Chapter 45

  The sky was full of shining stars on the night I was sent off into the endless space. It wasn’t an uncomfortable experience. I was, by all means, surrounded by every comfort a man could hope to get in an inter-space journey. I had a bed similar to my own, plush pillows full of soft feathers, a moderate-sized cooler by the side powered by magical charms of a Celestial Mage, a body-sized mirror around the corner, and enough snacks to last me through… months? Years?

  Well, it was a lot. I was sure Belfray was behind all of this. Who else would’ve packed cheeseburgers for the road? Who else would’ve arranged the crunchy cookies in a shape that basically looked like an “L”? Not to mention there were fliers everywhere, draped with sparkling glitter, staring down at me with a variety of send-off sentences. “Have a safe trip” sounded simple enough, but “The Best Future Runemaster” and the others kinda made me cringe.

  Classic Belfray.

  I wasn’t sure why he wasn’t here with us. I had Radek and Mother in the main hall, which translated to somewhere around Nell’s mid-section. It was weird, being inside a Voidbeast. The dimensions were wrong, since this place felt every bit as large as my former palace.

  Anyway, I was told the trip would take a few days, which highlighted the fact of how far we were from the core of the Planar System. Taraks, the large world in which the Creator’s Academy was situated, was considered one of the nexus worlds. It was a hub of activity and monstrosity, depending on where you were looking at it. Our little Palark Empire, instead, belonged to a backwater region.

  I supposed that was the kind of world you’d pick if you wanted to stay away from curious eyes.

  Reaching down, I pulled one of the many books Belfray placed in the cabinet and took a look at its contents. The history of Taraks was too long to fit in a single book, hence the reason why I had a dozen-book set waiting beside my bed. I’d already skimmed some of it out of boredom and got some information to work with.

  It was a different world altogether.

  Taraks was what you’d call a planetary system. This was a term used mainly by the big nations to simplify their reaches. In Taraks’ case, their system consisted of a total of three big worlds and twelve small worlds. At first, it didn’t sound like that big of a deal, but when you learned the intricacies of those worlds, things changed.

  For one, these small worlds all belonged to the Creator’s Academy, to be used for educational purposes. From what I gathered, each one had distinct Natural Laws. Some of them had populations of different beasts, separated into regions by the Academy itself to serve the students, while others had been carved and morphed with such intention that they’d been turned into hellish trials of fire. What was interesting was that each one of them was easily accessible via Dimensional Gates within the Creator’s Academy.

  This meant that the Academy basically owned these worlds and used them quite frequently.

  As a first-year student, I’d be spending most of my time in the world of Taraks with occasional visits to these worlds. I wouldn’t be permitted to visit them on my own, since that was a right each student had to earn by proving themselves through the so-called trials of fire, which happened at the end of each semester. Not all of them were dangerous in nature, as there were some that tested the student’s knowledge about certain fields, but if these books were to be believed, people dying during these trials of fire was no big deal.

  That was the part that irked me the most. By logic, an Academy should teach people which field to choose and how to become an expert in that particular field. It shouldn’t be a place where students were expected to die… at any time. While the Creator’s Academy did provide a valuable education, it had also taken in the general tradition of the Planar System of being ruthlessly realistic and brutally unforgiving.

  On that front, I had no other choice but to take Radek at his word. He’d told me I was prepared to deal with it, which meant, in my book, that he didn’t believe I’d die a terrible death in the Academy.

  At least I looked older than my actual age, and that was a relief. Considering the general age of the first-year students would be around fifteen and sixteen, that meant I wouldn’t be bullied easily. That was the hope, anyway. I’d get to learn the truth of it quite soon.

  ………

  When we landed, the first thing I saw was a rush of shuffling legs and bobbing heads, barely visible over the hulking Voidbeasts crowding the giant, circular platform. At least a hundred of them stretched as far as I could see, and that was just Platform A. From where I stood, I could see about a dozen different platforms floating in the sky.

  Once outside, I petted Nell on the nose, who gently lowered her head so that I could actually reach her. Her giggle echoed in my mind, which helped with my overflowing anxiety. I wanted to stay with her and watch the others go by, but was soon ushered by Mother and Radek toward a long staircase.

  It looked as though it was molded out of a large block of marble, and it was easily over a thousand steps long. A line stretched before it. That made me pause.

