After retelling the officer what happened—mostly by the excited girl—the officers that got here soon after dealt with the men laying on the ground. The one that had his nose broken was picked up and thrown into a different kind of car, much larger and with red colors on it, while the other two were just moved to the first car that showed up.
“That will be all. I just need to see your IDs,” the officer that had been here from the start said, pulling out yet another one of those phones.
“Oh! Um… hold on…” the girl said as she rummaged in her backpack for a while. “Aha!”
She pulled out a small rectangular card, same as the one that I had picked up from the room in the tall building. I pulled out the one I had and looked at it for a moment. The girl passed the card over to the officer, who took it and started pressing the painting that was glowing on his phone.
“Here you go, Miss Nicole,” the officer said as he handed the card over to Nicole—a name that I just learned.
He then moved his hand over to me, expecting me to do the same with the card, but I remembered Salrak saying that it was important, so I wasn’t sure about handing it over to a strange man… However, after hesitating for a moment, I eventually passed it over while keeping my eyes focused on both the card and every action that the officer did.
“And here you go, Miss Althea,” the officer said, just as nonchalant as he had done with Nicole, something that took me aback slightly, since most of my life that name had been subject of praise and reverence.
“Thank you!” Nicole happily replied to the officer before giving me a sidelong glance.
“You might get contacted again about this issue. Until then, please take care,” the officer replied with a stoic expression before turning around and going for the same car he used to get here.
“So…” Nicole playfully said as she turned to look at me. “Althea… huh…”
I looked at her as well, trying to keep my face as expressionless as I could, since the way she just said my name worried me that perhaps she knew me. “Yes, that’s my name.”
“Quite the exotic name. Are you from the other world?” she asked, and my worries went up more.
But I still tried to keep myself from showing it in my face as much as I could. “I—”
“I’ve always wanted to meet someone from the other world!” she excitedly said before I could even confirm or deny it. “The few ones that there are, are all being protected in other countries or in some places that would take too much to reach, so I’ve hardly even had the chance to see them in person.”
“Wait a second, what do you mean by—”
“Hey! Are you here as an exchange for the institute, or going to join it? I’m a student there—first year. I can show you the way! Come on!” Nicole continued with high energy, grabbing my hand and pulling me along to the road that I had been walking before meeting her.
I was at a loss for words, but I still allowed her to lead to this so-called National Institute of Magic. Nicole appeared to be a good girl, so I didn’t feel like she’s doing anything bad, which is why I still allowed her to guide me, if this could be called a guide.
“Hey, hey. What Rank and Class are you? I saw you doing all that stuff back there without breaking a sweat or getting scared at all, so you must be at least Rank C or something like that, right?” the girl said while looking at me with bright eyes. “I’m only Rank E… so perhaps you can teach me how to be as strong as you are.”
“Rank and Class?” I asked, not understanding at all what she was talking about, since I’d never heard about such a thing. I only ever was the Hero of the Holy Gods, a Holy Knight, or something along those lines, but nothing else.
The girl chuckled for apparently no reason. “Yes. Look, these are my stats.”
She slowed down and showed me her wrist. On it she was wearing a bracelet similar to the one I had in my pocket. The only difference would be that the strap was made out of a white material, and the jewel was slightly cleaner. She shook her arm slightly and the jewel lit up, displaying what I assumed to be the time.
“Oh wait!” she said, pulling her wrist back down and hiding the bracelet from view. “I want to see yours first.”
“I…” I trailed off for a second, and I considered my answer for the unknown thing she wanted out of me. “My bracelet is broken.”
“What do you mean ‘broken’? The Magic System Watches are made with Magic Stones, they’re almost indestructible!” she exclaimed as she started rubbing my forearms, looking for a bracelet that I wasn’t wearing. “Really?!”
“Yes,” I replied, pulling the bracelet from my pocket and showing it to her.
It turned on and she stared wide-eyed at the same message that appeared when I first took it. “It really is…” she said before expression changed to a pitying smile. “Well that’s okay, I’m sure the people at the Institute can fix it for you—or at least get you a new one.”
I didn’t answer as I simply walked alongside her, down the roads that started getting more crowded.
