Today is the official first day of school. The 4 of us, with Omi again, were assigned to class 75S3. The number 75 most probably represent the year 2875, S represents a Science class, and the number 3 represents we are the 3rd Science class of the cohort. Our subject combination for the class is H2 Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics and a random H1 subject, for me and the other 3 girls, we took up Economics. On our cycle to school, we met Nectilius and stopped and asked her class, and she replied that she is in the same class as we do.

Talk about coincidence.

We talked with her as we slowly cycled to school. As all normal school in Singapore operates, the entire school have to attend a morning assembly. During the morning assembly, the higher ups of the school, that is, the Principle and Vice Principle will address us, there will also be announcements made by the various committee of the school itself or by students in general.

Today there is only one announcement, and that is to “remember to check your assigned CCAs at the noticeboard by the General Office of the Main Building.”

Then we sang the national anthem and took the pledge before we are dismissed for lessons. Our first lesson was Biology. We entered the classroom 01-11 of building D4 and waited for the teacher to arrive. A young man, probably no older than 30, entered the classroom, on his hands he carried a laptop, on top of the laptop is a stack of handmade cards. I wonder what those cards are for.

“Hello, everyone. I am your Biology teacher, my name is Mr. Leo. I welcome everyone warmly to our first Biology class. First, I will let everyone introduce themselves. I have a stack of cards here which I have created with your names recorded on top. Everyone take a random card and look for the student that your card is recorded. Ask about their full name and what they like and dislike about Biology, then you will introduce them for us.” Then he started distributing the cards.

I, for some reason, got the card with Omi’s name on it. It there some kind of conspiracy behind this? Every time I want to avoid getting into her attention I keep getting thrown right back in. Everyone else is busy talking to each other, I slowly left my seat and approached Omi.

“What business do you want with Queen Alicia?”

I raised up the card.

“Oh. You do know Queen Alicia’s full name since she has mentioned it to you before, but in case you have forgotten, her name is Alicia Omi. Call her Queen Alicia. Her favourite topic about Biology is about Nervous System, her least favourite topic is DNA.”

Interesting. I thought. So she can talk normally. Why does she have to put a princess aura around herself? I find her more approachable if she talks normally like this.

I looked at her card. On it is scribbled Time’s name.

“Good luck talking to Time. She can be a little sneaky.” I told her before I leave for my seat.

“Hey. You forgot to add the honorifics! Address me as Queen Alicia!”

“I have told you numerous times, I will not address you as such. The most I will use is Ms. Alicia. Earn your position through the various test that we have.”

She looks like she is about to burst any moment in anger. I quickly noticed the signs and walked back to my seat.

We later introduced all of us using the cards. Mr. Leo says that we are not going to have any lessons since it is the first day of school, but he will have any conversation with us and he can answer any questions we have about the school. We have fun for the next 2 hours.

Next came Chemistry. We cycled our way to Region A, which is the Chemistry region.  We walked in to our assigned classroom and found a young female teacher waiting inside already.

“You all are late, all of you.”

“Huh? But we are given 15 minutes to move around venues.”

“In my definition, late is not being in the class before the teacher does.”

Now that is some very wonky definition of late.

Everyone settled down quickly in the classroom itself. The teacher introduced herself as Ms. Liew, and the rest of us all introduced ourselves one after another. Same as Biology, since it is the first day of school there will be no teaching, but a talk of anything of any kind. This lasted for 2 hours as well.

Then came Mathematics. We cycled our way to Region C, the Mathematics region. When we reached the classroom, we found the teacher, another young man that is no older than 30, dancing in accordance to a music being played somewhere. Then he realised we are here, he then quickly turned off the source of music, which is his hand phone connected to the speakers through an audio cable.

“Haha. I allowed the few early birds here discovered a true side of myself.” He grinned.

When everyone has arrived and settled down, he begin to introduce himself. His name is Mr. Sem. He is the head of IT and a teacher in the mathematics department. We all introduced ourselves again and he begin teaching. Since the lecture notes are not out for sale yet, he printed out the notes for us this time. We then delved into the world of mathematics for the rest of the two hours.

