'Its morning,
Resisting the sleep demons I got up from the bed and went to the washroom to freshen up.
The sleep demons which were still lingering around me vanished when I splashed my face with extremely cold water several times.
I looked at the reflection of my face in the bucket filled with cold water and thought about today.
Today's the first day of my knowledge tutoring, what does it even mean though.
I brushed and bathed then wore a blue-black, half sleeved shirt and maroon coloured loose pants.
Then I opened a window in my room and saw the outsides which were completely covered with fog.
The time must've been 5 or 4 am because the sun still hadnt risen yet. I thought of enjoying the sunrise with a hot cup of coffee so I beelined to the kitchen to make a coffee.
I boiled water and added coffee powder in it and poured it in a mug then I added a white powder in it and the hot coffee is done I didnt even need to add sugar.
The people in this world made coffee in this way so even I did this becuase I couldnt find milk anywhere and I didnt mind as this coffee tasted the same as the coffee on Earth.
I cleaned kitchen and washed the dishes after I made the coffee.
I made two coffees and I had to take them both to my room. I have to go up 3 floors, I thought I would just bring the coffee slowly and steadily without dropping anything.
But if I do that then by the time I reach my room the coffee would've already become cold. I started to think and then an idea came to mind.
I figuered something out but I dont know if it will work or not, well I should atleast give it a try.
I recollected a memory from when I was still at the MaEk mansion.
Grandpa Anarek was drinking tea while he was walking in the hallway. I was carelessly running around without looking forward in the hallways so eventually I crashed into grandpa which surprised him and made the cup of tea that he was holding in his hand to shake and drop a bit of the hot tea to almost fall on my face.
The few drops of the hot tea were just an inch away from burning my skin, the drops were floating. I then asked grandpa how he did that, he just gave me a brief explanation but I understood the fundamentals of the technique.
Grandpa had used his mana to form some sort of a invisible mana box. I just had to use the mana to form a lid on the cups.
I know that I hadnt learned how to solidify mana yet but I had to give it a try.
I focused on channeling my mana from my heart to the palms of both of my hands and imagined that the mana will form an invisible lid on the cups.
I repeated the process for a few minutes and finally I saw a glass kind of lid on both the cups. These mana lids were constantly sucking mana from me but the amount was significantly less.
I wanted to check if the mana lids worked or not, I slightly tilted the cups over the kitchen sink. The coffee didnt drop so the mana lids are working
I was going to go to my room but I noticed that the coffees became cold. I boiled the coffee again and took the hot coffees to my room.'
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"Finally I can enjoy the coffees" I said while I sipped on one of them.
The fog was slowly starting to fade but the sun still hadnt risen "The trees must be obstructing the view." I murmered
'I thought at the roof I could see the sunrise properly so I mana lid the coffees and climbed the ladder then opened the trapdoor.
It is extremely cold, good thing that I wore a wool sweater. I came up and closed the trapdoor. To my surprise somebody was awake and at the roof so early in the morning.
It wasnt a maid or anybody else, it was someone small. A kid was sitting at the roof, who could it be? I wondered.'
I walked towards the kid and spoke "Hey"
"Kyaaaaaaahh" she shrieked right when I said that, she must've been jumpscared
"Calm down, calm down I am not going to eat you." I said being scared if she will wake someone up
"Who are you." she asked while tears ran down her face
"I am a friend not a monster." I replied while smiling
"Why are you at the roof." she asked while she took a step back from me
"Dont be scared I wont harm you, I was just here to enjoy the sunrise. What about you? why are you at the roof?" I sat down a few feet away from her
"I am also here to enjoy the sunrise." she said being a bit less cautious of me
"I am sorry for scaring you now."
"No need to apologise as long as you didnt mean to really scare."
after a pause she asked me "What is your name."
"I am Clay, I recently got sponsored by the Sian family."
"Really even I am a sponsor of the Sian family. At first I thought that you were one of the children of the Sian family." she spoke with enthusiasm
"Well I would've been one of them if I hadnt told them to sponsor me instead."
