The third and final day of the orientation camp arrived. We cycled to school this time and avoided the large crowd of people on the bus. We ran into a small problem because apparently many people seems to be thinking on the same train of thought that we did, and we ran out of space for bicycle racks. Luckily we can perform magic, we cycled to an isolated corner and used magic to shrink the bicycles down to a size of a stamp. Then we entered the building B5. The principle isn’t here yet, she is most probably addressing the entire new student cohort now in building D6.
Then Omi passed by me. I can tell she wasn’t happy that someone is stronger than her. She most likely has claimed the top position in everything in her high school, and never had someone defeating her in anything before. Suddenly with someone much stronger than her appearing it is of no doubt that she will be mad.
“I will defeat you, Innight!” She said these as she passed by me.
I ignored her. No matter how powerful she becomes, she will not be able to defeat me, someone of Infinity Level magic. The stage is once again filled with smoke and the principle stepped out from it.
“Good morning, students. Today we aim to train all of you in terms of Light magic. We have a few cursed artifacts, and your job today is to purify them completely.”
Time groaned when she heard that, and I can understand perfectly why she did so. She excels in Time and Shadow magic, and Shadow magic happens to falls under Dark magic. Casters that excels in one particular form of magic will be weak in the form of magic that counters it. To explain it further, it means that for Time, her weakness will be Light magic since Light is the counter magic of Dark. Well, this kind of weakness does not apply for me because I excel in Void magic, which is known as the Master form of magic.
We begin our work right away. I begin analysing the form of curse that is lying within the artifact. My artifact is a cursed blue helmet, from what the principle told me when she gave me the artifact, it used to be a helmet of a dragon hunter.
One day, when the dragon hunter was hunting dragons, it came across a Black Dragon. As everyone knows, Black Dragons are rare and carries with them strange treasures, so obviously the dragon hunter killed the dragon. However, later he found out the Dragon isn’t any normal Black Dragon, it is a Curse Black Dragon. Killing one will transfer the curse on the dragon to the hunter himself. This helmet thus became cursed. The curse on this helmet is that once every 10 minutes, a blood vessel within the wearer will burst. This will continue until the wearer dies of internal bleeding.
Then I found that the curse has traces of Old Magic of The Void. The curses that a Curse Black Dragon carries with itself is usually of Darkness origin. Someone must have tampered with the helmet before. I tried retracing the Creatures that have come into contact with the helmet before, I found out the last Creature that placed the curse of Old Magic origin is a hooded person. I cannot see past the hood so I cannot determine who is there. However, what is interesting is that after the helmet has been curse, I can see the helmet being shoved into a storage room of some kind. After that, the helmet is taken out by Mdm. Lillie and she then took it here.
This means that my hunch was right. There are members of The Gathering here. This may be a blessing or a curse, depending on their intention of being here. Why do they curse this helmet? How did they know that I will be getting it? What are they real intentions? I cannot ask Time because Time has severed all connections with them after the Light Invasion.
So many questions but no answer, I will have to let Time pass to get answers for them. I will have to clear the objective for today first. I continued analysing the curse and found that it is a mixture of two curses, one from the Dragon, one from The Gathering. To break the curse, I will need to find out the starting sequence of magic flow.
To best describe on figuring out how to break a curse, it is almost like untangling a bundle of rope that is bundled into a bunch of knots. To break a curse, you have to find the start of the magic sequence first and unbundle the compressed sequence, finally you dissect the sequence into pieces.
That is what I’m doing. I can identify the starting of the magic sequence of the curse, and able to decompress the sequence, but to dissect it will be difficult without ingredients. As mentioned in the previous book, these types of curses are hard to break without the proper ingredients, and they all require sinful acts to be carried out to break them. If you intend to break them without the proper ingredients, then the magic required will be magnified by thousand fold, and it may backfire and the curse might trace its way onto the caster itself.
I took a glance at Time, Nicki and Charlotte. They all received normal cursed artifacts, cursed with the powers of Darkness. I suspect only mine is cursed with such a powerful curse. This can be troublesome, because I have seen this curse before, it can grow in power. The curse feeds on evil that resides in a person’s heart, and attack any others that has a good will. Once the curse matures it materializes itself and can act like a Creature itself, and it will stay that way until the object that is bounded with the curse is destroyed.
