Note: This story is written in first-person omnipresent. I know that this is a weird point of view, but it will be explained in a later chapter.
Hello, my name is Tessero. I am the first-year top student at the College for Gifted Mages and this is my diary. I am writing this in light of recent events because I am afraid that I will be silenced in the near future. If I disappear I hope that someone finds this and uses it as a record; with what is left of my reputation I hope that this can be used as viable evidence in both human and monster courts of law.
Entry #1: The New Kids Underground
One of most important things we learned at the College is that living things learn magic best through exploration and discovery. After so many years, there are only so many spell-books and grimoires you can read before you are encouraged to go outside of the campus and find hidden magic on your own. When I graduated from high school I already learned quite a bit of magic in my spare time, so I aced all of my courses and ended up first in my freshman class pretty quickly. By my second semester I was already exploring the world for lost and undiscovered magic with the other top students in each class. This was unusual for first-years, even the ones at the top of their class.
It's hard to imagine how excited the College was when the barrier to the Underground of Monsters was broken. This gave both students and staff the opportunity to explore magic that had been closed off to humans for centuries.
Although part of the magic from the underground was brought up by the monsters who lived there, a majority was left underground. This included an enormous generator that converted geothermal energy into magical electric energy, a hidden laboratory that contained records of research performed on monster souls, and some impressive magical recipes that included snails as the main ingredient. Our professors were particularly impressed by the laboratory work that resulted in discoveries the College had never known about. With some searching they discovered that there was a single scientist who performed the research: Royal Scientist Dr. Alphys. After contacting her above ground, she agreed to teach some courses in Applied Arcane Science at the College to help fund her growing anime and manga collection.
After discovering the generator that monsters collectively called 'the Core', the other students and I realized the underutilized potential it had. Before the barrier had opened the generator powered key facilities that surrounded it such as the laboratory and resort, but outside of the geothermal area monsters called 'Hotland', the generator provided minimal amounts of magical power. A couple months after the barrier opened, we completely renovated the underground using the Core to power a post-industrial network of student-run classrooms, lounges, dormitories, supermarkets, retailers, theatres, and libraries. This was the Underground Student Society, it was almost as large as the College itself, but we had it all to ourselves.
The top student in each class had a certain responsibility in running what we called the Underground Student Society, and we were collectively called the Council. Arcos, the 6th year valedictorian and the most senior of the top students, was the president of the Underground Society. He made sure every part of the USS was running properly, from the funding for maintaining the student facilities, to the maintenance of the Core, to the management of the underground library memberships; if something wasn't running properly down here, it was up to Arcos to set things in place, and this place was gigantic, so Arcos was always busy. As a farmer from a family who owned a ranch for seven generations, he had a heavy rural accent. He stood well over 6 feet tall and had a deep voice. He had blue eyes and long blonde hair that he put into a bun and wore his cowboy hat over. He usually wore plaid long-sleeve shirts which he always rolled up, jeans, a cow-skin belt, and either black work boots or cowboy boots. He was jovial, honest, and he had a lot of character; he was notorious for agriculture puns that he had "harvested" while working with his family on the ranch.
Aria, the 5th year top student ran the next most important thing, the treasury. We used most the treasury to pay for the maintenance of the USS facilities. Our biggest source of income was generated by student-run mini-courses for magic and magical practice. Both monsters and humans came down here to pay for these courses, but our most loyal and wealthy customers were a variety of bizarre, cat-like monsters who only called themselves 'Temmie'. Our courses were usually 200 to 300 gold, and they averaged five to seven classes, but the temmies payed 1000 gold for each class insisting that we "needed the muns to do the cool leg stuff." It wasn't unusual for a quarter to a half of our student population in each course to contain Temmies. Aria was from a family of impoverished factory workers and I heard from older students, she had to cut back on food and clothing in order for her to afford going to the College for Gifted Mages. Things changed dramatically for her and her family when she became the treasurer of the USS. With the massive amounts of surplus income that the Society generated, Aria sent money to her family so that they could afford a better lifestyle than the cramped one that they had. She was also able to afford a healthier lifestyle for herself at the College. She was a moderately tall and sleek woman with golden eyes and brown hair that was usually tied into a tight bun. Once the Underground Society started running, she had ditched her tattered and stained second-hand t-shirts and sweat pants for expensive and sleek business suits.
Seeing that our primary source of income came from extra-curricular classes, the fourth-year top student, Pip, organized this section of the Society. Pip ran what was considered by most students the heart of the Underground Student Society. Aside from being an official ambassador to the temmies and Professor Alphys' favorite student (although Alphys nervously insisted she had no favorites), she also understood how to maintain the Core. Arcane science was Pip's specialty, and with some of the Core's blueprints and some help from her family of Engineers, she was able to maintain it. She was famous for trapping rival students inside of the Core by mechanically rearranging the layout while they passed through to get to another part of the underground. Pip was five feet tall, she had brown eyes and brown hair, and she wore circle-rimmed glasses which complimented her round face nicely. I once made the mistake of asking Pip whether Pip was her real name or a nickname that she was called because of her height, which had earned me silence and a burning look of hatred. The next day she trapped me in the Core for a couple minutes before I got bored. I used an extra-dimensionality spell to create a fold in three-dimensional space so that one of the Core's exits was in my location. I've learned that Pip had a kind and sweet personality on the surface, but she was a woman not to be meddled with.
The third and second year top students ran the Underground's retailer and residential units together. Their names were Oryn and Crake, and they were the third year and second year top students, respectively. They were two witty siblings from a close redheaded family of successful human soldiers, therefore combat magic was naturally their specialty. They both had the same high-and-tight hairstyles with green eyes and tall, scrawny body types. Despite being the younger brother, Crake was the taller of the two, which was a point of mild frustration for Oryn. They would make use of clever hijinks to keep things running with difficult individuals. For example, when a Froggit demanded absurdly low monthly rent at one of our apartment complexes, the brothers convinced it that the rent went into providing its ambient food supply and that lowering the rent would diminish it. They created an elaborate scheme when the Froggit refused to pay rent by using suction and invisibility magic to meticulously remove flies from around the Froggit's living space. Once the Froggit noticed a decrease of flies in its environment, it agreed to its original rent.
The most minor responsibility for running the Underground Society went to me, the first-year top student. It was my responsibility to maintain contact with the surface, and this was more of a requirement made by the College staff than something the students wanted to do. The College administration wanted to have contact with the students down here in order for the Society to be recognized as an official organization within the College. Although I liked talking to Professor Alphys about the most recent anime just as much as the next student, I didn't just want to sit around and wait to talk to various college staff all day. Thus, a couple weeks after the communication cables to the college were laid out, I built some receiver dishes and transmission towers and siphoned off power from the Core. This enabled a radio communication range that spread to several towns surrounding Mt. Ebott. I had to ask Pip for help, which she grudgingly gave me when I agreed to help her install traps higher dimensional traps inside of the Core so that "Mages like me won't slip through". Arcos completely agreed to the radio communication plan, saying that "it's proper to talk to them locals who are rooted here 'round the surface". With radio communication established, I created my own pet project- Evening Under the Mountain- a radio show that started at 6:00 PM after classes ended and ran for two hours. During these two hours, I talked about all of the activities and changes that took place inside of the College for Gifted Mages and everything that was happening inside of the Underground Student Society. During this time, I would also take wireless calls from people in the nearby towns, and this was when I made the first contact that would change everything.
The seventh descendant will be revealed in a later chapter as well.