Rina opened her eyes, looked at the star studded ceiling in her hut.
This.. isn't this their home in the village ?
What in the world is she doing here ?
Oh! Wait !
She must have died.
However, even if she died , she did not think she would return here !
After all, they were cold, hungry and …
'PLOP' !
'Wet. ' she finished her thought, just after a fat raindrop fell on her forehead.
On the side, her mother got up, curses in her mouth.
Her dear parents.
They were ever so happy to sell her off to the royal school of magic, as would the rest of their children.
In their life, perhaps giving birth to enough children so that they could live off hand outs is their most proud work.
Unfortunately, there was no scam worse than the royal academy.
In Bohemia, the populace is full of mages.
They may not be powerful, but there are many…
The truly powerful only ever come from the nobles.
Like all people, Rina also thought blood made all the difference when it came to magic, but it seems not.
Instead, it is a dark conspiracy.
In her previous life, she got selected as mage, went to royal academy, became a soldier, then got caught by rebel forces. Her life was normal till then.
Then, she was one of the few who stayed for a time in rebel forces. Who came to know the Mages of the common are not powerful only because the entry form of royal academy, which is free for all the common people, levies their magic power to the nobles, who in turn would get levied by the royal family.
However, unlike most of her compatriots, Rina was not angry with the royal family, nor the noble family.
After all, this kind of levying meant if she had a power of hundred, she gave out ninety, and when she had power of ten thousand, she gave out nine thousand. Rina had been a nobody.
What she is angry about was that just for that single instance of imprisonment with rebels, she was side tracked in her career.
Her promotion ! Her bribes ! Her citizenship of the capital !
All of them went away along with the rebels' ideological education.
She was thrown back to the most boring job of it all, keeping the archives.
It is then she realized …
That promotion was never going to come to her.
That citizenship was a fraud from the beginning.
The only truth is those bribes and even her little cut in those bribes.. She missed because she was in the only department of the royal academy which has no outside contact of any sort.
Yet, Rina did not want rebirth.
She is not willing to study through seven years of education, then go through four years of training to be a mediocre mage in Royal academy.
In fact, she doesn't even know why she got reborn.
After all, there's no specific item that she touched, there's no specific event that happened.
All she remembered was that she laid her books out in the form of a bed in the same way as she did every other time.
Then, she laid down and slept on her perfectly contoured bed of books.
What is she doing in her home ?
Rina couldn't sleep any more.
She took over one of her siblings, so she could have some peace and quiet.
While she held her brother, she concentrated and looked at her magic core.
It's as small as it ever was.
To think she has to give up almost ninety percent of such a small magic core for her entire life, just for a chance to get educated.
She wanted to say how 'unfair '. Yet, she knew herself.
If she could stand in that position where she is the one stealing instead of nobles, she would make it ninety nine percent, not ninety.
On that note, she first would need to get enlightened.
That is the opening of her meridians.
The next day it dawned cloudy and muddy.
Rina went to school without much excitement.
" What are you doing here, you sodding bastard ?! " one of the boys was saying to another boy win unkempt hair and dirty clothes.
Edam Forest, the child of the woods.
Another word for when unmarried women get pregnant out of the blue and give birth to a child.
If there's one family more unfortunate than her own, Rina must say it's Edam's.
The awakening does not have any rules or prohibitions on it.
However, everyone who attends must fill a waiver that states whether they attend the royal academy or not.
This form is only given after the awakening is done, and must be filled with a special blood quill.
Therein lies the brilliance of the kingdom.
Awakening itself is free.
The form though, it's a whole another matter.
It carries with itself a multitude of curses. One, to suck out the specific percentage of magic of people who accept to attend. A slow degradation curse which scatters the magical core to nothing for those who deny. A special ratio absorption curse for non-human species, and a multitude of other curses, that bind them so they could not harm the ruling class.
Edam was a half demon.
He was found and bound as soon as he had agreed to the magical education.
He was given over as a gift to the eleventh prince with little to no magic and a congenital disease.
In time, Edam was sacrificed to make the eleventh prince healthy again.
" Hey ! What are you doing ? Get to the assembly hall ! Now ! Scat ! Shoo ! Shoo! " the PE teacher's voice came over, sending them inside.
Edam was barely able to stand.
Rina walked over to him, helped him up.
" Ohhh.. ! look at that ! The dirty and ugly got together ! That's right, you idiots. Stay with each other and stop harming society ! " one of the well dressed girls scolded her.
Rina has tanned skin, with her chestnut hair oiled and braided into most unflattering pig tails. Her beauty lied in the details. Despite being tanned, her skin is as smooth as silk, and has a healthy glow. Her hair, once the oil is washed away, is the softest and straightest.
Her eyes, which are covered with unflattering round glasses, are a perfect twenty/twenty, it's just that she got those free, they were the fad due to a successful wizard novel. She wore an extremely loose second hand skirt and shirt, for those clothes have to accommodate not just her, but all her siblings who are to come after her.
On the contrary, Edam was pale as a vampire, with hair dark as crows feathers, and equally dirty, his eyes as black as black could get, his lips thin. His eyes are like swords, as opposed to Rina's sweet almond eyes and cute bow lips. Right now, his overly long and bony frame is just tossed in mud by those boys, and his barely respectable clothes are full of mud and grass.
They indeed make a sorry enough sight that one would call them names.
Rina ignored the name calling. .
"Let's go to infirmary. " She told Edam.
" Nobody asked for your help, Fugly ! " Edam said, pushing her away.
Rina was surprised.
She looked at his eyes, surprised he was capable of speech at all.
Edam's eyes are shifty.
If she were a little girl, she would have thrown off his hand and ran away crying.
Rina did not do either.
She looked around.
Ninety nine percent of the time, this is due to a girl. The other, trying to come off as cool.
She did not expect even the non-human species to have such feelings. Or is Edam just human enough to understand and feel these things ?
She spotted the root cause soon enough.
"Elora Bright. "
With her golden curls that bounce with every step, golden skin that gives off its own light, and champagne colored dress that's' tight in all the places it should be tight at and legs that go on forever.
It's amazing if the boy did not have a crush on her.
Only… Rina knew one more detail. Elora Bright, fiancé of the eleventh prince.
Even if Edam was found to be a demon-kin, there was no need for him to be reserved for Eleventh prince, on top of that, to become his longevity pill.
After all, the symbiosis rite needs one to be willing.
No wonder Edam was willing to sacrifice himself. Elora must have convinced him, Rina thought as she looked at the boy.
Elora is more than selfish enough to beg such a thing off a boy who had a crush on her.
She is just the kind of person who will swallow innocent boys without even spitting out the bones.
Rina was taken advantage of more than once due to Elora.
Rina is definitely not kind enough to take on a person even after he scolded her.
However, in this situation, it really felt like she would lose if she let go of Edam.
Thus, she just shrugged off Edam's words.
" I still have functional hands and feet ! Don't worry, I am not seducing you. Neither do I have any contagious diseases. " Rina said, helping Edam walk.