The very next day was a little hectic day. Iud and Davy did not have to go the morning class as they did not need fire affinity classes and so I was sitting on the bench observing others. There were some familiar faces among the sixty something students. I did not bother talking to them as they seemed too busy in their own little world. I continued my scanning of the class and my eyes locked on to another pair of eyes. A majestic blue color filled those beautiful globes and a sense of Deja-vu hit me. Staring at me with those wonderful eyes were the girl who had glared at me days ago at the academy canteen, Aira. This time I stared back at her intently and not to run away like the last time. We stared, actually glared at each other till the teacher made her appearance. She stuck out her tongue to me and then turned her head away, which really pissed me off.

Fire affinity classes for the first years were handled by Angela. Here I came to know that light and darkness are considered as a strong fire based affinity. That is rather than a complex affinity which was formed by the combination of two or more basic affinities, light and darkness were considered as fire affinity with extreme powers. For example take a ruler and consider fire affinity to be at the middle. If that were the case then light and darkness affinities would be the two extremes of the ruler indicating that both are derived from fire affinity yet entirely different from fire affinity. Unlike in the games I have played were light and darkness were considered two different elements, here they were part of another affinity but in both cases the powers and spell seemed similar.

Once the teacher finished her explanation she switched over to the main thing, fire affinity basic spells. Similar to air and water fire affinity had too basic spells, oh and that does not mean there are only two spells in the basic category. When I did a little research on my own, I came to know that there actually were more than hundreds of basic spells and it is said that each affinity has over a thousand number of spells ranging from basic to god level spells. Every spell is categorized according to their power and potential and there are 7 such categories named as basic, intermediate, advanced, king, emperor, saint and god level spells. Another peculiarity of the spells of this world is that at a certain point the spell levels up. Let me explain to you readers with some examples. Consider the skill water petals, one of the basic spells of water affinity. Every skill starts at beginner level 1, both for aliens and the residents too. When we keep using the skill, it levels up and when it reaches a certain level the skill power up and turns into a new spell. The powered up skill is more powerful as well as undergoes a change in name too. Say water petals, the intermediate spell is named petals of rain, the advanced spell is named infinite petal, the king level spell is called rain of destruction and finally the emperor level spell is referred as waves of destruction. As each time the spell power ups the number of petals as well as the power each petal possess multiplies and so the spell waves of destruction is a wide area attack which can insta kill most monsters. But the drawback is it can be used only once a day and also requires a long time to cast. Similarly each spell has its pros and cons.

Even though there are 7 categories of spell, not all spells can power up till god spells. Some spells can power up till advanced level while some can reach emperor or saint levels. It is said that there has never been a skill that could power up to god level and only a number of skills can power up to saint level. There are spells which do not power up also. For example the saint rank air affinity spell nightfall was a saint rank spell when it was first cast. There are a little more than three hundred saint spells but only 6 god level spells, one for each affinity except life. Life affinity has two god rank spell as life affinity has two parts, birth and death in it. As for the complex affinities, there are no god rank spells, their limit is saint rank.

At this point some of you might think that I am so lucky as I can learn all six god rank spells. Unfortunately or I would say fortunately, I can’t. Each god rank spell requires a set of conditions to be met by the one who wish to learn it and the first condition is that the one who wishes to learn must be of royal blood, the second is that one should possess at least one of the seven hero weapons, as to what hero weapons are I do not know. And so there are other conditions which I did not bother reading as I was not interested.

Angela taught us fire punch. Just like you might have guessed the skill covers my hands with flames. This spell is really useful during close combat. The fire in our hands cannot be projected or be send flying towards the enemy. The skill lets you use it increase your physical damage and plus point is anything we hold in our hand will be engulfed in flames too. So if I hold a sword then the sword will be set on blaze and so will deal more damage. The practical went without any commotion except for the occasional staring from Aira which I managed to get used to.

