Susie Awakens Her Soul Chapter 11: Entering the Beast School

We must've sat there for a good hour just taking a rest, letting just one last pent up sigh, the stress within my body had managed to calm down almost completely and I was ready to move.

Seeing me get up the others quickly followed and we continued on our way. Shortly after that, we found the entrance we were looking for, it was a well hidden tunnel built into the ground, it would be very easy to miss if you weren't extremely lucky or specifically looking out for it, since it blended into the surrounding grass, dirt and shrubs near perfectly.

The tunnel was covered up by a sturdy wooden hatch, which opened up to reveal a ladder going down. The walls were made of stone and there was some sort of luminous paint in various swirling patterns and designs covering the walls, giving of an ethereal glow.

"Wow, what is this strange paint?" Asriel exclaimed while he reached out to touch it with his precious fluffy paws.

"It seems to contain spiritual energy. It's likely that the plant it was made out of was a rare alchemy ingredient, exactly the kind of thing we're looking for. And they must have a very large quantity of them if they can be so frivolous to use it for simple glow in the dark paint." Aurora gives us her analysis.

Cool beans.

Well the ladder journey wasn't too long and we quickly reached the bottom.
Suddenly Kris speaks up for a rare change "Wait, how do they use the ladder if they all have four legs?"

"..." "..." "..." no one knew how to respond to that.

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Quickly we discovered that we had severely underestimated the size and complexity of these underground tunnels. They're fucking endless!

We honestly couldn't tell if it was intentional on the part of the designers, or if they were just incredibly incompetent, but this place is just awful.
We must've been lost in there for hours and it truly started weighing on our minds, the monotonous patterns of paint on the wall start to hurt to look at, causing our minds endless anguish.

And then we saw them, two students of the beast school walking towards us while happily chatting with each other.

The two young wolf cubs were identical twins named Tom & Jerry that had joined the school at the start of the year, they'd been orphaned at a very young age and were adopted and recruited by the school. You might be wondering how I know all this information.

Well it's because they fucking told us!

"Oh hello! Who are you? Are you visitors?" Tom said

"Uhh I guess you could say that." Asriel replied a bit uncertain.

"Wow, great, do you need any help finding your way around?" Jerry said

"YES!" everyone in the group shouted at once, it was clear we were getting desperate for a way out, so we yelled it on instinct.

And so the two cubs regaled us with their life stories and the secrets of the school while they unwittingly helped us infiltrate it.

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The cubs weren't very bright and told us everything they knew never thinking for a second that we might be unworthy of their trust.

Since they were still new to the school their knowledge was incomplete, but it was certainly more than enough, and by the end of the walk we'd just completely zoned out from their nonstop talking.

Anyway, according to them, the founder of the school had been an absolutely tyrannical monster in his time if the stories passed down were to be believed.
Tales of his strength had him lifting thousand ton boulders and ruling over the continent alone with his unmatched might.

The school had been in decline the entire time since the founder died, simply because no one could come close to matching him since. It was said that only a true genius would be able to gain the founder's inheritance.

Whatever it may be, not even his descendants who continued leading the school since his passing had any clue.

I personally thought that seemed like a stupid arbitrary rule, If the inheritance would be so great and beneficial why can't everyone have it?
Is it a case of "If everyone is special then no one will be."?
A case of the strong keeping the weak down?

"How come no one has stolen it then? All it would take is one rowdy descendant to break in and steal it right?" Undyne is the one who spoke up this time, mirroring my thoughts.

"There's a BIG door and no one can so much as budge it, let alone open it!" said Tom

"The door is the test, breaking in is the whole point!" Jerry said

"No rule on the method? you just have to get it open? That's sounds like a really fun test! I can't wait to see you completely fail it later on Susie." Aurora tells me, it's great to have people who believe in you.

Not too long later we've found the exit, climbed up, and entered a large courtyard.

Looking around left our mouths wide agape. The main school looked utterly stunning! I don't even have the words to do it justice, How did they get such a nice place? This is a complete contrast with the aggressive blood thirsty image that the school has on the outside, and yet the evidence is right here for everyone to see.

It's like we've entered right inside of a fancy painting.
The gentle, soothing colours and style of the surrounding constructions form a work of art.
There's an intangible mystical feeling of comfort as I stepped out into the air, making it seem like we'd entered a whole new world!

"That intangible mystical feeling is caused by the spiritual energy in the surroundings being 10 times denser and twice as pure. I believe it is the unique geography causing a strange natural spell formation that's channelling and purifying spiritual energy. This shitty school really doesn't deserve such a great location... We should kick them out and take it for ourselves!" Aurora confidently jumps in and exclaims.

I literally have no comment...

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There are various people training, talking and wandering around the school grounds, it takes a while before someone notices us.

Once one caught sight of us, it went like domino's from there and soon everyone was pointing and whispering, eventually the little lion that Undyne beat up and the look of terror on his face as he recognised us and then understood the implication of what that meant was truly something priceless to behold.

