Small little author note: I just started writing back so I have not written for weeks, so don't expect 'locked in' quality off rip.

Also, this chapter became much, much longer than I thought when I originally started writing it so it's going into two parts, Enjoy~~

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Survival 101 class seemed to flow by like a stream of water.

Some people hesitated to start a conversation due to the display Reno had made at the start of the class.

There were still some that tried to go over and start up a conversation but Reno instantly shut them down.

Cassia had originally wanted to keep herself smothered onto Reno’s arm but decided against it.

When ten minutes of class went by, she composed herself and did her best to pay attention.

When Ryan asked the class questions that most students didn’t know, she could answer all of them with ease.

This surprised not only Reno but everyone in the class.

Ryan never held back with his questions as he knew most of the class didn’t bother studying or reviewing his lecture material.

As such, he thought if the class didn’t care about his work then he had no reason to care about them passing his class.

Getting teacher benefits mattered little to him.

So for him, when he actually could engage in questions with someone who knew the course material like Cassia.

He started to smile a tad bit.

“Truly deserving of being an Arwen. I truly love those who do their best to pursue to wisdom and profoundness of life.”

“It’s only with the wisdom of the human power, the rifts, and also the many different races that one can begin to search for truth.”

“Truly remarkable.”

Seeing Ryan be happy was a rare situation for Reno and the class.

Other than specific events such as those, the class was fairly boring.

When Ryan dismissed the class, people went right back to gossiping about Cassia.

Cassia herself, was looking at Reno with a conflicted gaze.

“U-Uhm, Reno…”

“Trust me when I say I was going to let you know when the time was right."

"I didn’t expect teacher Ryan to straight up announce it to the class.”

“For the person who became my first friend at this school, I don’t seem to be a very good friend huh?”

Cassia then started to look down, her gaze not daring to look at Reno in his eyes.

She expected Reno to be somewhat angry at her or even stop being friends with her.

To her surprise, however, all Reno did was pat her head.

“Don’t think about it too deeply.”

“From our first meeting, I knew that there was something I wasn’t being told.”

“I’m sure that we all have our secrets.”

“Sad that it happened now but there’s nothing else you can do about it.”

“Life’s like that. Not everything goes as planned but we make sure to keep moving.”

Reno’s gaze then softened.

“If anything, I hope that the ‘popular’ Cassia Arwen doesn’t think I’m worth being your friend anymore.”

Cassia shook her head.

She then started lightly crying.

“Don’t worry Reno, No matter how popular I get. I’d never forget my first friends at this academy.”

Reno then smiled.

“Then everything is fine by me.”

Cassia lightly smiled.

As long as she could remember, she had been a sheltered child.

Back then, she mainly spent time with her uncle.

He wasn’t the best parent by any means but he did the best he could and she always knew that.

One moment of her childhood she would never forget was when her uncle came back from an expedition with a sour face.

His body reeked of a pungent odor that smelt like a fusion of alcohol and blood.

For some time after this, her uncle had begun acting like someone she didn’t know or like.

He always seemed distant, would never crack a joke, seemed to never smile, and worst of all.

He acted like she didn’t exist.

If it wasn’t for his bad habit of making way too much food, then she might have even started starving.

Cassia did her best to try finding out what was wrong with her uncle but to no avail.

She felt like her world was collapsing like everything she knew was falling apart.

Until one day.

A skinny guy with black hair and freckles who was wearing a bandana with weird words arrived at the mansion.

The instant the guy arrived.

He waved his hand and seemed to have cast some spell that lifted Cassia and started flying her into the forest

After flying for a while, the spell had stopped and she fell onto the top of a tree.

The next thing she knew was that the mansion exploded into pieces with massive amounts of energy bursting into the atmosphere.

From what she could see, it looked as if the man had started fighting her uncle.

She knew that she would be of little help but even so, she didn’t want her uncle, her only family left to die.

‘I need to make it in time! I don’t want to lose uncle!’

When she arrived, she saw the man and her uncle lying on the rubble of the mansion.

The sour face that her uncle usually had was gone and was instead replaced with his usual radiant smile.

Her original worry instead shifted into pure joy as she started running over to her uncle while bawling her eyes out.

The guy scoffed seeing this display.

“I swear, 30 years later you’re still as much an idiot as you were back then”

“Damon… I know that it’s hard."

"Losing even more of your family and not being able to stop it but you should learn to protect what you already have.”

“With your stupid brooding, you might have put your niece in danger.”

