That was perhaps the scariest night of my life. Inside a completely barricaded hotel, we sat hidden in the cellar and could merely hope for the best while those who could fight did their best to protect the town.
Even down in this damp and dark cellar, we could still hear the screams of the undead, ever so slightly creeping up on us. It was honestly a horror scenario. Some of my classmates, boys and girls alike, were crying loudly and the few teachers staying with us weren’t of any help either as everyone could see they were shaken as well.
But in the end, all these screams stopped all of a sudden and peace returned to the town. Slowly, the students calmed down as well and the first teachers went back to the surface to check out the situation. The town had been saved.
What followed afterwards was apparently a cleanup of the corpses by the residents, but we weren’t allowed to take part in that. Some of us were given the opportunity to take care of the wounded though. But afterwards, we weren’t allowed weren’t allowed to take part in any activities outside for two days straight which was honestly a sensible decision. But we still hoped for the best. Sadly, we had no say in that matter all together and could only listen to the conclusion the teachers came to.
“As you might have heard, we had a talk with the mayor a few hours ago and he sincerely thanked the academy for helping as much as we did. Especially Ellie was praised for her rather reckless actions and they even wanted to express their thanks in a materialistic way which we naturally had to decline on behalf of her.” There was quite the uproar in the little hall, but that died down quickly as Ellie herself said that it was fine. “And towards our last point. The other students are doing fine at this point. The illness didn’t spread and none are feeling any signs of the illness anymore. Therefore, we have decided to wait one day before we head back to the capital city.” A rather strict teacher told us loudly.
“Back? We still have a week left.” A boy of a parallel class said loudly and directly earned the ire of the teacher in front of us.
“It is hard to imagine continuing with our trip after everything that happened.” The teacher explained a bit annoyed by most of the students who seemed to agree with the boy.
“But-“
“The decision had been taken unanimously by all the teachers. You are dismissed.” And with that, it was clear we had no chance of changing their minds. Even though everyone loved it in Atlantis, it was probably the right decision to leave. The town was still a mess at this point and the cheerful atmosphere on the streets had vanished and few students going swimming while others mourned their dead would be immoral. And thus, we cleaned our clothing one last time in the hotel, packed up our stuff and spent one last night in the large hall under the watchful gaze of a few teachers. For some reason, we weren’t even allowed to sleep by ourselves at this point, but none had any idea as to why this was the case.
Anyways, the very next day was also our last in Atlantis, which was why most students kept whispering through the night and thus were quite tired as we had to carry our luggage back into the carts. After that had been done, we hat to wait a little for the teachers to check everything one last time and then … then we basically had to say goodbye to the town.
“I had a beautiful time here. The weather was clear and I never shred a tear. From this day, I will remember every way.” I never thought Ellie had a poetic side in her … but she apparently had to fight back the tears as the cart rumbled through the streets.
“Please stop rhyming, or I will start whining.” Lucy said and laughed happily. I knew she would miss this time as well, even though she was probably glad we weren’t around the lake anymore.
“Gladly. Ran out of rhymes anyway.” Ellie said, exactly as we stopped in front of the gate to wait for the other classes. “A snack?”
“No, thank you.” I wasn’t the only one to decline Ellie’s offer for a few cookies as everyone shook their heads at the same time.
“Hey.” Miss Dove interrupted after going around the cart and leaning against the back. “The local part of the newspaper is apparently filled with your heroic deeds. Here it is. ‘A blonde cat girl blocking a demonic rhino with a simple barrier.’ You might be becoming quite popular amongst the beast men with this although …”
“Yes, mam?” Ellie said as Miss Dove folded the newspaper in her hands.
“I do have to wonder how your barriers withstood its attacks.” Miss Dove said apparently deeply in thought.
“I trained hard.” Ellie said, but our homeroom teacher apparently had quite a few doubts about that as she raised her left eyebrow a bit and then quickly turned around.
“We’ll see. Well then, I do hope you aren’t too noisy during our ride…” Miss Dove said and pushed herself away from the cart. It didn’t take long for her to approach a rather lonesome black haired boy and direct him towards us.
