The professor clapped her hands as the chalk finished writing on the blackboard.
"My name is Una Foster and I'll be the one teaching you the basics of what you'll be doing here for the next however many years it takes for you to graduate." Una said as she stood on the open stage.
The writing on the blackboard was just a fancy spelling of her name. She had spent next to five minutes writing it, too.
She stood silent for a moment, looking over everyone with a grin on her face.
"Well? Did you imprint the name into your brains, yet?" She asked. "Good."
A sudden gust of wind brushed against the blackboard and erased her name from it, before the chalk once again flew to it.
Within seconds, there were three large names in the same style of writing on the board.
"As most of you should know, Draphen currently has three kingdoms." Una said and the chalk flew and circled the word Hubrias. "And we're a part of the wealthiest one."
'Forget about that, why the hell did you take so long to write your name if you could have done it in seconds!?' Theo thought to himself as Una continued speaking.
She grinned. "You should be careful; each kingdom likes to try and assassinate the other kingdom's combatants every now and then."
Some of the students with a more disheveled appearance looked shocked at the revelation and were suddenly nervous.
It wasn't exactly a secret, but neither was it a common thing to know about. They must have been commoners.
The grin dropped from Una's face, replaced with a sneer.
"Squabbling and fighting against each other because they're cowards who like to fight against themselves to maintain the status quo!" The chalk flew up and hovered in the air.
"Many of you come from noble descent, and you carry the grudges your parents and bloodline have handed to you." She walked up to the edge of the stage. "Those grudges are meaningless."
One of the more haughty ones was about to retort something but didn't get the chance as Una continued speaking.
"When the gods still walked amongst us. Every single human from king to commoner was united against the Dragons." The wind erased every other word on the board, leaving only the bold worded Dragonlands. "The biggest war known to mankind was waged then. Millions fell."
A deafening silence reigned in the room.
Everybody knew about the Dragon War. Even the street rats in Stillben knew of the legends of the people who had defended everyone thousands of years ago.
But still, that was all it was. From what Theo had heard, almost no records from that time existed anymore. Most of the stories had come to be regarded as myth. Mere legends told to children as bed-time stories.
Not many knew if they were true. But it was undeniable fact that such a war had been waged, after all. It was still going on.
"The only reason we're able to live our lives like this is because Solus led the other three gods in a last ditch effort to drive back the ancient dragons." The professor walked to the black board. The wind surrounding the chalk disappeared and it fell into her hand. "They succeeded, but not completely."
"They drove away the ancients and some of their children." She looked up at the word written on the blackboard. "It gave the humans the chance to fight back."
She turned around. There was a smile on her face.
"But the most we could manage was to force a stalemate." She spread her hands. "And that's how we ended up in our current situation, according to the legends at least."
She ended her words on a light note, but the contents were heavy.
"Before you graduate, you'll be sent into the Dragonlands front alongside your team. It is to help you gain experience and to defend humanity as a whole!" She had a grim smile on her face and spread out her hands even wider. "A great task, don't you think?"
Most of the students weren't excited but scared instead. Scarlett glanced at him from the corner of her eyes while Era continued to try and avoid Una's wandering gaze. Lucy's eyes were twinkling with something that looked suspicious.
Theo had already known that he would be going there. He had heard about it from his mother. It was a requirement for most students to graduate.
"I see you're just as excited about this as everyone always is! Don't worry, only about half of you will die during that time." Una brought a hand to her chin. "The number of deaths has been lowering in recent years. Must be because of my superb education."
'What?' Theo thought to himself. He knew it was dangerous, but half?
"Anyways, this whole class is full of mandatory, boring stuff that most of you already know." The professor looked annoyed. "But there's always a few in here who don't know jack shit."
Theo wasn't sure if Una was annoyed at the people with the lack of knowledge or the people who had failed to pass down that knowledge.
"The reason you were put into teams of four was because of that time period at the front." She turned around and walked up to the blackboard.
She used her own hands to draw four, rough and ugly looking stick figures on the board. It looked nothing like the elegant words she had written on it with the wind assisted chalk.
"You'll be stuck with them during that time, so be sure you foster a strong bond between each member." She drew a line connecting the four figures before crossing over one of them. "If you can't trust your teammates enough to leave your back for them to cover, the chances that you're going to die go up exponentially."
