-Elena POV-

We are currently flying above the clouds as we traveled to the academy where we will be meeting the other hero who apparently was summoned in the neighboring kingdom. In the beginning the ride was very uncomfortable due to the constant shaking that came from the wyverns, but they slowly stopped as time went on.

From the words from the rider that was in control of the wyvern that I was riding, we should arrive in a few minutes. I was slightly hesitant to believe that since the clouds were currently obscuring the view of the ground, but almost as if the clouds heard my thoughts, they slowly parted way and began to reveal the ground.

Looking down where the clouds parted left me completely speechless, the beautiful sight was breathtaking and I keep staring down without blinking.

I saw a massive city that stretched out far in perfect circle with no deformities in shape with a large wall that surrounded and enclosed the city. The city was made up largely of whitish colored buildings that seemed as if they meticulously planned and built. What mainly shocked me was the attention to detail for the roads and their layout.

Starting at the wall was a large road that ran along the wall that separated the buildings on the outer perimeter and the wall. The city seemed to have four gates placed at each cardinal direction and had a wide road that each meet at the center and overall create something that resembled a jasmine flower’s petals.

This whole beautifully crafted city was built on a large hill and right at the top was a large school like structure that is most likely the academy. directly in the center was a large tower that jutted out the ground and resembled a beacon like tower.

By time I finally regained my focus away from admiring the city I found that we already had landed on the large tower that I saw before. Realizing this, I began the process of undoing all the harnesses and gear that kept me from falling off during flight.

I quickly noted Aria and Halbert doing the same as we all descend from the wyvern only to notice a woman walking towards us who just arrived.

When I noticed her though, I was once again stunned as the woman seemed to elude true beauty, if I had to compare her, I feel the city was a close comparison but still fell short. The most striking features on the woman was her long beautiful pure white hair and bright red eyes that revealed intelligence behind them.

She was probably around 5ft 7in with a figure that made hourglasses look at her in envy and wore a sky-blue tailcoat that had golden trims along the edges and went down to her thighs. She wore under the tailcoat a long blue long sleeve blouse as well as long blue skirt that fell to her ankles and black heeled boots.

This woman who was walking towards us finally arrived in front of us and began looking each of us over, almost as if she was probing us. Looking at Aria and Halbert, I also noticed that they were the same as me while staring at her, well Aria to a lesser extent but she never was one to focus on physical appearances though.

After an awkward moment of utter silence, she finally decided to begin talking after finishing looking each of us over.

“I can safely assume that you three are the newly summoned heroes correct. Welcome to my academy young heroes, I am the current headmaster of the Academy. I have already received the request to admit all the heroes as students to have your training conducted and allow you to grow in preparation for your task.” (Headmaster)

Speaking with a gentle voice and formal words, she welcomed us, but I did wonder how she knew that we came her to train and not just to meet up. Well that may mean that the other heroes already arrived and talked to her, well moving on, she went over a few formalities and then asked us to follow her.

As we began to follow her towards the entrance to the tower, I realized that we never introduced ourselves to each other.

“I do believe that we have yet to formally introduce ourselves yet if I may. My name is Elena, the girl next to me is Aearial, and the large man is Halbert.” (Elena)

After I acted once again as the voice of our group, it seemed that the headmaster realized as well her mistake of not introducing herself.

“Oh my, I completely forgot to introduce myself properly, my apologies. I have been rather absent minded even since I reunited with one of my old friends since he arrived just yesterday. Also, you don’t need to use formal speech when talking to me, anyone that is a hero just like my friend, is a friend to me as well.” (Headmaster)

Huh? So, her old friend is one of the heroes summoned as well, I guess I was right about the other heroes already arriving before us, but for some reason I overlooked any thoughts that may have questioned her possible age.

“Well with that I guess my introduction is in order now.” (Headmaster)

Even though we were continuing to walk while speaking to each other, the headmaster stopped walking and spun around while spreading her arms outward in a grand manner before proudly announcing.

“My name is Ambrosia Arthion, once again I am the current headmaster of this academy and I welcome you here and I hope you enjoy it here and learn what you wish with freedom.” (Ambrosia)

After that we continued following as Ms. Ambrosia guided us into the tower and onto a large platform that she activated with switch. The platform than began to descend downwards, much to our surprise and Halbert’s complete shock.

I must say that this world is very advanced in terms of technology even though from what I have seen, it is stuck in a medieval age, but I guess that with magic, it’s possible that it advanced but stayed in place at the same if that makes since.

