01 FINALLY

Orea jolted fully awake, buckling against the body that flung itself at her, not a trace of drowsiness in her mind. The giant winter shepherd started licking away at her face, stopping only when Orea promptly sat up on the bed pushing it backwards, its tongue hanging out of its mouth while it made short gasps of breath.

“Good morning Theo,” she said.

The dog replied with a short bark, still staring intently at her occasionally tilting its head, unwilling to budge from its position. All her mornings started like this with Theo jumping on her and licking a good morning after which it would jump off after she woke up but there was something about its persistency today...

“Alright, get off,” she said after noticing it wasn’t ready to end its invasion of her bed. It obeyed her and got off the bed making three quick circles before bolting out of the room.

Orea shrugged off the bed clothes and entered her bathroom, picking up her brush and applying toothpaste. She brushed noisily for some minutes and spat into the basin and sighed.

“Finally...”

She was going back to the academy today and that marked the end of all her troubles and disturbances with the rest of the family.

She spat for the last time and turned on the shower. As the droplets of water ran down her body, she closed her eyes and the thoughts of the past school year ran through her mind.

Once again Ellia Soears had beaten her to the top the class, she had turned down two dating attempts, had mastered how to control her mana and had made only one friend through out the school year. Alicia Alinari the new student who was basically unlike her in a couple many ways.

Alicia was a white haired daughter from a well known family in Cyara, and unlike Orea all she wanted to do was have fun, help others, and explore the world beyond the walls of the Alinari mansion. she was also well versed in Alchemy and could bend and generate fire using unstructured magic, just like Orea.

She got out of the shower, jumped into some clothes and started to pack...not that she unpacked anyway.

After a minute or so of gathering her books and personal effects she dragged her luggage along with her. Perhaps a simple levitation spell could have done the job a lot faster and easier too. But the academy wasn’t prepared to teach C class students magic yet.

As she went down the stairs she couldn’t help but notice the quietness in the house. Not like she could complain though. The house was always noisy and it’s occupants talked and did things to loudly for her liking.

“Ain’t nothing like the eeriness of silenc...,”

“Happy birthday Rea!!!,” they all shouted.

Crap.

Today.

It was today wasn’t it . How could I have forgotten. She lamented inwardly before squeaking a thank you and making a bee line for the kitchen. She needed to get out as soon as poss...

“Come blow your cake honey” Her mother said pointing to a tiny cake on the centre table which had sixteen candles.

“Oh,” she mumbled and walked to the table and picked up the cake. After saying a little wish, she blew off the candles and but back the cake on the table.

“Happy birthday,” they all wished one after the other as they gave her presents. After giving everyone a slight apology for not opening the presents she grabbed her luggage and left for the train station where she would board one going to Kiowa.

—break—

“Now arriving in Goth,” a disembodied voice blurted out from a speaker just above the cabin she was in. Inwardly she was praying to God to keep the cabin empty. After the announcement by the disembodied female voice there was brief noise as people scrambled in and out of the train.

Seemed Orea’s prayers weren’t even considered talk less of being answered as people thronged into the cabin heading for Cyara’s capital which was like the business hub of the country due to the presence of the Expantial Portal.

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The Expantial Portal was a gateway to a vast ecosystem of monsters and magical creatures alike and was always home to adventurers, heroes and hunters who sometimes battled against each other over who could delve into the dungeons within the Portal to harvest the mana crystals, ancient artifacts, rare stones, magical weapons and the like which was readily available in secret chambers and temples mostly guarded by monsters.

It was all fun and experience for these group of people also creating a business opportunity for smiths, healers and armouries. Whatever the Hero academy in Kiowa was all about, it was surely to produce heroes capable enough to roam the Portal.

It was like some gateway to another dimension entirely and in order to enjoy from the bountiful riches within, each family made sure it had a son or daughter in the most prestigious academy in Cyara.

The Portal also had its disadvantages as monsters were constantly creeping out of it, sometimes disguising as humans and sometimes as animals to wreck havoc on the world as much as they could before being destroyed by the Hero association.

Being a member of the Hero association was the dream of every student in Kiowa’s academy, and according to Alicia, they were assholes with ranks who got heavily paid for dealing with monster leaks and also having the freedom to explore the Portal at will.

Orea wasn’t particularly interested in getting high ranks or getting paid, all she wanted to do as soon as she graduated was to roam the entire landscape within the Portal getting rich while having fun kicking monster butts. Alicia just wanted to graduate and be done with it.

The train hadn’t quite left Goth when there was a sudden outcry from someone in the front seat of the cabin she was in. As uninterested as she tried to be, Orea couldn’t help but wonder what the sudden outburst was all about.

She soon found out.

A man seated at the front was slowly transforming into something abominable. He was growing spikes out of his back which tore through his shirt as his fingers and hair kept growing longer. Orea’s eyes widened at the sight, a goddamn monster right in front of her.

Every other person in the cabin was panicking and running as far away from the man as possible while Orea remained calm. It was part of her Hero training in school to always remain calm in the face of danger, she then proceeded to use her identity skill

[two fanged werewolf Class B rank 1200]

How on earth was there a werewolf in broad daylight? There was no full moon for Christ sake! She guessed monsters from the Portal just didn’t care about earthly rules.