  “Are those… students?” I asked somewhat mutedly, pointing a finger at the giant crowd, particularly toward a group of kids who had… interesting things accompanying them, for lack of a better word.

  “Who?” Radek asked with a tap on his chin, not really looking concerned about the fact that there were literal giant lions standing there behind the kids. “Oh, you mean them!”

  “Uh-huh.” I nodded.

  “Those seem to be a host of Lionguards!” he then answered excitedly, earning an annoyed glance from Mother. “My Lady, looks like we’re in the presence of royalty. You don’t get to see a group of Royal Beastkin out huddled with the rest of us. I’m a touch impressed to be proven wrong. So it appears the Creator’s Academy really doesn’t care about one’s background.”

  “Lionguards?” I arched an eyebrow, then my eyes widened. I seemed to remember a lesson with Belfray in which we’d spent a good while talking about this particular group of guards, or rather the nation they belonged to. “I thought Belfray was just trying to make a point when he said the Lionguard was fierce as lions and loyal to a fault. Never once did I consider they’d be real lions.”

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  “They’re not lions,” Mother said. “Not fully, at least. It’s their Manual. What was the name?”

  “The Lion of the Celestial Ripper,” Radek answered with rapt attention. “A rare manual, and quite a powerful one at that, but it’s not without its faults, as we can see clearly.”

  “It turns them into lions?” I asked.

  “Well, beastkin have a thing for beasts, as you’d expect, but this is just a part of their tradition,” Radek said. “Protectors almost always fancy their beastly sides, while the higher-class folk… prefer the elegance of being a fine human. You don’t see any fur or funny ears on those younger ones, do you? That means the Lionguard is here to protect them.”

  There was something strange, if I was being honest, about the fact that the higher-class beastkin tried to look like humans, but I supposed it was kinda understandable, since humans were the most prevalent and strong species across the Planar System, not counting the Demons and the Horde, the bug-like species everybody hated with passion.

  “Are we really supposed to take those stairs?” I asked as we inched slowly toward the giant staircase, its steps floating in nothingness down below. “It doesn’t look safe.”

  “You’re a clever kid, Leo, but you’ve never been much for metaphors, or their material representatives.” Radek shook his head as though disappointed. “The Thousand Steps of the Creator’s Academy is strictly reserved for first-year students and their close circles. We’re high up in the sky, with the stairs slowly leading us to the land below. This is to show that no matter who you are, and no matter where you’re coming from, you’re to walk the same path with others, down into the land under. I think it’s supposed to teach humility.”

  “You think?” I looked up at him with doubt. “Or you just made that up?”

  Radek waved me off. “I’m sure that’s the exact reason why they have this thing up here.”

  I didn’t believe him one bit.

  Anyway, we made our way through the throng with Mother at the front, Radek keeping by my side. Hundreds of people flocked into the narrow entrance of the staircase, which meant we had to at least wait an hour, if not more, to actually begin our descent.

  That didn’t happen, though. We didn’t have to wait that much. Because the moment we joined the crowd, everybody seemingly decided to give way to our little group, drawing to the sides and allowing us a smooth passage to the staircase.

  Back in the day, this sudden change would’ve surprised me. I would’ve been confused as to why people stared at us without making a sound. Thankfully, I’d long shed some part of my na?veté during the training, and thus knew, with perfect clarity, that this was Mother’s doing.

  How, you ask?

  Because soul vision showed me the color of a deep violet stretching furiously about her.

  “Is she a… Celestial?” I heard one of the kids mutter shakily, trying to keep his head straight. He looked, what, sixteen years old? And by the bulging muscles visible across his arms, he seemed to be a Knight. A Silver one, in fact, the color having already spilled into his soul.

  “Get back!” another voice barked rather loudly when another young man remained standing in our way, who was soon jerked back by strong hands.

  I felt my chin slowly lifting up with steadily building arrogance within me, and for this once, I decided to embrace the attention rather than shrinking back against it. That made Radek laugh. He slapped a hand across my back and pulled me along, grinning, after Mother.

  “Try as you might to drill into the minds of the young the importance of humility, it doesn’t mean anything if you can’t make it stick,” the Heart Mage said. “Strength gets the say, either way. Looks like our descent will be a short one, as expected.”

