They walked into the centre building and spoke to the female receptionist behind the desk. A few seconds later, she came out from behind the counter and led them towards the principal’s office. She knocked twice on the door and announced that the royal family has arrived before receiving the command to open the door and allow them in.

“Greetings, Bolten, Santa and Erza,” the principal said in greeting when they entered his room with a wide smile on his face.

“It’s good to see you, Sir Barry,” replied Erza with a cheerful smile.

The first impression that Lakshman got from the man that he was short but stout looking man because of the way he carried himself as he sat on his chair and greeted them. The room itself was not that large, but it was almost filled with books stacked neatly on shelves arranged on either ends of the room. Even the clothes he wore were fashioned in an explicit professional style that gave him an appearance of a strong and sincere person.

“He may not look it but this man is strong,” commented Asura, having similar thoughts like Lakshman about him.

The principal sat behind a large neatly designed wooden desk with a pile of papers resting on his right as he gestured them towards the vacant seats.

“Oh my. I didn’t expect so many guests today,” he remarked, becoming amazed when he caught sight of the many people that entered his room, especially the new faces that followed behind the royal siblings. “Please, have a seat everyone.”

He pulled back his sleeve and pressed the buttons a few times, causing a magic circle to appear on the floor beneath them all. A moment later, several simple chairs rose out of the ground and remained there while the magic circle vanished on the spot.

Bolten, Santa and Erza took the seats directly opposite to the principal while the rest of the group sat on the simple chairs behind them. Once they all sat down, Bolten leaned forward with a pleasant smile on his face when he addressed the principal.

“I believe his majesty sent you a word about enrolling nine other students into our academy.”

The principal nodded and said, “Indeed, but I was still shocked to learn that the princess performed the Hero Summoning.” He turned his attention towards her and said, “It’s an excellent move, princess. Summoning the heroes helped us fend off the alien invasion.”

Erza smiled, and he turned back to face the Nine Heroes of Legends and asked, “Greetings, nine heroes. My name is Barry Rhodes. I am the principle of the Hero Academy and this is the main branch with subbranches located in other cities all over the world.”

The heroes replied courteously with similar and different greeting dialogues.

“Greetings.”

“Hello, sir.”

“Hello.”

“Hi.”

“Good morning, sir.”

“It’s a pleasure.”

Once the greetings came to an end, Bolten got right down to the point and asked, “Have the necessary baggages arrived for our heroes? It’s been a week since his majesty issued the command to gather the necessities for the nine heroes in order to attend the academy.”

The principal looked as if he was hurt by those words, and he replied with, “Relax, Bolten. Don’t underestimate my authority as the principal, especially when I received a direct order from the king. Here. These are it.”

He gestured towards the left, here were stacked nine large bags, packed neatly to the side and away from direct view. The others were amazed at how large the bags were and wondered what kind of belongings they had received for them to be so big.

“Tanya, please explain about the bags to the heroes,” the principal asked, and the receptionist, who had remained in the room, nodded with a smile.

They all turned to watch her as she gave them the explanation about the bags, its uses and what are inside.

“This is your Hero Bag, which is something you should keep with you all the time. Normally, it acts as a travelling bag, but in case of emergencies, it will protect you from immediate danger, like falling rocks, or being blasted away by an explosion. Inside the bag, you will have textbooks on literature, being a hero, academic performance evaluator, and others that are required for your classes.”

She turned towards the principal and made an expression as if to say, “That’s about it, I think.”

“Good. Thank you for the detailed explanation, Tania,” he replied, and the lady nodded cautiously with a smile. He turned his attention back to the heroes and said, “I would also add that you will receive a free locker to place your belongings in while you’re a student in the academy.”

“Oh? That’s an impressive thing to add on to the already big list, Barry,” commented Santa with a light chuckle.

“It’s the least I can do for our heroes that have come from far away places to save our world,” the principal said, and his smile widened as he glanced at the heroes. “Anyway, Tanya, please hand out the bags to the heroes with their names labelled on the bags.”

“Yes, sir,” she said courteously, and moved towards the bags when Maxwell suddenly rose to his feet.

“It’s fine,” he said to stop her moment, quickly moving towards the bag with a placid smile on his face. “These look heavy—Wow! Heavy! Real heavy”

He had exclaimed when he tried lifting one of the bags and found that they were really heavy. Still, with brute strength, he managed to life up one of the bags much to the astonishment of the principal and the royal siblings.

