"So what's this about?"

"Exactly what it looks like" Kirimara responded curtly.

Currently he was being accosted by his adoptive father, while said father flashily threw what looked like a manilla folder on the table between them.

"Oh? So you applied for this, this, grant? Why couldn't you ask me directly for it instead?" the man in front of him responded slowly.

"Does it really matter? Seriously, it's just for the library after all."

His father had to pause and draw in a breath. In all respects his son was technically correct, all he had done was apply for a higher access level in the library. Adding to that, in most cases he would have never even known that such an application was even sent either. The only reason he knew was that during the application process when the application processors tried to locate his public information, they couldn't retrieve the proper information.

When such a serious error occurred, the topic was immediately brought into the headmaster's office. It just so happened that the headmaster of Zephine academy, Alexi Zei, was the guardian of the same person who applied. The matching names could have entirely been a coincidence, but in the end it wasn't and Alexi found out about his son's secret application. Of course Kiri would never need to know those things, and he wouldn't. In fact Alexi silently swore to himself immediately that he would let Kirimara imagine how exactly the documents in his hand came to be there.

"How did you even find out that I applied anyway?"

And there was that same question.

"I'm the head of the school, how could I not know who has access to the 4th floor?" Zei immediately responded. To some extent this wasn't entirely false, as he did get an updated list every 3 months on who exactly had access to 4th floor and above, but he had just received his updated list last month. Again, normally in this case he would never have even know about his son's actions until another 2 months. But not knowing any of this Kirimara could only accept his father's explanation and take it in stride.

"So do I have access now or not?" he finally asked, trying to move the conversation along now.

"Hahh~, yes tomorrow you will be able to access the 4th floor, but honestly you won't find much that's useful for you there. Ah, here's your new card."

So saying Zei passed a black card over the table to his son. The name 'Kirimara Zei' was printed in bright silver lettering along one side of it.

Grunting in response Kiri picked up the card and inspected it shortly before putting it into his breast pocket. He knew that his father was probably right, most of the fourth floor was allocated to either high level combat spells or random quality-of-life spells which might not make sense to some, but given the fact that if done wrong those quality-of-life spells could be worse than the combat spells it was the right decision. In fact there was a famous story of a certain child attempting to cast 'Dry' to help his mom and ended up dieing in a horrible fire. Well, despite how dark that got, apparently the little boy found the spell because the mother had access to those spells and happened to leave it out somewhere. That story became the fear of mother's and their children everywhere.

"Thank you father, I'm going to sleep for tonight"

_____________________________________________________________________________

Walking through the elevator doors, Kirimara stepped through and took in his first view of the 4th floor of the library.

Initial impressions? ‘Dusty’.

The journey wasn’t too difficult, it was the same process for access to the 3rd floor in that when he entered the elevator he had to slide his card before the buttons on the panel lit up. There were a total of 6 floors in the library, 4 of which Kirimara had access too. On the 6th floor held all the “Highly confidential” and “Black Ops” operations that the kingdom has done, as well as secret documents from all the way up to 80 years ago. The 5th floor also held some less confidential information as well as a record of dangerous criminals, some of their possessions and depending on who, some of the magic they used. This type of magic was usually considered black magic, but it was also sometimes considered a country’s ‘secret’ or ‘unique’ magic. This was the kind of thing people died trying to keep within their country and not leak out, that was how serious access to the 5th floor and above was.

The 3rd floor was just books and record on history, or more specifically they told of the more ‘unkind’ parts of history that were normally kept out of school textbooks for ‘the children’s sake’. The official statement regarding this was that the government didn’t want ‘the wrong impression’ built among children before they had a ‘full understanding of the circumstances’.

Everything else was kept on the first two floors of the library. Of course most students could easily get access to the 3rd floor, but would have to show a clean record and higher level of academic achievements. The 4th floor was similar in this, but was more limited and was only available to the top 10% of students. Of course that meant that Kirimara was one of that 10%, and that was a sore point among many of his peers.

“Ah here we go, this is it.” Kirimara suddenly muttered, pausing while pulling out a rather dusty looking book from a nearby shelf. He couldn’t quite read the title so he dusted the cover off a little, then proceeded to sit down at a nearby table. The book in question had no real importance to him, but the author did. Kirimara had read several of his books on the 3rd floor, using his silver with gold lettering card, and really liked the author not only as a person but for his work. He wanted to continue reading his books and immediately applied for access to 4th floor, in reality that was the only reason he did so. Though Kirimara couldn’t deny he liked his new card better than the standard silver card with black lettering that all students got for access to the library, or even the one with gold for access to the 3rd floor.

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

‘well, it’s not really like it’s important, the barcode is what matters’ Kirimara thought to himself.