Then came lunch break. That was when we notices there are posters everywhere in the canteen. All of them saying that a group named MuSiq are recruiting singers/drummers/keyboardists/guitarist for Transcendence.

Transcendence? I thought to myself. What in the world of El Gram could that be? Since it has relation to a band member, is it some kind of performance? I will have to ask the seniors of my CCA tomorrow.

Breaktime over, then it was Home Tutors Period, were the entire class is supposed to gather at our home classroom in Region A, in classroom 01-11.

We then found out that our home tutors are Mr. Leo and Mr. Sem.

“Home room is now in service. I need everyone to pay attention to the following announcements we are about to make.” Mr. Sem said.

Next came a list of announcements, some regarding the attendance recording system, some regarding the CCAs, some regarding the school’s academic system. None of them are really important as the final announcement, which is that all believers and members of the Occult are to submit a form to the school for whatever reason.

After another 2 hours, the final school bell rang, signifying the end of school today. I went to check the noticeboard outside the General Office about our allocation of CCAs, and found me and the three girls are successfully allocated to the Occult Research Club, while Alicia, luckily, was admitted to another CCA. Apparently we were the only ones who choose this club as our CCA, so we are going to feel a little lonely.

Nothing new in school today other than meeting new teachers and learning something new in Mathematics. We also have no progress in tracing The Gathering or the Styx Cult, nor do we have any progress finding out the caster of the magic draining spell. If we could just find out something from others tomorrow…

“Innight, we are done with the bath!”

I sat in the bath as Master talks to me using the Calling Crystal that I carried around me.

“So, Remius has started on attacking on the Darkness Elemental Plane. Any reason why?”

“The last time I have contacted him, he spoke about this being a tradition and he thinks that the Ancient Beasts are also likely to tell them the same thing. Traditions are hard to change, he said. We told him that we should not be fighting in such case but he cut off my call.”

“Habits are hard to change. Why do we have to fight, I wonder. Why can’t we just live in peace as the other Elemental Planes do?”

“Ah yes, one more thing, Innight. Apparently they planned to attack the Physical Realm as more and more people have been turning away from the normal religion. As you would have known, religion is only a matter of story that Light has created to assimilate humans under the same power. Earth is supposed to be a place where the Light creates more soldiers from it. They wanted to keep the people going to the right track, so as to speak. I do not know when they are going to initiate the attack or are they even going to, but just be careful.”

“Anymore updates?”

“We have discovered another abnormality under your school. We are unable to track down what they are, but from what we have gathered, they seems to be coming from a type of Creature. Mind you, there are thousands of those Creatures hiding under your school. We have no idea what they are up to, but be mindful, they are large in numbers. I suspect your school is not just any normal school, Innight. If there is something hiding under your school, it is definitely involved with an operation of some kind.”

“So much for finding a normal school. I guess I can never escape the grip of the World of Magic. I need to find out on the magic draining spell, The Gathering and the Styx Cult, and now we have this other Creatures under the school itself. So much work to deal with, but so little information. I guess I can first start with gathering information about this Occult research Club first, it may have the most clue as to when did the Styx Cult and The Gathering entered the school.” I turned off the calling Crystal.

After my bath I went to my room. I begin fiddling around my bag to find the ball of mana, but…

It is missing.

Where did I drop it? I don’t have a hole in my pockets, I can be sure of that. Did I left it somewhere? Luckily it does not hold much importance to me, it only serves as a trophy for defeating The Unknown. But to other magic casters, this is worth as it is a ball of pure mana. It can enable them to cast very powerful spells that they normally could not be able to.

I begin to trace back, by casting a Time spell that allows me to view backwards in Time on the bag, on the movement of the bag. I then stopped at the period of Time where a hand stretched into the bag and begin fiddling around it, it then touched the ball of mana and took it out. I begin to readjust the point of view to see the thief, it took me great effort to adjust the point of view as I am currently taking the point of view of a bag, but I managed it and saw a familiar face.