“Why him?” Louis asked, right as Schwarz jumped onto the cart and sat down next to Lucy. At least Louis and Schwarz weren’t sharing a bench that way, but I honestly doubted that would stop them from quarrelling.
“Because I am amazing.” I had my doubts, that was for sure.
“… let me guess. You were left over and nobody else wanted to go with you?” Louis asked in a very mean tone which Schwarz didn’t take well.
“Oh, my. Is it already beginning? You two should really learn to get along.” Lucy asked and raised her eyebrows a little. Unsurprisingly, these two looked away from each other and stopped their argument right away. It was truly a little wonder what Lucy could do just by using her voice alone.
But as always, her warning didn’t hold long and these two were back at arguing a few minutes later.
“I suppose you should get some sleep. All of you.” Lucy said sternly.
“We are doing it again?” Schwarz asked with great interest. And nearly stood up from the bench in excitement.
“The stakes are still the same, the contents of the lecture are different.” Hannah said from the driver’s seat. Lucy only nodded to that and looked honestly quite stunned as all of the others leaned against something, including her in the case of Schwarz, and closed their eyes quickly.
“What is happening here?” I whispered in Lucy’s ear quietly.
“You should sleep as well if possible. I’ll try to show you something tonight.” That kind of exited me. The others already knew for some reason what was going on, but I could only guess. A walk to the night? Gazing at the stars? I honestly didn’t know and was a bit too nervous and not too tired as well, which made it hard to close my eyes.
In the end, I stayed awake most of the time, even though everyone else managed to take a nap at least. As we stopped at our camping spot, it was already early in the night which didn’t give us much time to prepare our tents. Not a single person of our group changed clothing though and rather waited for a rather tired Hannah to approach us.
“Have you eaten?” Hannah asked quietly as some other students began to sleep around us.
“Just now. What do we do?” Louis whispered back.
“Take your weapons.” Hannah said and went around the cart to retrieve a rather interestingly formed black sword. Ellie took out her shield and sword as well while Schwarz reappeared with a sword a little while later as well. “Let’s go.”
Hannah said and marched out of the camp under the watchful gaze of the other teachers.
“And remember, never stray away from the group under any circumstances. Remain in contact with at least two others.” I didn’t understand the reasoning for her words at all, but neither did I intend to go too far anyway. The forest was way too scary to wander around alone. All of the others nodded immediately and so, I shrugged my shoulders and nodded along.
A few minutes later, we were at another clearing and Lucy tipped on my shoulder.
“Hey, let’s sit down on that fallen tree over there, alright?” She said while smiling gently.
“We shouldn’t go away that far…” I whispered back. I really didn’t want to get her into trouble with Hannah, even though it was probably alright for us to go.
“It’s fine. Hannah can still see us.” She said and took my hand to guide me towards the fallen tree she mentioned earlier.
“Okay.” I said, stumbling behind her over a few roots I didn’t see. But luckily Lucy was a vampire, so she wouldn’t have any trouble seeing in the starlight.
Sitting down right next to her, we looked at the other three for a little while. It almost looked as if they really wanted to hurt each other with Miss Dove fighting all three of them together. Her sword was basically hidden in plain sight as she swung it around herself to parry any attacks thrown at her. I could only guess where it was based on the occasional spark or reflection of the moonlight.
“Wow, they are good, aren’t they?” I didn’t have that much interest in fighting, but I could see that the three students were rather good in their own fields. Ellie could block Miss Dove’s sword most of the time with her barriers or her own shield once it threatened to hit someone with the flat side, Louis kept her busy with a variety of spells and Schwarz kept trying to find her weak spots.
The most spectacular one was surely Miss Dove though. She didn’t move her feet that much and sometimes even blocked behind her back which was just phenomenal to see. Additionally, I didn’t see her using any magic whatsoever, meaning she was relying on her own skill more than anything else.
“No … they are all really good.” I mumbled quietly while Lucy nodded a bit slowly.
“It’s alright … not what we need to defend humanity, but alright for the time being.” She said and turned her face to look at me. “Let’s get to why you are here. What do you know about classes of magic?”
