“I and Davy were abandoned my our parents right after we were born or so we were told by the church that adopted us. We were fed by the church but one was only fed till they were seven years old. From there on we had to work to earn our food. Like us there were almost hundred other children. The people in the church was not particularly nice nor were they cruel. Indifferent that is what one would call them.” Iudy sat on his bed, his head hung down as he began to tell his story, their story. Davy sat beside Iudy with his eyes shut, his face seemed pale to me.

“The church was surrounded by thick layers of trees, may be it was to prevent the children from escaping, that’s what we thought. When we were ten years old, I and Iudy were cleaning the outer gate in the backyard. We never knew why there was a gate there when there was a really big one in the front. In the midst of the cleaning, we heard the screams of a woman from the outside. The two us ran into the forest searching for the woman who was screaming. The screaming began to muffle down but in the end we were able to find the place. There in the forest was a small mansion like building and the scream came from inside.” While he explained things, I could see the two clench their teeth. I felt sorry for making them do this but I had to know why they were hiding things from me.

“The door was ajar and so we got in quietly. The insides were pretty dark but it was bright enough for us to see where we were going. The door opened up to a long walkway that stretched from our left to the right. There were doors made of iron bars and from each room we could hear muffles cries. The two us were really scared but still decided to continue. We slowly closed the door behind us and approached one of the room to the left. And what we saw inside shocked us.”

Tears began to roll down Iudy’s eyes. He wiped them of with the back of his hand. “Inside were women, naked women. I don’t remember how many there were but I remember that all of them had bulging stomach. Every one of them were carrying a baby inside them. We could not understand why these women were in such a place. So we decided to move on to the next room.

Some rooms were occupied by young women while the others had much older women trapped inside. We even saw small girls in some of those room. There were women everywhere inside that mansion, locked up behind the iron bars wearing nothing. Feeling disgusted we decided to leave the mansion and tell the father of the church about the mansion. But before we could back, we heard someone open the main door and get in. there were foot steps approaching us and so we decided to hide behind a dark corner. The darkness completely hid our presence and so we waited for those who came in to disappear. But we did not expect the person who came in were the father and others from the church. The mansion was something the church had owned and the woman were abducted by them. It took us a while to understand what was going.”

“What? A church abduct?” I could not believe what I heard. It was next to impossible to believe such an accusation.

Iudy slightly nodded his head and continued “Just like hoe there exists sacred arts and dark arts, there too exists sacred god and dark gods. Each of the god’s have their own separate churches and institutions. The church we were born in to worship a dark goddess named Mania.”

“Mania? The child eating deity?” Vitrian suddenly burst out, grabbing hold of Iudy he asked with a stern voice.

Iudy simply nodded his head and then went silent.

“I see. I had hear rumors of a church abducting women but never did I think they were true. Such cruelty. If the children were to be an offering to Mania, how come you two are?”

Iudy flinched at the question, taking another deep breath he spoke once again, “The children are given as an offering when they turn fifteen. Only the boys turn into sacrifice while the girls end up as captives. When we found out this, we were twelve years old. The boys are always given proper lessons in fighting and sword handling. This was to make them believe that one day they could leave the church and live on their own. This way they could explain the disappearance of the boys. The sacred arts we used were taught by the church. Actually the instructor was a nice guy and he did not know anything. When we told him about this it was he who taught us the sacred arts in secret.

He knew that an outsider like him could not do anything to the church nor could he help us escape. And so he taught us sacred arts while he taught the others simple steps. We trained for three years without rest, sharpening our fangs every day. We slowly began to gather friends too. There were thirty or so of us and on the day of the escape someone betrayed us. The church had brought mercenaries to slay anyone who dared to escape. Not knowing this we proceeded with the plan but were soon caught. The only ones that escaped were us two. The rest were all mercilessly killed. From then onwards we were on the run for a year. It was during the hiding that we heard about the academy test. The safety of an academy seemed very tempting to us. With a technique taught to us by our master we suppressed most of our power. To be exact we were not sure if we were strong or not but our master had told that one had to lie low to escape the eyes of others. And so we used the technique to reduce our power level thereby getting admitted in this academy”

Once Iudy finished talking there were tears flowing from his eyes. I could understand the pain. The two had gone through a lot. One of the woman in those mansions were their mother, yet they could not recognize nor rescue their mothers. They had also lost important ones like I had, they had lost more than I had and their parents, childhood, friends, home even their identities.

I kept silent for a moment not knowing what to say. But I unknowingly blurted out something, “Why don’t we hunt them down?” the words flew out of my mouth, it was as if my heart was aching to kill those bastards.