It was Liz.

What could have caused him to steal an object from me? And of all things to steal, why this? He could have stolen my own personal copy of the Dark Codex, which is the most precious thing to me, but he didn’t’. What is the reason for him to steal that ball of mana from me? I will have to confront him tomorrow to ask that.

Night time, the Rescendant College still has lights on in the Main Building despite there is no activity going on. A group of hooded Creatures sat down in the Main Building.

“Leader, this is the ball of mana that Zealus mentioned.” One of the hooded Members took out a ball with intense blue colour.

“Goodness. Did you create a replica and put it in his bag?” The leader said.

“No, I have forgotten to do so, leader.”

“HOW CAN YOU?! WITH THE ORDEAL SO NEAR AMONG US WE CANNOT ALLOW OURSELVES BE DISCOVERED BY ANYONE! YOU HAVE CREATED A PROBLEM THAT POSSIBLY LEADS TO THE DISCOVERY OF US!” The leader screeched and did a wrestling move on the Member. Cracking of the bones can be heard by everyone in the room.

“I am greatly sorry for my actions, leader.” The miserable Member muttered.

“BECAUSE OF YOUR ACTIONS, WE HAVE TO SPEED UP OUR PLAN! Luckily for us, you already obtain the ball, I need to analyse it and trace down the souls of our Grand Master. Give me a day, and we will be able to start tracking down the remains of our Grand Master. From there, we will then be able to find out about the Ancient Beasts, and awaken them. The Ordeal is so close that I can feel it!” The leader shouted.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

“Member 6, create a replica of the ball of mana and return it to him! If that is all you have to report today, then you are dismissed!”

Today is the day I have been waiting, the day where we get to interact with the members of the Occult Research Club. I can barely hold in the excitement as we have our lessons, and I can sense the same goes for the rest of the class.

After 7 hours of lessons, finally CCA hours starts. We gathered in the special classroom 01-15A in Region A, which we are told on the noticeboard yesterday is our CCA room.

“Ah, are you the new members?” A girl came to room and asked us. I recognize her, she was one of the members of the Club that attempted the ritual on the day of CCA open house.

“Ah I recognize you! You were the one who saved us from the ritual on the day of the CCA open house!” The girl exclaimed.

“Yes. Yes I am. Can you please open the door for us? I assume you all have the key for it.”

“Yes we do, give me a moment.” She fumbled her pocket and took out a key card. She slide it on the card holder and a *click* sound came from the door. She took the handle and pulled the door outwards. An ominous feeling crept onto my skin as the door opened, a huge blast of dust swept outwards as the door opened.

“It almost feels like this room has never been used in years, with all this dust here.” Time begin as we walked in.

“Eh? We have been using this room every Wednesday. It has so many dust because of how many magic spells we actually used.”

“Then what about this ominous arura that I am feeling in this room?”

“That is most likely caused by our rituals. We have summoned quite a number of Spirits into this room itself, evil or good, it does not matter, as long it is the supernatural, we will do it.”

“That is a very bad move to take.” I said. “You might never know what you actually summoned could do to the world itself. What if you have summoned The Unknown? That would have been the end of the world itself.”

“The Unknown? What is that?”

“I will give you a very detailed explanation of what it actually is after all the members arrived. How many year 2 students do we have?”

“This CCA is not really a popular CCA compared to many of the others out there so we were grateful that you all choose to attend this CCA. We currently have only 5 Year 2 students. I am the only girl among the year 2 seniors, my name is Lydia. What are yours?”

“That will have to wait until everyone is here. I hate to repeat doing certain things when it can just be completed in one try.”

The entire room is filled with symbols, dreamcatchers, magic circles, and many other occult stuffs. It may be just me, but the room appears to be filled with a very ominous aura, almost if something very evil stayed in this room.

“Really I will need to investigate your room after everyone arrives. I suspect you called upon something very evil in this room and I don’t like the feeling over here.” I started.