“There are six of them. Fire, earth, light, water, air and darkness.” I explained and furrowed my brows a little. Everyone knew that. It was shown on the stats sheet after all.
“Hmm … that’s broadly speaking correct. The system consists of these classes with ten sub categories to rank all the spells from tier one to ten. But what about if we think back around two hundred years. Were there still six classes of magic?” That was kind of hard to answer in all honesty. There were the same six classes back then for sure, but I couldn’t say for sure there weren’t any other. In the first place, grouping magic was quite the weird concept, especially looking at some magics like teleportation which belonged to dark magic.
“I think so … there weren’t that many magicians back then, but none have shown any magic outside of these classes.” I muttered, unsure what she expected.
“Let me phrase it this way then. Is it possible stop time, predict the future or simply to create something out of thin air?” That would break all the laws of magic I knew of, and a certain wolf in the distance seemed to agree with me right away.
“No?” I asked gripping the tree I was sitting on tightly as I was quite unsatisfied with my answer myself.
“And what if that is wrong? That very few do have the ability to go beyond the normal classes? That they have an innate magic which isn’t possible to replicate with the normal means?” That would mean that someone could predict the future, which gave them enough leeway to do whatever they wanted.
“What do you mean?” I just couldn’t accept such a power. Whoever had anyone of these innate powers, they had to be found and kept in check. Otherwise, they may spread chaos throughout the world.
“I believe you are one of these people.” Me? A person who could create gold out of thin air? I highly doubted it.
“So you are saying I can stop time?” No, it was completely impossible.
“Not really, no. But I believe you do have the ability to predict the future to a certain extend.” Lucy said and stood up as a leaf was blown into our direction.
“That’s impossible.” I muttered while looking at her how she caught the leaf out of the air. Maybe she wanted to tell me something with her actions, but I didn’t get it.
“Is it? One, two, three, five, eight. What will I say next?” She asked after looking at me for a few seconds.
“Thirteen…” I said. That was child’s play, that was for sure. But in a sense, I slowly started to understand what she wanted to tell me.
“In a sense, you just predicted the future, didn’t you?” I really didn’t. I made a logical deduction and nothing else. Scaling that up was only possible to a certain extend. It was definitely not possible to deduct what would happen next based on my knowledge alone.
“It’s impossible to do that on a larger scale. The amount of thinking you would need to do is insane.” I said and furrowed my brows. What she told me was … weird. And dangerous. But also strangely exiting. Finally I had a chance of being of use to her.
“And that’s where your innate magic comes into play. You don’t need to think that hard, your magic does that all for you. You only need the wisdom to feed it with all the possible information it needs.” So it was exactly as I thought … but I could I really predict how many leaves the tree right next to me would lose over the course of the day? Or when this tree I sat on would be completely rotten away? I seriously didn’t know, but that wasn’t the most pressing matter on my mind anyway.
“… how do you know that much about my innate magic?” I asked quietly and curiously. Maybe she had and innate magic herself? Something that allowed her to see the truth?
“The signs are all there … it’s kind of hard to explain.” That was … not answering anything. Sighing, I looked at her how she caught another leaf out of the air without even looking at it which was quite impressive.
“Okay … and how do I use it?” I asked curiously.
“I was told it is very similar to ancient magic.” She was told? So she really didn’t have any innate magic. It was quite sad she had to live without any magic whatsoever, but I didn’t pity her for that. She was strong and wise enough to do without.
“But ancient magic is weak.” I said. It was quite well known that mages back then weren’t the best. None of them could fly, a feat achieved fifty years after the system appeared.
“Was it? Or is it just that the mana density on Solaris increased which enabled everyone to use more powerful magic?” That was … possible? I couldn’t say for sure, but the system definitely helped with every magic.
“Perhaps … where do we start?” I asked eagerly.
“That is the big question. It would be better for Hannah to teach you … but oh well. First, try focusing on the mana inside you. visualise it like a blue sea with a little canal only allowing the top few percent to escape. And then, let your reservoir of mana slowly drain into your surroundings.” That … was way easier said than done.
