“The mana core, the very source of all living beings’ mana. While not physically inside our bodies, they instead swirl at the core of our being.”

The teacher twirled his pointer around the stomach of the body image. “All of us are born with set sized mana core, and there have been no reports of it ever growing.”

He then pressed his hand over his own chest. “For us humans, our mana cores are rather large compared to other species. So much so that as our bodies grow and adjusts, they find themselves lagging behind in keeping up with the intense mana that courses through our cores. In time, our bodies would eventually no longer keep up and they will shut down and when that happens…”

The teacher coughs, the topic being rather uncomfortable for him to speak. He decided to continue the lesson, avoiding bringing up the other subject all together. “Anyway, that is the main reason for the ritual summoning. After many years of research, we have concluded the safest time for us humans to manage our mana core is up to 18 hence the age requirement.”

After he was done, he then motioned with his pointer mana crystal as light starts to shine around him. The next moment the sounds of a child’s giggle could be heard as a child-like angel flew down from the ceiling and landed on top of the teacher’s head.

The angel looked to be female with ginger curly hair while adorned with a glowing halo with a small brown jewel at the center and small white wings on her back.

“It was about time you called me Desmond. Hehe what were you embarrassed to show off your cute familiar to your students? ~”

Not reacting to his familiar’s teasing, he merely pointed at her with his pointer tool. “Don’t let her young appearance fool you students, she’s actually a couple hundred years old.”

The small angel acted offended by that statement as she lightly banged on top of his head, on which he didn’t react to “Ugh meanie, why’d you have to tell them all that.”

“I only summoned you here to demonstrate the familiar tether that binds you to me.”

To demonstrate he raised a fist with his familiar doing the same as a glowing white ring appeared around their wrists. The closer they got the brighter the two rings appeared, blinding everyone else. Within seconds the rings dispersed and disappeared as the teacher waited for everyone to readjust their eyes.

“Now what you see there was what we called a Familiar tether. It represents the connection between summoner and familiar. Under no circumstance must you allow it to break, doing so will return the summoner’s mana back to capacity and I don’t need to remind you what will happen.”

The teacher put his pointer tool away as he sat back down. “For the rest of class I want you to practice conjuring your tethers with your familiars and to maintain it. Afterwards you are allowed to do as you pleased for the rest of today. Starting tomorrow you’ll start on your regular classes.”

With that the teacher leaned in his chair, ignoring them as his familiar kept trying to get his attention.

Not really adhering to the teacher’s advice, most of the students started to goof off, deciding to chat and gossip amongst themselves. The only ones who seemed to take the lesson seriously were Eugene and Alphonse, who both decided to practice together along with their familiars.

The first to speak was Eugene, who was still trying his best to get along with the Demihuman. “That was an exciting class, wasn’t it?”

“Y-yeah… I especially liked the part when they discussed about the other worlds…. I can’t imagine what they would look like.” The fox was fidgeting with his fingers, still feeling nervous but overall enjoying hanging out with Eugene.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Right? But I heard this year as part of our studies we’ll be visiting each world and can even gain access to visit them ourselves.”

There was a glimmer on Alphonse eyes when he was told this, clearly excited about visiting other worlds.

“Now how are we supposed to summon our familiar tethers?”

Alphonse took out a book, which was titled ‘Basics of Familiars’ “…… says here we’re supposed to simply concentrate and focus on the idea of a connection between our manas and our familiar.”

“Seems simple enough.”

There was the sound of a foot tapping, Ripley had his arms crossed and he clearly looked annoyed. “Can we hurry this up already? I require several maintenances in order to keep up an appearance that fits my status.”

Sife started to elbow “I dunno, your current appearance seems to suit you well~”

There was a low but intense growl coming out of Ripley as he was baring his fangs. Seeing this Alphonse quickly intervened. “O-ok that’s enough now, let’s just get started and as soon as we complete the task, we can get what you need a-alright? ...”

The hellhound looked away, scoffing but complying with his summoner’s request. “Very well, the sooner the better.”

Ryuze started to call Sife out, who was chuckling to himself. “That was not called for you lazy bum. Do you want to cause our summoner problems.”

“Aww I’m sure he didn’t mind. ~”

There was a clapping sound coming out of Abdul which seemed to come from his speakers, as his hands hadn’t moved from his back. It was enough to get their attention. “Now now, we wasted enough of Master Eugenes time. It’s about time he started in his practice.”

Seeing that things had finally calmed down Eugene proceeded to focus, silently thanking Abdul on stopping their argument.

He tried to follow the directions that Alphonse suggested and began to concentrate. Trying to recall the image of what his tether was. He tried to imagine what kind of shape it would take, the idea of something that would bind three very different people to him was hard for him to think of though and it seemed he wasn’t getting any luck.

Meanwhile Eugene took a peek at Alphonse’s progress, to his surprise he seemed to have already made decent work as his tether had almost been forged. It took the shape of chains that were wrapping around the palm of his hand, stretching out and connecting to Ripley’s multiple cuffs.

The Hellhound was not amused, giving off a grumpy attitude. It seemed he wanted to finish already. “Are we done yet?”

“Y-yeah…” Alphonse looked at Eugene’s progress who proceeded to refocus on his work. “How about you? ….”

“I’m having trouble picturing it, what did you do for yours?”

The fox released his hold over the chains as they disperse into mana before disappearing and he thinks a bit about it. “Let’s see…. I guess I just pictured back on the first day when I…. had to restrain him…. Sorry again….”

Ripley’s only response was to click his tongue as he looked away, annoyed.

“Huh, maybe if I think back to when I first summoned my familiars, I might recall something.”

The fox man nodded as Eugene tried to recall on that day. He visualized himself back into that empty space, remembering the disembodied voices which he assumed were his familiars’ voices. He thought of asking them about it later if they remembered the last moments before being summoned.

He continued to focus, trying to remember any other details after their voices called out to him. He began to recall their hands reaching out to him as he stretched out his to grab theirs. At the last moments before leaving that space he started to remember something forming between all four of them.

He kept his focus, doing everything he could to recall every detail of that moment. As he does, he could feel the swell of mana flowing through his body and start connecting to his familiars.

Eugene opened his eyes, curious to see what kind of form his tether would be. At first, he didn’t really notice anything. He had started thinking he had failed and that he would need to start over again, but then Ryuze started to call out to him.

“L-lord Eugene, look.”

The Dragonoid started to point towards his pinky claw then motioned toward the man’s own pinky. Upon closer inspection, Eugene noticed that he indeed conjured his tether but that it was so thin he could barely see it.

Wrapped around his pinky finger, there were three strands of red thread. Each one connecting a familiar’s own pinky finger. It looked so fragile, like even a simple breeze could break it at any moment.

At the same time though, it felt secure for some reason. None of them could quite explain the reason why nor did any of them seem to question it. Instead, his three familiars were congratulating their summoner for succeeding. Sife casually patting on his back, Ryuze lightly bowing on his success, and Abdul playing a light cheering sound effect from his body. Eugene could only blush from their praise, while also curious on wondering why his tether took on such an interesting form.