“I don’t think the president of the club is going to be happy about that if you did do it.” Lydia replied.

“I call upon something friendlier to fill the room. I came from The Void and work for the Darkness Elemental Plane but that does not mean that I love ominous objects.”

“So are you a Creature?”

“How come you are not surprised when I said that?”

“That is because we are notified by the principle about these kinds of things.”

“Hey, Lydia, are these people, like, the new members?” A boy with black coloured hair popped his head in.

“Yes, they are. Everyone, this is the president of the Occult Research Club, his name is Ashley.”

“Hello to all of you. This room, like, is kind of, like, haunted, so you may feel kind of, like, unpleasant feel from it.”

My eyebrows twitched. I cannot get used to people with strange speaking habits. The last time I encountered such a person I refused to speak to the person just so that he will not use his strange talking habits. Since he is the president and my senior, I guess I will have to tolerate him a little.

“So, can you, like, introduce yourself?”

“I will wait until everyone is here before I introduce myself. I don’t want to repeat unnecessarily.”

“Hello everyone!” Three other people popped in.

“Ah, everyone, these are our new members. Everyone, introduced yourself.”

“I’m Arnold, the Vice President of this club.” The ebon coloured hair boy spoke.

“I’m Argen, a member of the club.” The blue coloured hair boy spoke

“I’m Aschubel, another member of the club.” The white coloured hair boy spoke.

“Alright, since everyone is here, it is time for the new members to introduce themselves. Boy, you first.” Lydia spoke.

“Fine. Greetings everyone, my name is Innight. If you have studied the history of the Elemental Realms well, you should have known about a Creature of The Void that is named as the Creator and Destroyer of the Existence itself. Did you know about this?”

“Somewhat. We have access to the knowledge that there is the presence of such a Creature. What does it have to do with you… No, wait. Are you… it can’t be….”

“Yes, you are on the right track. I am that Creature, in human form. I am the Grand Ruler of The Void Elemental Plane as well. Please keep this as a secret within these four walls. There are members of Light who does not mix well with me and will intend to start a war against me if possible. My real name is called Zealus, which apparently has been forgotten by Time, but please do not call me by that name, please call me by Innight.”

“Are you sure about this, Innight, that is, you are the Almighty Creature?” Lydia asked.

“How do you want me to prove it to you? I can do almost anything, you know, since I am Omnipotent.”

“No need. We just want to be sure, since it is almost unbelievable that such a powerful Creature will come to visit us.”

Next Time came up.

“Hello everyone, my name is Time. I am a survivor of the Invasion Disaster. I am a magic caster myself, and I am masterful in using Shadow and Time based magic. I currently live together with Innight under the same roof as we are husband and wife.”

I face palmed. I told her many times to not say this to anyone. Luckily no one seems surprised over this fact.

Then it’s Charlotte’s turn.

“Hello everyone. My name is Charlotte. I am currently an Archangel of the Light Elemental Plane and I hold the position of Gabriel. I am the older sister of us twins of Nicki and myself. We are the wives of Innight as well.”

More face palms.

Then Nicki’s turn came.

“Uh… Hello, everyone. My name is… is Nicki. I … I am also an Archangel of the Light Elemental Plane and I hold the position of… of Zafkiel. I am the younger sister of us twins.” She stuttered over her words, but manged to finish her introduction.

Everyone clapped their hands after Nicki finished her introduction.

“Alright, what shall we, like, talk about today?”

“Ashley, Innight just now told me something of great interest, he mentioned about cleaning up the room up a little and also wants to talk about this Creature known as The Unknown.

“Alright, proceed with it then. Wait, clean up this room? Why?”

“I can feel an ominous aura the moment I entered this room, this is probably due to all the spirits and other Creatures you have summoned into this room itself. I need to clean up this room if I’m going to stay in here.”

“But we don’t feel, like, anything at all.”

“That is because you are not a magic caster. You cannot feel the flow of magic ad mana here while the rest of us are able to. Are any of you even a magic caster?”

