Xeno drew in a breath to steady himself before walking over towards the pedestal where he’d deactivate the shield between him and the crowd outside. Raising his hand above the command rune edged into the stone he took a final look at his other arm where his new familiar, Alexa, stood proud. She was a beautifully black raven, with glowing red eyes and a saw toothed beak. She looked like everything one could ask for from a familiar summoning, strong, intelligent, with near limitless possibilities to her evolutions, and she was completely fake.

The real Alexa was a fifteen year old looking girl that oozed innocens, belying her status as a demon lord. Xeno’s Summoning Ritual hadn’t gone according to plan, as when he’d summoned a lower.ranked devil, a true feat in and of itself, Alexa had ‘smelled’ his mana, become infatuated with its taste, and torn open the portal from the devils summoning. Afterwards she’d proceeded to consume the unfortunate devil, and then lapped up the blood on the floor from Xeno’s offering.

He’d then contracted her, only to realise that if anyone found out he summoned a demon lord he’d be royal boned, potentially literally, accidental summon or not. So he’d asked Alexa, for now, to disguise herself, and to hide her aura within his.

Readying himself for the possibility of Alexa’s disguise failing he pressed his hand down, only wincing a bit as his, still sore, palm met the smooth stone.

The curtain fell and hundreds of eyes turned towards Xeno. He stood there for a moment before proceeding down the stairs in front of him. Most turned back to what they were doing before, but some still held their gaze on Xeno and his new familiar, her apparent demonic lineage capturing their interest. Demons were not a common summon, and they held great growth potential, so some marked him as ‘of interest’ before returning to their conversation partners.

Xeno looked around for a familiar face, and found a few, some not very friendly, like Askan, and his posse. Despite the strict ignorance of class, that the school enforced, some still chose to define themselves by their origins, and not their talent. Askan was one of those. His familiar, a fat cyclops, was a rather fitting match for him, Xeno thought. Big, strong, but not an ounce of sense, nor depth perception.

Finally eyeing someone he actually knew he walked over. It was a man in his late forties, olive skin, big beard and an even larger belly. His name was Hassim, and was Xeno’s parent’s business associate, and the man that had helped Xeno the most with managing his affairs since they passed away. He was immensely grateful to the man. Instead of taking advantage of Xeno, like he easily could have, he instead chose to help the orphan.

Hassim had bought Xeno’s parents half in their company at more than a fair rate, gotten good prices for anything that Xeno had asked him to sell, and not asked for a penny in return. He’d even gone so far as to offer to adopt Xeno. He’d refused at first, not wanting to impose even further on the man, but he’d insisted. Claiming that even if none of his wifes would bear him a child then, by the Gods, he’d have a son before the sun set on him. Finally relenting Xeno had been adopted by one of the wealthiest Ajari outside of Ajara, and made an honorary member of the Ajaki family.

Walking up to the kind old man, who had been conversing with several of the more business oriented nobles until Xeno arrived, he could barely get a greeting out before he was raised up in a hug.

“The sun rises once more! I thought you might have been claimed by sleep in there, you took so long!”

Hassim’s rich voice rumbled with mirth, and his embrace slackened as he noticed Alexa, now circling above them.

“And what is this, a demon? Fascinating!”

He raised an arm to groom his beard, studying the bird.

“Yes, a most wondrous specimen. Have you named her?”

He turned towards Xeno.

“Hello yourself!”

Xeno said with a laugh.

“Her name is Alexandra, and I’ll have you know that I worked very hard to summon her. Claimed by sleep indeed.”

Xeno humphed, and looked at Hassim with fake frustration on his face. Hassim’s eyes glinted with bemusement.

“Hah! My manners seem to have abandoned me. Greetings young son of the setting sun.”

He mock bowed to Xeno, the grin on his face only fading slightly as he saw the bandages covering Xeno’s hand.

“Now that I get a proper look at you I can see that you’ve been working very hard. Is your hand alright?”

Xeno looked down at his injured appendage.

“I’ll live. I figured that since my aura was so clouded I’d have a better chance at the summoning if I offered up some of my own mana.”

“Oooh. Resourceful. Widened your horizons beyond mere wizardry, have you?”

Hassim was impressed. Too many magicians focused solely on their branch of magic, never paying mind to what synergy that might be found between the schools. He himself was a warlock. Unlike wizards, who got permanent partners which shared their growth with their summoners, warlocks had to sacrifice a part of their personal essence in exchange for temporary servants. These servants would then be contracted for a set amount of time, or until certain conditions were met. This meant that warlocks could often have weaker minions, but they had a heck of a lot more of them.

Hassim had, like Xeno, expanded his horizons in regards to what being a warlock meant. He’d figured out that spirits, being the ethereal beings, didn’t differentiate between external and internal mana, like most beings did. So Hassim had started summoning hundreds of utilitary spirits, feeding them on his aura rather than his blood, massively improving the abilities of his merchants, and servants. Providing his company with an edge that his competitors just didn’t have, unless they wanted to hire their own warlocks, and those didn’t work cheap. To keep his lead on other merchants, and warlocks, Hassim had sworn all his summoned and employees to secrecy, using punitive contracts that would inform him as soon as anyone dared break their oath.

