When Nagisa finished his test to prove his breakthrough and finished all the registrations for the new grade, it was already late in the afternoon. He had also received a new pin for his uniform with 3 stars on it.
Deciding that he was getting hungry, he quickly went back to the mansion to see if Karma was interested in getting something to eat in town. He had to go and buy some groceries now that he had settled down in this place.
"Hmm? Naa, I'll be fine," Karma simply waved it off when Nagisa asked him if he wanted to go into town, "I still have some leftovers from yesterday."
"Alright, see you later then, I guess," Nagisa nodded and left again.
Nagisa swiftly walked to the front gate of the academy, registered his leave at the entrance and made his way into the city center.
Since it was still a little bit too early to eat, Nagisa first went to get some things for his room. He bought some towels, toothbrush, and paste and all the things you needed in your bathroom, a new set of pajamas, a blanket including covers for both the blanket and the mattress.
After he was done with all that, he simply bought a few meat buns at the side of a street and made his way back to the academy. They had quite a strict curfew after all.
Once he was back at the mansion, he gave Karma a quick heads up and went into his own room to set everything up. Once he was done with that, he spent the rest of his time learning the new spells that he had gotten from his extremely short-lived homeroom teacher today.
While he had access to most of the rank 2 spells, he would only learn a handful of them. Trying to learn every single spell would be a waste of energy and time. It was way more efficient to have a few spells that you excelled in than having a bunch of spells that you are rather uncomfortable with.
In the end, Nagisa settled with Water Pistol and Prison Sphere for his smaller spells, and Raging Pillar as his larger spell. Raging Pillar was similar to Fissure, the spell that Raphael tried to use before. It was a spell that would evolve with the level of the mage and increase in power with the amount of mana poured into the spell.
After getting a general idea of the three spells he had selected, Nagisa noticed that it was already getting fairly late. Suddenly realizing that he was throughout exhausted and tired, Nagisa remembered that he hadn't had a good night rest for quite some days now and decided to call it a day.
Kaede sighed while she slowly walked towards her classroom. She had broken through the third stage the day before and was now officially a stage 4 mage. But her breakthrough happened only after dinner and by the time she was done, all the offices were already closed.
Frankly, she hated everything about this academy… it's been a while since she's been here. If it wasn't obvious, the dawn academy is co-created by the dawn faction of the dragons and the royal family of the humans and thus the closest thing to both these factions without actually having to be part on any of these.
While the dawn simply wanted to show that the coexistence of dragons and humans was possible, the humans saw it as a good chance to siphon some knowledge about magic from the ancient dragon tribes and maybe even recruit some to their own society.
Kaede was sent here by her grandfather so she could gather information about both of these factions, find out what they are planning so that the dusk could make precautions if something big was about to happen.
But considering everything she was supposed to do, she had only been granted permission to do work behind the scenes, if she had found out anything, she had only been allowed to deliver the information to the nearest side branch of the dusk and leave the actual inspection to them.
Only recently had her grandfather allowed her to start working actively, but at the same time had placed this ridiculous condition! She had to find a potential recruit for the dusk! But not just any recruit! He or she had to be around the same age as her and have about the same mana or aura level! Which was absolutely insane! Even though she hated that title, but she wasn't being called the prodigy of centuries for no reason!
Of course, there were still other people like her around, but people like them won't be hanging around in a side branch of the dusk just like that! They'll be given special training since the moment they're compatibility test had ended!
But somehow, she had actually found someone like that! A young boy who had an aura level that was just acceptably beneath her mana level. He seemed quite annoying at first but after their first mission together she had realized that she actually quite enjoyed his random, and most of the time, unnecessary comments.
But all of that only made her academy life so much blander… she didn't manage to find a single friend for the entire year that she had been here now. There were people that actually tried to befriend her, but after she had rejected multiple invitations of them to hang out, these also started to vanish.
She wasn't being bullied either, she just had a neutral relationship with everybody, in other words, she had separated herself from every single person in this academy. So, for an entire year now it had been nothing but wake up, eat, go to school, eat, go back to her dorm, eat and sleep. Well, except for the occasional missions she had gotten from her grandfather.
