05. A normal school life! How I made my first friends?...

...And how I made blunder over blunder until it all turned into a disaster...

I kept knocking on my own head, recalling everything I did wrong.

Don’t stand out Silvia, I remember telling myself. Just make some friends and blend in, I was telling myself. Geez...

Well, first was first.

~

We were introduced to our classes.

- What’s your name?

S - Silvia Opgaendsol... I mean, Siline Svenska! My name is Siline! I didn’t come here under a false identity or anything like that!

My wry embarrassed laughter surely helped them understand my tongue had made a mistake but that I wasn't hiding anything in any form or way.

They looked at me with frowns, as if I had said something suspicious. They wouldn’t think any less of me so soon now, would they?

No they were good people. They were children of the nobilities that had been concentrating blue and magical blood over generations, so they had to be understanding and caring people without preconceptions. They all would be friendly to me anyway!

Oh well. How high the expectations were from me.

S - I'm looking forward to make friends!

Now they looked even more wry and embarrassed for me for some reason. I didn't think I had made any slip though?

~

I had been tested for aptitude before I could enrol with a simple blood analysis. The nanites had been quantified in a concentration and I had passed.

S - Because you're in my blood too.

N - Like microplastics in the past, we are in everyone's blood. However the higher level of concentration and activity around you will decay rapidly from the samples.

S - So authority level can't be stolen...But it still tends to be hereditary.

N - That wasn't intended for humanity, but it appears so yes.

S - And for other species?

N - We aren't allowed to say.

S - Right... You know I will eventually find your secrets, hm?

They squirmed a little. Maybe I was trapped with them being everywhere, but they were also stuck with me, and they had some duty to reply to me. I could work with that. Eh eh eh.

Meanwhile, now came the real evaluation of our skills and potential.

How much could we actually command to the nanites?

Well...

I was asked to go first and I knew how it would go if I did so. So I begged for someone else to go first. The more I insisted the more suspicious glares I got.

To no avail...

Okay, without reference, I needed to do something mild and innocent so as not to attract attention.

I had trained a bit over various things, inspired from previous life knowledge of physics and videogames magic.

But then and there...

I raised a hand and asked the nanites to do the bucket of water spell.

The air where I pointed at popped in cavitation, causing a gust of wind, while a sudden globe of mist appeared. It concentrated into a then pristine globe of water of a few litres.

I kept the orb floating long enough for the teachers to see, and then dropped it to splash on the ground.

I turned around with the most cutely innocent smile I could do. I was truong to say, see, I'm sorry I can't show off anything more glorious or powerful than this. It had just been a bit of water.

Their looks told me I had again missed my target by a long shot...

Why! What did I do wrong?

The teachers looked very awkwardly at me and everyone else. Ok, maybe when it came to condensation of water, the average volume was a glass, not a big kettle.

Ok they needed the time of a prayer to focus on every aspect and not cast it instantly.

Ok they didn't combine this effect with a controlled gravity or rather antigravity spell as flawlessly...

Meaningless details I tried to laugh away more and more nervously.

Stop looking at me like I'm a freak! Please!

- Could you do fire as well miss Svenska?

S - Oh no... I couldn't...

Too many of them sneered. I clutched over my lie like my last defence.

I dodged that bullet properly at least. For that time.

But I still felt the unwarranted and uncanny sensation when I wasn't looking of prying eyes over me?

At different times in the lessons, I realised how much some leftovers of my previous knowledge made me a cultivated one. What I thought would be innocent knowledge in physics turned out to be pretty big deals. Again, why all the weird looks? I wasn't weird I swore!

Peradventure I had been a bit of a nerd in a different life... It's not my fault if space muons and cosmic rays were fascinating!

And it was weirder to me that our school brushed these topics already.

I did my best not to stand out and continued to fail.

O - Why do you colour your hair in pink?

S - I don't. It's from my mother I think.

Orea wasn't yet my friend exactly. She was in the trio of girls giving me the suspicious meme look about every day or time I spoke really.

It evolved rapidly into weird scenes, with boys trying to get on my good side and girls on my bad one?

I was a mixture of popular and infamous after these scenes.

D - What do you think you're trying to accomplish, making all the boys swoon in your way like that!

F - You're not playing fair!

O - I don't think miss Siline intends this, right?

At least the kind hearted girl understood me. Her two friends were still very doubtful.

S - Could we be friends?

F - What...

O - It's a little embarrassing if you ask it like that...

We got over some of our misunderstandings.

And I spent a relatively short but quite happy time with my first trio of friends.