* * *
Standing in front of me were the gates to the ‘Institute’ that Nicole led me to. It was an unusual place, akin to the palaces and large manors that the royalty and nobles of my world would have; with a large road where people were walking, and decorated buildings at the sides that would have more people laying on the grass close to them.
It was the people coming and going out of them as if it was their home that let me know that this place wasn’t owned by an arrogant person in power, since they wouldn’t allow anyone—especially peasants—to simply walk into their properties.
Something that caught my attention were the barriers—if they could even be called that—that were put in place at the gates. They were uselessly short; no taller than waist-high, and easily pushed aside by the people that wanted to go in. I didn’t even understand why they would even bother placing them when anyone could just as easily walk over them.
“Come on,” Nicole excitedly said, walking ahead of me to one of those barriers.
She pulled out the same small card that she gave the police before and placed it at the side of one of the barriers, which then gave off a short high pitched sound before she pushed aside the useless barrier.
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Seeing her and other people doing that, I pulled out the card with my name on it and matched their movements. It gave off another sound that sounded similar to the last one, and I tried to push the barrier, but found myself unable to do it as it resisted me.
“Oh, it didn’t read correctly. Try putting your ID up to it again,” Nicole said from the other side of the barrier.
I repeated the motion, and the barrier gave off the same sound as before. I tried pushing the barrier, but it refused to move for me—unlike the other people that were easily moving it aside at the other parts of the barrier.
“Well, that’s strange… could it be that there’s something wrong with—huh? wait!” Nicole exclaimed when I decided to jump over the barrier.
“Hold it there,” a man dressed in dark blue clothes just like the police officer and the one at the tall building said to me.
I wondered if he was a police officer as well, but he didn’t have any of the symbols that the police had on his clothes, so he likely was something similar. Perhaps a police officer in training.
“I’m sorry Miss, but we can’t let you jump over the turnstile,” the man continued, gesturing to me with his hands to go back.
I frowned and threw a questioning look at Nicole, who only looked at me with confusion for a moment before it turned to a look of realization. “Oh I know! You’re not yet in the system!” she exclaimed and tapped the man on the shoulders a couple of times. “Excuse me, she’s a foreigner and she just isn’t on the campus list yet, so is there a way for her to get in?”
“Oh, if that’s the case, then she’ll just have to get registered,” the man calmly replied before turning to look at the side of the gate, pointing as he did. “Go over there and have them take your information, then you’ll be free to go in.”
There was a door and a window next to the ‘turnstile’, so I started making my way there, and Nicole walked back out from the other side of the turnstile to come with me. It was just a few short steps away with nobody else close to it, so we just walked into the door where we saw a woman sitting behind a desk and a strange black rectangular sculpture that lay on top of it.
“Hello,” Nicole cheerily said to the woman, who turned to look at her without a change of expression. Nicole continued with the same happy attitude. “My friend here would like to register for entry into the campus.”
“ID, please” the woman answered with a business-like tone, just like some of the royal retainers would use when I dealt with them.
Knowing the kind of personalities that these kinds of people would have, I wasted no time taking out the card and handing it over to the lady. She took it and placed it down on the table in front of her, but she didn’t look at it as she stared ahead a black rectangle thing at her front.
I was baffled for a moment, confused about what she was doing, until she started pressing some rocks arranged inside a long rectangle black plate in front of her, which confused me even more, causing the furrow in my face to deepen. I couldn’t understand at all what this woman was doing, so I turned to look at Nicole at my side, wondering if she felt the same, but she carried a soft smile on her face, as if whatever was going on here was normal.
“Please stand here while I take a picture,” the woman said, and I turned to look back at her.
She was pointing at a very small box with a round glass bit in the middle that was placed on top of the black rectangle that she had been staring at so far. I turned to look at Nicole again, but she just gestured for me to move over. I took a couple of steps, stood in front of the small box and readied myself for anything that could happen in this strange situation.
“Okay. Here you go,” the woman said after a couple of seconds, passing the card back to me. “You may go in now.”
“What in the Gods’ names is going on here…?” I whispered to myself while looking down at the card in my hand.
“Come on, Althea!” Nicole said, pulling on my arm as she pointed back to the turnstile.
