While many of the weaker noble families work together under more powerful families, they almost always do so reluctantly, trying to gain any and all advantages over the other families, even those they proclaim to serve. This leads to a large number of problems with border disputes and other issues which cause many of these fragile alliances to break down completely every few years or so.

-Excerpt from Telram’s notes on the Noble Families.

Jai watched one of the guards pass in front of him warily, the tiger had been sent ahead of everyone else because he was the stealthiest of the entire group but even, so he still had to be careful. Each of the guards had a small ball of fire floating above their heads and if he was caught in the flickering light that the makeshift torches cast on the surrounding area, it would be easy for either the guard on patrol or one of the guards watching from atop the stone towers that they had erected to try and catch the group as they crossed over the border.

Picking his moment carefully Jai crept past the guard once he was sure he wouldn’t get caught in the light, moving slowly in case the guard had some sort of sensory related technique. While Jai wasn’t as stealthy as Willa even now that the wolf had increased in size, he was still more capable than most cultivators in the Ascendant Realm and as soon as he thought that he was clear he broke into a run.

Meanwhile Diane and Telram were underground travelling much slower than Diane would’ve like both because she didn’t want to jostle Telram’s injury and to avoid being detected by the cultivator that had created the stone watchtowers who was quite likely to be able to detect the earth moving underneath their feet. She had taken them as deep underground as she could while not wasting any time moving towards the border because she didn’t know how powerful the Earth cultivator was but also knew that they couldn’t afford to waste any time digging deeper.

Telram himself was quite uncomfortable with the situation he was in and not only because he was currently being held by Diane who was somewhere between 5 and 10 years older than he would’ve been by now if he was still back on Earth, although it was hard to say because cultivators often looked younger than they actually were. No, the main reason was that he wasn’t certain he liked moving at high speeds underground. Dirt and rocks were rushing past his body at high speeds, held back only by the layer of Mana covering him and Diane, not that he could actually see what was going on. Sighing heavily, he decided that he should try and learn something about the Diane’s Earth Dive technique while he could, at least it would take his mind off what was going on.

Channelling Mana to his eyes he activated his Spiritual Sight and looked around at the movement of Mana around him. As he looked around Telram noticed that the cocoon of Mana that they were in was made of Earth Affinity Mana and seemed to have several threads of Mana reaching out into the ground around them before dissipating into the massive Earth mana that surrounded them. From what Telram could tell these threads were what was pulling them through the ground towards their destination; a small hillock that they could barely see in the distance from where they had rested until nightfall.

Watching from the surface Fergus grinned as he prepared for his own crossing, he was the most likely member of the group to be noticed so he was going to start heading in the direction of one of the major cities controlled by Lord Undar before shaking them off. Hopefully this would limit the number of cultivators that followed him while hopefully putting Irian on the defensive. Once he was sure that he had shaken off anyone following him he could then find them through the same technique that Diane had used.

Flames gathered around the old man’s feet as he called upon the prodigious amounts of Fire Affinity Mana that dwelled within his body, already he could hear the clamouring of the guards as they noticed the flames flaring to life on the hilltop where he was, but they were far too late. Fergus broke into a sprint that caused glass to form in his wake from the heat of the flames that he had summoned before launching himself into the air with all the force that he could muster. Fergus shot across the sky with a loud roaring sound as the flames billowing from his legs blasted him forwards, a quick glance down at the ground told him that the guards had all noticed him by now and he could see more than a few of them pointing at him as a smaller group rushed to put out the fire that he had stared on the hill. It looked like things were all going as Telram had planned them to.

As he flew through the air Fergus took a moment to think about the odd young man that he had decided to follow. Despite his young age Telram was a very capable cultivator with a sharp mind which allowed him to come up with new Martial techniques that Fergus could barely understand himself and cunning plans that left Fergus in awe. It was easy to see why his old friend Gerry was so proud of his student and Fergus was looking forward to teaching him a few tricks of his own just so he could see what Telram would do with them.

Once she was sure that they were far enough away Diane started heading towards the surface glancing down at Telram as she did so. She was just as uncomfortable with holding onto the young man as Telram was being held by her, not that she knew that he felt that way, but even she had to admit that it was quite impressive that he hadn’t so much as shifted uncomfortably even once the entire time they had been underground. Even she hadn’t found the experience of being unable to see while earth rushed past her the first time she had tried this technique out but even as she thought this she noticed that he was in fact using his Spiritual Vision and quickly realised that he was using that to focus on learning about the technique she was using instead of what was happening around him. This was still actually quite impressive way of dealing with the situation as it showed that he had a lot of self-control even when he had no control over what was going on. For all he knew she could let go of him at any time leaving him stranded underground, but he had decided to trust her and Fergus despite them not really doing anything to help Gerry or Lily when Irian had targeted them.

Feeling their sudden shift in direction Telram stopped channelling Mana to his eyes and prepared for them to surface. Despite how uncomfortable the technique made him feel he was nonetheless impressed by it and was quite pleased with what he had managed to learn about how the technique worked and about manipulating Earth Affinity Mana.