Iudy, Davy and Vivian looked at me with wide eyes.

“What do you mean hunt down?” Vivian asked me in a stern voice.

“From what I heard, the church does not have much fighting power. I mean they had to hire mercenaries to kill the children. That means that they are a weak group. I presume their might be some guards ever since these two escaped. If the three of us were to get much stronger I believe it would be easy to take them down. Of course, no killing. We just have to catch them red handed and then the authority will be forced to take action.”

“It’s not that easy. Before you can go for such dangerous tasks, you have to become a recognized adventure. If you do not have enough achievements then nobody will believe you. The higher you are in the society ranking, the more people will follow you. But such a thing is impossible for a student from Itiferth.” Vivian tried to persuade me to think otherwise.

“It’s not like we are going after them now. We got plenty of time with us, but in the end these two are the ones to decide, so I will leave it up to you brothers” I smiled at the two whose eyes had been moist because of the past.

---***---

That day we were taught how to cast multiple spell at once. From morning to evening we practiced but yet we were unable to cast two spells at once. Vivian himself being the teacher, he worked our asses off. With no time given to rest, the lessons were tough. Once the classes ended we were given only thirty minutes to rest. Evening was reserved for special sword training by Mr. Wolf. We were not particularly taught any new moves instead he made us do burst strike and air burst move till night fell. At this point you might ask about the mana consumption, but conveniently the special training room replenishes mana at a tremendous rate.

When asked about the mana replenishing spell, we were told by Vivian that the material of the training room was a rare stone with mana regenerative property but to have a high rate of regeneration one had to carry tones of stones. A stone the size of my head would only regenerate 0.1 mana/minute. But if there were a building made of the same stone then the mana regeneration would be as high as 50mana/minute. This was the reason that people never bought the stone. The stones cost a fortune but had poor results, also carrying large quantities would just slow down the pace of the user.

By the time we could return back to our room, it was already late. With a tired body and mind the three of us dozed of not even taking a glance at the librarian’s diary.

The next when we woke up it was already time for the classes. Vivian was already in our room waiting patiently. We woke up soon but was startled to see him reading the librarian’s autobiography.

“That book you are reading is a quest item.” I said as I walked towards him, handing over the other two librarian’s diary.

“Quest item? These books? What quest?”

“Something called Vault of knowledge. Apparently these books are to lead us to it. Also they are supposed to have a blue print for the vault’s key” Iudy said out loud from behind us. He understood why I was telling Vivian all these things. At this rate, with this busy schedule we won’t be able to solve it any time soon. But if we were somehow able to convince him to give us some time for it, then maybe we could finish it by the next HOLIDAY.

“Vault of knowledge eh.” Vivian said while he went through the autobiography. I taking advantage of the opportunity, I opened the log book and went through the entries. The log had the name of the books borrowed, the date borrowed and the date returned. There were 56 pages of hand written data in it. I could not see anything interesting in it and so I checked the log book to know if anybody had borrowed the autobiography. There was the name ‘Librarian’s Diary’ entered only once. But to my surprise the name was written as ‘Librarian’s Diary 125’.

I showed it to the others. Davy did not even bother to look in to it. Iudy on the other hand was really curious as to why there were such numbers. When I showed Vivian, at first he seemed uninterested but suddenly he snatched book. His fingers pointed to another title, ‘Magic and its might 182’.

“This book too has a number in its name. I have one of these with me in my room but there was no sort of numbers affixed to its name” Vivian said with am excited voice, his finger pointing out to an entry in the log.

“Iudy bring me a paper and pen”

When I noted down all of those numbers, there were 33 of them. We stared at them intently but nothing came to our minds. A series of random numbers, that is the only thing we could figure out.

“That’s enough for today. Let us start the classes” Vitrian said, standing up from his chair, he closed the book in his hand and then urged us to follow him. The torturous training continued. That evening though, we had a special visitor.

“It’s been a while Zeph” exclaimed a very familiar voice, shocking me for a moment.

“Mr. Nodin!” my face was full of shock on seeing my guardian. He walked towards me accompanied by the principal.

“I took the liberty to bring him here for the purpose of changing your name. You will hereby have two aliases and the clan leader has happily agreed. As for the identity double, seems Vitrian has done enough. Even I have heard the rumors about three boys who appears and disappears like a ghost. We have kept your room in the dorm intact so that people will believe you live in the academy. This should keep the other academy from reaching you three for a while. I have also discussed the things about fee concessions and all the other matters with your guardian.”