I allowed myself to be led back to the same turnstile I tried to use before. Nicole went ahead of me, easily passing just as she had done before, and she stood on the other side waiting for me to do the same. I looked down and placed my card down in the same manner as I had done before, and this time the turnstile made the same sound that it had done for Nicole, so I pushed it and was easily able to move it.
“Alright! Everything is working fine,” Nicole exclaimed, turning around to look at the light-gray road that stretched deeper into this property. “Now, let's go to the administration building to get you a new Watch.”
I nodded and walked along with her. While on our way, I noticed the different people that were coming and going. Almost everyone was wearing the same clothes, with elegant jackets, like the ones that I’d only see in the academies for noble children. I was reminded of bitter memories when I looked at them, because when I had to attend one of those academies, I was seen mostly as a peasant that was dirtying their reputation.
And here I was in one of those again. However, there was something different about this one. Everyone looked and carried themselves differently from each other, and even if some of them looked much wealthier than others, they would all mingle with each other as if that didn’t matter. More shocking of all was that a handful of people looked older than the other ones, and people still talked with them as if that didn’t matter either.
I couldn’t quite understand what kind person would own this academy to have this kind of environment, but I was interrupted in my thoughts as Nicole excitedly pointed at a group of people. “Look! The higher ranked ones are training over there! Bet you could show them a thing or two yourself.”
I turned to look and noticed that there were a handful of people carrying different weapons in their hands and striking training dummies, something that made me realize that this was a sort of military academy.
Some of them had the normal kind of weapons I would see anywhere; like swords, shields, spears, and bows; while others had more exotic weapons, like a barbed whip, a scythe, punching gauntlets, or a twinblade.
There were only a couple of them that carried weapons that I had never seen, since they held them like one would hold a crossbow, with one of them being about a large as one, only missing the bolt and the string; while the other one had just the handle of a crossbow—just like the bandit I fought earlier.
I stood with Nicole, watching how the students of this academy would perform. They all used their weapons differently, and I was surprised to see that the mages were using other weapons from the typical staff, as the ones carrying a spear and the twinblade would launch lighting, fireballs, rocks, and water from their tips.
A couple of the ones with a sword were also using it for magic attacks, but one of them didn’t seem to have a very good grasp of his magic, since after a swipe, he would launch a pure wave of mana which would only bounce off the training dummy, dealing hardly any damage to it. That is not to say that pure mana is not dangerous, but to use it properly you have to be able to manipulate it at will, which means, being able to transform it into almost any element without having to think about it, something that the other sword user would do as his waves were of wind blades and fire.
The other weapons users were only using mana to empower their bodies and their swings, throwings powerful attacks at the training dummies, which would swing from one side to the other, fly away, and even be torn apart by a particularly powerful scythe user. Their techniques were somewhat crude, but I could tell that they were being trained by someone with plenty of knowledge and experience in combat, since they all tried to be as optimal as they could, and they all paid attention when this person pointed out mistakes.
Last of the group were the ones with the unknown weapons, who would carefully aim them just like a bow and pull on the trigger, creating a loud sound that fired a similar small rounded bit just as the bandit’s weapon would. These were much faster, so it was difficult for me to follow them in the air without circulating mana to my eyes, which also allowed me to notice that these students were empowering each arrow tip with a tiny amount of mana. It wasn’t enough to be considered dangerous to most beasts, but with the speed they were going, if they fired enough of them, then the most common of beasts wouldn’t have a chance.
I couldn’t help but raise my eyebrows, impressed at their display of power. However, there was one issue with all of them: They all seemed to be doing it as if they were never going to use those techniques to fight someone else—some of them didn’t even seem to think they were ever going to fight a beast at all. It all seemed like… sport.
“Wow! Awesome, right?!” Nicole excitedly said as she was looking at them swing and fire their magic.
“Hmm,” I replied, not denying the girl but not feeling nearly as close to what she was displaying, since I had seen a certain Darkness and Hellfire God try to burn down entire cities with but a swing of his hand.
“Heh, I guess that for such a strong mage, what they’re doing isn’t amazing,” she continued, giving me a small shove with her arm while carrying a teasing smile. “Well, let's keep going. The administration building is right over there, next to the central plaza.”