I continued my work on purifying the helmet. I begin pouring Light magic into the helmet, but it instantly gets destroyed and devoured by the curse. It appears that using Light magic will not disable the spell, then perhaps I can use the opposite, but then the principle is likely to be unhappy about it. I decided to increase the level of Light magic used instead. Then I was disturbed by Omi.
“Can’t you even perform a simple little purification spell? How useless! You might be powerful, but if you don’t know what to use, you are useless!” Came the insult. I ignored it. The curse itself suddenly materialize a hand, stretched out, and punched her.
“What do you think you are doing? You moron!”
“I did not do anything. That was the caused by the curse I’m trying to remove.”
“What kind of trash are you sprouting? There are no such curse!”
“You don’t know about curses. Curses are not just restricted to curse of Darkness, there are curses from the Old Magic of The Void as well. You are far too young in this world to have dealt with such curses that belongs to the old form of magic.”
“How dare you say these kind of words to me?!”
“Now please go away before you get injured by the hand again. I cannot control over how the curse move and I will need to focus to remove such a powerful curse.”
“Did you say Old Magic of The Void?” The principle came up and asked me.
“Indeed. The curse on this artifact appears to be very powerful, more powerful than any curse that I have met before. The only explanation for this is Old Magic.”
“Oh, then it is my mistake. I should have analysed the curse thoroughly before giving it to you.” The principle begin to take up the artifact, but I snatched it away from her and put it back on my table.
“I want to break this curse on my own. I will need permission from you, Mdm. Lillie to use Dark magic to break this curse instead.”
“If you really want to try then I will not stop you. Go ahead.”
I allowed Dark magic to flow through the artifact. Slowly I can feel the curse beginning to melt into the Dark magic. I begin to retract the magic from the artifact, then I felt a tug behind me and I turned around, it was Time.
“What is it?”
“The curse… It’s materializing!”
I turned and look at the helmet, and indeed the curse is materializing. After the hand that just appeared, another hand slowly begin to form.
“Too bad, it looks like we are out of time. If I take any more time to break this curse it might spiral into something out of control. Mdm. Lillie, if you please.”
She nodded her head.
I use The Void to bind the helmet and destroy it completely.
Mdm. Lillie then returned to the stage.
“Good. All of you have successfully cleanse the object of the curse, other than Innight, which I will regard as an abnormally. This is the end of lesson for today. Tomorrow you will be starting school in your assigned classes. Before you go, I need to show you your assigned House. This paper shows your assigned House.” Saying these, she used magic to assigned papers to us. I took a glance over it. Me, Time, Charlotte, Nicki and Omi are assigned to the same house, Garnet.
“Can’t I ever stay away from that little bug?” Omi complained.
“I would like to say the same thing. But… Bear with it, Omi.”
“That’s rude! You have to call me Queen Alicia!”
“You are not queen. I have mentioned this before, you are but a random student in this school. If you want others to call you a queen, wait until you actually claimed the top spot in every ranking of the school itself.”
“Alright stop arguing, the both of you. I will personally inform all of you when we will be having magic lessons once again. Before then, please behave yourselves and do not show others your side of magic. You should now return back to your orienteering groups, they will be playing some other games right now.”
Saying this, grey smoke appeared from the stage and the principle stepped into it. She disappeared after that, and we all begin to leave the building.
Once we are outside the building, we took out our bicycles from our pocket and returned it to its original size. We then cycled all the way to building D6 and parked our bicycles on the bicycle racks. When we entered the building, we found all the seats were retracted and all the Factions sitting on the stairs.
“What are you guys up to?” I asked them.
“We are to carry out a skit to the other three factions. The content of the skit corresponds to meaning of our own faction. Since our faction is named Candor, it means honesty. The organizing committee will judge the skit and give out points depending on how close we are to the meaning of the faction, and how well the skit is performed.”
I leave them to discuss over the skit while I talked to the girls.
“After all this, I hope we are going to have a perfectly normal school life. I myself already have more than enough experience on magic so I will not need any training. If possible I will like to keep myself away from her magic lessons. The only interaction with Magic that I will want to have is to have conversations over it in the Occult Research Club.”
