The Mage of Primordial Chaos

Within our digital mailboxes on our Navigators, there was indeed a new email sent to us. It appeared to be quite long, and beside its thumbnail preview in the left half of the Inbox screen, there was a large yellow star, signaling that it was a 'VIP message', meaning the sender was a 'VIP', thus causing their emails and messages to be highlighted and pinned.

The school administration's emails, by default, were designated as 'VIP', and while students could remove it from the VIP list, it wasn't very wise to do so as any emails from school administration was bound to be important. 

This one, in particular, held a simple title:

[Introduction to the CAA]

The description underneath, however, marked the beginning to a long explanation, as it started with the following words:

[Good afternoon, students. The CAA (Counterhex Academy App) is a designated program that only students and teachers of this school may use. It is a requirement for all students to download and install this program on their phones…]

A mobile app… for our phones? Even though we already had a Navigator with a Message function and an Email function? Interesting…

I tapped on the email to expand it up in its full size on the right side, then read through the information as a whole together with Feng Mian:

[Title: Introduction to the CAA]

[Good afternoon, students.

The CAA (Counterhex Academy App) is a designated program that only students and teachers of this school may use. It is a requirement for all students to download and install this program on their phones by midnight today, as it will prove vital and essential to your classes and progression here at Counterhex Academy in the future.

To download it, simply navigate to your phone's App Store and search up 'CAA', or 'Counterhex Academy App'. From the moment you all entered this school, your mobile devices were tampered with by a simple Enchantment that marked it with the ability to see this app, whereas any normal phone or tablet would not be able to find it no matter how hard they looked.

Once the installation is complete, open up the app, and the tutorial will continue from there.

That is all. Reminder that this is a necessary procedure, and any students who fail to complete this task by midnight tonight will receive according punishments. From this moment on until 11:59 PM, those of you who still have not yet installed the app onto your phones will continuously receive an exact replica of this email until you do.

Sincerely,

Counterhex Academy Administration]

"… Well, that was shorter than expected," I muttered, as Feng Mian gave a nod of agreement.

"All that foreword, just to say 'the tutorial will continue from there'… this entire email was 90% warning and threats, 10% actual useful info."

Once again, I sighed deeply, and exited out of my Navigator before pulling out my phone from my pocket. Feng Mian mirrored my actions, and we opened up the App Store before searching for the app mentioned in the email. Sure enough, after typing in 'CAA', we were able to find it with ease, and we tapped on the download button.

With the internet in this school, the download completed in less than a second. After opening it up, we were immediately met with a prompt:

[Welcome to the Counterhex Academy App.]

[Please scan your Student ID with your device's camera to continue.]

"My student ID… I don't have it on me…" Feng Mian murmured in worry.

"Relax. Didn't they say our Navigators could be used as our Student IDs regardless, and the physical cards are just for backup?"

"Oh, right…" Feng Mian realized, laughing awkwardly as she scratched her head. "Sorry, I forgot about that…"

"It's fine."

It would seem she was so flustered at our moment being interrupted that she wasn't really thinking straight right now.

The two of us opened up the [Status] screen on our Navigators, causing a hologram to appear above the watch-like gadgets, and then held our phones' cameras towards the holographic images.

[Scanning…]

[…]

[Scanning Complete. User authorized.]

The panel closed soon after that, and switched to a completely new screen—the home screen of the app, designed with dark blue and black colors in mind. The UI was neat and futuristic-looking, which was to be expected from a school like this.

On the bottom, there were five tabs we could switch to, each labeled with a different icon. The one we were on right now was the central one, marked with a house icon (probably means Home), and to its right was an icon displaying two human silhouettes, one overlapping the other—most likely the 'Friends' or 'Social' tab, judging from experience and common sense. Beyond that, in the rightmost corner was a portrait with the top-half of a human silhouette in it… the 'Me' or 'Profile' corner, I suppose?

To the left, however, things began to get interesting. The one in the leftmost corner was a cup-shaped trophy of some sort with a star design on it, while the one adjacent to the Home screen icon was a building. Before I could navigate around and play with the app, however, yet another pop-up appeared—the tutorial promised in the email.

[Welcome, student.]

[This short tutorial will walk you through the five sections of the Counterhex Academy App. You can skip it by clicking the x in the top right corner of these pop-ups at any time you want, but it is recommended to follow the tutorial to the end. The estimate time of completion is five minutes.]

[Begin]

Well, if they said it was 'recommended' to follow the tutorial, that's basically telling us 'do the tutorial'. Left without much of a choice, I tapped on the Begin button, and immediately, the pop-up went away, transforming into smaller blurbs of text that highlighted specific regions of the page.

[This is the Home Page. It is very simple, and contains news and announcements regarding events at the school, such as clubs, breakthroughs, and tournaments (more on this later). Important alerts are not displayed here, however, and are instead emailed to every student's Navigator inboxes. Next->]

Breakthroughs…? So when someone advances to the next stage as a mage, a message will be broadcast to everyone in the school about it? God…

I shook my head, dreadfully hoping this was not the case. At least make it an option to opt out of such a thing… but if there was one, they would've written something about it here. Unfortunate.

… Oh, wait. A.R.X.A. oversees this kind of stuff, doesn't she? I'll just ask her later, whenever I get a chance.

I tapped on the Next button, and was brought to the next page—the leftmost tab, marked with the trophy icon.

[This is the Tournament Page. Within it, various types of competitions at this school will be listed. There are many different Tournament categories, types, as well as official school-hosted ones and private ones held by other students or specific teachers. Every tournament comes with prizes, but some also come with risks. Note that students with severe late records or those who continuously fail to submit assignments and homework on time will be banned from participating in tournaments. Next->]