Mary was slowly getting used to her new life. Four weeks had passed since she left the orphanage. Sadly it had turned out she was too young to visit a magic school just yet, as you had to be seven years old in order to join, normal children apparently needed several years of training by their parents to achieve mana control sufficient enough to learn magic in a school or with a teacher.

She put her magic training on hold, as she had more to do than ever before. While she was reading in the library for a few hours every late afternoon and the early mornings were still reserved for watching the rising sun, the rest of the day’s hours were a flurry of activity.

Seeing her fascination with forests, the Baron had asked if she would like to learn how to properly navigate a forest. She had gladly agreed, but insisted on getting trained in melee combat, as she thought her manareserves too small, they were slightly increasing over time though . Because of that, her days were full of training. Mary had never felt more alive than when she was in a real forest for the first time, even if it was only the small one in the garden, that they used for training. She had never felt more at ease with herself than when she was moving in it, her teacher Nolan, said she was a natural, managing to move silently after only hours of practice, and taking in what he taught her about the forests natural flora and fauna like a sponge. While the training in the forest went really good, the training in melee fighting started out really bad, even finding a weapon that felt good to her had needed a whole week.

The weapon that felt most natural to her was a simple longsword. Of course, a sword was mostly useless against anything but humanoid enemies that were about equal in height, but these were the most dangerous ones as well, as they tended to be the only ones smart enough to actually use weapons as well, you didn't fight the bigger monsters headon if you could prevent it.

At first, she had wondered why the heavier weapon felt better, that confusion had been cleared up though. An average longsword only weighted about fifty percent more than an average one handed sword, so when fighting with two hands, she was actually lifting less weight per hand than otherwise.

Finding a style took another two weeks, one of the sergeants of father's guard, Melton, showing her the basics of the techniques he knew until they found one that fit.

After finding her style though, the training became a lot more fun, as she got a teacher specialized in teaching that style.

Interestingly enough the style the teacher used varied from her’s in all ways possible, but both styles complimented the training of the other one. She relied on speed and stamina, outlasting the enemy she fought and seizing opening opportunities. Her teacher on the other had, was fighting differently fast and hard, trying to force his enemy to choose between two bad choices and tempting them to make a mistake, ending the fight with a few hits afterwards.

A stupid way to fight she thought to herself, it was way to exhausting to be useful anywhere but in small scale fights, and completely useless against any of the more powerful, bigger monsters.

To her dismay, the lessons on etiquette she took from Elaine also continued, seemingly taking longer every time, she had to fight sleep every second of these lessons, it was a battle she would surely lose one day though.

Today was sunday, so she had no lessons to attend to.

Like the last three weeks, she visited the falcon’s hill to watch the birds fly off and come back with food for their young, small mammals, insects and reptiles.

She was watching her favorite subspecies again, a smaller specimen that had brown feathers on its wings and head, light brown and white feathers on its belly and orange feet. They built nests in the trees surrounding the Falconhill and were among the more numerous of the birds there. The only reason all these birds managed to live next to one another were the many spells engraved in its surroundings, a piece of art really, one she had not been able to decipher so far, though she got explained it made the birds ignore each other.

After her weekly visit, she set about a task the Baron set her to do, figuring out her affinity, so far, that didn't go so well, as she hadn't been able to figure out anything in common between the spells she created so far. Efforts to find out the limits weren't going the way it was supposed to, as she didn't seem to have many of these, the only affinities she was capable of excluding were space, time and healing magic. All other things were possible though, wizardry, all kinds of elemental spells, the basic ones like earth, wind, fire, plants and water and even the more advanced ones like lighting or light were no problem. She could even use the strange magic the Baron had used on that day in the orphanage, using mana without forming spells to interrupt the spells of one's enemy or detect hidden targets. Of course the problem with all that was, you needed to know it existed to use it.

She was really looking forwards to tomorrow, while her other training would be cut short by an hour, she was happy to learn more about the world at large and her father promised her to teach her more about the world and tomorrow would be her first lesson on the history of the world. Nandelia couldn't tell them much about that as she never learnt the bigger history of the world.

On the next day Mary was up early as always, following her routine until breakfast, after that she followed the Baron to his study, where she would learn about the history at large.

“Where do I start?” he mused to himself. “At the beginning!”

“Very well then, we don't know how the world came into being, some say the gods created it, but in the oldest texts there is no such mention of gods whatsoever.

For the first few thousand years most races lived very different than they do now, with a few exceptions. The dwarves unlike now, completely buried themselves under the ground only coming back up millenia later as a different race.

The elves haven't changed all that much for all we know, they still like to dwell in forests and live longer than all others, though their numbers have increased significantly.

The beastborn didn't change at all and are still roaming the lands in tribes, completely disregarding all borders. There have been one or two beastborn kingdoms in the past, but they all destroyed themselves after the leader that united them died.

The humans lived like the beastmen for the first few millennia, wandering the lands in tribes and dodging the dangerous monsters on the way.

The sole exception to this is the Empire of Qildorth, the first and grandest empire in the history of the world. They were the first humans to found a big lasting settlement, abandoning their nomadic roots, there have been some villages here and there, but nothing with more than a few dozen souls.

To this day nobody knows how they managed to defend their first city without the help of a dragon, a feat that was not repeated since, though many tried.

Many of the things they invented are still used today, the concept of small powerful groups, who we now call adventurers, going out and hunting all the monsters in the area comes from them. They were also the first to have an actual written language, what we now call the runic language.

