"Technology has become so advanced," muttered a young man with black hair and purple eyes who was sitting alone in a train cabin. Slowly, the cabin was filled with people, and he no longer sat alone.

He smiled at the person who sat next to him before he leaned back on his chair and closed his eyes while letting out a breath.

{'It has been a long time …. Another era,'} he thought quietly with his eyes closed. Not long after he had closed his eyes, there was an announcement that the train would begin to move, with its destination being Suroff City.

{'Suroff. By taking a train, it will take two hours to get there. Man, I never thought people could travel this fast,'} he thought again.

{'Costina Academy…. To think that I have to study again. Well, it doesn't matter, I'll just have to live my life leisurely.'}

.

Two hours later.

.

The young man opened his eyes at the same time as the train began to slow down. He looked out of the window and observed that the train was entering the station. Once it had stopped, he stood up and picked up the trunk he was carrying. Like the other passengers, he lined up to the exit and slowly walked out of the train.

He walked and queued with the people to be checked before he was allowed to leave the station. Once it was done, he stood outside the station looking around for a taxi.

Once he caught a taxi, he got inside it and admired it.

{'Heh, once a carriage, and now it turns into a transportation named car.'}

"Where to?" asked the driver.

"Costina Academy," the young man replied, which made the driver whistled.

"A new student?"

"Yeah, I'm going to enroll this year."

"Huh, then congratulations! I heard this year's enrollment test was hard."

"Yeah, I heard there are many other good students. I was lucky to get in," he replied. It was true, there were many talented students enrolling the same year as him. He didn't say that other years did not have many talented students; it was just that talented students in his year were more famous.

"Well, even if you are lucky, getting in means you have talent too! After all, Costina wasn't easy to get in." Which was, again, true. Costina Academy was one of the best schools, and its standards became higher when it was nominated as the second-best school in the annual ranking of the best schools.

The reason why he enrolled in Costina was that it was the best school in the country he lived in, and his parents wanted that.

Once he arrived at Costina, he whistled at the sight of the academy. Costina technically was the size of a town. Its front yard was already big, and who knew about the backyard. There were also multiple buildings which obviously were not cheap to build.

{'What a grand school,'} he thought as he walked inside the grounds of Costina. As he walked, he observed the other people around him, whom he believed were also students at Costina.

{'They are good for this era, as expected of Costina,'} he thought. The students had been nurtured well, but in his evaluation, they were just good, not excellent. Although he understood that not everyone could be on the excellent level since, after all, not everyone was destined to become one of the best.

He arrived at the dorm and checked the room he would be staying in. There were two dorms that were easily divided by the two genders, male and female. Each dorm was a large building, with each room having two occupants in it.

When he arrived in front of his room, he noticed that it was unlocked, so he decided to knock on it before he opened the door. There was already a person inside the room, a young man with black hair and blue eyes. He was slightly shorter than Kyle, and he currently carried a pile of clothes.

.

"Hello," the purple-eyed young man greeted first.

"Oh! Are you my roommate?" asked the first occupant as he put down the pile of clothes and walked toward him.

"My name is Joshua Fray. Nice to meet you," said the first occupant with his hand extended.

"Kyle Welton, likewise," he replied while shaking the offered hand. While shaking hands, Kyle evaluated Joshua.

{'He is not bad, he has the potential to become one of the best,'} he mused inside.

.

After that, they both went to put away their belongings while talking.

"Where do you come from?" Joshua asked.

"Pollin," Kyle replied.

"That's not really far from Suroff, isn't it? I'm from Rattengel, quite far." That was understating the distance. Rattengel was basically at the edge of the nation they lived in. As for Pollin, one needed to pass through only one city before arriving there from Suroff.

"You really came from afar," Kyle commented. "You're not going to Figord?"

"No," Joshua answered shortly. "I want to study in the best school I could get," he answered with a grin. Figord was another school, and it was quite a lot closer to Rattengel. Aside from that, its education wasn't that bad compared to Costina.

"True, aim for the best, right?" Kyle added. "So, which class are you in?"

"It's 1-2, you?"

"Third."

"Ah, we are not in the same class," Joshua expressed his disappointment. It felt weird for Kyle since they had only met recently. So he thought Joshua was a friendly type of person, and his emotion was easily shown on his face.

{'According to what I have gathered. Each year, each class will compete against each other in a competition. That means we have to fight each other in the future. So is it okay for students with different classes to stay in the same room?'} He was concerned about the foul play that might happen.

{'The reward of winning the competition will be huge, but I don't want that. I just want to pass my life leisurely,'} Kyle thought.

Costina Academy was an academy that not only focused on academic education but also combats education in both martial arts and magic. Despite the peaceful era they were living in, learning how to fight through martial arts and magic was necessary to survive well. This was because the government of every nation knew war could break out anytime, and they had to prepare. Also, the existence of monsters made them be on alert all the time.

{'Despite the advancement of technology and living. Monsters still lurk around, and humans can't ever eradicate them.'} Not only monsters spawned almost everywhere outside the human-populated areas, but monsters also held valuable materials and eradicating them meant the extraction of these materials.

{'But anyway, the future war will be devastating.'} With the advancement of technology, the future war would be fought using new technologies, and some of the new technologies were able to cause massive destruction.

.

"Kyle, I'm going to take a look around. You want to come?" Joshua offered.

"No, I'm a bit tired after coming here. I'm going to take a rest."

"Well, okay then. If you are going out, make sure to lock the door."

"Sure," Kyle said as he watched Joshua leave the room.

.

{'Well…. I wonder how much excitement this era will give to me.'}

.

...….

𝐀𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫: 𝐀𝐢𝐝𝐚 𝐇𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐛𝐢

Proofreader: 𝐓𝐞𝐩𝐩𝐨