She stepped forward and was about to face the monster head on when suddenly a jagged disintegration beam sliced it in half. A hand rested on Orea’s shoulder as she looked up at the owner.

“What do you think you’re doing young miss?” The man said in a clear almost feminine voice. It was then Orea realised. It was Zakkus, the A-rated sorcerer from the Hero association.

“I...I was trying...,”

“Get back to safety,” he cut her short and shoved her behind him, while he proceeded towards the now halved beast on the floor. After some wierd movements with his fingers, the werewolf simply levitated into the air and then disappeared, two toothlike daggers falling back into his hands.

Orea had been taught that in one of her classes. Heroes and adventurers alike always retrieved trophies from thier kills which power depended on the strength of the foe conquered which in this case was two daggers which were probably the fangs from the werewolf’s maw.

After taking one long look at the daggers, Zakkus turned around swiftly and outstretched his hands towards Orea.

“Here, you can have them,” he said, with an emotionless expression.

“Oh...thanks...,” Orea stammered as she received the daggers from him while bowing. She was about to say something when the disembodied voice came blaring from the speakers in the cabin

“Now arriving at Kiowa,” it said.

Immediately there was a brief scramble as people were rushing out of the cabin as though they wouldn’t have another chance to do so again, they were obviously terrified of what happened. Most of them hadn’t even gotten to thier destination as most of them were headed for Isheye.

In the scramble, Orea lost Zakkus and with a sad countenance she unboarded the train while dragging her bags with her. She was obviously sad she couldn’t at least get an autograph or something. It was all so unfair.

Orea was awed by the way Zakkus had defeated a B-rated monster in a matter of seconds with just one attack. The more she thought about it, the more she wanted to graduate from this goddamn school and start kicking monster butts as soon as possible, perhaps if she could defeat monsters stronger than the one they just encountered she could get even cooler weapons.

All she could do was lament miserably as she trudged towards her hostel room. It was the famous Zorian Kazinski hostel, named after the founder of the academy, according to what she had heard, he was a very powerful mage and was the leader and the founder of the now prestigious Hero association.

As soon as she got to her room she proceeded to unpack quickly so she could go to the library immediately and make some research on the dagger she had just been given. That plan however was bound to be disrupted as a knock assaulted her door.

Orea wondered who could be at her door so soon since she had only gotten in few seconds ago. She opened the door nonetheless.

“I just got here, Alicia...,” Orea said squinting her eyes towards the white haired young woman standing in front of her.

“What? Am I not welcome here?” Alicia replied as she slid past Orea into the room. Orea knew better than to argue with a girl who could control fire with her mind so she said nothing and closed the door.

“I’m not saying that..., just saying how come you’re here when I just arrived few minutes ago,”

“Been watching you,” she replied while making pointing gestures at her eyes and then at Orea’s.

Alicia was also gifted with a kind of power that allowed her to sense other people with her mind. So by making a mental signature of someone in her head, she could notice when that person entered her sphere of perception. It was like some sort of map.

“Guess what I found...,” Orea said dramatically as she approached her backpack.

“True love??”

“Ewwww, not funny, ” Orea replied making the exact same face she made when Alice first popped on her door.

“Something better and far more useful,” she said as she brought out the two daggers Zakkus had given her.

Alicia’s eyes widened.

“You...you...you went into the Portal??” She stammered, her surprised gaze fixed on the two weapons Orea was holding up to her face.

“How...how did you...,”

“Pull yourself together Ali...,” Orea said and tugged at Alice’ collar violently.

“I didn’t go into the Portal... I’m not stupid... you know Zakkus?” Orea asked.

“The A-rated sorcerer from the Hero association??” Alice guesssed correctly.

“Yeah. He gave them to me,”

“How...”

“Forget it, I’m not narrating how I encountered a werewolf in the cabin I was, and how he simply sliced the monster in half with a jagged disintegration beam, and how I was lucky to be beside him when he retrieved the daggers, and how he gave them to me, and how I tried to get an autograph, but couldn’t cos we decided to arrive at Kiowa immediately while I was trying to get one and how I ended up just getting two completely useless daggers from some werewolf’s teeth,” Orea said as she held them to her face, examining them.

They were six inches long blades attached to some kind of soft almost cartilage kind of material which was supposed to act as their handles. They were just plain without designs or runes or any special carvings. To Orea they were just the tooth of some easy to destroy monster.

“Those are the fangs of a two fanged werewolf ,” Alice said after. a pause, making Orea take a second look at them.

“Yeah I know.... I feel like that is obvious,” Orea replied pressing her lips together.

“A single scratch from any of those daggers can cause temporary paralysis, while a deep cut or a stab can cause permanent paralysis. The duration of paralysis depends on how deep the injury caused is...” Alicia lectured with a look of satisfaction on her face. She had obviously been reading. Orea hadn’t known any of those until now.

“Guess I’ve got a lot of stabbing to do.” C