The empire they built soon spanned the entirety of the continent of Aikidora, which even though the empire fell long ago, to this day is the only continent fully settled by the civilized races. Nobody knows how they managed to pacify the middle of the continent and nobody of them is still alive to tell, though they must have had some incredibly powerful mages to achieve that feat.”

“How did they fall?” She asked enraptured by the story.

“We don't know exactly what happened, all we know is that the empire fell shortly after the first sighting of a high dragon in history, they probably angered him and got wiped out.

Of course the grand empire didn't stay on its continent, and to this day we’re still finding ancient ruins on many of the other continents shores. Many of the advancements our modern society have come from these, ideas saved in enchanted books or paintings on the walls.

While all of these ruins on Aikidora are of Quilldorthian origins, there are many more of unknown origin, built by a race that most likely lacked some humanoid features, and all we know is they were incredibly advanced, even more so than the Quilldorthians.

While all human, elven and beastmen tribes on their continent had been swallowed by the empire, the live of the tribes on different continents didn't change much, apart from occasionally running into one of their advance settlements.

After the empire fell, another millenium passed until the second human kingdom was founded, this time with the support of a dragon on the continent of Vlayias. The founding of the kingdom caused some kind of change in the human race, as shortly afterwards more kingdoms came to be all around the continent. Soon enough these humans were capable of building ships capable of crossing the ocean once again and started exploring the world.

On one such trip, one of the crews stumbled upon the remains of an Quilldorthian settlement. It waa on a small isle, protected from everything but time, as all things powerful enough to harm the buildings had been wiped off the face of the isle.

It caused wonder in the ship's crew though, as the settlement was bigger than their capital. They found the settlement completely abandoned, the inhabitants long dead, it’s known as the only intact Quilldorthian settlement ever found and now an independent trading hub between the surrounding continents.

Though nothing was found there, as it was only a small staging ground for the planned expansion to the east, it still stirred up the first kingdoms,the chance of meeting a more developed civilisation than theirs.

It took them fifty years to find the continent of Aikidora, but what they found there was terrifying, they only found the ruins of Quilldorthian portcities but no single city in the middle of the continent, even though there were roads all over. Of course, that didn't stay like this for too long, and to this day we still find more of their cities buried deep underground.

The continent had the lowest population of monsters in the world, as the monster population hadn't recovered from the damage the Quilldorthian and then their demise dealt to them.

The kingdoms established colonies on the continent, but those soon became independent as they lacked the heavy opposition of monsters their native countries faced and soon overtook them in all matters. Only three hundred years after the races once again walked Aikidora they had already spread all over the continent. To this day, the continent as a whole is the most developed of all.

Their biggest advantage is of course, unchallenged access to the middle of their continent, where the most valuable metals are found and everything is permeated by mana. Of course the first kingdoms didn't limit their exploration of the world on finding Aikidora and found the continents surrounding them well before Aikidora. When the second rise of Aikidora started, all continents except Oqueron already had kingdoms and empires rising.

To this day, the continent of Oqeron is untamed by the races, as the only success we managed since it's discovery roughly eight hundred years ago, are a few portcities that were built with the cooperation of several human, elven and dwarven kingdoms.

The empire came into being during the rise of Aikidora, when the world at large was still untamed and wild. All continents still have lots of unclaimed lands in their midst, as the powerful monsters concentrate there, searching for ways to get even more powerful. All larger expeditions into the middle of the continents have failed, either being wiped out completely or having to retreat because of heavy losses. Some smaller ones have returned, reporting more ancient ruins differing from Quilldorthian ones, also built for races differing from us.

This, of course matches the reports of a few Oquerion adventurers who claim seeing a grand city in the continents jungles.”

He looked at the clock. “It seems we lost ourselves in history, your lesson in swordfighting is about to start and I have to resume working.” Mary nodded and after a few seconds said. “Thanks father, I hope we will do this again!” He smiled at her. “I’m sure I will find some time."

She nodded and ran off, secretly wondering what he even worked on all the time, living in the capital and lacking any lands to govern. None of her concern though, she concluded. She arrived at her next lesson just in time, having run all the way there.

Her teacher Iolaos a surprisingly small man if you considered his style of fighting, greeted her with a grin. “Ran here all the way, did you?” She nodded. “Well then let’s get started.”

He threw her practice sword in his hand in her general direction, she would have to jump to catch it, something she didn't do as she had fallen for that trick once before. If she stopped watching him even one second, he would sweep her off her legs. Instead she let the sword fall to the ground and carefully moved towards it, waiting for an attack.

It didn't come though, and her weapon was in her hands soon enough.

“Very good, it seems you are a fast learner, most of my students need several tries to get that right.”

She nodded, as they started moving in circles. Like always, she waited for her teacher to attack, which he did shortly afterwards, as always, he didn't move nearly as fast or strong as he could, just fast enough she had to strain herself to react in time, a fact she greatly appreciated, as her speed and strength weren't on par with those of a trained warrior and adult.

She carefully watched his attacks, trying to let them miss her entirely, and if that failed making them flow past her with the least possible effort.

The training continued like this, with Iolaos making her repeat the best ways to converse strength while fighting, like never blocking an attack head on or using your enemy's strength and momentum against him. They were doing this out of two reasons, firstly to firmly imprint them in her head, and secondly to enable her to concentrate on other things while fighting in the future, like watching the battle at large or cast spells, something he didn't know she was already capable of, and wouldn't know for some time. The training continued for two hours, after which Mary thanked him for the lesson and was off to her next one, her fatigue already fading in the constant excitement of her new life.