That was perhaps the scariest night of my life. Inside a completely barricaded hotel, we sat hidden in the cellar and could merely hope for the best while those who could fight did their best to protect the town.
Even down in this damp and dark cellar, we could still hear the screams of the undead, ever so slightly creeping up on us. It was honestly a horror scenario. Some of my classmates, boys and girls alike, were crying loudly and the few teachers staying with us weren’t of any help either as everyone could see they were shaken as well.
But in the end, all these screams stopped all of a sudden and peace returned to the town. Slowly, the students calmed down as well and the first teachers went back to the surface to check out the situation. The town had been saved.
What followed afterwards was apparently a cleanup of the corpses by the residents, but we weren’t allowed to take part in that. Some of us were given the opportunity to take care of the wounded though. But afterwards, we weren’t allowed weren’t allowed to take part in any activities outside for two days straight which was honestly a sensible decision. But we still hoped for the best. Sadly, we had no say in that matter all together and could only listen to the conclusion the teachers came to.
“As you might have heard, we had a talk with the mayor a few hours ago and he sincerely thanked the academy for helping as much as we did. Especially Ellie was praised for her rather reckless actions and they even wanted to express their thanks in a materialistic way which we naturally had to decline on behalf of her.” There was quite the uproar in the little hall, but that died down quickly as Ellie herself said that it was fine. “And towards our last point. The other students are doing fine at this point. The illness didn’t spread and none are feeling any signs of the illness anymore. Therefore, we have decided to wait one day before we head back to the capital city.” A rather strict teacher told us loudly.
“Back? We still have a week left.” A boy of a parallel class said loudly and directly earned the ire of the teacher in front of us.
“It is hard to imagine continuing with our trip after everything that happened.” The teacher explained a bit annoyed by most of the students who seemed to agree with the boy.
“But-“
“The decision had been taken unanimously by all the teachers. You are dismissed.” And with that, it was clear we had no chance of changing their minds. Even though everyone loved it in Atlantis, it was probably the right decision to leave. The town was still a mess at this point and the cheerful atmosphere on the streets had vanished and few students going swimming while others mourned their dead would be immoral. And thus, we cleaned our clothing one last time in the hotel, packed up our stuff and spent one last night in the large hall under the watchful gaze of a few teachers. For some reason, we weren’t even allowed to sleep by ourselves at this point, but none had any idea as to why this was the case.
Anyways, the very next day was also our last in Atlantis, which was why most students kept whispering through the night and thus were quite tired as we had to carry our luggage back into the carts. After that had been done, we hat to wait a little for the teachers to check everything one last time and then … then we basically had to say goodbye to the town.
“I had a beautiful time here. The weather was clear and I never shred a tear. From this day, I will remember every way.” I never thought Ellie had a poetic side in her … but she apparently had to fight back the tears as the cart rumbled through the streets.
“Please stop rhyming, or I will start whining.” Lucy said and laughed happily. I knew she would miss this time as well, even though she was probably glad we weren’t around the lake anymore.
“Gladly. Ran out of rhymes anyway.” Ellie said, exactly as we stopped in front of the gate to wait for the other classes. “A snack?”
“No, thank you.” I wasn’t the only one to decline Ellie’s offer for a few cookies as everyone shook their heads at the same time.
“Hey.” Miss Dove interrupted after going around the cart and leaning against the back. “The local part of the newspaper is apparently filled with your heroic deeds. Here it is. ‘A blonde cat girl blocking a demonic rhino with a simple barrier.’ You might be becoming quite popular amongst the beast men with this although …”
“Yes, mam?” Ellie said as Miss Dove folded the newspaper in her hands.
“I do have to wonder how your barriers withstood its attacks.” Miss Dove said apparently deeply in thought.
“I trained hard.” Ellie said, but our homeroom teacher apparently had quite a few doubts about that as she raised her left eyebrow a bit and then quickly turned around.
“We’ll see. Well then, I do hope you aren’t too noisy during our ride…” Miss Dove said and pushed herself away from the cart. It didn’t take long for her to approach a rather lonesome black haired boy and direct him towards us.
