The Elf Professor

Elyna followed the elf professor to outside, went to the right, and passed the E-class tower and the greenhouse to reach yet another building that seemed out of place here. It looked like a big tree with a door attached to it. When the elf man opened the door, there were all kind of papers, books, drawings,... scattered all over the place, right before the young girl's eye. It looked just like the man himself.

'Oh, sorry. Let me clean this up in a bit.'

The man then used a wind spell to move things on the floor up onto the tables. Not all of those got pile up on the tables yet, but at least there was now a way to get in. In the back of the room, there was a big table with a much smaller, tidier pile of documents sit on top. The elf then invited the girl to sit at the big table, while he got himself a stool nearby.

'So, uh... Professor...'

'Why did you fake it?' - the man asked with a serious tone.

Elyna confused. Didn't seem like she messed up her magic control, so even if people could sense her power, it would be something like "a person with lower magic power output than what she is capable of" at most.

'W-what do you mean?'

'The test, you did fake it, didn't you?'

'I-I have no idea what you are talking about.'

'I can see other's magic attribute, and I'm pretty sure yours was not Fire.'

'But my main magic attribute is Fire, though.'

The girl in front of him didn't lie about that, that thing he could certain. He had been living long enough to differentiate the truth in people's words. But he couldn't ignore what his eye saw either. The faint white light radiated evenly around her was not something a solely main Fire attribute user can produce. Two attributes were a bit uncommon, but even then, again, it should not be white. More than that, well... she might be as strong as him in the future, if not stronger.

'Miss Silverstein...' - the man downed on his knees - '... please, I need your help!'

'P-Please stand up.' - the girl panicked. Letting older people kneel before you was consider bad omen in where she lived. "You lose a few years of age if you let someone older kneel for a few seconds", something like that. '... how about tell me what happened first?'

'Oh... right...' - the man took Elyna hand. After sat back down on the stool, he started telling her about his side of story. Apparently, his name was Veldus, head of the Dungeon Research Department, this place was the department's building, there were a bunch of new dungeons unexplored, the person in charge of exploring the dungeons was missing, and they found out that the guy also tampered some of the documents before he disappeared. The man also enthusiastically talked about dungeons for a whole ten minutes, which sounded like the book Elyna read when she was seven, so she paid no attention to it whatsoever. Reading something that not storybook for the second time was not her thing. Not at all.


'So... you want me to do this dungeon explore thingy? It sounded like a pain in the neck.'

'Yes! I'll give you anything you want, so please...'

'Really? Anything?'

'If I can afford it, of course.'

'...Okay, okay, I'll try it, and see what happens. So, what do I do now?'

'Let's see, for now, take this envelope...' - said Veldus, as he pulled out an envelope from inside his jacket - '... then go to the Adventurer's Guild and find Miss Balba there. She will help you familiarize yourself with the process.'

'Alright.' - the girl took the envelope. A sealed envelope without any paper or paper-like things inside. A weird envelope.

'...And before you go there, make sure to ask for a pocket watch at the entrance, if you don't have one yet.'

'Wait, you can get a pocket watch for free?'

'Students can borrow it for free, yes.'

'Oh, okay. That's nice.'

'...And remember to get back here before 6pm, for the entrance ceremony.'

'Yeah, yeah...'

'And also... say "hi" to the little girl outside for me.'

'...Huh?'

Elyna opened the door. There was a small girl behind it.

'Big Sis, what are you doing?'

'Oh... Just talking with Mr. Professor. How did you get here?'

'Ehehe, you forgot that Liz have Big Sis Tracking skill, right?'

'Oh right, isn't our Liz just amazing.' - Elyna patted her little sister's head, like she always did - 'Wanna play outside together?'. The small girl seemed very excited when she heard that. Then the two of them said goodbye to the Professor.

'Guess it's all well and good that her sister having fun, huh?' - the guy thought to himself, as those two got out of his sight.