Vald tapped his fingers as he waited for someone to approach the ruins. Both Oliver and Trevor had gotten mad at him for wanting to meet his mean professor but by now had gotten over it and were pairing up for some hard missions while occasionally checking in with Vald to see if the professor had shown up yet.

It was eleven o'clock and Vald was getting tired of waiting. The ruins he had chosen for the meeting was in the first country characters appeared in, and was also where a story mission took place so everyone had to know where it was. Unless the professor was standing him up, there was no excuse for him being this late.

He passed the time by going through his inventory and selling some stuff to newer players who were a little too inexperienced to know how common the items were later in the game. Eventually he ran out of stuff to do and just went to join his friends and do some of the missions he needed to level up.

The next day he forced himself to stay awake through Professor Marse's class, easily the most boring class Vald had ever had, and then spent an hour trying to find Professor Halvir. He found the professor leaving a classroom and the other man seemed surprised to see him.

"What the hell?" Vald asked angrily.

"What?" Halvir asked in return. He seemed to be smirking mentally but Vald couldn't quiet tell.

"Where were you?" Vald asked again.

"At home," Halvir answered unhelpfully. Vald scoffed at the answer and the professor let out a breathy laugh. "I never agreed to meet you, if you noticed. Besides that, why did you assume that I would join you on Crimson Spell?"

"Well…" the brunette began. Truthfully he didn't have an answer and they both knew it.

"But to tell you why I didn't meet up with you," Halvir continued, "I was grading your quizzes."

Vald nodded but now was embarrassed. "Then you don't mind meeting up with me in the game?"

Halvir was completely smirking now and not bothering to hide it. "You're in luck. That happens to be the game I have been obsessed with as of late."

"Awesome!" Vald laughed. "What class are you? I'm a knight!"

"A sorcerer," Halvir replied, "but do you really want to be having this conversation? It seems a bit juvenile."

Vald looked around and didn't notice anyone nearby. "Does it matter? You're not much older than me, right?"

The professor shrugged but continued on his way. Vald followed him, unwilling to let the matter drop. "But will you promise to meet me there tonight? You don't have to be on long if you're busy. Or you can give me your character name and I'll friend you so that if we're on—"

Vald stopped as he noticed another young-looking professor. He had long black hair and was smiling pleasantly at them.

"Professor," Halvir said to the other man with a nod.

"Halvir," he replied in kind. He turned to Vald and said, "What's your name?"

"Vald," the student replied slowly. There was something weird about this man. At the sight of him, Vald's insides wanted to leap out and…what? Despite Vald not knowing what something inside of him wanted to do, he decided that this man was best to be avoided and would have left the two of them alone if Halvir wasn't already walking away from the strange professor.

"Are you alright?" Halvir asked him.

Vald glanced at the professor and replied honestly, "Not really. I haven't been getting a lot of sleep lately. Do you know who that professor is?"

"Professor Haleceles," Halvir replied with a confused look.