chapter 44: exploration of UCA
The canteen was dead silent. Students came here to eat, but none of them made a sound. Everyone looked hopeless and soulless, with despair heavy in their eyes—the look of people who had already accepted their fate. Only Fighter and Kaizer were present from the first-year block; the rest of the first-years had either skipped breakfast or were already eating up on the second floor.
Fighter gave Kaizer a solemn look. Kaizer, on the other hand, somehow seemed cheerful.
Kaizer: "What do you want? My recommendation is the soup. I think they call it roman. It's pretty good."
Fighter stared at him as if he were a complete idiot.
'Did he really think we only get to choose one item?' Fighter thought.
Fighter: "It's called ramen, not roman. And that is not ramen. Don't you know you're supposed to take every item on the breakfast menu? You don't have to choose just one."
Kaizer was shocked.
Kaizer: "WHAT?!?!"
A few of those soulless eyes glanced at Kaizer with brief nostalgia before turning away, their faces dropping back down toward their tables.
Fighter and Kaizer took their meals to a corner table.
Fighter looked down at his food—the so-called ramen. It was just a bowl of vegetable soup with spaghetti or noodles floating in it.
'How could anyone call that ramen?' Fighter thought. '"Soup-noodles" is a much more suitable term. I don't even think these noodles are real; they have to be made from synthetic flour or something.'
Fighter's hunger quickly won over his judgment, and he started eating. First, he finished the noodles, then grabbed the rice ball and the protein paste, dumping both right into the soup. The soup was dull, but the rice ball added some spice, and the protein paste was entirely tasteless—though he was learning that not every protein paste tasted the same.
After finishing the meal, Fighter walked out of the canteen. He was looking around when Kaizer spoke up.
Kaizer: "Come with me, let's go watch the matches. I think the matches will be very educational for us."
Fighter immediately shot him down.
Fighter: "No. No, no, I want to look around the campus. Maybe some other day."
Kaizer looked disappointed.
'HELL NOOO...' Fighter thought. 'I am not going with you. You're an idiot with zero social boundaries; you're going to pull some stupid stunt at the UCA Arena. First-years aren't even supposed to go near that place before the ritual.'
With nearly all the third-year students deployed elsewhere, the second-years acted like they owned the place. The Blood families didn't look kindly on anyone beneath them and always tried to take more than they deserved, turning the arena into a room packed with dynamite.
And Kaizer was the type of ignorant guy to walk right into it, acting like a stray spark ready to set off an explosion. Fighter definitely didn't want any part of that.
With that thought, Fighter split off to explore the academy campus on his own. However, his assumption was wrong—trying to avoid Kaizer wouldn't actually change his fate, and he was inevitably going to get dragged into the mess anyway.
After exploring for a while, Fighter managed to map out the UCA properly. The novel had described the school, and there was an official campus map available, but Fighter preferred to see things for himself, and he needed to find something specific.
The UCA was divided into five districts. The Middle District was for entertainment, featuring the canteen, the Arena, shopping malls, and other facilities. The South District housed the free classrooms and the main administrative buildings. The North District was strictly for first-years; that's where Fighter and Kaizer's dorms were located. The West District belonged to the second-year and third-year students, while the East District held faculty housing and rental properties.
Because the UCA was massive, it also included deserts, forests, mountains, and all sorts of biomes surrounding the campus grounds, built specifically for survival training and adapting to the New World.