  ……

  A thousand steps through the cloudy skies, and it wasn’t long until the city of Dawnlance revealed itself to me in its entire grandiosity. Buildings stretched impossibly high from the ground, looking like sharp spires jabbing at the very face of the earth. All gleamed with the color of a morning sky, golden hues from the system’s sun sparkling generously across their surfaces.

  Against their sheer height, though, they didn’t look threatening. Quite the opposite—there was a sense of peacefulness to the way they were lined along the streets. Beside them were normal buildings you’d expect to see in any city.

  “The Spire Forest of the Creator,” I found myself echoing the knowledge I’d learned from Belfray. “I can’t believe they put these things everywhere across the city.”

  “Not just the city. They have spires across the whole world,” Radek corrected. “A crude design, as some might say, but the Creator’s Academy has a long-lasting tradition. For every student who has ever spent time there, even for a semester, and then gone on to become a Herald in their particular path, there’s a Spire in the Taraks planetary system. It’s also one of the most envied worldwide protection mechanisms in existence.”

  Radek was right. The word was that this protection system could even take a Paragon down in case of an emergency. Now, whether this was true or not, nobody actually knew, since Paragons were painfully rare to begin with and there was not much known about their capacity, but still, it made for good marketing.

  Once out in the streets, I got to experience a truly nexus world for the first time. The main thing that pulled at my attention was the neo-medieval vibe they had here. It wasn’t exactly modern, as in there weren’t skyscrapers or mobile phones, but it wasn’t necessarily archaic, either.

  The mixture felt odd mostly because they had mana tools everywhere. Vehicles powered with internal mana sources, silent and fast like electric vehicles. Colorful signs changingfrequently to display the goods a particular shop had for sale. Long poles fitted with cables that ran above the length of the streets. Glowing light bulbs, and so on.

  This was, without a doubt, why Mages were more valuable to civilization than Knights. While mana could practically do anything electricity was capable of, internal energy was just that—a force to be used in cases where brute strength was needed. This meant that Knights could’ve made for good laborers and construction workers in an alternate reality. Thankfully, becoming a Knight or a Mage was not an easy thing.

  Even here, I could see that most of the crowds in the streets were normal people. They just belonged to a different world, but most of them looked human, which was probably why Mother decided to leave them alone and kept her aura to herself.

  I spent the rest of the day like a tourist, mouth gaped wide open as I stared at the odd sights this city had to offer. Food seemed particularly interesting, but when I entertained the thought of trying my hand at a stall, I was kindly reminded by Radek that this wasn’t the time yet.

  “Are we supposed to go all the way up to the Academy on foot?” I asked shortly after, slightly annoyed. “I thought the stairs would lead us straight into the Academy.”

  “We still have a day before the semester begins,” Radek said. “The first years aren’t allowed to enter before that.”

  “Really?” I looked up at him. “That’s odd.”

  “We still have that list, remember?” Radek said. “Better make sure you’ve got all your stuff. Grand Marshal has a delivery to make, too, which is why we’ll go for a little shopping while she handles her part of the deal.”

  “Her part of the deal?” I arched an eyebrow, then it dawned on me. “You mean the world? She’s going to hand that Runemaster the world? How?”

  There wasn’t a key or something like that. Not to my knowledge, at least. The world had become ours, but I didn’t remember a special ceremony or anything that officially made us the owners of the place. We just took it from the others. It was a simple thing, really.

  “Radek, make sure he has everything,” Mother decided to say, instead of clearing the air for me. “I want things to go smoothly, for once.”

  “You have my word, my Lady.”

  “Mum, you’re not coming to the Academy?” I asked.

  “I’ll never miss it in a million years, my love,” Mother said, granting me a smile, failing once again to hide the tightness around the corners of her lips. “But now, I have to take care of a few small things. I’ll personally walk you to the Academy in the morning, promise.”

  “Fine,” I said. “I’ll go with Radek.”

  And so, we split with Mother, and Radek dragged me toward a wide street. I glanced back at Mother’s slowly receding figure, with a bunch of questions burning inside my mind. I decided to keep them to myself. Instead, I focused on the fast-approaching first day of my new school life.

  Something was strange.

  I couldn’t figure out why I suddenly started feeling a bit excited about… this.

  ……..