Emil woke up in the infirmary a few hours later.

It was already nighttime by then.

Upon waking up, an agent visited him and clicked his badge with his.

"You've lost 5 disciplinary points for fighting and 10 for missing the school Orientation.

If you accumulate more you may face punishment or even expulsion."

The agent was ready to leave after saying his piece.

"But i didn't even-"

*Cough*

"But i didn't even start the fight, what about him?"

Despite it being difficult for him to talk, Emil still found it in him to ask that question.

He wasn't the one who started the fight, why was he receiving a punishment? This was unfair!

"The other person lost 10 points as he was the one who started it.

Duelling within the academy grounds is allowed but fights are strictly prohibited."

Emil relaxed a bit after hearing that.

The students discriminated against him enough as it was, if even the academy were to discriminate then he'd truly have no chances of surviving here.

Emil walked outside with difficulty and asked one of the staff where the stone monolith was.

After waking to it, he clicked his badge with it and received all the information he missed at the orientation.

There were detailed explanations regarding the school system within the information.

One of them was the examination rankings.

Emil could see his rank all the way at the bottom, number 300.

With a score so low it was unprecedented in the academy's entire history.

"Huh, so this was where they knew me from."

Looks like he didn't need to go looking for trouble on his first day of school, toruble could find its way to him instead.

There was much information to read about, but he had to get to his accomodations first.

Thankfully, the badge had a map with real time location. He wouldn't need to ask for directions if he knew how to use it from the beginning.

He headed to his room using the location written inside his badge.

Each person received not a room but an entire house of their own with fortification and barriers that kept sound and other disturbances outside, as well as a large front yard where they could practice their spells and skills.

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Quite extravagant to say the least, but this was the Royal Academy so this much was expected.

Students needed a safe and quiet place to study and cultivate, and the individual houses provided by the academy were one such environment.

The academy had rankings and each person's accomodations changed every month according to their rank.

The higher your rank the closer your house to the source of the mana vein and the higher the mana density.

As of now, the person at the top rank was someone that Emil was familiar with.

He couldn't give less shit about it at the moment though.

"Ughh."

He plopped down on his bed with a grunt.

It hurt. His entire body did.

The bastard was strong, his hand was heavy.

Well, it wasn't like he wasn't used to getting a beating, or pain for that matter.

Ignoring the pain screaming from every part of his body, he got up to take a look around his abode.

"This place is insane."

A living room, two bedrooms, a bathroom with a toilet and bathtub, a kitchen, a dedicated cultivation room, a training room in addition to the large yard outside.

It was the full package. comparing it to his humble servant quarters back at the Burton mansion was an insult.

Emil couldn't stop grinning, like a donkey who's just been handed candy.

This was the life. This was the shit.

He couldn't even dream of a place like this before, now it was all his.

Some of the exhaustion of the day was lifted upon seeing the house.

Now it was time for more important matters.

He had to find a way to open the ring, his condition was bound to act up again soon.

he wanted to do something about it as soon as possible.

He tried injecting mana into it but that didn't seem to work. He spilled his blood on it but that didn't work either.

"Pretty stubborn are you? I won't be sleeping tonight unless I open you, literally."

Emil stopped holding back at that point.

He started biting it, stomping it, dipping it in cold and hot water, licking it, yelling out nonsensical chants, exhausting all his mana into it, hell. He even found a hammer from somewhere and started hammering it, to no avail.

*Huff*Huff*

"Open up already dammit!"

Emil looked at the thing with resentment.

He's been waiting to open it for years.

Whatever was inside was what his parents left him, the cure to his condition, his bridge to getting stronger.

He wasn't gonna let it remain closed now that he's finally awakened.

One more time, he wore the ring and started injecting mana into it.

Without realizing what time it was, his condition started flaring and sent him rolling on the ground.

"Auugh!"

A pillow, he needed his pillow, he was gonna break his teeth otherwise.

It felt like every single molecule of his body was being burnt to a crisp.

It baked him from the inside out.

His face and skin were getting redder and redder and soon enough, his body started giving off steam.

As Emil was enduring the pain, an idea struck him.

He started injecting mana into the ring.

It worked!

The ring, for the first time in years, started showing reactions.

The eyes of the head carved into the ring started glowing redder and redder before dropping at a certain point.

The ring stopped showing any other reactions thereafter.

Emil assumed that it was open now, but he couldn't check it out yet.

He had to wait until tomorrow when his torture stopped.

Six excruciating hours finally came to an end.

Emil took the ring and hopped into the bathtub before filling it with cool water to cool his body off.

He knew from the beginning the ring in his hand was no ordinary ring, it was a storage ring.

It could store items many times its size inside it.

Such artifacts were rare and extremely expensive. The more space a storage artifact had the higher its worth.

To activate it, you needed mana, hence why Emil couldn't open it until now.

Just like Emil thought, the ring showed reactions once he injected it with mana, and revealed its insides to him.

There was nothing but an empty black space there, as well as a black scroll.

He had to look around for a good few minutes to find the scroll since it blended so well with the background color.

Emil took out the scroll excitedly and examined it.

'this must be a cultivation technique.'

Without wasting too much time, he rolled the scroll open and took a look at its content.

His brows furrowed upon looking at the writing though.

It wasn't written in any language he'd known.

It wasn't in inscription language either, it looked very different.

But that wasn't the strange part.

The strange part was that he could read it.