Upon surfacing Telram quickly stepped away from Diane as she let go unable to look the older woman in the eye. Diane wasn’t an unattractive woman despite the irritated look on her face that she had whenever she looked at him and he really didn’t want to think about the way her chest had been pressed into his back during the entire trip underground. Looking around he realised that Jai had yet to make it to their location.

“Well I suppose we should wait for Jai,” Telram muttered still refusing to look at Diane who was watching him with an odd look on her face.

“Telram, would you mind telling me what you plan to do when you make it to Yulis?” Diane asked suddenly.

“Hmm, well I’ve never really thought about that,” Telram admitted as he finally turned to look at Diane with a small frown on his face. “Why do you ask?”

“Well most of the people over a certain age who live in border villages are expected to contribute in some way to the village, so I was just wondering if there was anything in particular you were planning on doing,” Diane replied with a shrug.

“I didn’t actually know that,” Telram said thinking seriously about Diane’s question. Like he had told Diane he hadn’t thought about what he was planning on doing when he got to Yulis village but now it was literally all he could think about. In fact, he didn’t even know that was the case which actually raised some more questions that he wanted to ask Diane but decided to leave those for a later date and think about her question.

After a few minutes a thought he nodded as he realised that now was the time to introduce a concept from his world that he knew didn’t exist on Nerrus despite the benefits that something like what he had in mind had in any community. From what he had been able to figure out there were a number of reasons for this but luckily most of those reasons would be rendered all but non-existent in a border village like Yulis.

“I’m going to teach the kids,” he said slowly as a grin slowly made its way across his face.

“Teach the kids? Teach them what exactly?” Diane asked giving Telram a confused look.

“Well how to read and write for starters,” Telram said. “And then cultivation and martial techniques. About the different types of Mana Beasts, basically anything and everything we can think of!”

“Wait, what?” Diane said incredulously. “You want to teach a whole village of kids your Martial Techniques!?”

“Not exactly,” Telram replied shaking his head. “I mean basic techniques and then give the kids themselves ideas to make those techniques their own and a place to try these ideas out safely.”

“I’m not sure how that would work,” Diane admitted. “I mean it sounds good on the surface, but would it really work out that way?”

“It might not but then again, you were a scholar so you should know how working together with other people affects how much work actually gets done,” Telram replied, he had often wondered why he’d never heard of schools existing in this world and now it seemed he was about to find out the reason why that was the case.

“That’s… true,” Diane said hesitantly. “But why would you teach random kids?”

“The answer to that question lies in another question,” Telram replied shaking his head sadly. “How many people are actually able to learn to cultivate?”

“Um, not very many I guess,” Diane admitted. She was still a bit confused by what Telram was saying but he knew that she was paying close attention.

“Right, because first you have to learn how to read which is very time consuming and getting new techniques and resources is too difficult and expensive for most people,” Telram said and Diane nodded in agreement. “But what if that’s part of the problem?”

“What do you mean?” Diane asked interestedly and Upon hearing this Telram grinned.

“If everyone knew how to read and cultivate then not only would the average work that someone could do increases but you’re more likely to discover people with talent for cultivating, the more cultivators there are the more people can go and search for resources that would normally be rare and so on,” Telram told Diane whose eyes widened in sudden understanding, but then the expression on her face turned once more to confusion.

“But if this is such a good idea, then why hasn’t someone else thought of it?” she asked suspiciously.

“They probably have but were stopped by the nobles or cultivators that wanted to make sure that they were the most powerful people around,” Telram replied with a shrug. “It’s also something that’s a bit difficult culturally. Cultivators typically think of themselves as special and probably wouldn’t like the idea of everyone else being able to cultivate like they can.”

“I think I understand,” Diane said. “But are you sure this is something that you want to do, what if you get targeted by someone who doesn’t like the idea of you spreading things like cultivation techniques around?”

"Well luckily we’re heading to a border town,” Telram replied with a smirk. “You know as well as I do that they don’t care very much about what the people who live in the larger towns and cities think and most of them can cultivate to some extent anyway so even if someone notices that the kids are cultivating they shouldn’t think too much of it.”

“Are you sure you haven’t been thinking about this?” Diane asked. “You seem to be awfully prepared to answer my questions.”

“Oh, I’ve been thinking about creating a school on and off for a while now,” Telram chuckled. “I just never thought that I’d be trying to start it up so soon.”

“A school?” Diane asked the unfamiliar word sounding odd in her mouth. “Is that what you’re going to call it?”

“Uh, yeah,” Telram replied realising belatedly that there hadn’t really been a word in the language that they were using and had automatically used the English one instead. It was just lucky that there wasn’t a similar word in the language that they were using which would’ve increased her confusion. “I mean unless you can think of something better.”

“Well you’re the one who came up with the idea,” Diane replied with a shrug. “Call it what you want.”

As this part of the conversation came to a close the awkwardness that existed between them returned and they looked away from each other unsure of how to act now.