His arm slowly reached up to rub the base of his neck before he continued to read.

__________________________________________________________________________

“Good afternoon class” the teacher announced after walking in.

She put her books and miscellaneous things down on her desk before continuing,

“We have a new student today, he wasn’t able to come for the first couple of days of the semester due to travel issues but he’s here now, so everyone welcome him!”

As she finished saying that, a blonde haired man walked into the classroom with confident strides. In less than a second he was already observing the class with a cool, confident, and calm gaze.

“Hello everyone, my name is Alan Custos, please treat me well. I’m a senior like you guys and have just moved here from the western border. I’m new to this city so I hope that I can get along with everyone and learn about this wonderful place.”

Finishing his introduction with a bow, Alan slowly walked to the back of the classroom and took up an empty seat two rows over from Kirimara.

“Ah, Mr. Custos that seat is taken”

“Oh, my bad, how about this one then?” Alan asked, now pointing to the seat right next to Kirimara.

Turning to face Alan from his window seat, Kirimara nodded toward him and said “Yeah, it’s open.” before he returned to reading a dusty book that looked as if it could fall apart any day.

It had been less than a day since Kirimara stepped foot into the 4th floor but he had already made himself home. He had already learned two spells and was working on a third, and was appreciating the author very much.

“Hey, nice to meet you, I’m Alan” said his new neighbor.

“Yea, nice to meet you, my name is Kirimara,” he responded, shaking the hand that Alan had extended towards him.

“Kirimara? That’s a unique name, did you come from the east somewhere?”

“Eh? Oh, yeah” Kiri quietly responded, before turning back to his book. Alan proceeded to watch him for a minute longer, waiting expectantly for the conversation to continue, however Kirimara simply reached behind to scratch his neck and proceeded to ignore him for the rest of class.

________________________________________________________________

“Alright guys! Listen Up! Today’s practicals class will be split into two parts, the first is hand to hand combat and the second is machine technique,” in response chuckling started to rise from some of the male students in the group, to which the teacher glanced towards Kirimara before continuing, “Since Alan is new here I’ll have him partner up with Kiri for the first half and Daniel for the Second.”

Now the slight chuckles had faded into slight grunts of disapproval and annoyance, almost like a pet that didn’t get their treat for their troubles. Alan located Kirimara easily and trotted over to him, before asking him “Hey Key, shouldn’t you change out of your uniform for this?”.

“Key?” responded Kirimara, grunting annoyedly, before taking a look at himself. He was still wearing his standard uniform, dress shirt, tie, cardigan, slacks and loafers, while the rest of class had already changed into sports clothes and footwear.

Scratching the base of his neck, Key curtly responded with a simple “Is there really a need to?”

Slightly miffed at the response Alan just shrugged in response and said “Your loss then” before getting into the standard combat ready position with knees bent and two hands up.

Key didn’t say anything in response this time and just stood there, bringing Alan to an even more bothered state.

“Aren’t we suppose to be practising fighting right now?”

“Yea, just come at me with whatever you want, I’ll tell you what to fix from there.”

‘Cocky son-of-a-bitch isn’t he?’ Alan thought to himself before again shrugging away his thoughts.

“Whatever” Alan sighed, before dropping into a slightly lower stance and angling himself sideways. ‘Left roll, right punch to the face, duck then left strike to his ribs? No, too obvious, right punch to the ribs, elbow with the left sweep kick right then grapple maybe? Yea let’s go with that’

Settling his mind Alan prepared himself for combat, he would take this fight seriously even if his opponent wouldn’t, he needed to. Still, something about Key’s stance, his breathing even, the pure lack of care in his eyes, that made Alan off-ease.

‘Go!’

Alan ran at key and began the fight.

“The Ribs? Too easy” Key suddenly whispered into Alan’s ear.

Alan didn’t even have time to register what had happened before he went tumbling the other way with a tooth flying out. As Alan threw the punch Key grabbed Alan’s fist with his left arm and pulled it, throwing Alan off center and open. Key took this chance to pull his face close to Alan’s ear before kneeing into his stomach and striking him across the jaw with his elbow. With a final kick he sent Alan flying.

“*puh* what the hell?” Alan muttered, spitting out the blood from his mouth.

“You threw the punch too early, as a result you overstretched your arm leaving a weak point that I could exploit. Keep yourself centered, don’t spread yourself wide.”

Alan got back to his feet and entered his stance again but this time it was slightly different.

“Hmm?” Key mumbled, ‘What changed? He doesn’t look any different at all...’

The air around Alan had suddenly changed, and once more he charged at key, but this time he was prepared.

(A/N): Sorry I never got around to uploading this, I just can't stop getting sick. Because I missed a few weeks I'll be uploading 2 more chapters later sunday-ish, so everything will be back on schedule.