A hand on each strap of his backpack, Gale stared up at the building. The Adult York Learning Center towered over him. Brown brick walls that had inward chambers, containing windows at even intervals on both sides. Walls extended left and right. It looked like an ordinary high school except for the fact that it had the word “Adult” on metal letters at the top of the main entrance door. It was, in fact, not a high school.

Entering the lobby, it was busy. Of course, it was. Different kind of busy. This one had men and women of larger age gaps. White hair, graying, blond, black, and white hair. Instead of school uniforms or casual wear, some had business suits or their work uniforms, like gray scrubs. A graying man had a uniform that said “Dale’s Pest Control.” Most were checking their phones and about 80% of them had coffee in one hand.

A woman bumped into him. “Quit standing in front of the entrance, kid.”

Gale quickly moved further inside. “Guide. What’s the sitch.”

[No hostile entities detected. Average age of occupants: above thirty years. Threat level: minimal]

The ghost voice in his head was right. These people probably wouldn’t even take down one garbage sized truck beast. He could take on everyone in this building if he needed to. Didn’t make sense why his heart hammered so much in his ribs though.

Upon reaching the elevators, he stood in front of it, taking out the piece of paper he had written on for the schedule today. The room was supposed to be 317. Naturally, it should be on the third floor. Simple enough.

The numbers above the door blinked: 2…3…2…1… and the door opened. He took the elevator, and the man beside him clearly smelled like cigarettes, while the old lady beside him smelled like petunias. Mom did like that flower a lot.

When he stepped out of the elevator, he walked down the aisle, checking the room numbers one by one. 315. 316. 318. What the hell. 317 wasn’t here.

A blond man not much older than him noticed his confusion. “Looking for something?”

“Room 317,” Gale said.. “It’s supposed to be here but…”

“Ah.” The man chuckled. “That’s actually on the second floor now. I’m Andrew, by the way. Heading there myself.”

Gale hesitated before following Andrew back to the elevator. The man’s casual demeanour put him slightly at ease, but old habits died hard. Adults can’t be trusted.

“Guide,” he whispered.

[No essence signature detected. Classification: mundane. Threat level: minimal.]

“The city keeps adding rooms without any real plan,” Andrew said as they descended. “Last month they moved half the chemistry lab to the basement. Drives everyone nuts.”

The elevator doors opened. Andrew navigated them with ease. “Computer lab’s there through. Break room’s around that corner. Best not to try the coffee. It’s horrible.”

“Looks like you know this place well,” Gale said.

“I’m here a lot. Taking some programs at York U, but I like to keep learning new things. Chemistry’s just for fun.” Andrew said.

Gale nodded. All of that went over his head. The normality of it all felt surreal to be talking to a fellow classmate after everything he’d been through. No crazy knight to chase you. No crazy man to chase you. No crazy giant eye flying in the sky to chase you. The usual stuff. Now, it was just the distant sound of traffic passing and people complaining about the morning.

They reached Room 317, where a small group had already gathered. The youngest looked at least thirty apart from Andrew, everyone else was probably at least thirty. Their eyes turned to Gale as he entered.

“Guide, options,” Gale whispered.

[Options: unnecessary. Threat level: Minimal.]

He could have gone to Excellence Academy instead. They’d probably figure out he’s not ‘normal’ by now and put him into some kind of special ed class. Those guards at the gate were definitely anything but mundane, so he had turned back quickly as soon as he saw them.

A middle-aged woman smiled at him. “First day? Don’t worry, we were all new once.”

Gale forced a smile back, taking a seat near the door. Old habits. Always have an exit route. The chair creaked under his weight. The soreness in his muscles made his legs stiff. Making a sudden run for it would probably worsen the soreness.

Andrew sat beside him, pulling out a thick chemistry textbook. The formulas on the cover might as well have been in another language. Probably not any harder than the complex essence pathways he’d mapped last night, but that was a physical kind of hard that he could do.