“Why him?” Louis asked, right as Schwarz jumped onto the cart and sat down next to Lucy. At least Louis and Schwarz weren’t sharing a bench that way, but I honestly doubted that would stop them from quarrelling.
“Because I am amazing.” I had my doubts, that was for sure.
“… let me guess. You were left over and nobody else wanted to go with you?” Louis asked in a very mean tone which Schwarz didn’t take well.
“Oh, my. Is it already beginning? You two should really learn to get along.” Lucy asked and raised her eyebrows a little. Unsurprisingly, these two looked away from each other and stopped their argument right away. It was truly a little wonder what Lucy could do just by using her voice alone.
But as always, her warning didn’t hold long and these two were back at arguing a few minutes later.
“I suppose you should get some sleep. All of you.” Lucy said sternly.
“We are doing it again?” Schwarz asked with great interest. And nearly stood up from the bench in excitement.
“The stakes are still the same, the contents of the lecture are different.” Hannah said from the driver’s seat. Lucy only nodded to that and looked honestly quite stunned as all of the others leaned against something, including her in the case of Schwarz, and closed their eyes quickly.
“What is happening here?” I whispered in Lucy’s ear quietly.
“You should sleep as well if possible. I’ll try to show you something tonight.” That kind of exited me. The others already knew for some reason what was going on, but I could only guess. A walk to the night? Gazing at the stars? I honestly didn’t know and was a bit too nervous and not too tired as well, which made it hard to close my eyes.
In the end, I stayed awake most of the time, even though everyone else managed to take a nap at least. As we stopped at our camping spot, it was already early in the night which didn’t give us much time to prepare our tents. Not a single person of our group changed clothing though and rather waited for a rather tired Hannah to approach us.
“Have you eaten?” Hannah asked quietly as some other students began to sleep around us.
“Just now. What do we do?” Louis whispered back.
“Take your weapons.” Hannah said and went around the cart to retrieve a rather interestingly formed black sword. Ellie took out her shield and sword as well while Schwarz reappeared with a sword a little while later as well. “Let’s go.”
Hannah said and marched out of the camp under the watchful gaze of the other teachers.
“And remember, never stray away from the group under any circumstances. Remain in contact with at least two others.” I didn’t understand the reasoning for her words at all, but neither did I intend to go too far anyway. The forest was way too scary to wander around alone. All of the others nodded immediately and so, I shrugged my shoulders and nodded along.
A few minutes later, we were at another clearing and Lucy tipped on my shoulder.
“Hey, let’s sit down on that fallen tree over there, alright?” She said while smiling gently.
“We shouldn’t go away that far…” I whispered back. I really didn’t want to get her into trouble with Hannah, even though it was probably alright for us to go.
“It’s fine. Hannah can still see us.” She said and took my hand to guide me towards the fallen tree she mentioned earlier.
“Okay.” I said, stumbling behind her over a few roots I didn’t see. But luckily Lucy was a vampire, so she wouldn’t have any trouble seeing in the starlight.
Sitting down right next to her, we looked at the other three for a little while. It almost looked as if they really wanted to hurt each other with Miss Dove fighting all three of them together. Her sword was basically hidden in plain sight as she swung it around herself to parry any attacks thrown at her. I could only guess where it was based on the occasional spark or reflection of the moonlight.
“Wow, they are good, aren’t they?” I didn’t have that much interest in fighting, but I could see that the three students were rather good in their own fields. Ellie could block Miss Dove’s sword most of the time with her barriers or her own shield once it threatened to hit someone with the flat side, Louis kept her busy with a variety of spells and Schwarz kept trying to find her weak spots.
The most spectacular one was surely Miss Dove though. She didn’t move her feet that much and sometimes even blocked behind her back which was just phenomenal to see. Additionally, I didn’t see her using any magic whatsoever, meaning she was relying on her own skill more than anything else.
“No … they are all really good.” I mumbled quietly while Lucy nodded a bit slowly.
“It’s alright … not what we need to defend humanity, but alright for the time being.” She said and turned her face to look at me. “Let’s get to why you are here. What do you know about classes of magic?”