Well… she was going to be promoted to the fourth grade today… which meant she will have to repeat the entire process of separating herself from her class, AGAIN.
Without even realizing it, Kaede had already arrived in her classroom while her mind was busy with her own thoughts. Letting out another silent sigh, she opened the door and walked into it. Her homeroom teacher wasn't there yet, but there were already a few students chatting in the classroom.
As soon as Kaede entered the classroom, all of her classmates took a quick second to look at who had entered, but after realizing that it was her, they simply went back to their previous conversations without even bothering to greet her. Not being bothered by that at all, Kaede just silently walked towards the edge of the classroom and sat down on a seat completely isolated from the rest of the class.
The classrooms they had were equipped with tables and chairs to supply 30 students. But since there weren't nearly that many students in each year, each class only had around 10-15 students. There was a rare situation of having almost as many teachers as students going on in this academy.
Needlessly to say, Kaede always took the seat that was the furthest away from the rest of the students with her objective being to be isolated. Her homeroom teacher had tried several times to convince her to change her seat but had given up after being politely rejected repeatedly.
It didn't take long until her homeroom teacher finally entered the classroom. And as soon as she did, Kaede instantly stood up and walked towards the desk, "Miss Ley, can I talk to you for a moment?", Kaede asked her before she could even put down her bag.
"Of course, Kayano-san. But please wait for a little, I have an announcement to make, after that we can talk okay?", the homeroom teacher called Ley asked Kaede.
"It won't take long, can we please talk about it now?", Kaede insisted, "I actually just need your permission."
"Hmm… what is it?", Miss Ley gave it some thought and asked Kaede.
"I've broken through.", Kaede went straight to the point, "But it was already after all the offices were closed when I did, so I need your permission to leave class and take the test right now."
"Oh! Congratulations, Kayano-san, of course, you can leave.", Miss Ley wasn't really surprised by the news, Kaede was lingering at stage 3 level 9 for quite a while now so it was about to happen anyway.
"Thank you very much, thank you for all the years.", Kaede said and bowed slightly before getting her bag and leaving the classroom.
"Alright everyone!", Miss Ley quickly organized her belongings and started after Kaede had already left, "I have two announcements to make today! First, Kayano-san had broken through the third stage, so she will be leaving our class starting today. But at the same time, we will also welcome a new student, now please try to get along with him!"
Nagisa sighed while walking towards his new classroom. Nobody had told him that just registering his breakthrough wasn't enough to join the new class! There was a lot of other paperwork involved when entering a new class.
So, after being informed of that just barely 30 minutes before class started, Nagisa rushed to the office and rushed through all the paperwork that had to be done. And now that he was finished, he still had less than 5 minutes.
The office he went to was on the third floor, and to save himself some time, Nagisa decided to jump out of the window in the hallway instead of walking down the stairs. What he didn't know was, that the exact second he went out of the window, a certain green-haired girl had just walked up the stairs right behind him…
"… Nice to meet you.", after Nagisa finally got to his new classroom, his new homeroom teacher Miss Ley asked him to introduce himself, "my name is Nagisa and I'm from the water tribe.", was all Nagisa said, again.
There was a short moment of silence since Miss Ley expected Nagisa so say a bit more, but she then awkwardly realized that Nagisa had no intention of saying another word, "ehmm right, so why don't you pick a seat, Shiota-san."
"Alright.", Nagisa gave her a nod and started to walk towards the class, but to Miss Ley's dismay, Nagisa sat down on the exact seat that had just become free a few minutes ago.
"Ehmm, Shiota-san… wouldn't it be better if you sat with your classmates?", Miss Ley desperately tried to convince him.
"Hmm… I'm fine, thank you.", Nagisa simply answered innocently while starting to unpack his back.
- Another one of these students?! What is going on?! -
Oof, finally managed to finish this chapter :/ I've been really busy for the last few months but it's getting better now so I'll probably start having more time for writing again.
I'm not sure how many of you guys are still here after possibly the longest break I've taken without updating but I still want to thank everyone who had been or still are patiently waiting for an update. I'm terribly sorry for the rather inconsistent updates.
But all in all, I hope you still enjoy the chapter, please tell me what you think about it in the reviews, and hopefully I'll see you soon in the next chapter! ;)