A group of small white birds flew around with the rising sun. Three of them separated and flew into the house assigned to group no.2.

“Wake up! Wake up! Wake up!” I saw a small bird enter the room through the window and it started screaming human words.

“But I am awake?” I said seeing that the bird had no intention of stopping.

The bird stopped after hearing my words…

“WAKE UP!” The bird shouted and suddenly started flying towards me.

Startled I stood up and started running out of the room.

I noticed Adiel and Delsa running out of their rooms in the same way, As soon as I reached the hall the bird stopped chasing me and flew away.

“What the fuck” Delsa exclaimed seeing the birds fly away.

“Mine didn’t fly away?” Adiel said while pointing at the bird that was now sitting at the sofa, looking as if it was ready to attack.

“Should we get ready then?” I asked them.

“I don’t have my clothes with me, what are we supposed to wear?” Adiel said.

“There are clothes in the cupboard in the rooms, your belongings if you had any should also be there. At least mine were.” Delsa said and went back to her room to change.

Adiel shrugged and went to his room.

I entered my room and this time paid attention to how it looked like. It was 5 by 5 meters, The floor was wooden while the walls were white.

The bed was by the window that gave view of the trees outside the house. In front of the bed was a cupboard.

I opened it and found a bunch of Black overcoats, white shirts and brown pants, is this a uniform?

Under these clothes was my bag, which I think that Mr. Edward definitely didn’t teleport here. Just how much that guy loved the teleportation spell was a mystery to me.

Besides the window was another door, which when I opened revealed a small bathroom with a tap?

I quickly ran and touched it, to make sure my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me. I turned it and sure enough water ran through it.

I almost cried seeing a tap after 12 whole years.

Wait a second, what was lighting my room?

I quickly checked and saw a glass orb which was hanging to the roof by a thread and had a smaller metal ball floating inside. My god, this place has actual technology!

It make sense actually, making things more comfortable was a natural thing for humans, How there wasn’t anything like this in other places even after more than a million years of human history was weird.

I went back to the bathroom and saw a toilet that was not just a hole in the ground, It was an actual toilet with a flush and all! There was also a mirror in the bathroom.

I found a towel neatly folded in a corner. I bathed, wore the uniform and exited my room.

Adiel was already outside in a similar uniform.

“Chess?”

“Chess” And so we started setting up the pieces.

I was just about to move the first piece when Delsa came out of her room.

Her uniform was pure white, the designs were similar to ours but she was wearing a large white hat too.

As soon as she came out too the bird that had been silently chilling till now started flying around and shouting ‘Follow me’.

The bird took us out of the house and started taking us through the zig-zaggy path between the houses.

We soon at a ground in front of a huge 2 story building. This was the school building I suppose. There was a chair on a stage surrounded by chairs on all sides in between of the ground. I noticed that while there weren’t any children here yet there were quite a few young adults, oldies and middle aged people sitting near the stage of different chairs.

I sat down near the stage with Adiel and Delsa in tow.

“Mr. Edward is going to appear on that chair with a tea cup in his hand” I pointed at the chair and said.

While Adiel and I were betting on the chances of what I said happening, other children led by birds started arriving.

When all the seats were filled, Edward suddenly materialized on the chair with a tea cup in his hand.

“I won” I whispered near his ear with a grin.

“I am not going take much time, First of all, welcome to the most ancient academy on Prithyu! I wish you all the best of wishes for the path onward as mages! I do hope that I see some arcmages, grand mages and legendaries rise from your ranks. From now onward this place is your home.

These are the teachers that will be your mentors for the next 4 years” He said while pointing at the adults who were seated near him.

“They will call the names of the students they have been assigned and you will go stand in front of them. Of course you will not be taught by any one teacher completely, The teacher most qualified for teaching a subject is the one you will learn from. The teachers should begin with this while the children that I chose are to assemble in front of one of the guardian spirits of our institute, protector no.11”

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Edward disappeared from the chair in usual Edward style.

All the birds that had been flying in the air till now flew around in a circle and they suddenly merged into a large green and white owl. The owl flew down and sat on the chair that Edward just disappeared from.

After all the kids had been assembled into neat lines by the teachers we were taken into the Building.

“Take these stairs and go to the first room on the 2nd floor, if you need to ask any questions you will find me in the garden if I am free.” The owl said in his surprisingly rough voice and flew away.

The other teachers took the students with them to the class, I guess Edward is too cool for that.

We followed the instructions and found ourselves in a huge lecture hall.

“Hurry up and get seated” Edward didn’t magically appear on the chair this time but was already in the chair.

I sat near the first benches with Adiel and Delsa. Even after all the 40 something kids sat down the room was mostly empty.

Edward stood up and walked up to the board.

“I will tell about the curriculum today, the students of last year will give you the introduction of the buildings of our college and later you can explore by yourself.”

“For the first year no one will be taught magic. You will be taught the basics theories needed for mana manipulation and maths so that you can understand higher level knowledge later.

During this time I will teach you knowledge of much higher level so that you can build solid theoretical foundations. Also, the kids without the mana storage talent would enter and complete the initiate mage rank and you will be taught how to ingrave spell and how to use mana without engraving spells.