Hassim had only dropped a hint towards Xeno to look into the other schools, but he’d apparently taken it heart. Summoning something that was leagues above what his small aura should have allowed. Reaching down Hassim patted Xeno’s shoulder, smiling at the boy’s success. Hassim had only started out help in the kid out of pity, but as he watched he began to see Xeno’s true worth.

Xeno had dealt with the loss of his parents in an admirable way. After the initial shock, he’d decided to opt out of the easy route, and instead set out to get stronger. He’d sold nearly everything from his parents estate, only keeping the most precious of memorabilia, and decided to invest most of it. Both in his education, and with some of the bigger and more secure companies, Hassim’s own included.

This had shown such a strength of character, and conviction, that Hassim had found himself compelled to help the boy more, and in the end had even decided to adopt him. Despite what the boy might think, Hassim felt that youngster had earned it. His wifes had never born him any heirs, and even if they had, Hassim wasn’t sure whether they’d have a tenth of the strength Xeno had shown. He’d never met such an iron willed child before.

Hassim smiled again. Yes, the boy would make a fine man.

“So how’s your semester going to be structured?”

Xeno looked up from where he had been playing with his familiar’s feathers.

“We’ll be learning Familiar Management, Familiar Evolution, Mana Cleansing, Magic Coding, and Physical. If I got it right we’ll only have one class each day, lasting from daybreak till noon. After that there’s free time, meant for personal training, or studying.”

“Oh, so you’ll have plenty of free time?”

Hassim said with a grin.

“Hah! As if. I need to get acquainted with this lovely girl,”

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He scratched Alexa under her beak

“and figure out how we’re going to evolve her.”

Xeno said this, but really all he’d be doing, for a while at least, would be to get accustomed to Alexas power, and train himself to handle at least a little of it. He switched to rubbing her beak for a moment.

Wizards who were weaker than their familiars wouldn’t be able to channel their full power, and if the gap was wide enough then they’d often be even worse of than those without a familiar. If you didn’t have some kind form of power over your familiar then it could become uncontrollable, leading the wizard to having to block their own aura until such time as they had the physical, and mental capabilities to deal with their unruly familiars.

Fortunately for Xeno, Alexa seemed rather reasonable, as far as demon lords went, and she was absolutely fascinated with the taste of his mana, giving him at least some modicum amount of control.

As Xeno looked back up from Alexa, which seemed to rather enjoy the attention that he'd been giving her, he saw the approving look that the fat merchant gave him before turning back to the nobles he’d been conversing with before.

Seeing that his foster parent busy, Xeno walked over to a nearby stone bench to sit down, and play with Alexa’s raven form.

As he sat there petting Alexa, eliciting cawing noises from the satisfied bird in his lap, a girl walked up next to him and sat down on the bench. It was Rosana, the girl that had had her Summoning Ritual just before Xeno’s.

He glanced over at her. Her red hair fell down the side of her face, hiding her expression behind a fall of scarlet. She was quite a bit taller than Xeno, hailing from the Northern Isles, and looked somewhat *ahem* further developed than the other girls in his class. Most of the other classmates shunned her, however, as she was only a chief’s daughter with a mediocre aura, and as such not of much political value. This had lead Xeno to the conclusion that most of his class consisted of pricks.

Xeno himself hadn’t been able to converse with her much uptil now, being too preoccupied with trying to solve his mana problem. Now, however, he might actually have a chance to get to know his classmates. The ones that weren’t pricks, anyways.

“Hi.”

Rosana looked up, seemingly startled to find herself sitting next to someone.

“Uh, hi.”

She said, apparently miffed at being talked to.

“You’re Rosana right?”

He blushed a bit at having to ask her name, but it was better than reliving the thing that had happened with Alexa.

“Yes.”

She answered in a small voice.

“I’m Xeno.”

He said cheerfully. She just looked down at the floor.

“So, um. What did you get?”

Xeno asked. She looked up.

“What?”

“What did you summon?”

“Oh. I got this little guy.”

She said as a small, red, and black, snake slithered out of her sleeve.

“He’s a blood viper snakelet.”

As she spoke the small snake crawled up her hand and wove itself between her fingers.

“You?”

“I got this little glutton.”

Xeno said as he stroked Alexa’s feathers.

“Her name’s Alexa, and I’m pretty sure she’s some kind of demon.”

Rosana’s eyes widened.

“Wow. How’d you manage that?”

Xeno saw the look on her face, and couldn’t help himself but smirk a litle.

“Well apparently she likes the taste of my blood, look.”

He unwrapped the bandages on his hand, and raised his hand above the rave, before squeezing his hand into a fist, eliciting his wound to open again and drip towards his familiar beneath. Catching sight of the droplets, Alexa threw her head backwards and greedily caught the few drops, shivering as they landed on her tongue. Rosana looked on, fascinated.