“There are six of them. Fire, earth, light, water, air and darkness.” I explained and furrowed my brows a little. Everyone knew that. It was shown on the stats sheet after all.
“Hmm … that’s broadly speaking correct. The system consists of these classes with ten sub categories to rank all the spells from tier one to ten. But what about if we think back around two hundred years. Were there still six classes of magic?” That was kind of hard to answer in all honesty. There were the same six classes back then for sure, but I couldn’t say for sure there weren’t any other. In the first place, grouping magic was quite the weird concept, especially looking at some magics like teleportation which belonged to dark magic.
“I think so … there weren’t that many magicians back then, but none have shown any magic outside of these classes.” I muttered, unsure what she expected.
“Let me phrase it this way then. Is it possible stop time, predict the future or simply to create something out of thin air?” That would break all the laws of magic I knew of, and a certain wolf in the distance seemed to agree with me right away.
“No?” I asked gripping the tree I was sitting on tightly as I was quite unsatisfied with my answer myself.
“And what if that is wrong? That very few do have the ability to go beyond the normal classes? That they have an innate magic which isn’t possible to replicate with the normal means?” That would mean that someone could predict the future, which gave them enough leeway to do whatever they wanted.
“What do you mean?” I just couldn’t accept such a power. Whoever had anyone of these innate powers, they had to be found and kept in check. Otherwise, they may spread chaos throughout the world.
“I believe you are one of these people.” Me? A person who could create gold out of thin air? I highly doubted it.
“So you are saying I can stop time?” No, it was completely impossible.
“Not really, no. But I believe you do have the ability to predict the future to a certain extend.” Lucy said and stood up as a leaf was blown into our direction.
“That’s impossible.” I muttered while looking at her how she caught the leaf out of the air. Maybe she wanted to tell me something with her actions, but I didn’t get it.
“Is it? One, two, three, five, eight. What will I say next?” She asked after looking at me for a few seconds.
“Thirteen…” I said. That was child’s play, that was for sure. But in a sense, I slowly started to understand what she wanted to tell me.
“In a sense, you just predicted the future, didn’t you?” I really didn’t. I made a logical deduction and nothing else. Scaling that up was only possible to a certain extend. It was definitely not possible to deduct what would happen next based on my knowledge alone.
“It’s impossible to do that on a larger scale. The amount of thinking you would need to do is insane.” I said and furrowed my brows. What she told me was … weird. And dangerous. But also strangely exiting. Finally I had a chance of being of use to her.
“And that’s where your innate magic comes into play. You don’t need to think that hard, your magic does that all for you. You only need the wisdom to feed it with all the possible information it needs.” So it was exactly as I thought … but I could I really predict how many leaves the tree right next to me would lose over the course of the day? Or when this tree I sat on would be completely rotten away? I seriously didn’t know, but that wasn’t the most pressing matter on my mind anyway.
“… how do you know that much about my innate magic?” I asked quietly and curiously. Maybe she had and innate magic herself? Something that allowed her to see the truth?
“The signs are all there … it’s kind of hard to explain.” That was … not answering anything. Sighing, I looked at her how she caught another leaf out of the air without even looking at it which was quite impressive.
“Okay … and how do I use it?” I asked curiously.
“I was told it is very similar to ancient magic.” She was told? So she really didn’t have any innate magic. It was quite sad she had to live without any magic whatsoever, but I didn’t pity her for that. She was strong and wise enough to do without.
“But ancient magic is weak.” I said. It was quite well known that mages back then weren’t the best. None of them could fly, a feat achieved fifty years after the system appeared.
“Was it? Or is it just that the mana density on Solaris increased which enabled everyone to use more powerful magic?” That was … possible? I couldn’t say for sure, but the system definitely helped with every magic.
“Perhaps … where do we start?” I asked eagerly.
“That is the big question. It would be better for Hannah to teach you … but oh well. First, try focusing on the mana inside you. visualise it like a blue sea with a little canal only allowing the top few percent to escape. And then, let your reservoir of mana slowly drain into your surroundings.” That … was way easier said than done.