The instructor walked in, a woman with wire-rimmed glasses. No bell rang, reminding him this wasn’t high school anymore. Just adults choosing to be here. Though he did kind of miss the bell. The high schools had that.

“Guide, assessment,” Gale whispered.

[No threats in sight. Threat level: Minimal.]

The instructor began writing on the whiteboard. Around him, students pulled out notebooks and tablets. Andrew was already taking notes.

Reaching for his own notebook, he started just copying word for word what the teacher wrote on the whiteboard. Remember, Gale. Just get your G.E.D. Maybe go to university or college just so you get a backup plan if all else fails in that supernatural world.

A part of him still wanted to run to the forest and just survive. But a bigger part of him wanted to just stay here and make friends. Does Andrew count as a friend now? He could be just being nice to him because he’s new.

Gale sighed.

The instructor explained chemical bonds throughout the day. There was no interaction. Just pure unadulterated lecture.

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A paper airplane sailed through the air, landing on Andrew’s desk. He grinned as he unfolded it to reveal what looked like a molecular diagram.

This was what normal looked like. People learning because they wanted to, either to survive in mundanity or because they just wanted to.

Numbers blurred with the diagrams of valence electrons and chemical bonds that seemed to have made no sense. Looking at his notebook, he’d already written two pages of just notes. And when he looked up at the clock at the top of the whiteboard, it had only been 30 minutes.

Dammit. It felt longer than that. Who’s idea was it to get a G.E.D?

The mundane world suffocated him. Here he sat surrounded by adults learning basic chemistry when he could be practicing his sword arts. The thrill of attaining a new skill; he was so close.

A small smile crept across his face. Maybe he could practice, just a little. Nothing flashy. He concentrated on his pencil, letting his essence flow into the familiar pathways of Phase Touch. The wood and pencil turned translucent, enough to pass through each other.

For good measure, he layered Distort over the pencil to make it invisible. The combination of abilities drained his essence slowly. It was small and no threats around. Wasting essence wouldn’t bite him in the butt. However, the challenge wasn’t maintaining a good essence reserve. It was pushing the essence into the preferred pathway of each skill.

Andrew tapped him on the shoulder, pointing at something in the textbook. Gale nodded. Not now. He was focused on pushing the boundaries of his control. He let the Phase Touch creep up the pencil millimetre by millimetre watching it turn immaterial.

An old man suddenly coughed loudly, enough to startle most of the people inside the room, even Gale. His left hand was already in his pocket, and one tap could materialize the Weber blade into his other hand.

He looked back at the pencil. It was phased and merged into the wooden desk like a welding of two different objects together. He tried to pull it out, but it was already locked in. Phase Touch already released its effect.

“Mr. Hathie?”

His head snapped up. The teacher stood at the front of the class, marker just stopped at the end of a chemical equation. Everyone turned their heads towards him.

“Perhaps you’d like to help us balance this reaction?” She pointed her marker at the board: H2 + N2 → NH3.

Sweat beaded on his forehead. If he went now, they’d all see what happened to the pencil. If he didn’t go, he’d just stick out like a sore thumb for the rest of the semester.

“Guide,” he whispered quietly enough that no one could hear, “what are the coefficients?”

[Query rejected. Threat level: Minimal]

[Note to host: Restrict queries to combat or strategy related parameters.]

Perfect.

Even his all-knowing combat AI couldn’t help him with high school chemistry, and the silence was deafeningly awkward.

A woman tapped at her notebook with a clear frown on her face. The man who had coughed so loudly kept clearing his throat.

Merge the pencil with the desk. Great idea, idiot.

“Mrs. Chen,” Andrew spoke up. “Gale just joined us. He wasn’t here for the first month when we covered balancing equations.”

“I see. Well, let me explain the process.” The teacher turned back to the board, writing as she spoke. “When balancing chemical equations, we need to ensure the same number of atoms appear on both sides.”

Gale’s shoulders relaxed as the eyes turned back to the board. He watched Mrs. Chen work through the problem step by step. Hydrogen atoms needed to match on both sides of the arrow. Stupid arrow. Why use arrows in the first place? The sciences were never his strong suit anyways.

