5.1

“Mister Sarvod? Mister Sarvod?”

“Mmmm…”

“Mister Sarvod, we have arrived at Moxnet academy. If you could kindly awaken from you nap.”

“Hmm? O-oh…we are here already?” John rubbed his groggy eyes with his palm, half awake at the escorts voice. Blinking three times, he adjusted his eyes and climbed out of the carriage that he had been traveling on.

With a hand by the door frame for support, he carefully planted his feet on the stony ground, did his best to not buckle those numb legs of his.

“This is as far I could bring you. We are already within the academy’s territory, if you go towards the academy, which is right in front of us, someone in uniform should be there to guide you.”

“Gotcha,” still trying to wake his sleepy self up, John rubbed his temples with closed eyes. “By the way, how long have we been traveling?”

“Exactly 4 hours, sir.”

When his vision cleared, he was greeted by a flat landscape filled with patches of shortly trimmed carpet grass, shrubs, and trees, all of which are orderly planted in this remote place known as Moxnet Academy.

At the very entrance before the academy was a garden that contained fountains and statues made of white polished stone. Beyond the beautiful garden was a gigantic castle made from cast stones of identical dimensions but slightly different shades of white. The combo of rough stones and slight deviations in color gave birth to a minimalist aesthetic while prompting any onlooker to indulge in their creative minds.

“How far is the nearest town?” John asked, remembering his promise to get something nice for Meli.

“It is a 20 minute ride to the nearest town. Though worry not, we coachmen are here to provide transportation services should any of the students wish to travel outside.”

“Alright, thanks for your work.”

Having bid the escort goodbye, he walked from the road towards the magnificent castle, excitement oozed from him no matter how stoic he tried to be as he eyed the academy repeatedly.

This place is crazy huge! It is almost as large as Purefold Town!

He passed through the enormous garden, took in everything and tried to familiarize himself with the place that he would be for the next four years of his life.

His eyes glazed on the people who lingered around before the academy’s entrance. Many were gathered in groups and did introductions, others squealed for joy as they got off the carriage at the sight of the academy, while the rest loitered around or bid goodbye to their family members who came to send them off.

I wonder if I will fit in.

Though most of them were around his age bracket—a few years older than him—he could not help but feel uncertain being surrounded by outside people after so many years of being in A’vetheas.

“Someone in uniform…someone in uniform…” he mumbled to himself as he searched when a finger found itself on his shoulders.

“That would be me! Hello!” he turned behind and a uniformed guy with a clipboard on his right arm was there. “Pleased to meet you, I shall be your guide todat. Do tell me your name, so I can register you. After that I will be bringing you to your dorm.”

“Oh sure. I am John. John Sarvod.”

“John Sarvod, huh? Let’s see…” the guide flipped the papers that he had, a few moments later he stopped and pointed onto the clipboard. “John Sarvod. Age 19, from Parac Village?”

“Yup, that’s me.”

“Seems like you don’t need to do any more registration other than confirming your presence. How lucky, to be scouted out by Mr. Kaldor himself.”

“Lucky?” he tilted his head.

“Oh yes, you are assigned to live in East Wing, which means you live in the same residence and will have the same schedule as the latest hero in the empire.”

“Hero?” John first heard the term from Kaldor’s speech once or twice, but he dissed it as an advertisement to get people eager to enroll, apparently, it was an actual person.

“Oh yes, did you not see him earlier? The tall muscular guy with a group of four behind him. It would be hard to miss him from the way people gawked at him.”

John tapped a finger to chin, tried his best to to recall someone like that but could not find anything in his mind.

“No, I don’t think so… I just arrived.”

“That’s unfortunate, he is a true hero after all, one chosen by the great angels, who would bring all to a better path, a greater future.”

“Right…” John pulled his shirt and patted his clothes, accepting the guide’s explanation.

The guide then brought him through the two tall doors by the entrance. They entered a grand hall which was 15 meters in height, two stairs curved alongside the somewhat circular grand hall and led to the second floor’s landing.

“How many floors are there in the main building?” John asked as he walked behind, eyes glued to the glittering room.

“Four for student usage, two floors for researchers to carry out their work. And another three for storage? Nine floors as far as I know.”

“That’s a lot, considering this is just the main building.”

“Of course, it is different for each section of the castle but nine floors are the standards. The others may be lesser or smaller when compared to the main building, but I can assure you their width and length are nothing to scoff at. There is one part of the castle that is 750 meters long, but that is an old section of the building. The plot size of the land that the academy is built on is roughly 50 square kilometers.”

“Still… This is pretty impressive. How would one travel across the academy if it is already this huge? When I came in earlier, I could swear it looked almost as large as a town. Wouldn’t traveling from one end to the other take a long while?”

“Hmmm… That’s not exactly it, John. Follow me and I will show you.”

They walked towards the right of the grand hall, passed through some of the academy staff, who nodded fondly at John, another right turn after they passing through what seemed to be washrooms.

Finally, they end up at a wall, with nothing but a rectangular device erected waist height at the center right. At the very top of the rectangular glass interface of the device were magical inscriptions and names of various locations within the academy.

“Oh, it is a short distance teleporter. The type that only works if there are ground wires connecting it from one end to the other,” John blurted out.

Devices like these were intricate constructions that he came across when he did his reading in A’vetheas, but was not utilized due to the huge amount of power that require to transport a person. It required so much energy that if it was not sufficient, the device would drain mana directly from the user, it caused more inconvenience than the ease it warranted.

“Hey, you know you stuff. I can see why you are chosen by Kaldor himself.”

“Yeah. But how is it maintained? Don’t they take a lot of energy?”

