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31 – Single

An event, such as the one which I saw before meddling in, may have traumatic effects on Arman. He had gone through kidnapping, bashing and threatening for his life where he was helpless to retaliate. In short, his brain had gone through so much stress that his nerves may have snapped or are going to snap any moment.

I think that was the sole reason why he was still sitting on ground and was looking at me with those big sheepish eyes. I am not a psychologist, but I hope things that occurred tonight were not going to affect his future life to worse.

I made few steps towards Arman, bent a bit and raised my arm. He grabbed my hand and stood up. I didn’t speak at all because I wanted to see whether he is still sane.

“Thanks”, Arman muttered. “It’s alright”, I replied and smiled. “I thought I am...”, Arman stopped his eyes got watery. “Thanks Kain”, he told while tears were coming out of his eyes.

I patted his shoulder with my left hand and we headed back to our house. That night Arman slept on couch in guest room.

9th September 4031. Monarch Academy

Early in the morning Sofia, Arman and me left our house to cafeteria for breakfast. We were planning to go to admission’s office to apply to classes afterwards.

However, what took my interest was that for the last few days that I was in Monarch every single male or female servant, worker or part-timer in academy was looking at me with different eyes than usual.

They were much more friendlier with me in regards to other students. By all means, they tried not to offend anyone but in my case I could see them smiling at me from bottom of their hearts, helping me out in every single possible way.

I didn’t have the chance to ask one of them what was happening as either Sofia or Arman was with me almost at all times which restricted my communication with servants and workers of the academy.

After the breakfast we went to admission’s office to chose and enroll in classes. Front side of the admission’s building, almost up to its door, was enclosed by small stalls where senior students were advertising their clubs.

Some of them would go as far as trying to force newcomer’s to join their clubs. Because of their soft attitudes Sofia and Arman were almost scared the shit out of them by senior students who tried to grab and forcefully sign them to god knows what club they were advertising.

Somehow after going through the herd of students shouting and screaming about their club’s, we made it into the admission’s building.

According to the booklet given to me at admission’s office, maximum possible classes to be chosen were numbered to be three during one year of study. Moreover I had to choose a club to join which could be changed in future at any time.

Booklet was the only thing that explained what was going on so I was immersed in it. After reading the last paragraph I turned to see Sofia and Arman missing. “Most probably they have enrolled already and went to join a club”, passed my mind.

Without losing another moment, I grabbed enrollment form from the corner and began to fill it. I wrote down personal information about my self, and inserted all the classes which I was going to attend.

First class that I intended to study was History 1A. Simply put it was going to be about history of Pyrr continent and at the end of the year I had to write a thesis on any given subject.

Second class was named Magic 101. This class was going to be about spells, chants, incatations and so on.

Third class was named Magic 102. The different between 102 and 101 was that in this class it was going to be all about weapons and hand-to-hand combat. I assume this is where the distinction between a warrior and mage came up. Nevertheless, I didn’t want to speculate about it, as I was clueless.

I gave in my enrollment paper and was authorized momentarily to join the given classes from next day on. The only thing was left to join a club. I departed the admission’s office to see the everlasting chaos.

Recruitment was a tough job to do. I saw few of the new students join the club because the senior who was doing to recruitment was a member of very influential family and “forced” them to enter the club.

I had lots of students coming up to me but none of them insisted as they got to know who I am. I was wearing uniform so my peasant background was covered but after telling them my name  more or less they tried to avoid me.

I went through one stall to another as most of the clubs were not to my taste.

Close the end of the line, there were two people sitting on stools close to the table. Their hands were pressing onto their heads. They were playing a board game. I stood by to observe them.

Usual chess rules applied to this game although the figures were different. Instead of king and queen there was a dragon and a crocodile. Rooks, bishops and pawns were replaced by figures of orcs, priests and foot soldiers. Knights remained same as in normal chess.

Design of the board was a bit different from a normal chess from the old world. Opposite sides of the board were made to look like walls of a city with two big towers on each side.

I watched them play for almost an hour. A very interesting game was going on. The student to my left was doing a great job by making extra-ordinary moves to deceive the guy to my right. I was so immersed into the game play that when the guy to my right touched the orc on h3 unintentionally I yelled “Nah.. not that one”.

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It was as if life disappeared. Instantly everyone stopped talking. After I shouted, I heard few whispers. That’s it. Total silence.