---***---

That afternoon I had weapon training classes for bow, which I was not exactly sure whether to attend or not. I was then urged by Iud to go check it out and so I did. The instructor called himself Fern and was much older than Wolf. He seemed to be a man in his fifties and looked really tired and weak. The classes were nothing special but nevertheless I paid my attention. I was given a typical wooden bow and was asked to hit a target which was ten meters far. For some reason I felt a little irritated and so I did not hold back. All three arrows I was given hit the dummy target’s head which slightly startled the instructor. He then took me to another target which seemed thirty meters away and asked me to shoot which I did. He clapped his hands and appreciated me then asked me to practice as long as I wanted to. And so the afternoon was pretty much uneventful.

---***---

The next day I and Davy were sitting together for our life affinity class which was handled by Clovia. Life affinity unlike the other affinity consisted of two affinities merged under a single name, spirit and being or death and life. These two different affinities as they are two different sides of the same coin is called as life affinity in common. Being or life spells concentrated on healing while spirit based spells aimed at psychic powers like mind reading and all. Teleportation is an emperor level death affinity spell and so requires a huge amount of power. This was enough to tell me that the three headmasters were super strong.

The basic spell for being affinity was heal and that for death affinity was mind eye. Heal was a basic healing spell which restored 100HP/use. Mind eye was a skill which let the user to identify enemies which are hiding behind a wall or so. The skill lets the user see the mana flow of the enemy as a blue fire. Each spell consumed 100MP per use. To activate healing spell one had to feel the essence flow and slowly extract a little of it and then use it to heal oneself or others. Even though essence does not deplete like mana, extracting it from our body is not as simple as extracting mana and so it took us hours to cast the spell successfully. I had to try thirty nine times even when I tried without holding back and on the forty sixth try I got the notification for a new skill. Once the skill notification appeared, casting heal began as easy as casting other spells and so the life affinity class too ended without any problem. And with that the academy week ended. We were notified that Saturday would be free as our spells were not strong enough for enhancement classes. When asked about exertion classes we were told that a little more time was needed before it could be possible for all the students to qualify for the classes and so we returned to our rooms and began our training.

But problems arose in a different way. With all those training for the past few days, the increase in our skill proficiency dropped heavily. There was a limit to how much better one could get by just training with others. We discussed about the ways we could get stronger and seemed like we had only two ways to do so. One was to request for an individual battle with somebody else and the second was to go on a low level quest. We debated for a while on which method to choose. The problem about individual battle was that there were too many formalities. First we had to register at the battle center as we were new students. The second was we had to wait till a person who wishes to battle with us appears. Since we were low level students not many would be interested in us as we give away only a very little XP. The other problem was there were seniors who were focused on battling low level newbies in order to bully them in future. Our level were still at one since we never did anything that could gain us XP and so we decided to go for quests. Once again to go for a quest we had to register at the quest center and then once again register for a three man party and then get the permission from any one of the Head of Affinity. Once they approved we could set out for the quest. But the main problem was we were given time till the next working day to finish our quest. This was applicable to first years only as we were pretty much novices that too for the first six month because by then we would be taught all the basic things to survive.

The three of us decided to go for the quest method. Deciding to finish the day’s training we began to walk back to our dormitories from the training ground behind it. On our way back we heard the voice of people and I could grasp what was going on.

“Give me the money. Look our boss is waiting for you to pay today’s tribute. Come on it is just 1AG.” A sharp voice spoke the above part which was followed by another voice which was to my surprise that of a woman.

“Look you maggot. Your first years are under my control. Don’t you know who I am? Don’t piss me off any further and give me the damn money already”

I could not help but sigh. This atrocity was even present in this world. Old memories flowed through my mind as rage began to build up in me. Without waiting for Iud and Davy I began walking towards the commotion.

“Zeph? Are you sure?”

“Yes Iud. I cannot let them continue with this injustice, the victim has the right to live a normal life. You two need not come, I will go alone as it is my selfish desire” I said while I was walking away when suddenly I felt two hands on my either shoulder.