“Wow! You even know its energy problem! Are you trying to go for the engineering section!?”

“No, that’s not it. Isn’t it a little bit dangerous, to use something like this?”

The guide put a hand underneath his chin and pondered for a second before replying. “We have a large energy supply for the academy, mainly from the solar farms that gives us an almost unlimited supply of energy. Since the researchers here do a lot of testing, the power source issue was something we have long resolved. Mana rocks are a thing of the past.”

The empire’s strength. The reason that its people were proud for being a denizen of Dezarith Empire was because of their beloved Immortal Emperor.

Ever since the emperor found himself onto the throne two hundred years ago, technology advanced greatly to the point where the empire itself became the apex of civilization itself.

Where other non-human races had their cities, kingdoms and nations, none of them had the power to rival the empire due to their overbearing military power.

A population that spanned into the billions, magic tools that could be used by anyone regardless of their magic capabilities, genetic modification of monsters that gave birth to improved aerial and ground transport, all of it invented under his rule.

The Immortal Emperor, despite being a human himself, created a safe-heaven for all the Lower Races, became the symbol of success to many. His lifespan that surpasses any human was only proof of his power.

Even the Higher Races such as mermaids, giants, elves, arachnids, alike could not help but to seem inferior in comparison to the empire.

“Oh.”

“You don’t look convinced,” the guide frowned slightly at John who looked at the teleporter’s interface blankly.

“Me? No, no, I am convinced. I was just wondering about the achievements of the empire. To think that all the technology that I have heard of came from this academy, it’s kind of overwhelming. I don’t know if I am even worthy of attending this place…” his voice felt silent.

Up until this point in his life, he lived a predetermined life, where he never had to worry about how his future would turn out. The effort that the immortal emperor had put into building Dezarith Empire only highlighted that John never really worked to build or create something of his own.

He may have spent his time reading back in A’vetheas, but other than making use of the accessible knowledge back then to improve himself, he cruised through his life while he whined about how not being able to use other magic other than [Heal] when it was something beyond his control.

And look how that went. Exile, that’s right… And I had the audacity to boss people around when I was healing others, when in fact many of them created their own magic, martial arts and did their best for the community…

The melancholic look on John’s face prompted the guide to follow up, “If someone like you enrolled into Moxnet Academy with something as grand as a full scholarship isn’t worthy, no one would be.”

“Scholarship? What do you mean?”

“Mr. Kaldor offered you one, a scholarship where only 20 students out of 2000 could receive. To be a scholarship student means that you are talented and will be one of the top in the future, be it leading the military, administration, agriculture or even transportation, you are the type of person that would come up the next technological breakthrough.”

“Breakthrough? Someone like me? That is impossible, I can only use healing magic. What was Kaldor even thinking?”

“Do you realize who Mr. Kaldor is? About his relations to this academy?” the guide asked with a voice so delicate that John felt that his words could decide the guide’s fate.

“He goes around the empire and recruit talented people alike?”

The guide shook his head with eyes that were on the verge of falling out of their sockets due to how wide in shock he was from John’s comment.

“Mr. Kaldor is the vice president of this academy. He doesn’t show himself among us, but his influence is huge. He is also responsible for your batch’s curriculum, and the person who decides if I get to keep my job. What he says, goes in the academy.”

“Oh… He is the what!? Hold up! You are saying, Kaldor, the person who came to see me late in the night is the vice president!?” John opened his mouth wide in shock. “I mean, I knew he was kind of quirky. But the vice president!?”

“You seem to be quite energetic now, shall we go then?” the guide placed his hand onto the teleporter interface and spoke their destination, “East Wing.”

Just as John who was about to retort at the guide for dropping such huge information about Kaldor on him, the two of them were wrapped by a faint light and shifted locations.

Their bodies then materialized inside of a building which was slightly smaller than the one they had teleported from.

“That wasn’t too bad, was it?” the guide asked.

“W-wait a second, why didn’t the Kaldor tell me he was the second in charge of the academy? Just hold on for a second.”

“Well, that’s because he manages the academy when he is free from his other work. Perhaps he does not want you to feel overwhelmed by his expectations from you? Who knows what that man has on his mind, geniuses like him operate on a different wavelength than most.”

John squinted his eyes at that information and made a mental note to bring it up when he saw Kaldor again and would use it against him if he ever became Kaldor’s coworker.

He then feast his eyes on the outside view, the garden by the entrance was now a small dot in the distance. East Wing was roughly two kilometers from main building.

The same layout applied to the other resident halls, North Wing and West Wing alike—there is no South Wing because the academy’s entrance was built facing south—they were built based on maximizing comfort of their residence, mainly the students, hence they were located a good distance away from most buildings to prevent unwanted noise to disturb the students.

“Though we used the teleporter, if you wished to travel on your feet, you can use the walks,” the guide pointed outside where polished pavements and roofed walkways were. “Feel free to explore the academy to your heart’s content.”

“What do you guys do with the extra space? From what I know, there is only an estimate of 4000 people in Moxnet. Half of it are students while the other is academic staff.”

“The extra space? You mean the empty rooms? Those are up to the student’s liking, if you or any friends you have like one, just fill in a form and it will be yours to use until you no longer need it. In theory, there are about a room for five students in the academy. That’s just an estimate by the dimensions though it could be less…”

“Talk about the maintenance that needs to be done.”

“Ah, no. The academy castle itself takes care the cleaning, so you have nothing to worry if you chose to…ahem...do something private in those rooms,” the guide gave him a cheeky wink, made a few gestures with his fingers. “Try to be quiet about it if you can, you never know if the soundproofing magic has expired.”

John shook his head with a strained smile.