From the moment Mia and the rest of the special class returned to the classroom until lunch time they had normal lessons with Mirai. That would somewhat be the norm but for more advanced lessons, the actual professors of those subjects would come if needed.

“Professor Mirai. Even if you are going to lecture us in the more basic lessons, I am a little curious about what exactly you would be a professor of.” Mia said before the professor actually started the lessons.

“Probably a Magic Professor of any subject up to intermediary level. I am a 50 star ranked emitter, one of the 5 strongest in the academy. Besides that, probably governance. I learned a lot due to my experience as vice-principal even if I didn't really have any when I started so I think I can teach a lot about subjects related to it.” Mirai said, a little proud of herself.

The lessons were basic stuff. Most of the students didn't really like to receive lessons they already had but since there were new students, some like Mia and Klaws who didn't receive private education like the rest, they needed to at least be put on the starting line of some subjects.

First was a basic explanation of how the academy worked normally. You applied, took a test and if you passed you were accepted. During this test the academy would see what exactly you want to do along with what they think you can do and draft a basic class schedule for you. They would review it after the first day tests and give it to you on your first lesson. Different classes had different lengths and you needed to finish an earlier course to go to the next. Some classes had fewer students than others due to that reason. To graduate you had to gather a certain amount of graduation points. Those were earned every time you passed a class. Following the schedule given to you would let you graduate in about 5 years but you could do it earlier and the academy allows people to stay until they are 20 years old. After that you either pass or are kicked out.

As for graduating earlier, if you think you can pass a class, you can take a test. But if you fail you will need to do things normally and take the test only at the end of the course. Falling it means you have to either redo the entire course or do extra-classes and then retake the final test. None of this applied to the special class it seems.

As for the why of all that, it had to do with the lesson, history.

Mirai gave a quick overview of the kingdom's history. Azuria used to be just a region of a bigger empire some thousand years ago. Due to a monster attack in the capital, the emperor died and the empire fractured. Azuria, back then, was mostly this city and the lands outside. As the years went by, the family that was once in charge of the city and the region crowned themselves royalty and founded the country. For a few hundred years not really of note happened. The usual border skirmishes and other monster invasions happened but nothing of note. For better or worse Azuria is really in a calm part of the continent. The reach of the kingdom slowly increased over the years and around 300 years ago the borders they had today were set for the most part.

The kingdom to this day doesn't have many big cities. Only 3 come to mind if you think of big cities. The capital, Blueport, the biggest port town of the kingdom and the town where most of the foreign stuff of the kingdom comes from and Starveil, a city that is growing up in the north. It got the name due to the aurora you can see almost every night.

About the same time the borders settled themselves, the king at the time asked someone to build something that would put the kingdom on the map. A scholar named Yu suggested a military academy like all the big kingdoms and empires had. After going over all the other options, the academy was selected. It took 50 years to actually finish the construction and recruitment. Since this academy was supposed to be one of the best places on the continent to study, they had to find the best teachers.

Yu was the first principal of the academy and stayed in the position for 75 years until his death. The second principal was the fourth prince of the time and he stayed there for more 75 years. This time the name of the academy really went out there and we earned our spot in the world. Once he retired Maximillian took the principal spot and he has been there so far.

It was during the time of the second principal that things became the way they are now. Before, you just had to attend the academy for a while and you would graduate, like all the other big academies at the time. The fourth prince didn't like that some people didn't qualify for graduation so he made people work for it. So now instead of social pressure trying to make you learn, you had to learn to graduate.

A few more small details were added. People who graduate here and are from the kingdom usually find themselves in the military days after graduation. Some students may be drafted in emergency situations. It only happened twice but it happened. There is a rule in the academy that anything that happens inside of the academy is a personal problem. Any group, kingdom or empire that tries to make a problem that happened inside of the academy between two people a greater problem, will be banned from having people from there along with its associates attend the academy. 5 kingdoms are banned from the academy so far, one is trying to pay its way back. Mirai joked that it was not working.

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The next lesson was a quick lesson in geography and how the kingdom worked. Contrary to what Mia imagined, most of the kingdom was plains not forests. Around 60% to be exact. The kingdom was a big exporter of food and tamed monsters. The farms just outside of the capital were pretty much only to sustain the capital but there were hundreds to thousands of industrial farms out there that export all they grow.

