Luz followed Brian, and it was not until deep in the night that the two reached their destination. It was a huge mansion that could be roughly seen in the moonlight. The sight only confused the tired Luz, having never seen such a huge building before. Brian just waved and a butler opened the gate for them.

As the two entered Brian told his butler: "Alfred, take Luz to the other children please."

"By your command," Alfred replied as he bowed to Brian.

He then turned his attention to Luz and briefly looked at Luz from his head to his toes. "Follow me, young man," were the only words that left his mouth.

Luz followed Alfred who led him down some hallways to the basement. Each of their footsteps echoed loudly through the hallways and Luz almost felt uncomfortable.

'Such a large building belongs to Master Brian, but I don't see a single human soul around.'

"You should be grateful that Brian bought you instead of someone else," Alfred sighed as he opened a squeaking door.

The door was made of white wood and had a golden handle. Luz gazed into the room and he saw a few bunk beds with people sleeping on them.

"Why is that?" Luz asked, stopping at the door.

"Because Brian has a good heart. He's trying to buy as many young mages as possible who would be unjustly enslaved to give them a chance at a life worth living," Alfred stated with a sigh before continuing with, "but enough talk. Time for you to enter. You'll have to work hard starting from tomorrow. So you better sleep early."

"Will do Alfred," Luz replied before entering.

After the door closed behind Luz, suddenly there was a boy sitting in each of the beds except for one. 10 boys of different ages sat on their beds and stared holes at Luz. The atmosphere remained tense for a few seconds before a boy around Luz's age interrupted the building atmosphere with, "This is our newcomer. Please introduce yourself."

"My name is Luz and I am 18 years old. I'm from the Northern part of the kingdom," Luz stated as he moved his gaze from child to child looking each of them into their eyes.

Some of them had green eyes, some brown and there were even a few who had golden eyes.

'In this room alone are enough eye colors to fill a color palette.'

"Wow, if it continues like this, Master Brian will have saved at least one child from each province of the kingdom," a boy commented.

Another child whispered loudly: "Gotta catch them all," and a few children giggled at his comment.

"Welcome to the team and the bed up there is yours. I think getting to know each other better tomorrow would be the wisest decision," commented a boy around his age before continuing with, "Please don't be surprised if some here are very shy. Some of us have experienced hell before being discovered by our master."

Luz nodded and climbed into his bed. By now he had been awake for two days and he just didn't care about the stiffness of the bed.

'Gab, Raph, Az, and Michael, I hope you are all well. Hopefully, you are all in a better situation compared to me, even though my situation is not too bad,' went through Luz's head as he threw the blanket over his body.

'I hope to see you guys sometime soon. Mother and father are both dead anyway and you are the last thing I have left. I can't lose you and I will kill anyone who does anything bad to you.' Luz slowly moved his body into a fetal position out of the sheer cold he felt.

'Why am I so weak? Maybe if I had trained back then or if I had just cast the spell correctly, we wouldn't be in this situation. Sure, I would have died, but all of you wouldn't be scattered around the world.'

Luz clenched his hand into a fist and the vein on his hand almost popped because of the rage Luz was harboring in his body.

'If only I was stronger, I could have prevented all this chaos. I am sorry for my incompetence and that it will take some time before I will find all of you. But I will find each of you I promise,' sobbed Luz as his anger slowly transformed to sadness.

During his quiet sobs, one of the boys climbed into his bed and just whispered, "If you need someone to hug, I'm here, even if you don't know me yet."

Luz just sobbed quietly, "I'm just an incompetent idiot who's too weak for anything and is now crying on the shoulder of someone younger than himself."

"It's normal. Every one of us cried on the first day. The most important thing is what you do after you cry. You worry about your siblings, right?" the boy asked him.

"Yes. I'm worried about what will happen to them since I can't take care of them," Luz sighed and hugged him.

"That's understandable. If you want, I'll help you look for them when we have time off and don't worry, none of the rest will know that you've shown any signs of weakness," the younger one replied while hugging Luz.

The next day the boys were woken up by Alfred. Luz's body ached from his adventure yesterday. Alfred took him with him in order to look for a suitable uniform size for Luz. The uniform was mainly black and white with a white shirt and a jacket.

On the chest was a small insignia of a two-headed eagle, with one head looking to the left and the other to the right. Only after Luz tried on several uniforms did Alfred and him find the uniform that fit him.

"Normally you would be working today, but Master Brian thinks we should take care of your injured mana core before you start working," Alfred told Luz as they walked through the halls. "So we're here," Alfred announced after they left the mansion and arrived at a large mage tower that was 500 meters away from the mansion.

"Enter," said a young man with disheveled hair and a strange thing attached to his left eye.

"Master Simon sorry to disturb you but, Master Brian is sending the newcomer to you. He hopes you could help him out with his mana core," Alfred told him before bowing.

"All right, so come in dear, I won't bite," Simon said, waving at Luz to come in.

Luz followed and he saw several complex machines and a tank full of small fishes. Luz could see other occult objects on the walls, as well as birds flying freely."

Undress," Simon instructed, as a bird landed on his shoulder. Luz did as he was commanded.

Simon placed his hand on Luz's mana core and just shook his head.

"Looks like someone used a magic spell that wasn't in his class, hmm?" screeched the parrot, and Master Simon nodded.

Luz, on the other hand, looked to the side due to embarrassment.

"More testing is needed or do you disagree Jodoc," the mage muttered to himself.

The parrot screeched only in agreement.

Luz was slightly taken aback by the conversation between the mage and the parrot and watched them both with fascination.

"Sit on the chair please," Simon told him as he went through a pile of notes.

The chair looked like a torture chair and there were several devices attached behind it.

Luz did as he was told and Simon tightened the straps.

"This may be a bit painful, but I'm just going to shoot mana through your body for a moment in order to create a detailed picture of how much your mana core has been strained," Simon said as he was ramming several thin measuring sticks into his back.

Luz was about to get up but the straps that were fastened prevented any attempt to fight back. After Simon pulled down one of the switches, Luz felt a strong mana current shoot through his body, forcing his mana veins to almost burst.

This blow didn't even last a second, but Luz could be seen motionless on the chair with his head slumped over. Blood began to slowly drip out of his eyes and the veins on his head were bulging because of the mana current.

"I think that was too much mana at once," Simon commented before pausing at the sight of Luz.

'The chart still shows a regular heartbeat,' went through Simon's head before he shouted at Jodoc: "Please note that the mana volume rate for mage apprentices should at least be reduced by a factor of three."

The monitors above Luz already depicted a few scans of Luz's mana core as well as a few charts.

Jodoc began to screech, "Too many cracks, rehabilitation by normal measures will be difficult. Research experiment trial 232 could be used on him," while glancing at the charts.

"No, no, no, Jodoc we can't try that experiment! We don't have long-term studies on the experiment or anything else, and besides, it's not even certain whether this experiment can really be a solution to his problems," Simon disputed while zooming in on a 3D model of Luz mana core.

"But only this method can ensure that Luz Mana's output to the environment is not too high. Remember, we can use him as an experiment, and besides, the Royal guard uses a similar method," Jodoc shouted back at Simon.

"Yes but the Royale guard probably uses a different organism. In any other magic monster we've tried it on, it's seized control," Simon replied, shaking his head.

"Then let's ask him if he's ready for it. He's young and naive. I'm sure he'd rather die than never be allowed to use mana again. If you want to convince him, just add that you'll pay off his debt to Brian," the parrot said with a laugh as he flapped his wings.

"You have no scruples either," the mage sighed before he continued with, "well, time to wait for him to regain consciousness."