“Amazing. He lifted such a heavy thing without the use of any power at all,” the principal remarked in amazement.

“Yes. Even I would need to apply a strengthening magic spell to lift that thing with relative ease,” commented Santa with a look of mild surprise on his face.

While they were conversing with one another, Maxwell passed the bags to their respective owner by the name tags pinned to each bag. Since he would not read the language of this world, Tanya helped him identify the names and it made his task easier in passing them onto each other.

“Man! What the heck is up with this weight?” Vikram complained, looking astonished by how heavy it felt when his bag reached his hands. “Seriously! You’d need to be trained or something to carry this without a problem.”

“I concur,” said Gram shortly in agreement, feeling the heavy weight of the bags and feeling the tension it put in his muscles. “I think it’s our special powers that’re giving us the extra boost in being above the standard. Even in our world, I doubt I’d have been able to lift this much!”

Due to the textbooks and other equipment packed tightly into the bag, the weight was abnormally high, but none of them seem to have too much difficulty lifting them. It seemed that their status as Summoned Heroes possessing special Hero Weapons had given them the basic ability to lift heavy objects and perform inhuman activity.

Only Lakshman seemed to be unperturbed by this development due to him being far stronger than anyone in that room.

“I can feel its weight, but it’s like lifting a feather,” he shared his thoughts with Asura.

His past-self snickered and said, “That’s because you’ve fought A-Ranked Monsters, cleared Twin Labyrinth Towers and defeated tyrants bent on world conquest or destruction. So, you shouldn’t really be that surprised.”

“I know but I wasn’t sure just how much show I should put on to make them believe that I’m just a magician.”

“Keep behaving the way you’re doing now and things will be fine, but don’t become complacent. You need to impress Erza, remember? You need to confess to her before anyone does.”

“You don’t have to remind me,” replied Lakshman in a serious voice.

He was suddenly brought back to reality when he heard the principal say, “—but it could be a little difficult for them now considering the academy term has already started and they need to catch up on two weeks of work.”

“It’s fine. I believe in the capabilities of our heroes,” replied Bolten confidently.

The principal, on the other hand, looked concerned when he said, “You may be right, but they’re still new to our world. Has it been over a week since they arrived here? It’s still too soon, especially today since all the students are undergoing their weekly sparring matches.”

When the princes nodded in understanding and the others looked puzzled, Vikram reacted wildly by asking in an excited voice, “Sparring matches?! You mean like a competition?”

They all turned towards him and the principal responded with, “Yes. Weekly, all classes are put against one another to determine their individual scores and then elevate their grade based on the total score at the end of the academy term.” Then, seeing the keen look on the young hero’s face, he smiled a little and asked, “Are you keen to see it?”

“Yes, please!” Vikram replied earnestly, his eyes sparkling with excitement.

“Well, it’s a good idea to see what kind of battles occur in the competition,” suggested Maxwell.

“We’d also understand the kind of magic that this world’s people use first hand,” added Natsu, putting on a thinking posture.

“Whatever!” Vikram burst out, unable to contain his excitement any longer. “We got our things, so let’s go already!”

The principal chuckle heartily and said, “Very well. I like the hero’s energy.” He turned to the receptionist lady and asked, “Tanya, please escort the heroes, the princes and the princess to the arena.”

“Yes, sir,” she said with a smile and bowed her head a little. She then straightened up and asked them, “Please follow me.”

As they collected their belongings and rose to their feet, Bolten extended his hand towards the principal while saying, “Thank you very much for providing the heroes the equipment in such a short notice.”

“It’s a pleasure to be of service to the royal family,” the principal replied smoothly.

They smiled at each other and departed, closing the door shut behind them. Once they were gone, silence remained within the room and the principal leaned his back on his chair and swivelled to face the open window behind him.

“I’m sorry prince, but It’s all for the money. It’s all… for the money,” he muttered to himself, wearing a smug look that he hid from his recent visitors.

***

“So, what kind of battles take place in these competitions?” Natsu asked curiously.

“Mostly close combat and long-range battling styles while the spectators and judges watch them from a safe place,” Tanya, the receptionist, explained calmly.

Natsu nodded, looking thoughtful before he asked, “What do the judges specifically look at during the battle? Like, the strength of their magic, their speed, stamina and stuff like that?”