“Say, Telram?” Diane said after a few minutes. “What would you say if I offered to help you out with this ‘school’?”

“What, you thought that this was something that I could do by myself?” Telram snorted. “I’m still only a Human-ranked cultivator. There are going to be cultivators in Yulis that I couldn’t even last more than a couple of seconds against if I wasn’t injured, do you really think that they’d prefer that someone as weak as I am taught their kids?”

“I see,” Diane nodded. “So, this is going to be more like an organisation that teaches anyone who wants to learn instead just being limited to the village children then?”

“It could be,” Telram replied as even more plans started forming in his mind. He had really only thought about teaching kids before but there was no reason that they couldn’t teach the adult villagers as well as he was sure that between Gerry, his father, Fergus and Diane they would easily have the strongest cultivators in the village and he was sure that he could convince them to help him teach at the school. “At the moment I have a lot of notes on cultivating in the Human Realm but I don’t really know that much more than the basics of cultivating at the Ascendant Realm which is why I was thinking more about teaching the kids so I’d have to leave that up to someone who was actually in the Ascendant Realm or higher, hell if we’re going to be teaching classes on the Ascendant Realm I’ll probably go to them myself!”

Diane snorted at his words, but she had to admit that the idea was certainly an intriguing one and she decided that she’d like to see what would become of it. “Alright then, I’ll help you out with that.”

“That would be great!” Telram exclaimed happily giving her a big smile.

The two continued talking about ideas for the school for a few minutes when suddenly a large black and red form shot of the darkness towards them before coming to a halt at Telram’s side and rubbing it’s head up against him with a chuffing purr.

“Hey Jai,” Telram laughed. Though the tiger might act aloof sometimes Telram knew that he was a softy at heart and honestly enjoyed his company. “Well then, I guess we should get moving, we’ve got some ways to go before we get to Yulis and I want to see my family.”

Diane nodded her agreement. Now that she had actually spent some time talking to Telram she was a lot happier with her choice to follow him and Fergus. Although she was still a little worried about the lengths that the young man was willing to go to, she had to admit that he seemed to genuinely want to help people and had come up with a very intriguing way of doing so which was why she had ended up offering to help him out. Only time would tell if she had made the right decision in doing so.

Moving out they started their journey towards Yulis village, the journey would take a few more days if they were careful to make sure that they got there without being discovered so it was a good thing that they were comfortable enough to talk to each other.

At nights Telram and Diane would talk further about what Telram had planned for the school or about cultivating. Their talks about cultivating were mostly about Diane’s cultivation technique which a bit different from the Earth Affinity cultivation technique that Telram had managed to obtain.

Occasionally Telram would also take some time to check on his arm and Mana Core as they travelled. He eventually had to slow down the rate that his arm was mending when he discovered that the bone wasn’t setting quite right but thankfully the repairs to his Mana Core were progressing well although he had felt a bit of nausea that told him that his body was trying to process that excess Mana that had leaked out of his Core which only made him even more thankful that he had created his body strengthening technique and made a note to at the very least teach all of his students the technique he had originally come up with. It wouldn’t be as potent as the technique that he was using now which had been strengthened by his Soul Contract with Jai but even the weaker version of the technique should make it less likely that one of his future students suffered from the same issue that his mother was.

On the second day Fergus finally caught up with them having finally shaken the guards who had tried to follow him and had been surprised to see the friendly way that Telram and Diane were acting to one another. When Telram explained his plan to create a school later that night Fergus had been cautious of the idea at first but eventually agreed that the benefits such a thing could have for the village far outweighed the risks and agreed to become a teacher if they managed to convince the villagers to let them teach their children.

This of course led to more conversations about how they were going to run the school and the subjects that they were going to teach. Eventually it was decided that for the moment Telram would be teaching anyone who wanted to learn cultivation starting from at the Human Realm which would mostly be kids like he had assumed but to his surprise Fergus had insisted that he also take the classes on Soul Energy and after Diane had found out just how powerful his soul was she had quickly agreed realising that this was likely the source of the young man’s strength.

Diane would then be taking the classes on Martial Arts and Earth Affinity Mana while helping out with other classes where she could. After a long conversation it was also decided that Fergus would be taking the classes on movement techniques and Fire Affinity. Telram had argued that his father could also take the classes on movement techniques bit this had been vetoed by the other two when they had reminded him that they didn’t know whether or not Aran would even agree to become a teacher and Telram had been forced to admit that it was likely that Aran would probably rather continue being a hunter like he had been back in Palamar city. Fergus reassured him that he had no problem with Aran helping take the classes if he wanted to but had insisted that he be the one to take the majority of them by himself. If Gerry agreed to help, then he would be taking the classes on Air Affinity Mana and Inscriptions as well as armed combat due to his specialisation in these disciplines. Finally, they would all work together to take classes on things like reading, writing and other subjects that Telram had insisted that they teach the students.

By the time they had figured everything out Fergus noticed something in the distance and grabbed Telram’s shoulder excitedly.

“Look Telram, there it is!” The old man said. “Yulis Village!”