Regardless of Vallynn's expectations or lack thereof, Izlude is what it is, a town that exists mostly for practical reasons: to hold the port and the airport and serve as one of the main interfaces between Rune-Midgard and the rest of the world. Not very many people live here, most of them staff the place, and there's not much in the way of tourism. The only people who really stay here for any length of time rather than moving on to the actual rest of the country are here for the one other attraction this city boasts.

Right, that. The boat he came here on—which came from Amatsu, stopped in Brasilis, just got here, and is going to Alberta next—is mostly a cargo ship, not a passenger ship, so despite the presumed high influx of would-be adventurers here he's the only one bound for the Academy on his ship. So it falls to him to find out where to go, as whatever welcoming party there might be when bigger passenger ships arrive is nowhere in sight right now. The port looks downright deserted, if he's honest.

"Excuse me," he says to the first professional-looking local he can find. "Can I have directions to the Criatura Academy?"

"Down the street out of the port to the main road then north past the city gates," says the bored-looking person, not looking up from their clipboard to respond.

"Thank you!" he calls after her aaand she's gone okay. Vallynn supposes people around here must be really used to giving new adventurers directions, and those are easy enough instructions to follow. Onwards, then.

The paved road is pretty wide, as befits a well-used road that sees frequent action, but at this time in the evening it's mostly deserted; most frequent boats probably arrive in the morning, the trip from Amatsu only happens once a week and the trip from Amatsu that stops in Brasilis once a month, so Vallynn didn't have the option to be picky.

There was some amount of pickier he could've been; there's a more frequent passenger boat from Brasilis to Alberta but then he'd have to go from Alberta to Izlude and that'd either be a pretty long trip overland that'd pass uncomfortably close to the Morroc dimensional instability, a second boat to Izlude, or an expensive teleport through the Kafra Corporation services he's heard so much about.

Which, well, he'd probably have gone for the Brasilis-Alberta-Izlude trip, actually, if the Amatsu-Brasilis-Izlude trip hadn't been only a few days away from when he was ready to go. What can he say, he likes comfort.

The main road runs from the airport in the south to Criatura Academy in the north, passing through the plaza and market in the center of the town. At this time in the evening there are very few people out and about, and the Academy is actually the most lively-looking place from this distance, with many lights still on.

Excellent. He'll have time to properly get to know this place later, but for now he'll just follow the lights.

Training grounds with practice dummies and a stable population of different types of porings can be seen from the front of the building, and three people are there still awake and training: a boy fumbling about with a sword; another boy staring intently at a blue watermelon-sized blob of slime minding its own business as if he's hoping it will spontaneously explode; and a girl punching her dummy in precise, practised motions, one-two-three like clockwork.

...kinda hot ngl.

Anyway. Into the building

A professional-looking woman is at the reception reading a book, and a short pointy-eared woman is standing in a corner meditating. The receptionist looks up when Vallynn walks in, puts her book down, and smiles at him. "Good evening! How may I help you?"

Holy shit an elf?? He thought the stories about those working for Eden Group were just people making everything more fantastical than reality.

"—hi!" he says after a beat, noticing he'd been staring. "I'm here to register for the Academy."

"Oh! Yes, of course, please give me a moment." She shuffles through some papers until she finds the relevant registration forms and she passes one over to him plus a pen. "Please fill this out. If your name is originally written in a different alphabet please include a transliteration next to it to the best of your ability; surname is optional, prospective guild is optional, please let me know if you have any questions."

"Will do, thank you."

She accepts the form once it's been filled out, reads it over, nods to herself, then says, "Do you have a preference for your roommate being the same gender? We don't have any available single rooms; we do have empty two-person rooms if you'd prefer to be alone for the moment but we'd eventually have someone join you. And you can of course acquire lodgings in the city but the Academy doesn't cover the cost for those."

"No gender preference, and you can put me in a room that already has someone." Good way to break the ice and might get him a potential future party member to boot.

"Allllright, one moment, please..." More looking through files and then: "Ah, here we go, yes, room 107, up two flights of stairs to the right that way," she says, offering Vallynn a key.

"Thank you very much!"

"Of course! Meals are at 7:30AM, 12PM, and 6PM for an hour and a half in the mess hall down that way, so if you drop your things in your new room and come back downstairs quickly enough you can catch the tail end of dinner!"

Oh, right, food is a thing that exists. Thank you, receptionist person, for reminding him of this fact.

Upstairs to his room.

And once he unlocks the door he'll find his roommate was doing one-handed pushups in the middle of the room.

In the buff.

"...hello," he says, looking up at Vallynn with a curious expression on his face.

"Hello indeed," Vallynn says almost automatically while the two of them exchange the kinds of looks that only people who are immediately and obviously attracted to each other can exchange. "Am I in the wrong room, or...?"

The other boy jumps to his feet. "Room 107. I assume you're my new roommate? Taharqi, at your service. I'd shake your hand but I would not want to drench you in my sweat."

"I do think I am, yes." He steps into the room and closes the door behind himself. "I'm Vallynn."

"A pleasure to meet you, Vallynn."