Then we carry out a skit that some random person decided. It involved a replica of the entire camp, but with the score keeper being dishonest and is bribed into changing the scores. The Candor group managed to find it out and scolded the score keeper. We were then awarded with the most points for the best acting. However, I can sense unrest in the organizing committee, and that they are unhappy that they are being replicated in the skit, even with all the changes in names.
After the skit activity, we have a long 1 hour break. Outside the building, I can hear rain pattering down onto the Earth. Usually, when it rains, it signifies something bad is about to happen. That is the experience I have gathered over the years. What is going to happen?
That is when the alarm sounded. So another asteroid is about to head towards Singapore. As I have previously mentioned, Singapore appears to be strangely attractive to the asteroids for some reason unknown to any of us. We begin to evacuate to an underground shelter near to our building. On our way to the underground shelter, we found someone familiar.
It was Nectilius.
“Nectilius! I never knew you applied to the same school as we do!” I exclaimed.
“Innight! I never knew you will go to the same school as I do!”
“Everyone, this is Nectilius. I met her during the Invasion Disaster and also met her twice again in our high school.”
“Nectilius, sorry to ask this, but what is your power?” Charlotte asked.
“Death. I curse everything I touch to death. Every spell I cast kills anyone that touches it, even if it only scratched them.”
“That’s amazing! Such a power is rare to have!”
“No it is not.” Nectilius replied.
“It isn’t indeed.” I added. “You cannot touch anything without killing it with such a power. You will need to have an additional protection, like a glove, to prevent others from being cursed by such a power. Am I right Nectilius?”
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“Correct. I cannot feel the warmth of human touch because of this. I have not touched anything with my bare hands for years due to this power.”
We talked as we stayed in the underground shelter. That was when a whisper came into my ears.
It is the principle again. She wants us to gather at the entrance of the underground shelter. The 5 of us, including Nectilius, went to the entrance and stayed there. Suddenly I see a magical circle appearing under out feet and we are absorbed into it. When I can see again, I found all of us in the middle of the school football field. Together with us were many other students, which I guess are magic casters as well. The principle is standing in the middle of the field and using magic to transport more magic casters to the field.
“Mind explaining to us why did you teleport us here, principle?”
“Your job is to greet the visitors to our Realm. These asteroids that you have heard all these years are actually transportation tools for the Creatures of the Elemental Realm to our Physical Realm. They can only enter our Realm by either using magic circles, which can appear randomly and cause panic and alarm to the public, or by using Asteroids as a form of transportation. Using the latter option will cause lesser alarm so they prefer using Asteroids instead. Our job is to lessen the impact cause by the landing of the asteroids on Earth itself and to greet them promptly.”
“Ah.”
“Enough talking, here comes the asteroid!” the principle barked. “Use spells to cushion the impact the asteroid!”
I snickered. This will be an easy job for me. I opened up a field of The Void in front of everyone.
“Who is the caster that is using Void magic? It is not allowed in this school!” One of the older students bellowed.
I kept silent. They cannot trace magic to the respective casters as they are not capable to do so yet.
“Innight, you heard them. Use other forms of magic.” The principle whispered in my ears.
I switched to using Dark magic.
“Asteroid incoming!” Someone cried.
Everyone braced themselves. The asteroid crashed into others’ spells first, but it broke right through them. Then it reached the Mdm. Lillie’s, the magic absorbed most of the impact, at first everyone thought it will held but then the magic shattered. Finally the asteroid reached my spell, once the asteroid reached the spell it closed in and absorbed all forms of movement from the asteroid, then it allows it to softly touch the ground.
“Good work everyone. Especially Innight. Had you not use spell on the bottom the asteroid will have crashed into the ground and injuring everyone here. Alright, let us welcome the visitor to our Realm. Everyone, stand in rows of two with a space between the rows. Innight, you come with me. The visitor appears to be from the Void Elemental Plane, so I want you to interact with them.
I understand what she meant. Not all Creatures of the Void Elemental Plan knows the universal language of English. They may be old, but they are not adopting to the new world since they constantly isolate themselves from the others.
The asteroid opened up. A human like Creature climbed out from it. I can sense the amount of Void magic flowing from it is not pure, and is mixed with Dark magic. This implies that this Creature came from our artificial Void Elemental Plane in the Darkness Elemental Plane.