“For NH3, we have three hydrogen atoms on the right,” she said, circling the numbers. “But only two on the left in H2. Similarly, we have one nitrogen atom in NH3 but two in N2.”

She turned back to Gale, fixing her glasses, then turned back to the board.

“So we add coefficients,” Mrs. Chen continued, filling in the blanks. “Three H2 molecules give us six hydrogen atoms, and two NH3 molecules also contain six hydrogen atoms. For nitrogen, one N2 molecule gives us two nitrogen atoms, matching the two NH3 molecules.”

3H2 + N2 → 2NH3

“Understand now, Mr. uhh… Gale,” she said.

He nodded, still covering the pencil on the desk.

Mrs. Chen moved on to the next example, but Gale barely heard her. All he could think of was the pencil that was stubbornly stuck in the table of the desk. Now that it was stuck, technically it was one object. He didn’t know how to extract pieces of objects yet using Phase Touch.

Andrew slid an extra pencil onto his desk, along with a folded note. Gale opened it, finding a simple message: “Don’t worry about it. Chemistry’s tough for everyone at first.”

The lesson continued. Gale took notes mechanically with his newfound pencil. His essence levels dipped lower with each passing minute to keep the merged pencil covered with Distort. He’d have to drop the concealment soon or risk running dry.

He could technically extract the pencil, but this wasn’t some crude castle wall he didn’t have to care about. Someone else was going to use this desk after him, and the pencil was small. It needed concentration.

“Guide, how difficult is it to extract this pencil?” he whispered, keeping his eyes on the board.

[Acknowledged. Phase Touch manipulation possible at micro-scale. Warning: precision control required. Current essence levels: suboptimal for extended covert manipulation. Threat level: minimal]

“Show me how to control it precisely.”

[Command accepted. Initiating motor control guidance.]

His fingers moved on their own, guided by the system. The essence flowed through specific pathways, concentrating at his fingertips in microscopic channels. Each channel controlled a fraction of the Phase Touch effect, allowing for precise manipulation.

The wood around the pencil began to shift at a molecular level. Gale kept his breathing steady, even though his back was sweating from the level of control that this needed. Who would’ve thunk this level of control was needed for such a stupid pencil.

A line of Phase Touch formed at the pencil’s borders, separating from the desk’s wood fibres slowly. It was like untangling a thousand invisible threads, each one requiring perfect control.

[Warning: essence expenditure rate increasing. Current reserves at forty percent.]

A student coughed. Another dropped their textbook. Each sound made Gale’s heart jump, certain someone would notice what he was doing.

The pencil moved a millimetre upward. Then another. The process was agonizingly slow, but rushing it would risk damaging the desk or losing control entirely.

“Guide, what happens if I run out of essence during the extraction?” Gale whispered.

[Analysis: Object molecular structure would destabilize. Result: potential outward explosion caused by volatile uncontrolled essence.]

Great. So if he messed this up, the pencil might explode in the middle of chemistry class. The literal worst scenario.

Mrs. Chen turned to write another equation. Gale increased the power to his Phase Touch, carefully pulling the pencil from the wood.

The last few bits separated with a barely audible pop. The pencil was now ungrafted from the desk.

Without thinking, Gale did a fist pump. Heck yeah.

Andrew turned to him with an eyebrow raised. “You… like chemistry?”

Gale shook his head and quickly dropped his hand. His face turned red, completely forgetting where he was for a moment. But it was still his win.

A small hole marked the desk’s surface where the pencil had been fused. Barely noticeable. They’d probably just think it was some defect in the table, except it was a perfect hexagon shape.

The teacher stopped writing and looked back at the class. “Alright, that’s it for today. There’ll be a short quiz next week. Just 5 questions so I can see where everyone is at. Class is dismissed.”

That was a long 1.5 hours. Although he still wanted to complete his G.E.D, he didn’t think it would be this boring and painfully long.

Gale smiled slightly. Though it’s boring, it’s not too bad.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep