"In a merciless stampede of the monsters the children and caretakers of the Vental Orphanage met with an unfortunate death."

The article continued with how tragic the deaths of everyone were and how the only mage who was also the director of the orphanage Altaam Vental tried his best to protect them but with his deteriorating age, his magical prowess was also decreasing. He was unsuccessful in saving anyone.

Most of the children's bodies were completely eaten and only some children and most caretakers' bodies were left behind, although in small pieces. The body of the director was a few hundred meters behind the bodies of others, he had stayed behind to give others some time to escape but possibly overestimated his strength.

Darrick could not continue reading it any longer. He felt hot in his chest, his heart squeezed. It was painful but certainly, not as painful as the pain those orphanage people possibly felt. His mind was going blank, he could not think straight. Everything looked blurry, his eyes were watering.

This isn't my emotion, it's all real Darrick's emotions. 'Darrick' spent his childhood there, all of them were his family. Now that I'm in control of his body I can feel some pieces of emotions here and there. Those emotions are melting with some triggers and this was a good trigger for that. Thought Darrick while rubbing his eyes.

This is all just too sudden though, I haven't even collected my own emotions and now another emotion was dumped on me to soothe. Not having parents is not that big of an irregularity in this world theme but suddenly every connection I am supposed to have disappearing feels like it's not a coincidence anymore.

Did someone summon me into this body and clear anyone who knows the real Darrick? Then did the orphanage tragedy happen because of me? But it was clearly done by monsters, nobody can control them except magic beasts, right? Or maybe I'm wrong, I can't be certain that no one can control monsters. But why me or him? Shit! This is too much, I don't know anything and still so much is happening, there is nothing here that's in my control so uh... I can't be too much paranoid now. I should try to figure out things one at a time.

Darrick was sweating again, a lot, his hands were shaking. The uncertainty of the future was too much worrying. And whatever was happening around him, it did not look that simple or straightforward. There was probably a lot of conspiracy surrounding him or he was just paranoid but it did not hurt being a bit more cautious.

"Darrick, are you ok?" A concerned voice asked, but he was not in the state of mind to answer politely, "I don't think so, but I can manage."

"Here take this, drink a bit of water to cool your head off." The old lady sitting in front of him offered some water.

All four of the passengers in the compartment were now aware of what happened. Walter was silent after asking about Darrick's state. The guy next to him was shifting restlessly in his place, he looked around the same age as Darrick, he did not give any comforting words or maybe because of his lack of social skills, he did not find any gaps in conversation to give a word or two of comfort in between.

The old lady, Hailey Wern, was the one most concerned about his well-being. She had already told him many times to cry out to release whatever sadness was going to build up and she even gave him water and a fruit to calm him, the fruit was weird looking though.

"I'm sorry for your loss, young man. If this is too much then you should let it out or if it helps you in some way you can also talk about it with us."

The emotions were still hot, they were slowly melting but it wasn't fast enough so he opted for the next best option to the crying one so he talked, even though he himself did not know how much of it was the truth.

"Thank you for the concern, my chest feels heavy and I'm feeling extremely sad just thinking about them, the director Altaam was like a father to all of us in the orphanage. He would showcase some silly magic and make us really surprised. We would all start running around firing some imaginary magic spells at each other. That would be a massive headache for the caretakers. I remember sister Hailey was our favourite caretaker, you ma'am reminded me of her with not only your name but with your care too." he sniffled.

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"I recently visited there and met up with all of them, now I can't imagine all of them being dead and I'll never be meeting them ever again and even though so many things happened I just got to know it now after whole two weeks and I can't even go back there as it is already barricaded as the threat of monster attacks are there."

Darrick was spouting nonsense, mostly nonsense that is. Whatever the backstory he told was all made up on the spot, and other than that all other things were in the newspaper. He was making up a conveniently good and believable story to vent out his frustration and sadness caused by Darrick's emotional remnants. And it was working, the weight behind the heaviness of emotion was slowly but surely loosening up. Those good guesses may have been the closest thing to the truth so emotion clutters were mostly cleaned. Just a few more and he would be a free man, probably.

