda like how some of our modern tech would have felt like magic a few centuries back. Though obviously science cannot overwrite the laws of physics and such like magic does, the latter have a much higher ceiling, but much are harder to replicate.” I felt like I was starting a pretty long lecture. Maybe I should just stop here.

“Can’t say I’m sure as to what that all meant.” She said, understandably finding it hard to absorb everything I said.

“Just know that magitek is a real thing I guess.” She doesn’t need to know all the innerworkings, since even I don’t.

“Will do.” Karra replied, clearly satisfied with only hearing the short version. “By the way, where did you even learn all of that? From the library or…”

“I checked the libraries in EX-VR and cross-referencing it with the books in Grand SK Institute. Seems like they ported the books over while removing most of the allegories and subtleties. You already know by now that the content of that game does include lessons and theories on magic.” I elaborated on my findings. Though I also know more from Walsuna yapping on about magic during my training, which is a few months back. Nowadays she barely contacted me.

“...What even is EX-VR?” She asked. Seems like she didn’t find the answer when she goes through searching through the storyline. Then again, if she did figure something out, she would’ve confided it to me.

“I can instinctively tell what it is, but it’s hard to put into words.” I should probably go talk to Walsuna or anyone who is the expert on the topic for those keywords. What I can tell is that it is a lesser realm of sorts, that is real all the same. “I don’t think it’s really important aside from giving you all the clues needed to learn magic. You were in there for a long while, right?”

“A few in-game days.” She answered. “Honestly, after all that I didn’t enter it for a while…”

“I can see why.” Probably a massive burnout, at least.

“Now that I think about it, would any other subjects even have magic involved? Like maybe history or…” I think I made it clear that that won’t be the case.

“Absolutely not. At this point and time, people still haven’t even fully accepted that magic is a real thing that exists. Or at least not something that is even worth using and experimenting.” As absurd as it is for me to say, the world at large is still oblivious to how it works, and so the public at large still can’t even cast the simplest of spells.

I’m certain most of the students in our school can’t do that either. They can’t channel mana, cannot fight with them, cannot cast spells with them.

To us it felt natural. At this point all of us can do the fundamentals. Other people are still at the ‘figuring out the bare minimum’ stage. Many probably already gave up and think of it all as mere hoax or something only a select special few can do, not understanding how wrong they truly are.

“That’s… Huh...” She is taken aback by the statement. When her environment includes me and all our friends, it paints a picture of a more fantastical world that left behind the stale mundane life of over five months back. In actuality, most are still rather cynical and unable to comprehend all the changes to the world.

“It’s just how it is. It’s why the dungeons are still banned. If more people have access to this power, people would’ve been let in. As of now, the government still banned them.” Though in actuality, Walsuna and a few others are already planning on lifting that restriction, but I have no part in it as far as I am aware.

“That still really ticks me off.” She complained.

“And I understand it whole-heartedly.” I’m also upset, mainly for her sake. “Anyway… What do we do now?”

“I dunno. We could keep talking about this for a while longer.” She said, having no clue on how to progress things.

…At some point we need to get to the next step, but it looks like neither of us have the plan or courage for it just yet.

Looks like we just need to wait longer for that point, and just coast along with the plot for now.