A slightly haughty and tsundere one acting as the leader of the trio most often, Felicia. She was a backwaters noble's last daughter, with little prospect on that line. The kind one, Orea, helped me regularly clarifying my mistakes and blunders. Even if she often looked at me with some pity.

And last but not least, Dominika. The no nonsense one, often caught within the crossfires of Felicia's assertiveness or Orea's kindness.

D. - And now also your quirkiness to spice things even further.

S - I refute that statement. I'm no spice!

O - But you do easily step on others' toes miss Siline.

S - I do?

And I naively looked at my shoes.

~

I didn't teach them much, but I sure accidently revealed more than I should have.

S - Oh for fire magic that's easy. Focus on decreasing the weak force so oxidations can start and increase the frequency of the photons steadily. Eventually, bam.

D - Hm, I thought you didn't know how to do fire lady Siline?

S - Ah! You're right, I don't! Forget everything I just said!

And another embarrassed laughter trying to dismiss my blunder. only it was her trying to be considerate of me.

It brought tears to my eyes. My real friend! I pounced on her for a hug, forgetting my strength.

Orea yelled in a bit of pain.

Upsie.

~

There was a ceremony and traditional event.

The king and queen were coming for this. Felicia sure taught me a lot about, since she enjoyed to gossip about the royal family.

F - King Olav IX of Norway and Queen Ursula will be there. And if we’re lucky, we will see Princess Märthina and her brothers. Oh my god, oh my god! Princes! And they’re just about our age too! Don’t you realise what this means!

She was shaking my shoulders in excitement barely contained. She wanted her romance. I wanted good friends. I was not meant to stand out, or this would bring more dangerous attention to myself.

But I was happy with Orea, Dominika and Felicia, and they took care of me.

This ceremony was in a courtyard with a strange amorphous statue standing tall.

A weird physical exam was done there for some obscure reason.

Not about how we were, but more about what we could do. This was a ground meant to evaluate potential heroes and adventurers, with super human abilities after all.

Only then did I realise how much this society might be a little eugenistic... This royal academy was selecting those with higher affinities, and inbreeding them, wasn’t it?

S - You said you didn't expect humans to progress in that selection... So is it a growing social problem like corruption?

N - We're not supposed to say...

But this time they let their tone of voice speak. This social tendency the kingdoms had set in competition of the academies; it wasn't something directly aligned with their original programming. They couldn't betray their confidentiality, but they could see an annoying trend or threat for them.

S - So people with power and authority like me could become a systemic problem for you...

N - Not you though!

That was a lot of trust based on emotion and it made me chuckle. I wasn't sure yet of where to go with these figments of information.

As for the physical test...

- You are meant to use magic to strengthen your body and push this as much as you can.

A weird totem or monolith was embedded in the courtyard there. What material it was made of wasn't obvious. Dynamometers would measure the strength or weight one could push with their body between the ground of the monument and its spire itself.

It looked like the most exotic thing I had seen since my reincarnation. But it was just a solid slab of something standing over another flat one on the ground.

Students selected before me pushed between their legs and arms, reaching hundreds of newtons for the strongest ones.

While I already knew very well how the nanites behaved within my body. They don't need a voice to act, only some fort of alignment or compatibility. And with me they were... enthusiastic to support in my every endeavour, even if it was just physical strength. And all the more if I forgot to ask them to tune it.

S - Nanites, what is this material?

N - It's a system beacon. It's not obvious because of the colour but it is a diamond.

S - Please make it so I don't show an absurd level of strength...

N - Yes Ma'am.

I should have been more specific.

They were just machines at the end of the day.

Problem. Solution. Did it cause a different and bigger problem? Now that was on me.

The output was normal.

But the beacon began to shine.

And a loud voice rose out of nowhere.

K - Access granted. Hello Silvia. You seem to be doing well.

I pulled my hand away, feeling something warm entering my bloodstream. I mostly felt how I was flushing in embarrassment now that this weird voice had rang throughout the courtyard.

I didn't know where to hide at this point. Everyone was staring, and the king and queen were looking shocked too.

For the time I was touching it, the beacon had activated its never used before interface to the system.

The princess was gawking at me as if I was a fallen messenger of god.

I ran away.

S - Nanites! What happened!

N - The system granted you one override access. It’s... never heard of. We wonder why?

S - I don’t care about that! Why did you have to humiliate me!

For some weird reason, god had given me one key to access his system, believing I would use it wisely.

This was like granting me a wish apparently. Why did it do that, I was clueless at the time.

It had been him wishing upon a star in the sky, or a grain of sand in a dusty desert.

But in the meantime, I had brought more attention over to myself now.

Much to my dismay.

~