“Came crashing through the portal I’d opened, and licked up all the blood I’d used as sacrifice in the Ritual.”

“Wow. But wait. Isn’t the whole blood thing sorcerer and warlock territory?”

“Yeah, but my aura is so clouded I figured I had nothing to lose by using my own natural mana.”

She looked thoughtful for a minute.

“Huh, well I’m glad it worked out for you.”

“Thanks.”

Xeno beamed her a smile. He was going to continue talking to her, but the sound of a bell ringing tore through the room, ending all conversation in the room.

“Greetings. I am Professor Maria Hellsway, principle of this fine university, and I just wanted to congratulate our new wizards on their ascent into higher society. You’re all, doubtlessly, excited about the new opportunities, and abilities this will provide you, as you should be, but I wanted to give you all a few words of caution. Do not think these powers make you invincible, this is but the beginning of the long road that leads to true mastery of wizardry. Do not think yourselves superior or above others. An arrow through your throat, or a knife to the back can do just the same amount of damage that a fireball to the face wil. Throughout your lives some of you may forget this, but my hope is that even then, in your moments of darkness, you’ll still remember our values.”

She paused for a moment, drawing in a breath.

“For magic! Honor! And glory!”

The whole room shouted with her, reciting the Academy’s motto.

“Now then, you should all have gotten used to your familiars by now. What do you say we go to the dining hall for a little celebration?”

Her suggestion was met with a general cheer of approval, and the whole group started funneling out through the doors. Standing up Xeno turned to Rosana, intending to speak, but she beat him to it.

“It was nice talking to you. Want to go with me to the library later?”

Her cheeks reddened.

"Maybe we can help each other look for possible evolution paths?”

She twisted her foot, and looked away, her freckles nearly indistinguishable from her cheeks. Xeno, taken by surprise at her offer, went red as well.

“Uhhh. Yeah. I think I’d like that.”

As soon as Xeno finished she turned away and ran, her face completely hidden by her hair. A brown hand landed on his shoulder.

“Already wooing the ladies are we, mister wizard? Well I must say, you didn’t take very long.”

Hassim laughed. Xeno blushed. He’d been doing that a lot today, and his cheeks were so hot that it felt as if they could catch fire at any moment.

“Shut up.”

“Ah, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!”

Hassim’s laughter boomed, catching a few glances from the last people in the doorway.

“Come! Let us see how these academics celebrate!”

_____

The party had been well organized, with plenty of food, music, and even a light show, put on by a hired sorcerer, there were Bordanian dancers, sword swallowers, a selection of fire eaters, and, as a finale, a huge mountain of chocolate cake.

The only things that undercut Xeno’s joy were the scowles that some of the noble brats gave him, when they saw him, and the fact that despite his best efforts he never managed to find Rosana again. Aside from that he genuinely enjoyed himself. All his hard work had paid off, and now his only concerns, for the foreseeable future at least, would be to not get noticed too much, get strong enough to match a demon lord, and then figure out how the hell he was going to evolve a demon lord. Easy peasy. Fuck.

_____

After the party Xeno said goodbye to Hassim, and then headed to his room. He’d need to change out of his formal outfit, that he’d worn for the Ceremony. Shrugging out of his robe he hung it up, and then dragged his shirt over his head, revealing the lean body underneath. He wasn't muscular, not by a longshot, but he wasn’t skinny either. Folding his shirt roughly he turned to his chair to lay it down, only to meet a pair of boobs in his face.

“My, my. Look at you. Master is so handsome!”

Xeno’s gaze slowly began to move upwards, lingering for a moment on the glorious orbs that very nearly smothered his face. His eyes locked with those of the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Full lips, delicate jaw, and a button nose gave a rather noble look to her features. Her blonde hair further enhanced this, cascading down her smooth shoulders, and glorious chest, only just stopping at her cleavage. Xeno, not daring to even think about looking down, could only mumble a single word.

“Master?”

“Oh yes, that is our current relationship now, isn’t it? You feed me your delicious mana, and I serve you.”

“Alexa?!”

“Who else dummy?”

She pressed a slender finger against his nose.

“Now I believe that you owe me a taste test.”

“A what?!”

“Remember? You promised that once we got back to your room you’d let me test whether your mana tasted differently depending on where it came from.”

“I. I mean. Uh. Um. Library?”

“Oh right you were going there to ‘study’ with that girl. Hmmm. No this just simply will not do. We’ll have to continue this later, when we have more time. I can’t have my master standing a girl up, even if you did promise me first.”

That last part she said with a pout.

“I. Um. Sorry?”

“Apology accepted!”

Alexa leaned down and kissed Xeno, deep. Her lips locking around his, as her tongue invading his smaller mouth, weaving, and wrestling around his shocked tounge. She only let him go after a full minute, a stray strand of saliva still connecting their mouths as she did. She licked her lips.

“Mmmmn, it does taste different. Let’s go!”

Xeno stood still where she’d left him. Stunned.

“Master?”

Alexa asked, already in her raven form.

“Hurry up master! We can’t disappoint Rosana.”