“Ashley is.” Aschubel pointed out.

“Then aren’t you uncomfortable with this ominous aura around the room?”

“I don’t, probably because it gets build up, like, over time and I sort of, like, got used to it.

My eyebrows twitched. Partly because of the way he speaks and partly because he does not mind about the negative flow of energy in the room.

“No matter what, I want this room to be cleaned up. I’m going to wash away this ominous aura in the room so everyone stay where you are and don’t move, unless you want to be sucked into the whirlpool and find yourself inside the bottle.” I took out a bottle and placed it in the middle of the room and opened the cap. No one moved from their seat.

“Anavel: Water Guardian Angel!”

Water begin flowing out from the bottle and fill up the room. Since the water is only magic, it does not affect us either way and we can all breath normally. The water swirled in the room like how a washing machines does, then the water eventually is sucked back into the bottle.

“Now that is an experience of a lifetime.” The 5 of the seniors harmonized.

“Now I shall start my talk about The Unknown. No objections, right?”

All of them kept silent.

“The Unknown. He is a Creature that is created alongside with me and The Creator in the Creation Point. He, similar as I do, has Infinity Level magic, the highest form of magic available. We used to be friends, the interaction of our magic created many things that you know now. The Elemental Realm and the Ancient Beasts, not sure do you know them, are the result of our magic. In the beginning, I thought he is a pure hearted Creature, and played along with him.”

“However, slowly I found that he is what you all may call as an Incarnation of Evil. He feeds on negative emotions to grow in power. So, to fuel his endless hunger for power, he begin bending his will to create Creatures of evil will. That lead to the creation of the Ancient Beasts and Avatars, what actually happened I shall not describe here, but I can tell you after the incident regarding the Ancient Beasts I lost all respect for him. In the end, the entire Elemental Realm was in pure chaos after the Ancient Beast incident. I figured out that, in order for the Peace in the Elemental Realm to ensue, I have to rid the Existence of this monster.”

“Now, we might be Almighty and powerful, but we still have to sleep every now and then. When he was asleep, I used seven Infinity Artifacts to seal him in an Infinity Seal. Then I used Ragnarok to reconfigure the entire Existence as after the Ancient Beast incident the entire Elemental Realm is in a mess. The Physical Realm does not exist back then so no humans died, of course. Just before he is sealed, he awakens and tried to stop me, but it is too late. He then placed a curse that evil will always be in the hearts of Creatures. That was the opening of the Pandora’s Box.”

“Question. What is Ragnarok?” Someone asked.

“If you have read the Greek methodology, you would have come across this term before. Basically, it describes that due to a major battle, it causes the death of all major figures, which includes all Gods and Goddess, the occurrence of natural disasters and the submersion of the world in water. After this, the world will resurface, surviving gods meet and the world will repopulate by two human survivors. Similar to the Ragnarok described in Greek methodology, my Ragnarok spell destroys everything in the range of the magic circle, reduces it to mana, and then from the remains of everything, I will use my magic to reconstruct everything once again. It basically is a recycle of mana.”

“So, continue from where I stopped, I recreated the entire Existence using Ragnarok. Then for safety reasons, I stored the Infinity Artifacts into the Grand Rulers of the various Elemental Planes. So each Grand Ruler of the Elemental Plane holds one of the Infinity Artifact. I thought that, by doing so, the Infinity Artifacts will become inaccessible by anyone else, and even if someone manged to access the Infinity Artifact, they will not be able to break the Infinity Seal without the complete set of 7 Artifacts.”

“For a long period of Time after, including the Time that it took for me to reincarnate as human, the Existence is in peace. The only battle that is ensued is the tiny battles between the countries of the Physical Realm and the never ending war between the Light and Darkness Elemental Plane. That all came to an end when the greed within the previous Grand Ruler of Light, named Luricerite, begin to grow infinitely. He wanted to rule over the entire Elemental Realm, but with the Darkness Elemental Plane there, he could not. So he figured out that he will need a greater power to fuel his plans. That is when, I suspect, when a piece of The Unknown’s soul reached Luricerite.”

