A/N : in last chapter, in the description of rafael's spirit i wrote 'golden sun'. well, i was wrong, it should be pure white sun... will edit later. and here's small flashback before the academy life began.

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It has been half a month since I departed from home towards the Holy Arla Academy. Riding the specially prepared horse carriage was actually quite comfortable for me, but as comfortable as it was, my butt began to feel sore from sitting too long…

Recalling the pitiful sight of my dad crying as we parted, it somehow also made me feel sad. However, this was something that I must do, so that I could reach my dream and gave those meanie old man and old lady in the Church a good beating for bullying my dad!

On the way to the Academy, since I was bored and had nothing to do other than eat and sleep, I began to train my magic. Yes, the great power of magic!

Since I was a kid (…um, I am still a kid as of now, but you got my meaning, yea?) my dad has been personally teaching magic for me. And it was not just the usual magic, but it’s the light element magic, the strongest kind of magic! Or at least, that’s what my dad said to me.

Originally, my dad was kind of reluctant to teach me any magic related stuff, no matter how much I beg to him. He always said something along the lines of “your body is too weak to bear the power of magic”.

Hence, I began my secret training to improve my physical strength!

…Well, even though I said ‘secret training’, it was actually just jogging around the main temple’s surrounding in the morning. And it wasn’t so secretive either, since my dad knew about it. Or rather, I actually asked permission to him every morning before I got to jog…

And the result? My stamina increased, and I can run longer.

…What did you expect? Sudden breakthrough to the next level? That kind of stuff only happened in the fantasy stories my dad kept reading for me every night. Even I knew something like that.

Nevertheless, my dad still refused to teach me magic, but since jogging in the morning had somewhat became my habit, I kept doing it even until now.

Everything suddenly changed, however, from a chance occurrence.

My dad, maybe because he was annoyed since I kept begging for him to teach me magic everyday, decided to borrow something from the main temple. A small, transparent, and perfectly round crystal.

“This is a tool to check your aptitude,” he said, as he nonchalantly threw the small crystal to me.

As I caught that small crystal with my right hand, it suddenly brightened to the point that the two of us had to close our eyes. And even though we had already closed our eyes, the light it emitted was still so bright that it even pierced our eyelids!

It was at that moment when suddenly… Boom!

The small crystal actually exploded to pieces! Countless little shrapnel flew everywhere, some of it grazed my skin, and a few of them even pierced deep into my limbs, causing bloods to drip down to the floor…

As our vision recovered, we stared numbly at the sorry state of my hand. At that moment, our mind was unable to process our current situation, and could only thought, what the heck had just happened?

And then, it wasn’t long before the pain kicked in. I screamed and cried out loud, before I fainted on the spot.

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When I regained my consciousness, it was already night time. My dad was sitting beside me as I lied on my bed, staring at me with his rare to be seen solemn expression.

“Don’t ask anything, just sleep and rest for now. We will talk about this tomorrow,” he suddenly said.

I did as I was told, and immediately fell asleep once again. At that time, I was unaware that my body which should have been full of scars was actually already back to as how it was before, without leaving any scratch left, as if everything that had just happened before was just a dream.

In the next morning, when I just awoke, I felt really refreshed. It has been a long time since I’ve felt like this before. Now that I thought about it, that was when I also fell unconscious after I tripped and fell from the stair…

Shortly thereafter, I goes to met my dad in his office. A slightly bigger crystal ball was on his hand. It seems like I was somewhat traumatized by the sight of a crystal ball as I unconsciously winced and taking a step back from my dad.

“Don’t worry, this is an upgraded and complete version of Spiritual Crystal,” says dad. “First, I had to apologize to you, the thing that I brought to you yesterday was the ‘demo’ version of this Spiritual Crystal, hence the durability was far lower than the completed version.”

“This crystal ball could be used to check the aptitude of any person who had touched it, as long as they channeled their spiritual energy towards this crystal” as he said that, the crystal on dad’s hand began to shine brightly.

It wasn’t to the point that you had to close your eyes as to avoid the pain caused by the brightness, but the light was bright enough to make us narrow our eyes. However, unlike yesterday, the light that came from the crystal ball was a mix of white, red, and blue, with white being the brightest, followed by red, and then blue, the dimmest one.

“This light represent your aptitudes with certain element. A person could learn to manipulate the element they had affinity with. In my case, I had a strong affinity with light element, average affinity with fire element, and low affinity with water element. Rafael, try touching it.”

As dad saw my doubt, he tried to coax me with the words I have been waiting to hear for a long time: “If you do this, I will teach you magic…”

And thus, the naïve and innocent me was instantly baited. I slowly walked towards my dad, reached out my hands, and then touched the crystal ball.

Ding…

The same occurrence once again happened. Though, unlike yesterday, the crystal didn’t go boom. Pure white light covered my dad’s office. As I closed my eyes, I couldn’t see my dad watching the glowing crystal with astonished expression.

A few moments had passed before I heard my dad sighed, and felt that he pulled the Spiritual Crystal back.

As I opened my eyes once again, what greeted my sigh was the sight of my dad bitterly smiling towards me.

“Well shoot, what can I say? It’d be a damn shame if I ignored this kind of talent that could even made my own talent, which was said to be the one of the best in the Church, pale in comparison.”

And since then on, I began my light element magic training with my dad.