Both of the players moved their hands from their heads and lifted up their heads in my direction like a slow-witted schoolgirls trying to collect their thoughts in an effort to understand the teacher’s question.

The guy sitting to my right was Kyle Cohen while the one to my left was Cyrus Lyth. It was an awkward moment. “Should have stayed silent”, passed my mind.

Cyrus began to laugh. “You guys teach peasant how to play shahmat?”, he said looking at Kyle. “Can you win?”, Kyle asked me disregarding Cyrus. “I can try”, I said as there were not so many pieces left on the board.

He waved his head implying for me to continue the game in his stead. There were not so many important and powerful pieces from both sides left, nevertheless I could sway the ending of the game. There was a chance and I was going to give a shot.

Kyle was playing with blacks while Cyrus was controlling the white ones. I was left with a crocodile(queen), one knight, two orcs, and one priest. Cyrus had an extra knight and priest in comparison to me. Although I had 6 foot soldiers whereas he had four of them.

Anyway, to their surprise I made my first move with crocodile moving him to the opposite side. I saw a sleazy smile on Cyrus’s face.

However I continued to play as usual. In three moves I intentionally sacrificed crocodile to get a tactical advantage over him. Cyrus took the bait. After two more moves, Kyle shouted in my stead “mate!”.

Cyrus stood up. He had a casual face expression. I didn’t see any anger or other complexion in his face. Cyrus raised his right hand, and I shook it. “Good game”, he said and I replied “Likewise”. “Welcome to Shahmat club, Kain”, he said and left dragging Kyle with himself.

Same night, I met Sofia and Arman back in the house. They were thrilled to bits after learning about my experience in club search. Actually they had heard it from others but wanted to confirm it with me. It was good to see Arman smiling and talking. I was happy for him overcoming the trauma that he had faced.

I was dumbfounded when I heard them having Magic 101 classes but avoiding 102. It seems warrior classes were not that popular with the students.

Next day, we attended Magic 101 all together. It was much of a introductory class so I didn’t get to know much. Day after it was history class. Same thing happened over there too, although Sofia and Arman were not attending history.

On Thursday, 12th of september, I woke up earlier than usual. I run around our house for 10 laps, did push-ups and pull-ups. Sofia and Arman were sleeping so I left to cafeteria by myself. There were not much people eating and I didn’t know any of them so I ate by myself and left to Magic 102 class.

There were 10 students attending Magic 102 out of all the newcomers. Klytea was there too. She came up to me as soon as I entered the classroom. We chatted a bit and were telling each other about our experiences when a young female entered the room.

She was around 1.70 meter’s tall. She had small hazel eyes, dark black hair and brownish skin. Most of her body was covered in ninja style clothing. Overall, she may not be categorized as conventionally pretty but you know what they say, beauty's only skin deep.

“In a row”, she ordered and pointed out for us to get in line. By the time we got into line she began to talk “If you had just knife... one knife... and...and around 20 enemies had circled around you”.

I was standing at the end of the line farthest from her, so thank god, she went towards the first one on line. I can’t remember whether it was a girl or boy, but teacher screamed. Her voice had composition of a monster from hell. “What would you do?”, she yelled her nose touching the nose of the student.

Another girl began to cry when she asked the same question to her. One by one she was coming up to me. It was Klytea’s turn now, and she was the only obstacle after which I would be teacher’s prey.

“What would you do? Ha?”, she yelled. “I..I...I stab myself?”, Klytea questioned. “Dead, you are all dead!”, she screamed. “Next”, she screamed and came to face me. “What would you do kid?”, she screamed.

“Not married. You are single, aren’t you?”, I said to her. Bam... I was knocked unconscious.

P.S: Sorry for late release!

P.P.S:

(a) I'm going to write my thoughts about Kain and development of the story. Firstly, actually the most important thing is that I am not planning to make him tooo OP in a chapter or two.. What I mean is, it is going to take time and hardships for him to attain a level or two while he gets stronger... So don't expect a character (like in other stories) who is 11 years old and kills an army of a kingdom using only his/her left hand.. isn't that too unrealistic?

(b) second point to be explained is that on first few chapters there were way too many POV's (according to readers).. After chapter 8 or 9, I cut all of them down which puts me in a hard position when describing characters... I'm not planning to bring up different POVs but storyline is going to be VERY SLOW for a while for all of you get who is who..

thank you all for supporting the story by reading it...,. THANKS THANKS THANKS!!!