“I suspect, the Infinity Seal is not completely protection proof so small pieces of The Unknown’s soul can leak out of it. That is how he reached Luricerite and came out with the plan all the Artifacts. Luricerite is successful in doing so and he broke the seal. The Unknown then tried to combine with Luricerite to gain a body of flesh and fuel Luricerite with the power he wanted while he can feed on the endless greed and evil residing in the heart of Luricerite. However, he plans all comes to a fail as his level of magic is too powerful. From what I remembered, he absorbed magic from the Infinity Dimension inside the Infinity Seal and his power grew to near the far end of Infinity Level magic, just the absorption of any more magic will cause his level of magic to breakthrough Infinity Level magic, which I don’t even know what will happen after as Infinity Level magic is the highest form of magic in the World of Magic.”

“After combining with Luricerite, his level of magic peaked Infinity level magic and the magic begin to collapse upon himself. He was converted into a ball of pure mana that I kept near my side. That was The End of The Unknown. I can show you now if you want.”

I begin to fumble my bag, then I remembered it should not be there because Liz stole it. That is when I come into contact with a spherical object. I took it out, and saw that it is the ball of mana. That is strange, I swear that it has been stolen yesterday. Unless, that is, Liz returned it to me without notice.

That thief.

I showed it to everyone else the ball of pure mana.

“So beautiful. Almost like it is not of this world.” Someone said.

“It isn’t. This kind of object should only exist in the Astral realm, which even myself have no idea on how to access it. I should consider myself lucky to have such an object with myself.”

“It feels so soft, yet hard at the same time. It feels like an unmeasurable amount of power is stored within this sphere.”

“That is because it is mana. It has no physical form in this world. Mana is the fuel that all magic casters need. If human can utilize their mana and have a certain amount of magic, they can too cast magic spells as well.”

“So this means if I have the ball of mana I can cast magic as well?”

“You will need magic as well. But if you have that fulfilled, then yes, you can cast magic as well.”

“Woah!”

I put the ball of mana back into my bag. “Did you record down all of that I have described into some kind of a record?”

“AH! I’m so engrossed in the story that I forgot to keep a record of it! Sorry!” Argen exclaimed.

Saying these, he went over to one of the cupboards in the room and opened up one of them, from it he took out a book, which I shall assume it is their record of the stories of the Occult.

“So, Innight, can you repeat your story? Please?”

I sighed.

Halfway through my story telling, the ground suddenly shook violently, throwing everyone off their seats. Then it stopped, everyone crawled form the ground.

“What is happening?” Time asked.

“I will like to know the answer to that question as well.” I said.

An announcement came:

“Greetings, humans. We are the Arachnids. We have come over to take revenge over what you humans have been consistently doing to our dear brothers and sisters. We will be taking your world as our new residence, resistance is not recommended. Thank you for listening to our announcement.”

Then the speakers got cut off. That is when the principle, Mdm. Lillie, whispered into our ears.

“Students. There is an invasion going on in the school itself. We need your help to slay the invaders and drive off the invasion. You are to fight off the invaders at where you are now exactly, we will gather once the invasion is over.”

I smiled at all of them.

“Looks like we have our work cut out for us. Let us reclaim our school!”

“Uh, wait a minute Innight.” Ashley spoke.

“What is it?”

“I will not be helping out, I have other places to attend to.”

“Huh? Fighting off the invasion is more important! Do you want the Arachnids to take over the world?” Charlotte shouted.

“Calm down, Charlotte. Some people are not as strong as us do. He may be a magic caster, but we do not know his magical strength, depending on the type of enemy we meet, he may land himself into trouble. We do not even know the enemy strength yet so giving a weak soldier a chance to fight an unknown enemy is practically a suicide attempt. Let him be off.”

“Thank you for understanding, Innight.” Ashley said this and ran off.

I rubbed my hands together and took out the ball of mana in my right hand.

“Alright, everyone let us drive out the invaders!”