Clifford and Dora remained at their positions at their positions silently, not talking to each other. The silence between the two was starting to get awkward, Dora quickly brought up a topic.
"So you're a friend of Benson Byers?" She asked Clifford.
"Well....Yeah, he's the closest person I've got as a friend here so far." Clifford could not deny that, Benson was good to him. He was a chatty person, not the type of person Clifford would like to have as a friend but Benson had been good to him.
"Hmmmm! Dora nodded. She didn't particularly like Benson, Even though he was talented, he loved clubbing and hanging around girls a lot. That was something Dora doesn't like.
"Is there something wrong with being a friend of him." Clifford asked when he noticed the slight displeasing expression on Dora's face.
"Nothing, he's a good person." Dora smiled. Even though Benson love living extravagant lifestyle, he was a good person. Dora just didn't like his extravagant lifestyle.
Clifford was about to talk about something else when he got interrupted by a young man with dyed blue hair.
"Talk of the devil...." Clifford muttered and shook his head slowly.
"Hey mate," Benson was surprised to see Clifford at the occasion but when he saw Dora, he understood that she must have invited Clifford.
"What's up my brother," Clifford replied with a faint smile.
Benson said hi to Dora and they exchanged a few words.
The three discussed for quite sometime. Dora was surprised, from the discussion they had, she discovered Benson was actually responsible. Despite his young age, he was already capable of handling some family business. She was impressed by this and it changed her view of Benson. It was also through this Discussion that Clifford learnt more about Benson. The Byers Family was the most wealthy family in Sun City, Clifford knew Benson was from an influential family but he never expected the Byers to be that influential and prominent. They control most of the top monetary organizations in the City. Not only in the Sun City, they also had bigger branches at other mega cities.
Sun city wasn't the biggest mega city on earth at the time, Milky city, Earth city and Universal City were way more bigger and powerful than Sun city. The war between humanity and the monsters reduced the estimated population of almost ten billion people on earth reduced to around five billion. Some continents fell during the war. Asia, Australia, Antarctica and South America fell to the invasion and was being controlled by the monsters. Asia did not completely fall, some Asian migrated to behind the great wall of China which provided protection for them.The wall was rebuilt and reinforced over the years, it was built more higher. Despite the constant attack of the monsters over the years, it stood mightily.
There was also some safe zones at some parts of Asia, like in India and Tokyo, while South and North Korea united to form a safe zone.
Some Asians also migrated to Europe. Africa also suffered a lot from the monsters invasion, almost half of humans there was wiped out but they survived it and defeated the monsters. Antarctica was not really a favourable habitat for humans so very few people lived there, it was easily invaded by monsters. Australia was the first country to be suddenly invaded by the monsters, this caused them a major damage, the few millions of people left migrated to different parts of the world that were still standing.
South america also did not completely fall, but the larger part was invaded and controlled by monsters. Only Europe and North America did not suffer much invasion. Asia was a powerful continent, they would not give up their continent so they kept fighting the invasion. They were gaining more of their cities and zones at the time.
The monsters caused the former power structure of the world to fall. New power structure arose, powerful mages which were the primordial mages were the ones at the helm. Only power matters in the world at the time, even the rich and wealthy respects the powerful mages. The new power structure changed system of the world, countries were united and named after the continent. Europe for example was changed to a country instead of being a continent, same goes for other continents. Countries were then renamed and were called cities.
This was done so it would be easier to control the entire Earth.
Sun city was one of the cities in Europe. It had a population of about ten million. Clifford was from a low tier city under the jurisdiction of Sun City. Clifford wasn't concerned with whatever was going on in the world but that changed when he learnt that his dear father could be alive.
Clifford wanted to become one of the most powerful, he wanted to become a Sovereign mage. He doesn't want to be looked down on anyone. When he becomes powerful, he would be able to protect his loved ones. But the path to become a powerful mage wasn't easy. It required determination, self discipline, motivation and many more. Whatever it was going to take, Clifford was determined to know of his father's whereabout. He could only know this if he became strong. He had always pondered on how his father was connected to a primordial, but he couldn't understand. The orb he was told to protect is the thing between him and his father. He couldn't possibly announce to the whole world that the orb was in his possession, else he would be killed and would fail his mission, fail his mother, sister and dear ones.
The only way was to get stronger and safely pass the orb to Valentine Carew.
"There are things you don't know, it's best you don't know this things yet......... You're not ordinary boy, you're more than what you think you are." Clifford recalled the words of the old man. For all these things to get clear to him, he had to get to Valentine Carew. That would never be easy, primordials are too rare to see.
After sometime, the discussion was brought to end after a speech from the host and the celebrant. Clifford got back to his suite at the hotel. The next day was the day of the tournament. Clifford had to be among the top thirty in order to get sponsored for free at the academy, he doesn't know how the tournament would be tomorrow so he had to be very prepared. Clifford opened the magic scroll In his mind, the last time he opened the scroll was back then at home and he had comprehended a whole chapter.
He started comprehending the second chapter of the scroll but it was tougher this time. The last time, he had comprehended the first chapter in a few hours. But now he had only comprehended half of the second chapter in seven hours. The further one comprehends the chapters in the magic scrolls, the harder it becomes to comprehend. A natural basic mage would use about half a year to comprehend the first two chapters of a magic scroll but Clifford had comprehended one chapter and half of the second chapter in just a combined time of half a day. It was just too frightening, he dared not let people know or else it would cause massive unrest among the powerful families and organisations. They would all want Clifford.
After comprehending for a while, Clifford could feel that he would breakthrough anytime, but he suppressed it again. This was the second time he would suppressed his breakthrough, he wanted to have a finer control over his basic magical abilities before he advanced to the next stage so that his magical path would be solid. switched to controlling his mana whirlpool. He didn't spend much time on it as his mana whirlpool was already and he had great control over it.
Clifford checked his time after he was done meditating, it was already past six in the morning. The tournament would start by twelve noon. He decided to have a short sleep before he would leave for the academy. He laid down on the bed thinking of what would happen on his magical path and his mission path. after about twenty minutes he slept off.
He woke up by ten minutes past nine, he freshened up and prepared to leave. When he got to the door, he saw a scroll that was hung on the door knob. He was surprised as it wasn't there the previous night. Some one must've passed a message to him as the scroll was one being used to pass messages, he then opened the scroll. When he saw the contents in the scroll, he frowned his face.