“Don’t let something that you had no control over impact the things in which you do.”

Damon saw Cassia crying her eyes out and wanted to punch himself in the head.

‘I am an idiot huh?’

Damon got up with Cassia in his arms while the guy did the same.

“Thanks for knocking some sense into me Jace.”

Jace punched his shoulder.

“Don’t worry about it, you’ve done me some solids, I do you some solids.”

“At the end of the day, I don’t want you to go down a path you’ll regret like others I’ve seen before.”

The two of them then began to chuckle a bit.

Damon then let down Cassia who had stopped crying.

“I know I have no right to say this after how stupid I’ve been the past couple of days but, I would love it if you forgive this dumb uncle of yours.”

Cassia nodded her head before running and clinging to one of her uncle’s feet.

“Even if uncle is dumb, he’s still Cassia’s uncle so I won’t hate uncle.”

Hearing this, both Damon and the man felt like they could die happily.

The man then cast a side eye at Damon.

“Damon, you better take care of Cassia properly because if I ever come back and see her so sad then I won’t hold back next time.”

Damon scoffed and the two got to arguing while they began to fly into a rift to go to Earth.

Cassia had seen how her uncle’s friend had saved him and brought him back from his weird state.

Which was something she couldn’t do no matter how much she tried.

‘I want a friend like an uncle too!’

It was due to this that she was so eager to try out the different academies that the world had to offer.

When she was chosen to be a student at the most prestigious academy on the earth, she resolved herself.

‘I’ll make loads of friends while I’m at school.’

She had high hopes for her school life.

Reality is often sadly disappointing, however.

Upon getting announced to her class, she was initially the talk of the school.

Everyone wanted to be her friend despite her introverted, and shy nature that she wished she never had.

When she had to form groups in her classes, she could choose from anyone.

The teachers always greeted her and were friendly.

There were even loads of boys who expressed their love for her.

She was not the brightest tool in the shed however as she thought that they liked her as friends.

She was thrilled until one event showed her the side of the coin she had been blind to.

It was when her uncle Damon had been presumed dead when he hadn’t returned from an expedition.

Cassia wasn’t worried as she knew her uncle best. He most likely had found something interesting and ended up getting sidetracked.

One thing she did begin to worry about, however, was that she started to notice how her classmates slowly began to treat her differently.

Before, she felt like a part of the group until every time she hung out with who she thought were her closest friends.

They would always ask if there was any news of her uncle returning.

Upon hearing that there was none, they slowly began to lower Cassia’s place in the group.

Before, she seemed to be the one who the group was based around but now, Cassia felt like a slave to her friend group.

They always taunted her and asked her to carry their stuff with her physical energy.

Before long, she also found out that the rest of her friend group was going on trips and hanging out without her.

They either denied it or guilt-tripped her into it being her fault because she never talked up.

Cassia knew she was shy and introverted so she didn’t dare to talk back.

‘I should be content with having friends at all, especially with how I am.’

Cassia always felt bad for her uncle when others related to the two of them as she felt like becoming like her uncle was impossible for her.

Especially due to her shyness.

When she told Damon about it.

He told her that she shouldn’t worry about it but even so, the insecurity seemed to live rent-free in the back of her mind.

The thing was that with how easy Cassia was to read, her friend group learned how to control her fairly easily.

When they said things such as stop being her friend or disliked by fellow first years.

She would do next to anything they would say.

As such, they played around with Cassia like she was a brand-new toy.

This situation would have even gone on for much longer if the leader of the friend group didn’t go overboard.

The leader wanted to see if they could get Cassia to bring one of Damon’s weapons to school.

Cassia adamantly refused this order though.

No amount of kicking out of the friend group threats could change her mind.

In a fit of rage, the leader hit Cassia in her stomach and started to beat her up.

This didn’t last for long, however, as Cassia’s combat persona came out.

She then beat not only the leader but anyone who tried to help her.

The next day, Cassia felt she began to be ostracized from her entire year group.

She was then called into the principal’s office around a week later.

The principal told her that the girl she had beaten came from an original family.

As such, he could only carry out the instructions Damon had left him with.

She was then suspended until the end of her first year at the academy.

Due to all the free time in her room by herself, she had lots of time to go over what went wrong.

‘Was it Uncle Damon being gone?’

‘Was it my shy nature?’

‘Was it my friends being unfair?’

Going over those, she eventually chalked it up to her not being good enough.

This caused her to cry on quite a few occasions.