Chapter 75.

PART 1.

Josh is furious.

The reason for his anger? How quickly things have gone normal after the events of a few days ago when his friend was banished like a criminal for defending himself. Granted, it caused a huge uproar among the students for a while, but things simmered quickly enough. Now, that is just general outrage with the public. But he is angrier with his friends, for actually taking the attitude of the school.

When he brought this point up with them, they all replied with virtually the same thing: “What can we do?”

“How can you say that?” He asked them, turning to Raven, he continues. “Didn’t you say that we can’t afford to ignore this anymore?” He rounded on James. “And what about you? You said we could be used as hostages. Where is that forethought and planning now?”

“I was just offering my observations.” Said Raven. “Besides, it is not like we have a solution. Do you think they'd cancel the banishment if we asked the other students?”

“No one will listen to us.” Said James. “Didn’t you notice? Students below the fourth year weren’t allowed to vote.”

“A deliberate way to exclude people.” Said Shin bitterly. “They say that a student council exists for the students, and yet they don’t count the first three years.”

“Okay, I can accept that. but not one of you thought of visiting him, did you?” he asked.

They all turned their eyes away. “I can’t believe you call yourselves his friends. That is no way to treat him; we should visit him.”

“I completely agree.” Said Daphne, who walked up to the group with her friends and Maria and Liang. Suraj was also with them. Josh notes that the boy seems to be adapting very well to the life of the Academy.

He also thinks it was a bad idea to argue right in the middle of the ground. “I do think we should visit him as a group. If nothing else, that should cheer him up.”

“Indeed.” Said Liang. “In the forest, having some companions is the best thing. It can cheer you up.”

“Where’s Avinash?” asked Raven, not seeing him anywhere in the group.

“He hasn’t left his room much ever since that day.” Said Ravina, “That is what I’ve heard.”

“Whatever. If he wants to come, he is welcome. Otherwise, we’ll go without him.” said Josh.

Everyone agreed. “But when should we go?” asked Maria.

“Whenever we like.” Said Josh. “If you’re worried about classes, then maybe you shouldn’t think of going into the forest.”

Raven drags him away. “Please forgive him. He is…” he trailed off.

“Nah, he is right.” Said Maria. “Today is too late. We’ll go in the afternoon to visit him, even if we have to bunk our classes.”

PART 2.

A seven-year-old child is assigned some homework, to write an essay on Koel birds. This child is, of course, Hatori when he was young. When he brought the essay up after writing it on his computer and printing it the next day, it caused huge outrage.

Instead of writing the assigned essay from the book, which was expected, he wrote his thoughts about Koels, which were less than charitable. But all the reasons that he wrote for not liking the birds were presented with sources, which he searched for yesterday.

In summary, the essay stated these reasons for not liking Koels: they are admired by humans for their voice; poets write about them all the time, which ends up in the school books, and Hatori doesn’t like to study those poems; the said poets insult crows for their voices, even though they are intelligent birds; and Koel places its eggs on other bird’s nest, and when they hatch, the chicks push the original chicks and remaining eggs out.

This essay hurt the sentiment of the language teacher, and as a result, she cut his marks for that essay. His father tried to convince her, but she did not listen. The matter reached the principal of the school, who concluded that the essay contained nothing offensive; and the question did not state that the essays must strictly be written from the books assigned by the school. Thus, Hatori got his marks, but the teacher never talked to him and refused to even grade him properly, something for which she got fired later.

After the whole incident, Hatori sits in his room, feeling ich on his neck, as if someone is targeting him for an attack. With a start, he wakes up from the dream and retaliates with a fireball. He just took a small nap, and his half-constructed camp was surrounded by spirits.

Separating the spirits with a Fire Blast, he burns a few of them with Flamethrower. For a moment, he wonders how a spirit can be burned, but he discards the thought, as more attacks come his way. As long as he can make them disappear, he doesn’t care about anything else.

The remaining spirits regroup and rush at him. Hatori retaliates with more fire spells, regretting his lack of transmutation knowledge. He would have loved to do something like turn the ground swampy; at least it would have gotten rid of the spirits on the ground.

This forest is part of the wider habitat, where all sorts of creatures from around the world are held, and studied in their natural environment. But this particular part of the forest is isolated, for the creatures got out of control here, and it was sealed off for the students. Apparently, not for the banished students. The animals haven’t caused Hatori any trouble; they appear very rarely, anyway. Spirits and shadows, however, have caused tons of problems. This is much more brutal than the module running in Zeko’s house; at least that one scales in difficulty with his skills. But here, there’s no scaling whatsoever. He always gets attacked by large groups of spirits and shadows, which move so fast that they feel like smoke to him. He feels like this module is not for training anyone. Instead, it is a quiet way of killing someone, and we call it training.

