Leo's escape from the courtyard had been less "strategic withdrawal" and more "panicked flight," but he preferred to think of it in military terms. It made him feel slightly less pathetic about the way he had practically sprinted away from a crowd of admiring teenagers while muttering excuses about urgent library research.
The Royal Academy of Aethelgard was a sprawling complex of interconnected buildings, courtyards, and towers that had been designed by someone with either a deep appreciation for architectural complexity or a sadistic desire to confuse visitors.
Leo navigated the maze-like corridors with the confidence of someone who had spent considerable time describing them in painful detail, though he had to admit that experiencing them in person was significantly different from writing about them.
For one thing, his descriptions had failed to capture the way the ancient stones seemed to hum with residual magic, or how the portraits lining the hallways occasionally shifted and whispered among themselves when they thought no one was looking.
He had also underestimated the sheer scale of the place; what had seemed like reasonable distances on paper translated to genuinely exhausting walks in reality.
"Where exactly are we going?" Sir Reginald asked from his pocket, his tiny voice muffled but still audible. "Because if your plan is to wander aimlessly until everyone forgets about your heroic bucket-throwing, I feel obligated to point out that it's not a very good plan."
"I'm not wandering aimlessly," Leo protested, though he had to admit that his current strategy was more "get as far away from the courtyard as possible" than any kind of coherent plan. "I'm conducting a strategic reconnaissance of the academy's layout."
"Ah yes, reconnaissance," Sir Reginald said with the kind of tone that suggested he was not impressed by Leo's military terminology. "And does this reconnaissance have a specific objective, or are we simply admiring the architecture while fleeing from your adoring public?"
Leo paused at a junction of three corridors, each leading in a different direction and each looking remarkably similar to the others. "I need to find somewhere to live," he said finally. "Somewhere quiet. Somewhere far from the main areas where 'protagonists' and their friends tend to gather. Somewhere I can blend into the background and be forgotten."
"A noble goal," Sir Reginald agreed. "Though given your recent performance in the 'being forgotten' department, you might want to consider a more realistic objective. Perhaps 'being slightly less memorable' or 'achieving a moderate level of notoriety rather than full-blown fame.'"
Leo ignored the pixie's commentary and consulted his mental map of the academy. As the author of this world, he had a significant advantage when it came to navigation; he was familiar with the hidden passages, the forgotten rooms, and the areas that most students never bothered to explore.
More importantly, he knew about the dormitory wing that had been built during the academy's expansion phase but had never been fully integrated into the main housing system.
It was perfect for someone who wanted to avoid attention.
The dormitory wing in question was located in the academy's eastern section, connected to the main buildings by a series of covered walkways that most students found inconvenient.
The rooms were smaller than the standard accommodations, the magical heating was unreliable, and the whole area had a reputation for being slightly haunted, though Leo knew that the "ghosts" were actually just the academy's cleaning sprites who had gotten confused about their assigned territories.
More importantly, it was where he had placed 'Student #47' in his original story, far enough from the main action to be safely ignored, but close enough to the academy's facilities to be technically part of the community.
Leo made his way through the increasingly empty corridors, following a route that took him past the academy's less popular areas. He passed the Department of Theoretical Thaumaturgy, where the professors spent their time debating the philosophical implications of magic rather than actually practicing it.
He walked by the Museum of Magical Accidents, which housed a collection of spell experiments that had gone wrong in interesting ways. He even took a detour past the Academy's Lost and Found, which had grown so large that it required its own building and a full-time staff of archaeologists to catalog the accumulated items.
"This place is enormous," Sir Reginald observed as they passed a corridor lined with portraits of former academy headmasters, each of whom seemed to be glaring disapprovingly at Leo's choice of walking speed. "How does anyone find anything?"
"Very carefully," Leo replied, pausing to check a directory that had been carved into the wall sometime during the previous century. "And with a lot of patience. The academy wasn't designed so much as it was accumulated over time. Each generation of administrators added their own sections without much regard for overall coherence."
"Sounds like it was designed by committee," Sir Reginald said with the kind of disdain that only a pixie knight could muster for bureaucratic inefficiency.
"Worse," Leo said. "It was designed by wizards."
They finally reached the eastern dormitory wing, and Leo felt a surge of relief as he recognized the familiar layout from his own descriptions.
The corridors here were narrower than in the main academy, with lower ceilings and fewer of the elaborate magical fixtures that made the central areas so impressive.
The walls were plain stone rather than the ornately carved marble of the main buildings, and the lighting came from simple magical torches rather than the floating crystal chandeliers that illuminated the more prestigious areas.
It was, in short, exactly the kind of place where a background character might live without drawing attention.
Leo consulted the room assignments that had been posted on a bulletin board near the entrance.
The list was written in the kind of bureaucratic script that suggested it had been copied and recopied multiple times by clerks who were more concerned with legibility than aesthetics. He found his name, or rather, the name of the character he was inhabiting(which was still his normal name), about halfway down the list.
"Room 247," he said, more to himself than to Sir Reginald. "Third floor, eastern corridor. Perfect."
The room was exactly as he had imagined it: small, functional, and utterly unremarkable. It contained a bed, a desk, a wardrobe, and a single window that looked out over the academy's eastern gardens.
The magical heating was indeed unreliable, giving the room a slightly chilly atmosphere that Leo found oddly comforting. It reminded him of his old apartment, minus the persistent smell of instant noodles and despair.
"Well," Sir Reginald said as Leo released him from his pocket prison, "it's certainly... cozy."
The tiny knight flew a circuit around the room, his wings buzzing with the efficiency of a miniature inspection tour. He examined the bed, which was large enough to serve as a parade ground for someone of his size, and tested the structural integrity of the desk by landing on it and bouncing experimentally.
"The accommodations are adequate," he declared finally, settling on the windowsill with the air of someone making an official pronouncement. "Though I must say, the décor lacks a certain... grandeur. Where are the tapestries? The suits of armor? The portraits of noble ancestors?"
"This isn't a castle," Leo pointed out, unpacking the few belongings that had apparently come with his new identity. "It's a dormitory room. The whole point is to be functional, not impressive."
"Functionality is all well and good," Sir Reginald said, adjusting his tiny armor with the kind of attention to detail that suggested he took his appearance very seriously.
"But a knight requires a certain standard of accommodation. I shall need a proper perch, perhaps a small banner to mark my territory, and definitely better lighting for my evening sword maintenance routine."