"Wait are you the one who lord Alfred picked up from the forest."
"Yes, its me."
"So you told them to sponsor you instead of adopting you, why would anyone do that."
"Well because I thought that if they adopted me then the other true Sian children would bully me. And also because I didnt want to belong to any family."
"You didnt want to get bullied huh, well bad luck for you. You are going to get bullied even if you are the sponsor."
"How do you know" I asked
"I get bullied sometimes, I mean everytime I meet the children."
"Too bad, well atleast now you wont get bullied alone." I said laughingly and she chuckled too
After a few moments I asked her "Whats your name"
"My name's Cera, just Cera."
"You have a beautiful name."
"I know right, I named it myself after the first dragon, Cera."
"You named yourself?" I asked with a confused look
"Ah thats because I didnt like the name that my parents kept for me so I changed it."
"Looks like you dont like your parents."
"No its not because I didnt like my parents, I changed my name because it kept me reminding of them."
"I'm sorry about that, are your parents dead."
"I will tell you about my family.
My family was very poor, my mother worked as a maid in some rich family and my father worked as a miner in the mana stone mines.
They would struggle to make even 1 silver in one month.
So my parents always had to borrow money from our landlord, one day the debt reached 5 golds and the landlord demanded that we give him money or else he would make us their slaves.
My parents didnt have any money so they asked the landlord to give them some time to arrange the money. He didnt give them any time but he gave them another method to pay back their debts.
He told that if any of us will become a body for extracting mana he would forget about the debt that my parents owed him, at that time I was only 2 years old.
My parents gave me away to that man.
I was too young to even walk properly and I had become a body for mana extracting.
But a month ago the landlord was caught and imprisoned for illegal mana extraction meaning I was freed and a few other children who were also bodies for mana extraction.
When I got free I thought atleast now I can live peacefully but it turns out that children who are subjected to mana extraction are excellent at channeling and controling mana.
So a lot of rich families approached to me asking for the permission to sponsor me, they bribed my parents.
My parents who only thought about themselves and not their daughter, made me sign a sponsorship.
Thats how I ended up here, because of my parents selfishness."
"Jeez you have been through all that, you have all my respect." I said to cheer up the girl's frowned face
'This world is more messed up than I thought. Parents selling out their own child their asses this stuff is unheard to me. Lets quickly change the subject before she gets sadder.'
"Hey I have an extra coffee, its cold but do you want one." I said while I gave her a coffee
"Give me yours too I will warm it up." she took my coffee and held them in her hands for a few seconds, then they started bubbling.
"Fire magic!" I exclaimed
"Yeah I know to do fire magic, take the cup and drink it fastly or else it will get cold again."
'I took the cup and started drinking, it was sunrise. The sky first turned red then it started to get golden.'
"The sky is beautiful right, I come here every morning to enjoy the scenery." she said
"The sky is really beautiful but I think I would get bored if I came here every morning." I replied
"Do you want to be my friend, Clay." she asked
"Ofcourse I would love to be your friend." I said
"Okay then from now onwards we will be friends."
"Yeah we will be friends.
I'm sorry to break the atmosphere but when do the classes start and where is the room 509."
"The classes will start at 7 am but we should hurry now or else we will be late, Come with me." she took my hand and ran to a trapdoor which was open.
"This is the library, I didnt notice a trapdoor in the library." I said
"There are trapdoors everywhere in this mansion." she said
-------
We had exited from the mansion and were headed to a set of small buildings which were atleast a kilometer from the mansion
"Why are the classes held so far from the mansion." I asked while I was catching my breath
"You got tired from just running that much. My teacher said the reason for why the classes are held so far from the mansion is because to make us walk a lot and get our legs stronger. Miss Himiya said the distance is around 4 kilometres."
'4 kilometres and I have to do this everyday I am gonna die, it would've been easy if my legs were longer.'