The capital is more to the west of the country but it still is the hub of the country. With magic the kingdom can dispatch troops almost anywhere in it in a matter of minutes. Communication magic is expected of anyone who is not a foot soldier in the military here so the problem of communication is taken care of.

Inside the kingdom there aren't really any dangerous areas. Monsters tend to be on the reasonable side. The really dangerous monsters are all on the coast. Not that there is much contact with them, but a good amount of powerful troops stay at the coast all the time for security.

The kingdom also has one known dungeon. Everybody gave up on conquering it and now all efforts in it are now revolving about not letting the dungeon grow or cause a stampede.

Mia asked what exactly was a dungeon and a stampede. She heard about it but since it's not something people go out of their way to talk about, Mia didn't really have much information.

Mirai explains that dungeons are otherworldly places. Once a concentration of mana and/or monsters reaches a critical point, a hole in space opens, linking it with another place and being, usually a monster. If you didn't get rid of the being serving as an anchor for this opening, the area where the hole appeared would start to fuse with our world somewhat and begin to grow. Up to a point it only grows on the other side of the hole but if you don't take care of things, it will start to grow outside too.

The only good part about dungeons is that they always follow their own rules. They need things to enter them and use mana so they can grow, so they produce various things to entice the living beings on the other side of the hole. Some places have various dungeons, all specialized in something but it takes a monumental effort to not let a dungeon grow out of control. If a stampede, an almost never ending wave of monsters attacking anything they saw, happened, it was really easy for other nearby dungeons to start one too. During a stampede, monsters could send mana from outside the dungeon to it.

Mia thought to herself that it was a risk versus reward situation.

Of the various monsters that the kingdom exported, the carrier bird was the most popular. It had innate special abilities that allowed it to carry a lot of stuff if trained and it could survive a lot of travel. They were the go to method of long distance communication when magic was not an option.

The other one was a monster pig. They had strong regeneration powers and could be used for emergency food if you could keep it healthy enough to regenerate. They could also smell poisonous or venomous stuff really easily.

The last lesson was more or less world history. It was explained that the world didn't always had mana. Mia kind of knew that. Nowadays mana is becoming a natural part of everything but you can still find the odd place that is shielded from mana. Strangely enough, taking the mana away from something that had it doesn't do as much damage as one would think. They just become normal or as normal as some people can be in relation to their current situation. If you took all the mana from a truly high ranking cultivator, he would just become a normal person the age he appears to be and age as such no matter how many hundreds of years of life he had. Natural strength was also maintained to some extent.

As for how it affected the world, it was somewhat about what the lesson was about. The continent that Mia was now, the north-western continent was probably the first one to find uses for mana so the ancient empire that conquered the entirety of it probably came about because of that. The south-western continent was connected to the north-western one by a strip of land that became submerged by the sea in regular yearly intervals was probably the second one but due to the mutations of the wild life there, they couldn't reach the levels of the ancient civilization. The cataclysmic destruction of that ancient empire probably didn't help much either.

The other two continents, the north-eastern one and the south-eastern one were completely disconnected from anything as far as borders go. The north-eastern was the continent plagued by monsters so it was a little hard to find any history related to it. The south-eastern had a bunch of nomads, something that, until the last few centuries, was the norm, so much of their history was lost when the groups that wanted to stay in one place won their wars against the various nomad groups.

One thing that was entirely impossible before mana was children between people of two different races. This along with the fact that monsters are too much of a threat are the given reasons why most countries don't try to conquer vast amounts of territories like the ancient empire did. Mirai didn't really explain it directly but one of the most common forms of conquest in older times was conquering the woman of a place. If you got all of them pregnant with your kid, you pretty much won. Now that pretty much everyone could 'win' against anyone, people started to be really careful about starting wars and losing their women.

There are also legends about gods, people who got so strong in ancient times they ascended to a higher plane of existence and occasionally pop back in our world but that can't be confirmed but it can't be denied either. There are some really stupid powerful people out there that just ignore society so something just above that isn't out of the possible.

Mia thought about asking about what Gina had once told her but she got the feeling that she should look into it by herself.

With that the classes ended and a signal for lunch sounded. All the students left their room and began to move to the restaurant building, which was a giant cafeteria.