"And then, with one of you dead, the chances that you all are going to die are just that much higher." She drew a line over each figure. "So, for your own safety. You better be prepared."
She put down the chalk and walked back up to the front of the stage.
"Also, be sure to know how to swim. Our borders with the Dragonlands aren't a mountain range like Vulcania's or a plain like Sernia's. Ours is a bunch of islands, so be prepared to swim a lot when your ship ultimately gets destroyed."
She clapped her hands and a gust of wind once again erased everything from the blackboard, before another wind picked up the chalk again.
"Now, onto some more exciting stuff~." The professor said just as the chalk rapidly depleted, and a bunch of elegant words and a fully colored image of a translucent soul appeared on the board. "The soul, the core of your being and the source of your magic."
"The thing you came here to study."
She used the chalk like a pointer, tapping on the soul to gather their attention there.
"Souls are divided into ranks named after the color change that occurs during a rank-up. Most of you have just sensed your souls and have yet to absorb any inner cores, so your souls should be at the first rank, a white soul."
The chalk continued to tap on each new keyword that the professor said.
"There are certain distinctions inside of a rank, too. Dependent on how close you are to a rank-up. Named one star, two star and three star. At three stars, you're close to ranking up."
"I have no idea who named them as such, but that's how they're named." The professor shrugged. "It's also impossible for anyone to tell the star level of someone else, and only the individual themselves will know it."
"You don't sense that, because all of you are a zero star, rank one. White rank is the only one where there exists more than three stars."
Theo raised his hand and waited until Una pointed at him.
"How many ranks are there?" He asked.
"Excellent question, but we don't know." She answered while giving him a smile. "Historical records point to a single human in the Dragon war who was a rank five: blue soul. But we haven't seen a single person achieve that rank in thousands of years."
Theo nodded to himself, satisfied with the answer.
"Now then, you might be wondering how do you rank-up?" The wind holding the chalk once again brushed over the entire blackboard and wiped it clean before a new image replaced them.
The chalk was getting rather small and short by now. Coloring the images really took a lot of chalk.
"The answer is absorbing the inner cores of beasts." The chalk tapped on the translucent image of a bull-like beast that Theo had never seen before. More specifically, the sea of aether within its chest. "How do you do that?" Una asked.
"By using a specific technique." She answered her own question, and another gust of wind wiped the board once again before the chalk replaced it with a new image and words.
"Beasts are able to devour the souls of other beings just like eating, but we as humans require a more delicate method." The chalk tapped against a string of words in a foreign language. Theo thought he might have seen them once before, but he couldn't recall where.
"The language of Eld. Humanity has known about it for as long as we can remember, but we do not know where it originates from. A product of a genius from humanity or a gift from the gods?" She said while the chalk circled the words. "Some priests might claim their god was responsible but the gods themselves have never said a word."
"It's this language that opens the possibility of creating these techniques."
"Each technique differs from one another, but they all share a few similarities." The chalk tapped against the string of unfamiliar, but somehow familiar words. "First of all, they're all written in the language of Eld. Second, they all require you to kill the beast before it can be utilized."
"But that's about it. From there, they all differ either just a little, or massively. From the affinity it favors to the thing you have to do to absorb the core." The professor then clapped her hands and the chalk fell into her hands once again.
"Now then, any questions?" She asked.
Theo's hand arose along with many others, even Scarlett raised her hand.
"Yes?" She pointed towards a young girl with bright blond hair.
"Where can we access such techniques?" She asked.
"Most noble families have their own secret ones they guard with their lives. If you're not a part of one, hundreds of them exist within the library."
The girl nodded, satisfied with her answer.
The professor then pointed at Scarlett.
"Do we need to learn Eld?" Scarlett asked.
Una clapped. "Excellent, I forgot to mention that. The answer is yes, you will need to learn to read the techniques in Eld yourself."
"The reason the techniques work is because of Eld. If you have a translated copy of a technique, it won't work. Your soul must have the knowledge of Eld words imprinted onto it, or it simply won't operate, at all."
"Imprinted?" Scarlett asked.
Una stopped whatever she was going to say and tilted her head curiously. She furrowed her eyebrows, as if trying to recall something before they widened.
"Ah, crap. I forgot to mention that."