Except for the bullshitting, nothing could have worked for me right now. Those emotion's remnants can't read me but I can do that so the closest bullshit was the best bullshit. Fooling people with made-up things is indeed a tough task, I just can't convince everyone the same way but this just worked on my first try. Mostly because I was inflicted with the emotion and all those books I read finally came to some use at least.

To the people in this compartment and the next one, he now had an image of a pitiful boy who lost his family and friends. Some people who overheard things from other compartments also had reactions like condolences and deep pity.

I do not want the pity of some passerby, even the real Darrick wouldn't take this pity.

While thinking he heard the train horn, the train had reached its stop, and no one other than Walter stood up. He took his one small bag in one hand, then picked up the newspaper with another hand and tucked it between his arm and body. "It was good to see you, Darrick. Take care of yourself, don't beat yourself for it. Then see you again." Walter said his goodbye and went for the door.

Darrick peeked his head to see the station from the window. There was a large board, Luxure

written in 'Natil'. That must have been the name of this stop. He looked at the doors, and around ten people got down but the people waiting to get in were a lot more like at least forty people.

There were a lot of people on the train and all of their destinations were the same. This was the last stop before everyone reached their destination. The place was a dream for most people as it opened up a lot more possibilities. It did not matter how many people got off or hoped on, the greatest place in the whole kingdom was the nest and final stop of this train.

"Astoria"

The capital city of Zalin and the place where the Royal palace stands. The grandest, the richest and the strongest place in the entire kingdom. It also had one of the four greatest academies in the whole continent.

Darrick was now once again reading the diary. It mentioned that he was going to Astoria to pursue his higher studies. All of the scholarships he applied for were approved, which means his favourite academy, the best in the kingdom also accepted him. The scholarship was ridiculously good, it not only provided monetary aid but also a seat in the entrance exam for the 'Caladric Academy' also called 'The Great Royal Academy', although nobody calls that.

The entrance exam was one of the toughest exams in the whole world. Only the ones who passed have the chance to attend the academy but not anyone one can take the entrance exam, only the select few. They were chosen based on many criteria even for the entrance exam. That was the level of the Caladric Academy.

As the greatest Academy in the kingdom, it had a vast legacy and deep roots. The academy was there way before the kingdom of Zalin. It had a legacy of around 2100 years and had taught more than half a million people in its entirety, which was amazing for an education institute.

The most important part of all this is Darrick was already accepted. He passed one of the toughest exams for late teens in the entire world. hundreds of thousands of teens write this exam every year around the whole world, not just the Zalin kingdom.

I don't know how tough this exam was but If I had a bit of time to study then I also would have passed these exams with relative ease. It's not like the reason I couldn't go to top universities was because of my test scores. I travelled to different countries to write the exams and topped it, how tough would it be? I couldn't write this exam but I will check it out afterwards and I would also try giving the other great academies exams, hehe.

However he was back then it did not matter, at the end of the day, Darrick's future path was set in this world and he was looking forward to it. The Caladric Academy taught a lot of subjects from languages to advanced mathematics and astronomy to magic. Almost everything this world had to offer was taught there, or that was what they claimed to do at least.

All the subjects from sections other than magic had a good portion of practical classes but the magic and all of its subjects were mostly theory parts until the middle of the second year and from then onwards practical portion, they kept the practical session strictly to a minimum.

For all the other courses you can get in directly if you have passed the entrance exam but for magic-related courses, you have to have taken the test measuring your magic potential and only if you get satisfactory results you can get in.

Now there was a small problem, the real Darrick did not want to be a mage so he did not even bother to take the magic test.

Hence Darrick was in quite a pickle now, thinking maybe his destiny of becoming the archmage was cut short because of a small mishap.

*Sigh*