“Welcome to our Physical Realm, Creature of The Void.”
The Creature tilted its’ head and stared at the principle. Then out came a garble of words that no one but myself understands. Then it stopped. It took out a pill from the asteroid and consumed it, then it spoke in English.
“Ah yes, yes. You must be Mdm. Lillie. Thank you for the arrangement. I have signed the required documents for the stayover, please take a look at them.” The Creatures replied slowly.
The Creature took out a stack of papers from the asteroid and passed them to the principle.
“While I look through the papers, can you please introduce yourself to the students here? I’m sure they are excited to know about your plane.”
“Ah yes, yes. Greetings, students of…. What is your name of your school again, Mdm. Lillie?”
“Rescendant College.”
“Greetings, students of Rescendant College. I am a Creature of The Void, I have a name, but it is too complicated for humans to mutter that in your language, so just call me as ‘Liz’. Do you have any questions for me?”
A hand raised up from the crowds of people.
“Yes. Your question please?”
“Who is your Grand Ruler of the Void Elemental Plane?”
“He is the Almighty Creature, the Creator and Destroyer of Existence. His name is Zealus. Currently he is absent from the Elemental Plane as he is sealed in as human, but we believe one day he shall return to us. Any more questions?”
Another hand raised up from the crowd.
“How is your Elemental Plane like? We are curious about this element known as The Void.”
“You need to be there to understand. There is no words that can describe how The Void is like.”
“Isn’t it empty, since The Void actually meant nothingness?”
“That is a misconception, my dear child. The Void is filled with what you humans know as Dark Matter, and it is very powerful, mind, since The Void created all forms of magic known to you.”
“Alright everyone, that is enough. Liz, you need to assume a human form to stay in this school. Can you transform?” The principle interrupted.
“I can. Just a moment.”
The creature retracted its purple aura surrounding itself and assumed a more human shape, I can see he is a handsome male, almost like a prince. I can almost feel a shining aura surrounding him after the transformation is done. Everyone, except me, starred at him.
“Is it not perfect?”
“It is perfect. Too perfect.” Someone said.
“Everyone. Creature will now be a student of our school. He will be here for a period of 6 months before returning to the Elemental Realm. Please be nice to him.”
We, together with Liz, then walked our way back to building D6. Everyone is already seated by the time we reached there. Everyone is having a break, and everyone, absolutely everyone has their eyes fixated on Liz the moment we entered the building and until we sat down. Liz sat down beside me, replacing Omi’s seat.
“Boy, what is your name?”
“Innight.”
“Innight, I want to ask you this, are you working for Lord Inoxion of the Darkness Elemental Plane?”
“Yes indeed I do. Why do you ask?”
“You appear to have large amount of Void magic stored within yourself, and this is mixed in with traces of Dark magic. Are you a Creature of Void?”
“You may say so. I am not really any random creature. For my own safety I will not tell you who I am exactly, but you can randomly guess who I really am. I am not going to tell you that.”
“I need to ask you something, Innight. Since you are a member of Void, did you know about the incident regarding Luricerite, the previous Grand Ruler of Light?”
“I do. What do you want to know about it?”
“I heard that a Creature named Innight is involved in this incident. Are you the Innight that they are talking about?”
“I am. Do you want to know about the details of the incident?”
“Yes. I heard you saw how something called… what is it called… The Unknown or something among those lines, merged with Luricerite. Can you describe in detail what actually happened?”
“Well I-“
Then we were interrupted by the Emcees.
“I will get back to you later. I will give you my number in the communication system and you can use it to contact me. Here.” I passed him a piece of paper with my code number.
“Hello everybody! I hope you are ready for the final activity for the day! You are to learn a dance and perform it to the parents group before you leave!”
I groaned. I hate dancing. I love to see others dance but ironically, I do not like to do that myself. I hate any activity that exhaust my limited physical strength. I considered myself lucky because had it been 500 years ago, I would have been in trouble. There used to be National Service in Singapore, for those who do not know, in the past boys that reached the age of 18 are supposed to serve in the army of Singapore for 2 years to train their physical strength. This system has been abolished in the end of 2300s, as technology has become so advanced that robotics are used instead of human for the use of war.