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Some of them possess trees, and Hatori had to survive many attempts at strangling by vines. In the few days Hatori has spent here, he has only been able to construct his camp halfway. Each time he starts on something, he gets attacked, and sometimes, a part that he constructed before falls apart in the battle. Many times, he cried in his sleep. People say that children should not face any difficulties beyond them, but he often feels like he is playing the game of life in a hard setting by default ever since birth, while others get to cruise along with easy or beginner difficulty.

At least his skill with magic seems to be improving fast. He can think of starting with advanced topics already since he has gotten a lot of insights from these battles. He’ll start with transmutation and his continuous improvement with lightning. And then wing things from there. Of course, this leaves a very bitter taste in his mouth, since he couldn’t forget the death of Karasu. He didn’t even get a chance of coming to grips with his death, that he was banished. Each time he thinks of that little chick, a pit of anger burns in his stomach. It is always burning, but its flairs into an inferno when he thinks about Karasu.

Hatori hears some crunching footsteps, and before his senses can catch up, he lobs multiple fireballs at the sound. He then realizes that it’s just his friends. Fortunately, all four of his friends were familiar with his paranoia, so when they dove out of the way, this serves as a signal for others. Liang drags Suraj down with him, while the fireballs sale over their head. Fortunately, they landed where there was nothing to burn; otherwise, they could have been looking at a forest fire.

“We come to meet you by bunking our classes, and that’s how you greet us?” Said Shin from under James. “And get off me already.” He hurls him off him and gets up with bells in his hair tingling.

“Yeah, sorry about that.” Said Hatori. “This place is worse than Zeko’s house.”

All four of them shivered. “You’re kidding me, right?” Said Raven. “And you’ve managed to survive here already for four days?”

“What’s the module?” asked Maria.

One quick explanation later, they also realize the graveness of the situation. But lacking the same direct experience as the four boys who had lived at Zeko’s house, they did not show much horror through their body language.

“Suraj,” said Hatori. “Nice to see you. but you shouldn’t come here, aside from the spirits; there are dangerous animals here.”

“How do you know that there are dangerous animals here?” asked Suraj. “I didn’t hear anything or sense anything on our way here.”

“That in itself is a sign.” Said Hatori. “A forest is full of sounds, whether it is bugs or birds chirping, or some animals making noises. But nothing like that here, aside from trees and leaves making a sound.”

“That is indeed scary.” Said Liang. “Though why not go to a safer place?” He asked. “It is not like they can tell you where to go.”

“They can.” Said Hatori sadly. “I tried camping in some safer areas, the forest outside of this dangerous place. But the students attacked me there, and I had to run here.”

“That is just cruelty. You’re already banished, and they dare to attack you like this?” raged Maria.

“At least you guys came to meet me.” Said Hatori. “Hello, Daphne, Ravina. I hope we could have met in some better place.”

“Yeah, me too.” They said together.

“The idea of coming here to meet you was hers,” said Suraj.

“Thanks.” Said Hatori.

“You know, you can ask us anything. Anything you need, we will bring it to you here.” Said Josh.

“Not much.” Said Hatori. “Just bring me books from the library, and come to meet with me once in a while,” said Hatori.

PART 3.

Avinash is depressed. How can he show his face to anyone? He just sat in silence, while a great injustice was done right in front of him. Porus would have turned the entire hall into a pile of ash to prove his point.

How can he call himself the future king, the one who will defeat Porus, and start the new age of magic, when he can’t even defend his sort of friend from injustice?

“Sulking is no way to become a king.” Said Tom, his muscular friend.

Tom comes from the same background as Shin, an orphan, though they have different orphanages. Though his other two friends come from high families, Avinash is grateful that they do not mind including Tom in their group. Partly because he is just so good at fighting, and partly because he sees certain solutions which they do not consider due to their experiences.

And partly, he likes the boy, because, unlike his two other friends, he is the only one who has enough guts to drag him out of his room to cure his depression. “Don’t sulk. Instead, learn from this. Why were you forced to sit in silence?” he asked.

“Because I didn’t have any power, magical or political.” Avinash doesn’t like to admit this, but that is what it is.

“The magical power will come to you.” Said Tom. “Work on your political power. You won’t become king alone, or just by the help of the three of us. You’ll need more people.” Said Tom. “Once you’ve got political power, then you can stop injustices like that one from happening again.”

PART 4.

Professor Krodhatma is teaching how to write the common words of a normal language in runes. “And now, we will write synonyms for anger. Irate, rage, furious—”

“Mad.” One student couldn’t resist speaking that out loud.

The rest of the class glairs at him, while the professor begins to rage. “NO. Not Mad, angry! Angry is what is angry, do you hear me? No madness here, Only Anger and Angry Runes! “The class was let out early. But that is nothing new when it comes to Krodhatma. Other professors are often amazed that students never fail the rune exams, despite how many times he has to let out classes early due to their anger problems.

(End.)