(Julius Argenti POV)
The rest of the holidays have turned out uneventful. I consolidated my power and steadily gained strength.
If I had to guess how strong I was now, I would say I could comfortably defeat 3 or 4 of me back from the attack at Ausburn.
I had grown closer to the Moria family and interacted with Amina's parents and siblings. The awkwardness that hung around the house when holidays started was non-existent.
Though the Moria's treated me as one of their own, there was always this disconnect between us. We weren't related, so I couldn't really see them as my family.
No, I was just making excuses. Blood doesn't mean family. There have been many cases where people not biologically related still considered themselves to be family. Both in stories and in real life.
I knew this was my fault. I just couldn't accept them. I think it was because I was scared. I didn't want to lose my family for the third time.
Though I knew they were strong, there weren't the strongest in the world. Not even close. Even on this continent, there was Rebecca Storm who could defeat the entire Moria family single handily.
We took the train and returned to Central High after a tearful goodbye. I was once again in class 1A in my second year.
I was looking forward to the second year as the mage course is finally covering specialised classes and not the basics.
The school hadn't changed except for some construction work that was not previously there. Apparently, they were renovating the training room with new state-of-the-art technology.
The first day was boring and next we had the mage course.
I entered the class and sat at my usual spot with my clique sitting next to me. The class was unchanged from last year, with Mrs Rumbles still being our teacher.
Central High has a system where the same teacher teaches the same class for the entirety of High School. Though this only applied to the mage course.
We were lucky that the only two teachers that were at A rank happened to be in our year level. The rest of them were only B rank and below.
I suspected with my rate of growth, I was probably going to defeat some teachers within the year. An amazing feat for a second year.
And this year would also be the time when school factions would start approaching us.
We were spared from this last year because the ranks were unstable and frequently changed over the course of the year. It was our introductory year where were spared from the school chaos.
Now that we entered the second year, factions would want to recruit us. We were prime candidates as the top 4 of our entire cohort, so we would be harassed.
There are 3 major factions in this school the Nobles Faction, the Ideals Faction and the Neutral Faction. Though they are not recognised by the school as a group or club, everyone knows they exist.
After your first year, you are automatically placed in one of three factions whether you like it or not.
The noble's faction unsurprisingly was made up of mostly nobles. They believed in power and bloodline being special. However, you didn't have to be a noble for them to recruit you.
If anyone was sufficiently talented enough, they would be recruited by them. It may seem like a contradiction, but their belief was that they would eventually become nobles, so inviting them was a given.
Though this was probably just an excuse so that they could attract more people. The Noble's faction couldn't grow to this extent unless they invited talented 'commoners'.
Despite how it sounds, it was extremely appealing for those who want to gain more power and status in their lifetimes. They have a myriad of connections which is extremely useful if someone wanted to get to high places.
The Ideals factions were the complete opposite of the nobles. They wanted equality and wanted mages and civilians to be treated the same.
As honourable as that sounded, many mages considered themselves to be above civilians so it wasn't as popular as many thought. Even still, many mages from other sectors and lower birth still joined.
The neutral faction was made up of everyone else. It wasn't even a proper faction, just a term for anyone who didn't want to be involved. But that resulted in no protection for the ones in the neutral faction. You may be forced to join another faction and nobody would help.
Even though I leaned towards the noble faction's ideals, I was planning on joining the neutral faction. I couldn't be bothered by all that bullshit. In my eyes, it was all pointless.
I was one of the strongest students in the school, and not many, even from the higher years would be able to defeat me. Though I did plan to rejoin some clubs that I picked last year.
Mrs Rumbles entered before writing two words on the electronic whiteboard.
'S Ranks.'
"Okay class, I know this is your first day, but today we will be teaching you about S ranks. You may have heard about the ridiculous powers of S ranks, and you may even be related to one."
"This year we will be going into an in-depth analysis of the powers of S ranks. There are three major changes that S rank undergoes when they become S rank."
"First of all, their mana is elevated to a higher level. Though their mana capacity doesn't increase, the density of all their attacks, attack power and defensive abilities skyrocket."
"Secondly, the power of concepts. We'll skim over this for now as we'll do an in-depth analysis at a later date."
"Finally the ability to ignore the laws of physics. They can choose to nullify the laws of physics that affect them. Whether it be gravity, friction or inertia. Nothing can stop S ranks."
"We are teaching you this as all of you have the potential to become S ranks. Only class 1,2 and 3 A will be able to learn this."
'Though most of us will die before we reach that exalted rank.'
S rank wasn't a level of strength that one could achieve by merely training. It requires you to survive many life-or-death battles, usually at the cost of other S-rank seeds.
Only a small percentage of us would be able to cross that barrier. And I was determined to be one of them.
The class continued, with Mrs Rumbles explaining the higher level of mana and physics-breaking abilities with greater detail.