After 1 entire hours of living hell, I am exhausted. We performed the dance in the view of the entire parents community of the new student cohort and everyone is happy except me. I am dead tired and all I want is to go back home and have a good rest before the start of normal school days.
Then came the final program of the day, to reveal the winning Faction and distribute the prizes. We lost to the Dauntless Faction by a mere 10 points. I can feel all the glares from everyone finding their way onto me. I sighed. I could not possibly explain myself now, and even if I do, no one is going to listen to my explanation anyway so I kept silent. The organizing committee starts to distribute the prizes to everyone. We got a huge pack of delicious snacks and chocolates, but not as large as the one Dauntless got. Everyone has a packet of snacks and chocolate, but when it came to my turn, there were none left. I suspect some of them must have taken extra, or they just tried to “accidently: create an event where I don’t have any. Either way, it does not matter. I love sweets but I can still live without them. It just saddens my heart a little that human as such creatures, so nit-picking over a small little thing like this. At least I can have some peace after this entire orientation camp. We are then dismissed.
We then went over to our bicycle racks. The bicycles of the girls are all fine, but mine has been obviously tampered. The chain I used to lock it is missing, the tire has been flattened, and several metal pieces has been beaten so much that is it changed shape. I sighed. Such is the behaviour of human. Can’t they be slightly more forgiving? It’s not something that great after all, just a small competition over the temporary “Factions” and it does not even go into any records or testimonials. It is only a small friendly competition, so do they have to resort to this if they failed to claim the top position? I sighed once again.
I pushed the bicycle to an isolated corner and used magic to repair the bicycle. We then cycled our way home. When we reached home, I received a message on my Calling Crystal, it was from Liz.
I spent the next hour explaining the events of the Luricerite Incident to Liz. When it was over, he thanked me for providing him this information.
“Innight, you can use the bath now!”
I sat in the bath as I think things over. Liz seems to be very interested over the Luricerite Incident, but why? That incident does not affect the Void Elemental Plane, it only troubled the Light Elemental Plane greatly because it was their grand Ruler behind this entire Incident, and it also troubled the Darkness Elemental Plane because I, The Piece, was involved in the mess as well. However, the other Elemental Planes have nothing to do with it, less it be the Void Elemental Plane. So why does he press against me to know so much? Something is off.
I allowed my head to sink into the bath and thought about it. The strange thing is, as well, is why is a Creature of The Void staying in a human school? Interest? No, that could not be it. Besides, how did Mdm. Lillie contact the Creature? There is definitely something going on behind the background that I do not know. It is of essence to understand that. I do not trust anyone in the school itself since anyone could be a member of The Gathering or the Styx Cult. Our first mission, is to figure out where the members of the Cult and The Gathering are. To find that out, I will need to trace back on that helmet.
I opened up a portal and from it I took out a small glass bottle, inside is the curse that I extracted from the helmet itself today. I begin to read the sequence of the curse. It resembles a sequence that I have analysed before. Then I remembered, this magic sequence is similar the one that I have extracted from the cursed object in high school. For those who do not know, please refer to the first book for reference.
That means that it is the same group of people that have placed this curse, this also means that they already have been observing me from the shadows ever since in high school and I do not know it until now. I kept the bottle back into the portal and shut it off.
I have not learnt anything new besides knowing that The Gathering has been observing me ever since I was in high school. This is not good, we have no idea what they are planning against me since Time has left The Gathering after she was revived and married to me. Before Time left, she has started to warn me that the objective of The Gathering has changed because the previous leader died.
Suddenly a wave of mana swept over, and begin to feel my magic being sucked by an unknown source. I quickly encrypt my magic to prevent it from further being drained. This must be the girls playing with a spell from a book I have retrieved from the Forbidden Library. I will lecture them on this later when I get out of the bath.
Then the sucking stopped. I got out the bath and wore my clothes, and went upstairs. In my room I found Time playing with Nicki using magic. Charlotte is reading a book on my bed.
“Now, admit it. Who was the idiot that carelessly used a magic draining spell?”
“We didn’t, Innight.” The three girls responded in harmony. “We are also victims of the magic draining spell.”
“Eh?”
“Really, it is true, don’t you believe us?” The three harmonized again.
“I believe you. It is just… who did that?”
“Can’t you trace back the magic caster?” Time asked.