After a moment, the elevator finally stopped and we got off on what I assumed was most likely the third floor based on the view out the windows. We continued walking down a corridor and I began looking out the windows we passed and noticed cleared areas of flat ground with students currently paired up and fighting each other using wooden swords while some instructors was walking around observing them. I was pulled away from my thoughts when I heard Aria begin talking and I turned to once again look straight.

“Ms. Ambrosia, I want to ask about what you said before, you said that you were friends with one of the summoned heroes and how you just reunited with him. I’m curious about what he’s like since we will be meeting him soon.” (Aearial)

Taking a moment to think, Ms. Ambrosia than began to speak.

“Well first of I met him when he was summoned as the sole hero about twelve years ago, I met him when he arrived at academy to do some research. I was friends with him for about seven years until he finally completed his task and disappeared.” (Ambrosia)

So, he was a previously summoned hero, but I wonder why he was the only summoned hero since I have always been summoned for as long a can remember with others and Aria.

“Aside from that, I do know that in terms of combat experience, there is no one greater or stronger than him.” (Ambrosia)

“Why do you say that, I mean, yes, heroes are by nature stronger than normal but it can’t be that great since we are still only humans, right, we still have limits?” (Elena)

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“Well I can say that because he has mentioned before about his age. He said that in terms of age based on years, he is about over one thousand years old and he said that he completed around 76 tasks that you heroes are always mentioning at that time. So, in combat experience, he is more than qualified to be called one of the strongest.” (Ambrosia)

Wow, over a thousand years old, that seems like an impossible number that I could never think I could ever think to come close to as a hero. But, I can understand what she means by combat experience now, if you live for that long you will probably have also fought a massive number of battles. I guess Aria and Halbert shared the same thoughts, but Halbert beat Aria to shouting his shock out.

“Wha- what, how can he even be that old and still be consider human, but still, wow, that seems a bit hard to actually believe!” (Halbert)

Noticing his comment that showed his inexperience as a hero because of his lack of knowledge of how the heroes work Aria decided to correct him and explain.

“Just so you know, as heroes, we are given a set number of tasks to complete right, well we continue to complete them and it doesn’t matter how long it takes to complete each task, we don’t stop until we are killed in that world and that task is considered as a failure. Weren’t you told this when you spoke to the gods and they explained to you about the tasks and our job.” (Aearial)

Realizing what she said was true, Halbert turned slightly red from embarrassment, but seeing a twenty something year old, large, muscular man turn red is strange.

“Sorry about that, I kind of spaced out at that part, hard to keep focus when you are talking to gods for the first time, you know.”  (Halbert)

“I see, well going by personality, he rarely shows his emotions and thoughts except when you annoy or anger him or he finds something interesting, but that is extremely hard to do, but you probably don’t have to worry about that much, I can assure you that if he is decides to do something, he commits to it with everything he has.” (Ambrosia)

After that, we continued walking until she stopped at a door to before telling us that we had arrived. I would be lying if I didn’t say that I wasn’t excited to meet our instructor, I mean he may some answers to what I want to know. If I’m lucky, he may even have a solution as well to my problem as well.

-Cyril POV-

After who knows how long in a room that was filled with an awkward silence along with a white witch that is in the back of the room while silently snickering.

What about me, well I am currently relaxing in a chair doing nothing while Mai is reading a book that she went and quickly got from the academy library to pass the time.

After a bit of time, a bit of noise coming from the hallway alerted me to our new arrivals that are late. Not even a moment later did the door to the classroom open and in walked in Ambrosia and three new faces.

Once again going over their features that each had, I did note that all three were humans, I always found it strange that most heroes are usually humans even though there are many different races, but I digress.

First off, the large guy in the back had short blonde hair and dark blue eyes. He was taller than me by maybe around two inches and was sporting large muscles under his cloths that we always have by default when summoned.

Since our bodies are always formed during the summoning process, naturally cloths are included with it and tend to be simple white shirt and black pants.

The second girl that I looked over was a lot short than the guy at around 5ft 6in and looked eastern with short black hair and black eyes.

The last girl was at around 5ft 8in with long curly brown hair and bluish green eyes. Overall all three seemed normal enough but I knew that wasn’t true at all since they are summoned heroes.

There was one thing that all three had in common except for the clothing, they all had shocked and confused expression and their eyes were rapidly alternating from Ambrosia that was standing next to them and Ambrosia who was standing in the back of the classroom looking at them.

Once again silence reigned supreme in the class, but history dictates that absolute reigns are always overthrown in revolt. What was the revolt this time, well it was both Ambrosia’s that began to openly began laughing hard while holding their stomachs.

