December 1st, year 787 of the Imperial calendar
"WAIT! STO—"
Not letting me finish my sentence, however, an excruciatingly painful headache assaulted me. I fell down to the ground and groveled in pain.
"ARRRGHH!!!"
The pained scream of me could be heard throughout the entire sewers system. Luckily for me, no one else was in the sewers at the time. Well, maybe there were some people here but they were probably too scared to approach the source of the horrible screech.
After what felt like an eternity, the pain finally stopped.
Wiping the sweat off my forehead, I slowly stood up and leaned my body against the wall.
'What the fuck just happened?'
That's when I remembered that I was holding onto an SS ranked artifact. I looked at the ground, and tried to find it.
Fortunately, I found it soon after. Unfortunately though, it was broken in half.
As I was questioning whether an SS ranked artifact could be broken that easily, a translucent blue screen appeared before my eyes.
<[Eyes of Chronos] (Grade - SS artifact)'s power is partly assimilated into the user's unique Time magic>
I widened my eyes in surprise. I have never heard of anyone forcefully awakening their Time or Space magic before. And it seemed that the pocket watch I always kept on me was responsible for whatever it was.
I was excited. Who knows what cool powers I have awakened? Maybe it was the ability to stop time!
I focused Time mana and...
"ARRRGHH!!!"
Another painful headache assaulted me.
When I tried to activate my Time magic, several pale red sprites resembling me that only I could see appeared all over the sewers.
However, to say that there were only 'several' of them was an understatement.
There were so many sprites that they practically filled the sewers. And my brain almost fried from the excessive information. Luckily though, I managed to deactivate the magic almost immediately.
Thanks to Status, I intuitively knew what the sprites were. They were the representation of each and every of my possible future movements in the next 10 seconds.
Knowing this, I was disappointed.
'That's it? It's not even worth losing an SS ranked artifact'
Refusing to believe that the power I acquired at the cost of a powerful artifact was so underwhelming, I tried focusing Time mana again. This time, I strictly limited the mana flow, and only saw the sprites representing my most probable movements as a result.
Instinctively, I concentrated Time mana on one of the sprites. My eyes flashed red for a split second and...
Splash—!
I, who was leaning on the walls of the hidden passage way, was teleported right into sewer water.
No, 'teleport' wasn't the right word. It was more like that I 'erased' the action of me walking out of the passageway. And the only thing left was the result of me getting drenched in sewer water.
Standing up and distancing myself from the filthy water, I fell into deep thought for a good minute before finally figuring out the nature of my Time magic.
There were 2 parts to my magic, which I named [Foresight] and [Splice] respectively.
Let's say, for example, there was a finish line 50m away from me.
Normally, it would take me 10 seconds to cover a distance of 50m.
However, if I used [Foresight], selected the sprite that ran the 50m, and focused Temporal attribute mana to activate [Splice], I would find myself right in front of the finish line instantly.
To an outside observer, not even a millisecond has passed since I activated my magic, and I was already at the finish line.
After testing around for a bit, I found out that I could only 'erase' up to 10 seconds of time with [Splice].
This Time magic was kind of similar to a certain Italian mafia boss' powers.
Well, it might seem like a glorified teleportation magic. And it was indeed the case, for the most parts.
[Splice] had multiple advantages over teleportation magic. One of which was that it required little to no preparations to activate, unlike teleportation magic. Another was that I wouldn't have to get used to the nauseous feeling of teleporting if I used [Splice].
If I used [Splice] correctly, I could preserve the momentum of my strikes and erase the unnecessary movements I would have inevitably made using my [III - Roteare style]. As such, the sword art would get immensely powerful if I could master my Time magic.
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Unfortunately, however, it didn't seem to affect mana concentration. Thus, I could not shorten the preparation time for [V - World splitter] using this.
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***
After figuring out my Time magic, I made my way out of the sewers. I was still drenched in filthy sewage water, but I could do nothing about it.
I continued to walk towards a clinic. People ran away from me and sent me weird looks as they came across me.
Luckily, the owner of the clinic was a nice old man. He didn't immediately kick me out of his clinic when he saw, or rather, smelled me.
"What did you do boy? You smell like goblin shit"
"I... fell down a manhole" I sighed.
"Sure... manholes apparently rip your clothes to shreds and leave cuts all over your body these days. Never knew they had evolved to be so ferocious"
I scratched my head and just shut my mouth to let the man do his job.
After bandaging my wounds and giving me some prescriptions, the man stood up and smelled his own body. His face crunched up as he did so.
"I'll go take a bath to get rid of your smell. Just leave the money by the counter and get out"
"..."
He actually left me here alone, with the front door unlocked.
Now, I could have just ran away without paying him anything. But since he was somewhat nice to me and still treated me as a proper patient despite my god awful smell, I decided to be a bit generous and leave 1 Gold for him. I wasn't that concerned about it since Irene Nightshade gave us 2 Platinums worth of money after all.
I then got to the inn. [Splice] proved useful as I managed to get into my room unnoticed thanks to it. After all, I didn't want Alicia, or really anyone in the inn to take a whiff of me.
I then cleaned myself in the bathroom adjacent to my room and went to sleep for the rest of the day, or night. I didn't really care, as I was completely exhausted.
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***
The next morning, I met Alicia right outside of my room after I woke up.
"You done with the exam?"
"Yes"
"Congratulations" She said with a flat tone. I had no idea if she was genuine about it or not, but I sure was jealous of her for being able to hide her emotions that well without using any skills.