Of course it actually wasn't that funny. I'm still not truly sure on how to feel about being a murderer.

"D-Did you kill my father?"

"...I swear it was an accident! He was coming right for us!" I quickly defend myself while silently wondering if that excuse would work in a court of law... maybe?

Everyone in the surroundings turns silent. I'm feeling really awkward now because was what I did really shocking to this extent? Like these guys have gotta be super familiar with death right?

"Why are you all reacting like that? You don't even know I bit his head off yet!" I realise what I had just said only after my stupid mouth had already spoken.

The surrounding people started panicking and bowing on the ground begging me to show mercy.

"Uhh why are they acting like that?" Undyne asked looking disappointed that the conflict was already over

"Well, maybe that guy was more important than we'd thought?" Asriel spoke his thoughts.

One of the nearby students overheard this comment and couldn't help but shout.

"Important? He was the strongest AND youngest to hold the position of headmaster in centuries, he had high potential to pass the test and earn the Ancestors treasure some day!"

Suddenly Asriel had a crazy thought.

"Wait, doesn't your school have any other elders?" Asriel asked with an extremely confused expression.

"Umm, well we used to but... they kind of all died to unfortunate circumstances a couple months ago..." The student seemed extremely embarrassed to admit that, being unable to even face us when speaking.

"That sounds like it must be your school's greatest humiliation and I'd understand completely if you didn't want to share." Asriel looks extremely adorable as he gets all serious and respectful all of a sudden.

"They all got food poisoning and died." The idiot duo blurted out at the same time with dumb smiles on their faces.

Literally all eyes turned towards them.
Everyone was speechless, they wondered what moron was responsible for letting these two join the Beast School.


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Since the anticipated "epic battle" wasn't gonna be happening now, we were basically let to roam around unimpeded in enemy territory.
Not exactly a bad thing. If the conflict had of escalated from here it would've ended pretty badly for everyone involved.
Honestly just waltzing right into the enemies base without a plan, what sort of idiots would do that?

We decided to explore around a bit before getting to our main purpose, that door has presumably stood for a thousand years, it can stand for another day.

Taking a look around the school we found a library, a dining hall, an armoury, multiple training areas, an especially pretty lake surrounding a small hill with a cherry blossom tree on top, etc

Aurora said that this is a good environment to train and that it was worth coming here for that fact alone. Not to mention all the lovely new servants we'd gained.

Undyne had gone straight to the armoury only to be immediately disappointed by the lack of weapons and armour for bipedal creatures. Which were none to be exact, they already had a pretty low quantity of armours and weapons in general. Presumably because the difficulty of blacksmithing with paws is really high, on top of their strange perceived "weakness" of relying on external tools.

It became pretty clear that the Beast school certainly fit their namesake.
They all got stupid animal brains. No wonder they managed to accidentally poison themselves to death.

Half of these so called beasts were literally just normal looking dogs and cats. Either the words "decline" were an understatement or maybe the school has just been propped up on false rumours this whole time.

We had no interest in entering the dining area since we liked staying alive, Aurora joked about the possibility that all the visitors who'd died in the past were just unfortunate victims of the Beast School's chef's.

We all laughed until we actually caught sight of one of the chef's preparing food and then we realised that it was a lot more than just a possibility.
We shall not speak of the horrors we have witnessed within the depths of that kitchen.

The training area's were simply large area's for duelling and various physical training exercises, we'll probably have some fun here later, but for now we just moved on.

Next we took a quick look at the the mini island in the centre of the lake, the lake was massive, so it was multiple kilometres just to reach the centre, since none of us were currently interested in getting wet, we decided to hold off on checking that out.

We had asked the students about the purpose of that little island, but no one we talked to seemed to know of any, it was just a nice and isolated place to sit if you were willing to put in the effort to visit.

Finally we moved on to the library.

The library was last on our list of places to check out, Undyne wasn't really interested in reading anything and just sat around looking bored, whereas Kris, Asriel and myself went to locate the history shelf because we were seriously questioning what we'd been seeing so far.

As it turned out, it really was just a case of major decline. Things were brutal back in the founder's time, but in recent years things were comparatively gentle and the Beast School had been reduced mostly to just all bark no bite.

They hadn't even had a human slave in over a hundred years due to their incredible rarity on the continent. It seemed the guy I'd killed had been a huge exception, actually having power close to the level of the first generation of students from a thousand years ago, back when there were countless ongoing conflicts among both monsters and humans.

Of course I got bored reading after 5 minutes and just had Aurora summarise everything for me.

Kris seemed to get quite lost in a particularly old book detailing the history of the Human and Monster wars.
I guess that must be super weird to read from his perspective huh?

There were way too many books for one sitting, and we were honestly all getting excited about the treasure that lay in wait behind that door.
So we didn't waste too much time in there. There's always more time in the future for a more detailed search.

It was time.

I wonder what we will find?