Nathan

Year 2849 | Month 5 | Day 6

As if on cue, I feel someone poking my shoulder before a familiar voice says, “It looks like we’re gonna be in the same course!”

When I turn my head, I find Aidan with his usual grin on his face as he gives me a playful salute.

“Looks like it,” I answer, lacking the same bubbly excitement that he has before noticing Aidan’s eyes straying to Cyria, who is still leaning up against the wall a few feet away from me as she watches the two of us interact.

“And who’s this?” Aidan asks, his bubbly attitude fading away slightly at the presence of a stranger.

Cyria just looks at him for a few seconds before turning to look at the instructor for our group as she answers, “Cyria.”

After that, the instructor – who also happens to be the one who spoke to me earlier, telling me to wait for everyone else with the group – begins to speak, stopping Aidan from giving any reply to Cyria.

“Let’s get through this as quickly as possible, shall we? Every one of you will have a roommate of the same gender, but the dorms themselves won’t be split up into any boy or girl sections. What you do amongst yourselves is none of our concern as long as you don’t cause a fuss.” The man says with a serious look on his face; one that will clearly accept no arguments with his statement. He has on a military uniform – one of a major within the military, surprisingly enough. The uniform has the usual red and black coloring, with a magi-tech under armor plating beneath a fancy looking tuxedo. On his shoulder is four bars, marking him as a major, along with a black and red circle with a star in the center. Meanwhile, the star itself has two of the five points filled in going from the center of the star all the way to the tip on each points, marking him as a Class C magician.

Seriously? I didn’t expect them to give us Class C magicians as instructors… this could be bad.

It would be best to avoid getting hurt near him.

One of the requirements to become a Class C magician is the ability to sense the formation of spell circles, so he should be able to instantly see through my lie and tell that my immortality isn’t just a ‘spell that my family came up with.’

Why couldn’t one of the other instructors that were here with him earlier be our instructor instead?

The man continues speaking as his eyes move through each and every cadet in our group, pausing momentarily on Cyria, Aidan, and myself – likely for our distance from the group. Or my young appearance, since I look like a fifteen or sixteen year old. “I don’t care about introductions as I’ve already memorized each and every one of your names. With that said, I will introduce myself to you, seeing as I will be both your dorm head and magical circuitry class’s instructor.”

He stands up a little bit straighter at this point before pointing to the circled star on his shoulder, “As you can tell, I am a Class C magician. My name is Leonidas de Ashford, and you will refer to me as Instructor Leo. Are we clear?”

“Yes sir!” Every single cadet in the group – myself included – answers with a salute. After the salute, however, a few whispers begin to break out amongst the cadets.

Seriously? He's also a member of the leading fire magic family in the Republic?

That certainly complicates things.

Uncaring of the reactions his name is giving the cadets, Instructor Leo continues speaking without any change in his demeanor, “Now I will move on to how the classes will work for the first semester.”

The man raises his hand, palm outwards, before a red magic circle appears in front of it. The magic circle – just like with the one from the driver of that bus earlier today – has hundreds of tiny lines of words running across it before it begins to shrink in on itself and five rows of six books appear in the air above our heads. The books each give off a small amount of smoke that disappears as soon as the magic circle vanishes, leaving them all to slowly float down to one student each.

After all thirty students grab their books, the instructor continues speaking, “These books will serve as a basic rundown for the classes accessible to you at this academy as first year high course students. You will also find a key inside of each book that will bond to you and the dorm room that you choose, along with the dorm roommate that you pick to room with. The keys will not bond if you attempt to room with someone of the opposite sex, nor will they bond if you try to bond with an already bonded room. Lastly, you must bond with a roommate’s key first before you may bond with a room.”

The whispers amongst the cadets grow louder at his words. At the same time, I turn to look at Aidan before quickly finding him nodding his head towards me.

“Roommates?” he whispers to me.

I nod my head before taking my key out of the book.

“To sign up for the classes you wish to take, you need to go to a registrar located at one of those two towers,” Instructor Leo pauses as he points towards the two towers on the opposite corners of the fortress to the entrance portal. He then looks at each of us in the eyes and adds, “Make sure that you register for at least five classes and do it before tomorrow at noon.”

After that, he crosses his arms and says, “That said, the class I teach, magic circuitry, is a requirement for all students going to the academy, no matter what course they are taking. But in your case? You will all be taking it with me, which will also take up one of your five required classes.”

And with that, he raises his hand with his thumb and middle fingers together, says, “That’s all,” before snapping it, causing a large magic spell to appear as his entire body bursts into flames and he flies straight past us towards an open window on the fifth floor of the dormitory building.

I guess there’s no asking questions.

So I turn towards Aidan, still with my key in hand.

How do we bond our keys?

Aidan simply looks between our keys and shrugs to himself before touching them together, causing a mixture of fire and electricity to sparkle around the key as I feel my mana begin to drain a little bit.

Huh, I guess Aidan has the lightning specialized affinity. Neat.

Putting that aside for the moment, the key in my hand begins to grow slightly warmer before the mana drain is cut off and the fire and electricity stop sparkling around the keys.

Guess all it took was us touching the keys together.

I look around at the other cadets, only to notice several of them watching me and Aidan before repeating what we did. After that, I turn to look at Cyria, who has a frown on her face.

Poor girl. Looks like whoever told her about the team assignments forgot to mention the dorm situation.

Actually, now that I think about it… I turn to look at all thirty of us before counting the number of boys and girls.

Well, that’s interesting. There managed to be fourteen boys and sixteen girls total.

Was it a coincidence that they both had even numbers? Or did Instructor Leo just not bother telling us what to do if we couldn’t get a partner because he already knew that there was an even number of each gender here?

Either way, it doesn’t really matter much to me.

I nod my head towards Cyria before starting towards the dorm building with Aidan following quickly behind me. When we reach the front doors, a strange sensation comes over me as if my person is being scanned for something before my key begins to glow slightly red.

I turn my head to look at Aidan, only to find his key doing the same thing in his hand.

Guess we can’t enter if we don’t have our keys.

Which makes sense, considering that there are three different courses here. It wouldn’t make sense to let all three courses roam free in the other course’s dormitories.

Anyways, the keys continue glowing for a few more seconds before the glow fades and the double doors in front of us open, only to slam shut again as soon as we walk through into the fancy looking entrance hall behind them.