“That’s pretty much it, sir. They often base their scores on the overall performance of the student’s overall balancing of themselves and their powers. At times, lower scores cause the students to be held back a term and would need to get passing grades to get elevated in the academy. This is all to ensure the heroes get adequate training and experience before receiving their Hero License from the League of Heroes.”

“A Hero License?” Vikram asked, looking dubiously at her. “It almost sounds like a Driver’s License. Right?”

She nodded twice and said, “You are right, hero, however, the Hero License is more than that. It is the registration identification that you must keep in order to identify that you are a hero. Also, you receive salary based on the heroic deeds that you performed on select missions based on its difficulty and achievement.”

“Oh. So, it’s similar to having a blue card,” said Vikram in amazement. When the lady looked at him in confusion, he elaborated by saying, “It’s actually called a Teacher’s Blue Card, which serves as a person’s ID card in order to let them teach in schools and get paid their salary. I guess such a system doesn’t exist in this world.”

“No. Such a thing is unheard of,” replied the receptionist, looking bewildered, “but I can understand how one relates it to the Hero License.” A moment later, she turned a corner to face a room and said, “Here we are.”

When everyone came to a stop, the nine heroes looked puzzled because they found a single door at the end of the corridor. On the other hand, the lady, the princes and the princess smiled expectantly, seeming to see the kind of reactions they would have after seeing what was inside.

“I thought we’re supposed to be going to an arena…?” Martin asked nervously.

“We are,” said Santa with a grin on his face. He walked forward and pushed open the door before saying, “Let’s go in.”

The princes, the princess and Raze walked into the room and, as soon as the nine heroes followed in, almost all of their jaws dropped in shock. The room was large and the temperature was cool while the furniture consisted of comfortable couches, and lamps that lit the room with a nice glow, creating a semi-dark cooling atmosphere in the room. The room seemed to stretch in a large full circle to other ends, which they could see through the glass.

In that large room, which seemed to have lower levels as well, people seated in all the comfortable couches. This was something they saw when they entered the room and saw through the transparent window and saw the vast space on the outside. It appeared Since they were at a great height from the ground, there were multiple screens in their room, which displayed different fights and skirmishes of the battle taking place on the battleground below.

“This is… wow…! Unbelievable…!” Maxwell commented in amazement.

“This is … incredible,” Fred said, looking awed by the displayed battle on the multiple screens.

“It’s so big…!” Wondered William out loud in surprise. He leaned towards the window and pressed his face to look towards the ground, asking them, “Is the battle occurring down there?”

“That’s right,” responded Bolten as they were led towards a seat at the rear end by Tanya. “Since the battle is taking place on the ground, it’s being shown on the screens here for the spectators to enjoy from a safe place.”

While passing by, the people that noticed them rose to their feet and greeted the royal family before being told to take their seats gently by the princes and the princess. Raze hung back and stood a little closer to Lakshman, who was silent as he was looking around at his surroundings with an amazed look on his face, which was being mirrored by the rest of the heroes as well.

“I see. So, these screens display the battle that’s occurring down below,” said Gram, quickly understanding what is happening while nodding his head in amazement. “This is quite an impressive feat to achieve.”

“Still, isn’t this a little expensive to construct and maintain?” Natsu asked, turning to look curiously at the royal siblings.

Erza explained by saying, “All costs for this comes directly from the government funded activities and tax in order to train new heroes to protect us and our world.”

“Oh… Okay,” said Natsu, nodding with a thoughtful expression on his face. “I suppose it also has to do with the energy efficiency that your society runs in.”

“Mmm! You’re pretty smart, Hero Natsu,” exclaimed Erza, looking impressed.

Lakshman saw this reaction and instantly received a word from Asura, saying, “You’ve got a lot of competition. Just look around and you won’t find one guy that doesn’t turn his head and look in Erza’s direction at least once.”

“I’m aware of that,” replied Lakshman in his mind, as he had already noticed the glances that Erza was receiving from everyone in the room, “but there’s nothing I can do about it. I’ll take things one step at a time, but first, I should watch the match and understand how the warriors of this world fight.”

“What’s the point when we’re the strongest around?”

“I rather be cautious of my surroundings than get full of myself with overconfidence.”

With that, Lakshman focused his attention on one of the screen to watch the battle occurring down below.