“Hahahaha... oh my, you should see the look on all of your faces, its priceless. Seeing that reaction was worth the wait completely.” (Ambrosia)

To explain the prank that she pulled on them, what she did was create a doppelganger using magic that allowed her to act in multiple places at once, stupid prank right.

“Hey old lady, are you done yet with your little prank, I want to get started with training them already.” (Cyril)

“Old Lady! I don’t know how you can call me that when I am obviously far younger than you!” (Ambrosia)

“ha, yeah right, you may be younger, but by only around 200 years or so, so in essence, you are an old lady you witch. Don’t you go and attend to hide your age from them to feel young again.” (Cyril)

Once I stated this fact, once again everyone had the expression as if a bombshell dropped on the room.

“Wha-what! Wait are you saying that she is that old, she said that you were over one thousand years old but you said that she’s only two hundred years younger than you, how is that possible if she isn’t a summoned hero.” (Black haired girl)

Trying to comprehend what is going on, the girl will black hair began rapidly asking how it’s possible, but I thought that the answer was obvious though, well I guess that means that these heroes truly are inexperienced to the possibilities of the world. Fortunately, Ambrosia decided to answer her question, though her mood looks depressed much to my amusement.

“Well to simply answer your question, I am what you call an immortal. Knowing that you will ask for more information, the reason for that is that I trained for who knows how long through magic, I keep at training with every effort that I possessed until one day, I became so powerful in magic, that I achieved immortality for some reason.” (Ambrosia)

“That doesn’t answer why there’s a connection to you being immortal, that doesn’t really make much sense in the first place.” (black haired girl)

“Since this is the first time that this has every happened in recorded history, I never figured out why, but I guess that once you reach a certain point of understanding of magic than you achieve this state, who knows.” (Ambrosia)

“Give it up, questioning her will never get you anything except for headaches, she works more on instinctual nature and through talent and less from hard work, let’s just ignore her for now and begin with introduction.” (Cyril)

Once I said that and ignored the glare coming from Ambrosia who finally released her doppelganger and grumbled something while sitting down, we began with their introductions by having each person stand to speak once the new arrives sat down. I asked for a standard introduction consisting of name and what they excel in combat wise.

“why don’t you start us off black haired girl.” (Cyril)

“black hai-, never mind alright, well my name is Elena and I am skilled in no areas in particular making me more of a jack of all trades, please take care of me.” (Elena)

Moving on the next one was the other girl that arrived with the other heroes who stood up after Elena sat down.

“My name is Aearial, but most people call me Aria, I specialize in martial arts and hand to hand combat, but I am terrible with weapons, I hope we can be friends.” (Aearial)

“My name is Halbert, I am a hero of the innocent, I specialize in fighting close combat, good to meet everyone.” (Halbert)

Going after Aearial was the large guy, but something about him felt off, it wasn’t in a bad way but it was as if he was hiding something that is important based on what he said. I will leave that for when I figure it out during training, so moving on was the girl that was looking fearful when she arrived and saw Mai and me.

“M-My name is Florian Arthion, I am adept in most forms of magic, I am weak in close combat though.”

Hearing her last name, I briefly looked towards Ambrosia in the back but she only gave a look as if she’ll explain later, so I dropped it as well. But I am annoyed that this ‘Florian’ is only skilled in magic but weak in close combat, I’m going to have to work on that. Standing up was the dark brown guy sitting next to Florian.

“My name is Lex Speros, I specialize in purely defense involving shields and lack any form of offense power by my own choice. I am somewhat skilled in using magic as well but I am only talented in reinforcement magic and defense oriented magic, I hope we can get along.” (Lex)

Interesting, someone who only specializes in defense, nothing new, but they are not common though since they are usually reliant on support from others to attack while they defend. Moving on the last one was the familiar face that has been releasing bloodlust and glaring at me from the beginning that I was ignoring.

“My name is Erline Lorenia, first princess of the Azure Empire, I am skilled in swordsmanship and I also have confidence in my speed, nice to meet everyone and if you could disregard formalities due to status I would be grateful, also it’s nice to see you once again Cyril.” (Erline)

Once she ended her introduction, everyone’s eyes were planted on me with a questioning look. I know that it may sound repetitive for me to say this, but my headaches are only continuing to increase with each passing moment. Nevertheless, I did my introductions for them just like they did while explaining my position.

“Well, my name is Cyril, I am what may people call a jack of all trades and a master of all. My job is that I will be training all of you and assisting in improving your capabilities for the upcoming task, I was also assigned to act as the leader for the heroes.” (Cyril)