Mage Of Shadows - Chapter 13 Enrolmen

“Okay. Well then, let’s get on with it.” Aria gave Favian a warm smile as she handed him a blank parchment paper. It felt pretty heavy despite being so thin that he could see through it. Favian paused to really try and figure out what was so special about this piece of paper, but he couldn’t put his finger on it.

Aria laughed at the boy in front of her who was concentrating so hard on finding out what this blank parchment was. ‘Ahh he’s really so adorable. He reminds me of Sharie sometimes.’ The moment that thought jolted into her mind, a wave of sadness rushed into her, as she tried to seal all of the bad memories that were slowly drifting upwards.

“Are you okay master?” Favian saw the quick change up displayed on her face. Despite not having felt the loss of a loved one himself, he had seen this look countless times whilst working and studying in the ER (Emergency Room) at medical school; His concern was almost a trained response due to his time there.

“It’s nothing little one. Let me tell you about what your day will be like at the academy starting from tomorrow.” Aria instead diverted the question. She was truly happy about the heartfelt concern Favian showed; despite having only known each other for a matter of weeks now (maybe even days when taking Favian’s coma into account), Aria felt a motherly bond had emerged for him. She wanted to nurture and protect Favian at all costs.

A ceramic pot of tea was placed on the desk Aria was currently working on. She took out two teacups with the same floral pattern as the teapot, and poured a fragrant jasmine tea into them. She sipped onto her tea, not minding its extreme heat. After a moment she then passed a cup to Favian, who had to blow on the tea to cool it down, before he drank from it. The fragrance of the tea was markedly worse than its flavour. That was not to say the tea smelt bad, however the taste was just so amazing.

“So, first thing is first Favian. Your week here at the academy will consist of 10 mandatory lectures, which each take up two hours of your time. These lectures are based on the subjects you wish to study, and usually there would be 1 subject you are required to study, however seeing that you have already reach the upper initiate realm, I doubt you need to learn about elementary magic principles.” Aria kept sipping on her tea, its consumption soothing her and calming her previous emotions down.

“On that piece of parchment paper, there’s all of the subjects you can study available. Be warned that some subjects are in such high demand that you would probably need to fight for a seat at a lecture. The choices are all yours however.”

The blank piece of parchment paper slowly started to reveal words. The paper was dark brown, and its length was that of an A2 sheet of paper. There were seemingly endless choices for Favian to pick for his 10 mandatory lectures. The classes were placed into different rows and columns as several of them would clash due to their lectures being held at the same time. For instance, Favian could either decide to learn Alchemy or Enchanting, but not both due to their conflict of schedule.

‘Or wait, I could probably buy notes from another student and use those to learn.’ He thought to himself.

Favian spent a full half hour reading through the different lectures he could go to, and finally decided on which to pick. He would decide to take lectures on ‘Beast Taming 1’ and ‘Beast Taming 2’, ‘Intermediate magic particles 1 u0026 2’, ‘Enchanting for beginners’, ‘Dark magic 1’, ‘Light magic 1’, ‘Illusions and their use’, ‘Martial arts for beginners’ and finally ‘Monster hunting 101’. It took him time to sort through which subjects wouldn’t clash with each other, and which he thought he would enjoy sitting through. If there had been anything he learnt in his past life, it was that it is insurmountably more difficult to learn something which you aren’t interested in. He had also received a prompt from his World of Exile game system stating that it could sort out the timetable for him, however he decided that he didn’t want to rely on the system too much in making his decisions. Thus, he spent half an hour making his decision. This made sure that he didn’t get the instant results his system was capable of giving, however it allowed him to feel like he was in control.

“Master Aria, I think that I’m done with my choices.” He spoke, handing the parchment to her with all of his allocated choices.

“Hmm, that’s interesting. Why the focus on beast taming and monster hunting?” Aria asked, looking at Favian with a worried expression. “Taming powerful beasts is one of the most dangerous things you could attempt as a magician. You need to be able to be able to exert such a fine-tuned amount of power onto it, not too much to kill it, and not too little to allow it to escape. The fatality rate of young kids like you trying to tame monsters above their pay-grade is too high for me to feel comfortable with you choosing this.”

“I mean I don’t think it will hurt to just learn about it. It’s best that I have as much knowledge about beasts and environments as possible if I am going to venture outside of the academy in the future.” He countered. His thought pattern was that he needed to learn as much he could about monsters, environments and magic phenomena in order to make sure that he was safe at any point in time he was outside the academy.

Noticing the persistence in Favian’s voice, Aria felt at ease knowing that he had truly thought it through what he wished to study. “Okay then. That’s everything you’ll need to know. I’ll send off your choices for you right now.”

It was already starting to get a bit dark outside, and dinner time was approaching. “Oh shoot, I must’ve kept you here for too long Favian, you should hurry back to your room and get some food. Oh, and before I forget, everything here at the academy can be bought with contribution points. You earn these by finishing quests which are signposted at the Trade Area. We also give you a set number of contribution points based on your talent and level. Since you are of a purple arcane core, and have reached such a high level already, the director decided for you to get 300 contribution points.”

With that, Favian went back to his dorm room.

‘Okay first thing is first, I need some food and a shower’ he thought to himself. He had yet to have a hot shower since he entered this new world. ‘I really did take something as simple as a hot shower for granted, didn’t I?’

The shower he had was pretty much as good, if not better, than those he had back on Earth. ‘Probably because I haven’t had one in ages.’ is what Favian thought. He ordered himself something which looked like a quiche or a frittata. Needless to say, it tasted amazing. Everything seemed better than on Earth. ‘How weird.’ He savoured the richness of the food he ate, and after his last gulp of it he realised that he needed more. His body wasn’t satisfied yet.

After ordering and eating another 3 portions of the quiche-like food, Favian finally felt satisfied. He had spent only 1 contribution point in total for all of the food.

‘Not only will I not have to worry about food whilst I’m here at the academy, I’ll also be able to slowly build up my body with martial arts training. I think that I really struck on gold here.’

‘Okay lets get to business. System! Highlight any useful information from the books ‘Introduction to Dark Magic’ and ‘Meditation Techniques’.’ He ordered.

[Ding! Introduction to Dark Magic has no information deemed as valuable. The information from the book ‘Darkness and Shadows’ has more advanced information with less jargon. Meditation techniques has information which will allow host to actively meditate. Would host like for transfer of information?]

‘Well that’s a shame, I hoped that there might be some info from the Dark Magic book but that’s fine. System transfer information.’ Favian didn’t want to be completely reliant on his game system, but he wasn’t an idiot. He would learn what he could at his lectures to improve his understanding of magic, however he would still use the system to gain instant knowledge whenever he deemed it necessary. There was no point in not using such a powerful tool. It’d be like a deciding to rummage through a phone-book for a number when the option of searching on the internet was there.