In the second year you will start engraving spells and learning what you could call real magic, by the 3rd year you will have become quasi mages. Then the knowledge you learned till now will be put to test as you will have to go on missions throughout the world for half a year, during the rest of the year we assist you in creating and choosing your path as mages and by the end of the fourth year you will be tier 1 mages if you are not lazy”

“Talent doesn’t matter anymore, It used to when the initiate mage rank didn’t exist but it doesn’t matter now, what matter now is the amount of blood sweat and tears you are willing to put on line for the sake of magic”

“Can we become Demigods then sir?” A boy raised his hands and asked.

“You have to add a lot of crazy to the hardwork situation but yes, you can become the next demigod of the mage faction.”

“Crazy in what sense?” Delsa asked

“Crazy as in ready to give up everything for power. I will not go in details but to become a demigod you have to risk your life, on a probability of 1 to 100, 99percent chance that you die and 1 percent that you survive.”

“That low?” The same boy who asked the first question asked.

Edward nodded.

“This topic, I was planning on starting tomorrow but I should teach you a bit of history today. You might know from the propaganda that gods circulate that they descended to punish the mages, it is not exactly wrong.”

“How so sir?”

“This planet originally only had 1 god, a total tyrant too. That time period is called the dark ages by us. The mages, in short managed to gather 500 demigods and killed that god after a lot of sacrifices. After that god’s death all the other gods gathered to see how one of their own could have been slain, they took away our path to become demigods, which made us have to play with death to become demigods, and they made our planet there central entertainment channel.”

The class grew silent for a second.

“You might think that today is hard for us, but the truly tough times were before the mages discovered the way to become demigods, The god that could rule over the world liked to play the bad guy character, he would send entire fleets of armies out to our lands to kill and conquer every decade, The mages fought side by side with warriors and other people to try and protect what was left of humanity in those times.

Then news arrived that the god had grown bored of humans and was about to send all his subordinates, which meant that hundreds of creatures equal in power to the strongest mage in the army would arrive and kill every human on this planet.”

I looked to the side and saw a kid gulping.

“What happened next was recorded by mages of those times in order to serve as proof that there once was a society of mages that existed on this planet.”

He tapped his staff on the ground and soon the whole world grew dark.

“You, the future generations of mages have to watch this recording at some point. You have to ingrain in your minds the fact that no matter how bad the times get, there was once a time that the entire humanity faced extinction.”

Soon his voice faded in the darkness and a bright light flashed.

“Has the recording started yet?”

“The audio yes but the video will start in about 30 seconds”

“I have to go fight too, you will record every sacrifice made, every mage who fell, every warrior who lost their lives and then use your life as fuel to teleport the records safely in the core of the planet.”

“Y-eayes sir” The voice of the female cracked a bit.

Just then the video turned on and I saw a young man wearing a bright red robe standing in front of a women dressed in simple clothes.

“I would have proposed to you if I had the chance to live through this war” The man said with a sad smile, I noticed a small tear drop fall down his face.

“And I would have accepted dear” The female mage said with a smile that could have melted the stars.

The male flew out of the room and the female soon followed. The perspective we were shown was of the female mage.

She walked forward with quick steps and as soon as she reached the end of the path the walls of a fortress came in view and beyond those walls stood thousands upon thousands of things.

I almost vomited seeing the grotesque creatures that seemed as though they were made after someone took all the organs and limbs animals had and mixed it all together randomly.

There were people of all ages standing on the walls and out of their hands flew fire, lightning, stones at the speed of bullets and all sorts of element. Floating in the air were mages who did about the same spells but on a much larger scale.

“Is this a grand-mage?” A horrible voice came from the enemy army and a creature holding a human figure flew and and threw it to the fortress.

A floating mage flew ahead and soon I heard a roar of anguish so loud that it shook my heart.

2 or 3 floating mages went ahead and brought the human silhouette and the mage back to the fortress.

I saw a human, No something that used to be a human. The man’s eyes had been gouged out, face disfigured and everything below the waist cut off, But somehow I saw the man say something, the women walked towards the man and when the man said it again I heard what he wanted to say.

“Bring me a piano *cough* I want to play music for the last time in my life”

The mage who had originally caught him had now started crying and he made a piano appear out of nowhere in front of him.

The man was helped in standing and finding the keys with the help of 2 mages who had been firing spells from the ground.

I felt tears forming in my eyes too, why would any benevolent creature enjoy such a war?

The man took a deep breath.

I watched the opposing army slowly approach the fortress despite the mage’s spells.

I watched the man who had just confessed his love getting torn in half while trying to stop the opposing parties approach.

I watched the man who had cried at his friend’s condition get crushed by a abomination who jumped and caught him.

I watched a warrior killing dozens of those abominations, hundreds of these abominations tore her apart.

Just as the abominations were about to touch the fortress the world suddenly froze.

The man started playing. His playing started getting faster and faster while the world remained frozen.

The I looked at the sky and watched as the sky slowly turned green, fire appeared randomly in the air and the clouds approached the ground.

And then the music stopped too, I looked at the man and saw him crying as he watched the horizon through the eyes that had appeared just as mysteriously as the green sky.

I turned my head and saw that the entire army that had been threatening these brave protectors had been burned to death.

The man looked at the torn body of his friend and after giving a weak smile he too turned to ash.

What was left was a message on the piano written in blood.

‘Let everything that made you a great mage burn away, in those ashes is the seed that will lead you to the path of power’