“Where do you think you are going? We are brother after all and brothers stick together, both in life and death” Davy said posing like some hero while gave me a thumps up. I laughed at their action and walked together.

‘Why do I have such idiots as my brother?’ I thought to myself.

---***---

“Hey wimp, you are making the boss angry” the side kick said. The victim seemed to be a boy with black hair covering his eyes. He was a little shorter than me and was having his back pressed to the wall. The side kick was leaning on the wall towering above the small boy. The bully had yellow hair which was rather short. He was in his uniform so was the female boss. She was dressed rather provocatively in a skirt and tight shirt. Most of her thighs were exposed so was her cleavage. Her red hair was undone and was swaying under the evening breeze but her cute face had no pity on it, just the sinister laughter of a bully.

Clenching my fist I walked towards the group and called out loud, “What is going on?”

The yellow haired guy was startled and he moved away from the boy in seconds but the red haired woman stood their without the slightest concern. She turned her face slightly and glared at us.

“Who are you brats? I don’t have time to deal with you. Go away or else?”

“Or else what? Don’t get cocky woman” Iud retorted smiling at her. He was intend on provoking her and it seemed as if it worked well.

The red haired girl suddenly dashed towards Iud her right hand thrust forward aiming at his abdomen but before it could connect her hands were stopped by Iud’s left hand. The movement of his left hand was so fast that even I could not perceive it. The woman was startled for a second but jumped back a little and once again glared at us.

“You lot, better disappear from here or I will make you regret it.”

“Just bring it on already.” Davy was getting impatient. It seemed like he was craving for a fight and so was Iud, their eyes had a strange hunger in them and I could recognize the hunger was for a strong opponent.

“Very well. You first years will regret going against the crimson witch, Aoki Osawa”

The name came as slap to me. In front of me stood a woman in skimpy dress and red hair clenching her fist also with a Japanese name.

“Japanese?” I blurted out unknowingly which the woman heard and then glared at me. For some reason the question seemed to irritate her and she rushed towards me indenting to attack me. The sudden offensive move scared me a little as memories of old bullies screened in my restless mind. The hit was a success and it send me flying backwards a little. The pain had caused me to kneel down as my eyes bulged out. Her strength was monstrous, so monstrous that even with the nanosuit on, the pain was unbearable.

“Oi, Oi Zeph, get up already. Or should the two of us finish this? Why are you scared of her? You are not alone brother. I told you before, together both in life and death” Davy stood beside me his right hand holding his sword while his left hand stretched towards me.

For some reason I could not help but smile for I felt really calm, my phobia for bullies felt like it ever existed and I felt my body wanting to tear that woman apart. Davy pulled me up and then turned towards the woman who was still glaring at us. At this point of the time the side kick walked forward and stood beside the woman.

“Two against three eh, does not seem much of a challenge. But I still have to take you three down.” Saying so she took out a red color round badge which had some sort of drawings on it. “I, Aoki Osawa and my minion Lean Vager challenge you three for a duel” She then flipped the badge into the air where it began to emit a blue light. I could see a thin blue color membrane spread throughout the surrounding.

“Some sort of barrier?” I asked Iud.

“I guess so. Normally a duel is impossible without the teacher’s supervision. But I am guessing the badge gives the owner to challenge anybody she wants to fight. And the barrier is to indicate the area allotted for the battle. May be any physical wounds will heal once we move outside the battle zone. Interesting. I really must have those”

“Huh? Just level 1 noobs and you dare to go against me” the woman roared. It was then we noticed that her name, level, HP and affinity was shown over her head. She was at level 10 while the guy was level 7. She had an HP of 3200 and the guy’s HP was 2180 while their affinities were firevapour and steam, both were a little similar, made of water and fire affinities.

“This is going to be interesting” Davy was now laughing while Iud was smiling too. For some reason a smile broke out on my lips too and my body trembled in excitement for in front of me were two people on whom I could vent all my anger from my past and I had no intention to let this chance slip away.

“Burst strike” I screamed at the top off my voice.

---***---

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