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“B-But broth-” Oswald stammered out before he was silenced by Edmund raising his hand.

“I already heard of what happened, did you have the chance to use your aura during the match?” Edmund asked and got a “Yes but-” in reply before he cut Oswald off again.

“Then do you mind explaining how you still managed to disgrace our house’s name? Were you drunk or high on drugs to perform so poorly and lose to an obviously tired opponent?” Edmund asked while the anger in his glare increased.

This time Oswald blurted out his answer before his brother could interrupt him, “That is because he was only acting tired!”

After some silence, “Explain.” was the only thing Edmund said before Oswald told his brother of the fight from his point of view.

Once Oswald was done, Edmund rubbed his chin while contemplating, ‘This Luke Ironcrest is obviously more skilled than my brother and beat Oswald while he was using aura, but even as skilled as he is, he is of lower noble standing and has shown disrespect to my house.’

Edmund’s contemplation was broken when Oswald asked, “Brother… are you able to help me resolve this? Or should we bring this up with father?”

With that question, Edmund returned his glare to Oswald, “This little tiff you have with Luke Ironcrest never goes near Father’s ears, do I make myself clear?” Edmund said sternly.

Oswald gulped and nodded his head in agreement, but still asked, “But why?”

Edmund sighed as he looked at his younger brother, there were days he wished he was not born the eldest who had so many responsibilities put on his shoulders as the heir to his father’s title. But as the heir, he was taught many things that Oswald did not have to learn as much of, one of which was politics.

“Because if we bring this to father’s attention, it may become an official conflict, and no matter if we win or lose, we will come out looking bad. If we win, our family’s enemies and detractors will say we are bullying a new rural noble, and if we lose to the son of a new rural noble, our long-standing reputation as one of the top martial families will be tarnished. While this conflict is kept within the grounds of the academy, we are given the benefit of the doubt that we are just young, stupid, and learning.” Edmund explained.

“As for what I can do to help you, I cannot directly intervene, it will not look good for me to beat a boy three years younger than me”, Edmund said, not knowing that Luke was much younger. “Instead, what I can do is train you. From today onwards, you are to meet me at my dorm’s training hall after school. When you are ready, you will challenge Luke Ironcrest again and remove the stain on our family’s honor.”

***

A few weeks passed after my first encounter with the lady dragon known as Professor Sageira Drackot, and after every Languages of Power night class, she would keep me behind to chat for some time.

That was how I learned about elder dragon territories and the Argus Kingdom being part of her turf, and instead of laying around in a shiny hoard all day like most dragons, she was more attracted to knowledge and magic, so she cut a deal with the Royals to make the Royal Academy’s ever-growing library her new hoard so she could bask in the accumulated knowledge of the many brilliant minds throughout the ages. And she has been doing this for a few hundred years.

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When I asked her how she kept her cover, she explained that as the years passed, she would age her disguise until a certain point, and then she would use the same kind of illusion she tricked me with while we fought for the first time to create a new middle-aged woman disguise.

Then the kingdom will come up with a name and background for her, and all important people in the know would just rubber stamp all the supporting paperwork to get her new alias to take over her old alias. She would then show up at the Royal Academy alongside her illusion and introduce it as her replacement while announcing her retirement. After a few days of farewells for her old alias, she would polymorph into the appearance of her new alias and take over.

In return for letting her claim the Royal Academy’s library as her “dragon's lair”, she would stop any major kingdom destroying natural disasters that were not of their fault and beyond the kingdom’s ability to resolve, but she would not interfere with their politics or wars, be it internal or external, even if the Argus Kingdom get invaded and conquered, it would not be her problem, worst-case scenario, she would transport the library to her hideout and see if the new administration would take the same deal.

But other than chatting, I also used my one-on-one time to go over some things I learned during her lesson and compare notes on our different uses of Instinctive/Molecular Magic.

After giving her some basic chemistry/physics lessons, she quickly picked up on how I cast Molecular Magic. The same could not be said for my progress, I was told to concentrate on the “essence” of the element and will it into existence, I can only assume it is in a more metaphorical sense because even after repeated attempts, I can only feel that I am on the cusp of pulling something off. Until I succeeded, I was just burning mana at a prodigious rate.

In other news, Oswald and his goons have been quiet ever since I whooped their asses during the sparring session and only acknowledged me enough to give me dirty looks. Other than that, I have been having a great time with my other subjects. I breezed through the mandatory subjects except for eleven language classes which were at around the same level of complexity as any other new language I have ever learned.

Advanced Spell Theory kept my interest because it went into more in-depth theories and applications than the basics I was taught at home.

During Advanced Combat & Tactics classes, we learned of large and small group tactics, and different tactics used in war, be it on open grounds, attacking or defending during a siege, and even proper retreat tactics. After a few practical exercises to apply all the theories we were taught, I was kind of banned from taking part in student-on-student exercises due to me being an unfair advantage for whichever team I joined, I would only be included if it was an instructor vs students exercise.

To make up for my exclusion from the group activities, Instructor Matthias Greyham assigned some assistant instructor trainees as my “group” and “enemies” during student-on-student exercises, and during the sparring portion of the class, the assistant instructors would take turns sparring with me so I do not get used to fighting just one person.

Next up was Enchanting class, we were all learning how to draw a schematic before we even so much as touched an enchanting table.

We were all given small chalkboards and given schematic problems to solve or build schematics with a certain purpose, this saved a lot of precious paper, it reminded me of algebra questions asking me to find x or y.

On the blacksmithing front, the first new lessons were more theory-heavy, but as the classes progressed, we started making simple things like hooks, nails, rivets, horseshoes, simple tools, and small decorative Items.

Lastly was his night class for Array Architecture, I learned about the different grades of mana crystal, their uses, and placements in arrays, other than that, the Array Architecture class was very similar to the Enchanting class, in the way that we were also issued chalkboards to draw out arrays during class.

Overall, classes were rather enjoyable and my days fulfilling, and with Oswald piping down, a few of my classmates actually started chatting with me, most of them being from noble families, as for the commoner students, the most I could get out of them was a casual “hi” or a hand wave to greet me, but it is a start, baby steps, we will get there one day.