We then came down to the main lobby of the inn to have breakfast.
Our meal continued in silence until Krista suddenly showed up.
Not really being surprised at her sudden appearance, I asked her.
"So you passed?"
"Mhm! 15 Golems were nothing to me!" Krista answered with pride.
"Enough about me! You had to hunt 5 Wyverns right? How did you pass on the first day?" She asked with curiosity.
Alicia, who didn't know that I had fought Wyverns, gave me a look of surprise. But she soon returned to her apathetic look though.
"Well, Raun helped me"
"Wait, Raun's here? Does that mean Amelia is here too?" Krista asked excitedly. I didn't pay much attention during the coming-of-age ceremony, but I guessed that Krista managed to befriend the shy Amelia in a single day.
"She probably is. Though I guess that the church of Life made it so that she would be instantly accepted into the academy. She's their Saintess after all"
In fact, all Heroes, Saints, and Saintesses of any churches were able to enjoy the privilege of getting accepted into any of the two great academies without taking any sorts of tests.
Well, Arthur was an exception. Since the Holy knight captain noticed that there were spies in the church of Light, Arthur was treated as a normal Holy knight trainee. Thus, he had to take the exam like everyone else.
Although, he was very bad at hiding that fact. But I had no idea how no one found out about it until a few months into the school year. Yes, no one, not even the Imperial princess who had the best information gathering network in the continent.
"Hey, where will Alicia stay when we're at the Academy?" Krista suddenly asked.
"At your dorm room of course" I said.
"But she can't"
"Why?" I was confused.
"Only relatives or servants can stay with students in a dorm room"
"So adopt her or make her a servant"
"She's too young to legally be a servant and I don't think my mom could afford to adopt anyone willy nilly"
"Can't she register as Alicia's guardian like she did with me?"
"Again, she can't just do it to just anyone. And it wouldn't work either since they won't acknowledge guardianships"
I furrowed my brows. If that was so, there's only one thing I could do.
"Alicia" I turned towards the 8-year-old girl who was not aware of our earlier conversation.
"?"
"What do you think about me adopting you?"
"!"
Alicia had a surprised look on her face. Before long, however, her surprised expression turned into that of sadness and longing.
'Maybe it's too abrupt' I thought.
There were many ways I could have gone about it. I still had enough money to let her stay at an inn during my school year. It was definitely my fault on this one.
"Sorry, just forget what I said. You could sta—"
"It's fine. You could do it, I guess" She interrupted as she returned to her usual bored look.
"Are you sure?"
"Mhm. It might help me move on from my parents" She said, tonelessly, as if it had nothing to do with her. But I was sure that she was anything but apathetic at that moment.
Whether she was really trying to move on from her parents' deaths, or she was just running away from her trauma, it didn't change the fact that she was now Alicia Gray, my daughter.
As such, I would always be there for her if she ever needed someone to rely on.
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***
December 3rd, year 787 of the Imperial calendar
It was the final day of the exam, and Raun suddenly contacted me.
He asked me if I would have liked to attend the small celebratory party he was holding at a café, and he said that he wouldn't take no for an answer.
'Why did you even ask me then?' I wanted to retort but Raun had already bolted out of the inn at that time.
Sighing, I informed Krista and Alicia of this. You could already guess who was enthusiastic about this and who was not.
"Here!" Raun waved at us as he saw us enter the café.
Our table was in an obscure spot in the corner, the perfect spot from someone like me if I do say so myself.
Well, I guessed that he chose it just because he didn't want anyone to spot Amelia, who was sitting next to him, and hit on her. But I saw no needs to call him out on that.
"You're 10 minutes late, I thought you won't come" Raun said as he slapped my back.
"Yea, stuff happened"
By stuff, I meant me and Alicia being dragged out of the inn by Krista since we didn't want to go outside.
"So, who's that little girl?" Amelia suddenly asked me. Hearing that, Raun turned his gaze towards Alicia.
"She's uh..." I glanced at Alicia to ask for permission, but she just shrugged her shoulders and still kept her poker face.
Well, I saw no needs to lie to them.
"She's my daughter"
Clank—!
Raun and Amelia were so shocked that they dropped their cutleries down to the floor.
"W- what? Does that mean you h- had s..." Amelia asked with a red face.
Raun, however, just laughed.
"HAHAHAH! Theodore, if you're a lolicon then just say it, no needs to lie. There's no way you got laid before I did" Raun spoke shamelessly.
I tried to smack his forehead in response. But Amelia was one step faster than me, as she pinched his sides while glaring at him.
After that, Amelia kicked Raun from his spot, forcing him to sit next to me. Seeing this chance, Krista pulled Alicia to the seat next to Amelia with her.
The girls were chatting happily. Well, only Krista and Amelia did. Alicia just look at me as if she was pleading me to just take her back to the inn and let her sleep in her room. But I paid her no mind as I had something I wanted to confirm.
"So what class are you in?" I asked Raun.
"Who do you think I am? Of course I'm in 1-1" Raun puffed his chest as he said that.
'Good'
I was in class 1-3, and Raun was in 1-1, just like Krista. Looked like that the plot was still going in the right direction despite Arthur having a different test than the one he had in the novel.
'I could enjoy my life as an extra now, away from all the troubles that class 1-1 will face'
That was what I thought until my first day in the Academy came.
'WHY IS SHE HERE!'