My name is Victor Frankenstein, currently a student at the Luse Academy. I have a supportive family, a charming and loving fiancée, and a best friend to keep me company, to most this is the ideal life they dream of. But not me for I am troubled by a desire that can’t be satisfied by money, power nor fame, a desire to know; when I’m eating, when I’m conversing, when I’m sleeping, constantly forcing me to search every niche and cranny to establish every ounce of causality.
In my youth to sate my wild curiosity, I’ve read all the books that I can get my hands on, books that explain the phenomenon of the world. It is only then that I can feel a moment of respite and satisfaction; especially books regarding fields of biology and chemistry, those two are like a child’s favorite meal, never grown tired of it.
My family’s library has around 2,000 collections of books, while academic journals and such only consist one-tenth of that, to a viscount it is already a plentiful collection. During my browsing of my family's collections on academic findings, the name of the Luse Academy kept making its presence. Luse Academy, ‘a place for those who seek knowledge and truth’ the motto inscribed below what assumed to be the academy's crest. While this statement might be a bit of a hyperbole, it does resonate with me for the first time I felt understood that there is a place for people like me, and the more I find out about the academy the more I dreamt of becoming a part of it.
When I became 16, my father called me to his study and asked me what I intended to do with my life. I told him about my plan of joining the academy. My father looked at me perplexingly and perhaps with a hint of sorrow told me stories of family values and the importance of family business in the last-ditch effort for me to stay and inherit the family business. He has changed, ever since mother died, he used to be so focused on winning but now he’s always afraid of losing. I don't blame him though but could never see myself as a merchant.
Seeing how I'm set on my decision he reluctantly agreed to offer assistance. Using some of the family’s connections and favors in the capital city, I was offered a chance in the form of several tests on academic knowledge and I didn’t disappoint. Soon I got the acceptance letter from the academy I was overjoyed; that day me, my fiancée Elisabeth, and my dear friend Clerval celebrated late into the night.
The Lusian capital, where the Luse Academy is housed, home to the political drama signature to the Lusian court, the construction of the docks across the capital’s shorelines 200 years ago only fueled the clash with the introduction of profit. The king wouldn’t care who is in charge of the docks as long as the crown’s taxes are collected but to whomever ever put in charge of the dock, there’s always room to squeeze their interest in there. Thus over time, the control of the dock is divided primarily between five different factions.
Like all things in the capital the academy isn’t free from politics, noble families often have their heirs become a student of the academy not so much for knowledge or to learn but to establish relations with other heirs, influential figures, or when the princes themselves. All sorts of people come to the academy for reasons other than learning and all form their own little groups. But I’m not interested in all the social affairs, I am here to learn; upon joining the academy I was like a kid in a candy store free to sample knowledge of so many fields.
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Over the next two years, I’ve made great progress studying under a professor, who was in good relations with my family, particularly in the field of mathematics, biology, chemistry, and physics. Those two years were the most fulfilling years of my life, the majority of which are spent in my dorm studying away, conducting experiments in the laboratories, or exploring the academy’s library.
The Luse Academy’s library is home to the world’s largest collection of reading materials, it is a labyrinth containing books from every origin, and to be honest I still haven't scouted all parts of the library. However, as my two years of study were coming up I faced a conundrum; the academy simply doesn’t have any more to teach me at least under the status of a normal student. Most would be glad to have graduated from the academy but as I have mentioned in the beginning I’m not like most.
I needed more, I was the metaphorical equivalent of a thirsting man wandering in a desert who's at last encountered an oasis and you are telling me to stop when I haven't drunk my fill? So like all logical people would do in my situation, I’ve turned to the supernatural. As someone who’s grown up on a vast array of books, I can tell you for certain that supernatural or occult forces exist in the world. The difficult part is finding one and not getting killed in the process. For the common folk finding the supernatural is extremely difficult, like nobilities the occults communicate in secrecy and have closed off circles exclusive to their kind. It would be extremely difficult for a normal person to find them without some supernatural contraption or an inside man guiding them. Even if one does manage to find them, without enough power or influence you can’t harm them but they can harm you, after all not all cults deal in arbitrary concepts like common morality.
Lucky for me, it turns out a cult was right under my feet all this time. A trip to the academy’s library for further research on the supernatural has revealed to me an autobiography of a senior scholar who used to study here many decades ago on a long overlocked shelf. In the autobiography, he has mentioned the existence of a cult within the academy itself and their practice of each year selecting the most talented and promising students as their new member. This along with some more clues I've found when probing into the history of the academy has led me to conclude the existence of an inner circle within the academy.
Logically it makes sense for the academy to possess some sort of supernatural standing being so unbounded by the politics so ever-present in the capital. Now I think of it the crown has always had a friendly yet ambiguous relationship with the academy and so do the noble families, the more that I think about it the more it makes sense that the academy has supernatural associations. After carefully considering the ramification of joining this hidden circle, I’ve decided to join based on the reasoning that if the crown does allow the academy’s existence in the capital they must at least be ethically sound enough to be reasoned with, otherwise the crown would never leave a ticking time bomb in the capital for the last few centuries, and joining them would be the better options out of any other alternatives.
Now that I’ve made my decision I did everything that would exemplify me as a scholar as this was my last semester in the academy. In addition to receiving top grades on all my class papers were written, experiments conducted and help ever given to my fellow scholars. Not to brag, while I’m sure that if they are looking for the student of the most promise and potential I would be the one, but I can never be certain of factors outside of my control so I gave it my all. My efforts are all but rewarded when on a dark and stormy night I received the invitation from the ever so enigmatic inner circle of the academy in the form of a single letter on my dorm bed.