Saying so the principal stretched forward three rectangular gold color card towards us. The cards had our names on it. Well the name on mine was Zephyr Calm. I looked at the principal and he smiled at me. “You can have this. The school will be sending you the promised allowance to this ANCA, while the Calmor house will send its to your real ANCA”

I thanked the principal and then turned towards Nodin who was smiling at me like a rising sun.

“You look really happy” I said, smiling at the man.

“Of course. Things have gotten so much better ever since you came to my house. You creating an emperor scale spell has had a huge effect on the world dear boy. Other houses have begun to pay visit to ours asking to marry about you, some even want you to marry their daughter or granddaughter. By producing a successful talent the royalty has restored a portion of our power. The village adjacent to us is now under the jurisdiction of our house. With this we will receive a revenue as tax. No more selling of the house belongings.”

“Good to hear that Mr. Nodin. Let me introduce you to my friends. This is Iudy and Davy.” Pointing out to the two beside me I said to the happy man in front of me. They nodded at each other with a polite smile. “There is something I want you to do Mr. Nodin”

“Something you want?” Nodin looked at me with a surprised face.

“I want them to be part of our house too, just like me. I want them to be my brothers, to travel around the globe with them, to bring honor to the house together”

Everybody around me were taken aback. The words I said were my true feelings and I had wanted them to be part of my new family. And so o decided to take steps to make that wish true.

Nodin scratched the tip of his nose lightly and then looked at the two. With a weak smile he asked the two dumbstruck boys.

“My house is nothing but a sinking ship. I will not force you to aboard a ship that is going down, but if that is okay with you two, will you please be part of the family”

The two stared at Nodin, eyes moist and mouth wide open, family was something the two had earned for. With a slight node of their head, they agreed, eyes showering tears of joy. Nodin smiled at me warmly which I returned with a flashy grin. I turned to the principal and was about to speak when he suddenly spoke out,

“Well then shall we proceed with formalities and use this chance to change their names too. With this the three of you will have to live two different lives, entirely different.”

We nodded at the principal who then left with Nodin. The procedure for the adoption went smooth. Iudy and Davy changed their names. Davy called himself Andy Calm while Iudy chose the name Wes Calm. Now we were the Calm brothers, part of the same family, true brothers.

---***---

Days passed at tremendous speed, at least to the others. For us, time seemed to have stopped. Days felt like months to us as the training got harder as days passed. From mana and essence control to enchantment, physical training, muscle development, sword training, magic spell casting, mental training, target practice there was no shortage of training courses for us. The next few weeks were truly monstrous. Our spell classes were handled by Vitrian, the head of each affinity and lastly the principal itself.

Lessons on complex affinity, that is our affinity was handled by the principal, Mr. Holdos. It was he who taught me what the affinity matter meant. In the history of Anwol only a handful of people had the affinity matter, ‘one of the rarest affinity to exist’ he said. My ‘matter’ affinity was hard to master. The simplest spell was king ranked and required weeks to learn. But they lacked offensive and defensive characteristics.

I had once asked him during the classes, “If my affinity has neither offensive nor defensive capabilities, then what use is it?” to which he replied with a smile, “O son! You have no idea the wonders your affinity can create. Let me tell you something good, all the previous wielder of the matter affinity were without fail hailed as ‘God’s Hand’”. Though I did not understand what ‘God’s Hand’ meant I nodded my head with a forced smile.

At the end of the month, we had an arsenal of skills at our disposal. Magic spells and sword skill enhanced by physical and mental abilities, we were now ready to roam the free world. The thirst for power had already taken its root in our body and our hearts craved for adventure. When the last day approached the skills we possessed were truly terrifying,

Spell ListZephardBasicIntermediateAdvancedKingMatter---Combination, DecayAirAir Strike, Air Block-TempestVoid of DragonsWaterWater PetalsFog CloudHydra-FireFire SlashFlame VortexFlame ChainEruptionEarthSandstorm-Tombstone-LifeHeal-Mind EyeSpirit Wrath

Spell ListDavyBasicIntermediateAdvancedKingWood--Chain of Nature, Wood Coffin, Hands of GodWood DragonWaterWater PetalsFog CloudHydra-EarthSandstorm-Tombstone-LifeHeal-Mind EyeSpirit Wrath

Spell ListIudyBasicIntermediateAdvancedKingThunderstorm--Thunder CladLightning WindLightningShockwaveGod Speed, Electric Blast-Hell’s DescendingIceFrozen PikesIce Wave-White Dragon BlizzardAirAir Strike, Air Block-TempestVoid of DragonsWaterWater PetalsFog CloudHydra-

---***---

rate my ff, pls

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