“I could, but the spell has stopped. If it has left traces behind I could analyse the source of the spell… Wait. I remembered, I encrypted my magic to prevent the magic from further flowing away, I could have possibly encrypted some traces of the spell in process.”
I dove into the Alzelea state again, and indeed, I found a small piece of the spell remaining on the encryption of my magic. I came back to my senses, decrypt the magic and begin analysing the spell.
“It came from the school.” I said, after I finished analysing the spell.
“What does this mean?” The three of them asked simultaneously.
“It means, someone in the school is being greedy and wants to steal the magic power of this city. For what reason I do not know, but they need to be stopped. If you drain magic from humans, who already have very little magic, they will exhaust their magic and die. Also, the magic extraction is not of a human source spell, it is much more intense, as if… yes, as if it is coming from a machine. The spell is executed repeatedly, in the same exact sequence every few minutes. Only a machine is capable of doing that. I might be wrong, and it could be just a human mimicking a machine for maximum efficiency of the spell itself. Whatever it is, it cannot be allowed to continue. We need to know more about the school population before we can take any action.”
I sighed. “Why can’t ever have an end to all of this mess of the Elemental Realm?”
Back in the darkness of the Main Building of Rescendant College, a hooded human is operating a machine. It has a huge cylinder connecting the ceiling and the floor of the room itself, gradually filling up with blue liquid, and with wires, gears and metal pieces popping out around it. A computer screen connected to it glowed and showed a reading of a bar filling up. The machine roared as the machine runs.
“Leader, the machine is successful.” The hooded man operating the machine said.
“Wonderful! Wonderful! I am shocked beyond words can describe! That is diligence, my dear members!” the leader exclaimed. “Disable it now, we do not want others to discover this creation of others, do we?”
The Member flipped a switch near the wall of the machine. The roaring of the machine ceased, the screen stopped glowing and the blue liquid stayed in there.
“Member 6, how did your little talk with Zealus went?”
“Update, my Leader. He personally informed me of what truly happened in the Luricerite Incident. According to him, our Grand Master tried to combine with Luricerite, but failed, and he is reduced into a ball of pure mana, which is currently kept by him.”
“IMPOSSIBLE! INTOLERABLE! IMPROBABLE! UNBELIEVABLE! OUR GRAND MASTER DIED?! THIS IS THE END OF US! WE WILL HAVE TO REVIVE HIM AT ALL COST! WE NEED TO FIND OUT THE MANA BALL TO REVIVE HIM FROM THERE!” The leader shrieked.
“Leader, another update, apparently our Grand Master is not completely dead yet. There are pieces of his soul floating around in The Void that managed to leak from the seal. If we can gather enough of this, we can probably revive him from there.”
“Wonderful! Delightful! Enchanting! Magnificent! We can start by finding the ball of mana first, identifying the magic sequence and tracing them in The Void! What a splendid idea you have, Member!”
“I am grateful that I can provide the little that I have to achieve the Ordeal.”
“Indeed. Our Ordeal. To kill Zealus and bring a world of terror and delight in our Grand Masters, The Unknown and the Ancient Beasts!”
“But leader,” Came from another Member. “That is not our Ordeal as the member of The Gathering. In The Gathering, we aim to extract Zealus from his human form and convert him into his magical form.”
“THAT IS OF THE PAST, YOU WORM! *I* AM THE LEADER NOW, NOT THE OTHER USELESS LEADER OF THE PAST! NEW LEADER, NEW OBJECTIVE! THIS IS THE OBJECTIVE OF STYX CULT AND MINE! NOT THE OLD GATHERING! DO YOU NOT HEAR ME?! UNSEEN HAND!”
Long purple hands stretched out from the back of the leader and it crushed and curled the poor Member into a human ball. Screams echoed throughout the room as the Member is curled into a ball, crunch of bones cracking can be heard throughout the process. When it is over, the hands retracted and the Member, now a ball of flesh, dropped onto the ground.
“I hope no one else is foolish enough to challenge me. Remember, I AM THE LEADER AND MY DECISIONS ARE FINAL!”
Silence ensured.
“Tomorrow, Member 6, search through the belongings of Zealus, find out the ball of mana and steal it. Consider it as a work done for The Ordeal. That is all, you are all dismissed!”