After classes ended, Orin was about to leave the classroom with Hannah when he noticed his teacher, William, waiting by the door.
"Darion Fills?" William asked.
"Yes sir." Orin replied confidently.
"Follow me; I'll give you a tour of the whole school while explaining about its rules and regulations," William instructed and walked off. Orin then bade Hannah his goodbyes and quickly followed William.
"This is the ground, which you have probably already seen." William said as he continued to walk. The school surrounded the expansive ground, and after walking for a bit, they soon reached the library, which Orin was excited about. "This is our school library, the only place where you can read hundreds of books without spending a single penny." He explained. Orin gazed at the library as if he had just found a holy grail. He knew this place would be the place where he would spend most of his time of school.
"Can we borrow books from here?" He asked eagerly. But unfortunately, William shook his head. He was not allowed to borrow books from here; however, the good news was the fact that he could come to the school even after he graduates and read from the library for a lifetime.
As he was being shown the buildings, Williams started talking about the rules and regulations of the school, and for some reason he looked excited to tell them. The rules were pretty standard and nothing too out of the pocket except for a rule that said people of the same sex could not hold each other hands for an extended period of time. 'What the hell happened in this school?' Orin wondered.
After being shown all the buildings, he found nothing else that interesting, except for the basic martial arts training hall, where they taught basic martial arts to the students here twice a week.
"This is it," William said. "How do you like it?"
"It is really nice. Thank you for taking your time showing me around the school and explaining all of the rules and regulations. Orin replied sincerely. He genuinely liked the man, albeit not in any romantic way. Despite having a strict demeanor, he seemed like a good guardian and a teacher—someone Orin could respect. 'This kid is nice. I like him. William thought and smiled. It was safe to say they shared a mutual feeling.
They then promptly left the school compound and went back to their own place.
A few weeks passed by, and Orin got accustomed to the school environment. He thought he would encounter a lot of snotty kids in his time here, but contrary to his expectation, he had yet to find a single such peer, which surprised him. Everyone was well behaved and rarely got into any problems. He had heard rumors about a few scions of nobility who brought trouble occasionally, but it was very rare.
He had a pretty good time in the school—way better than when he was in the slums. He wore nice clothes, ate ample food, had time to enjoy himself, and read the things he always wanted to. He occasionally discussed the business with Phil—the first soap was going to be sold tomorrow.
Orin was currently inside the library, immersed in a book called "The Entire History of Vultiva"—written by Anwen Merric. It briefed the entire history of Vultiva in just 400 pages. He went through all of them in a matter of two days, and it helped get to know about this world immensely.
The recording of history mysteriously began about 750 years ago. For some reason, nobody knew what happened prior to that period, but for some reason, nobody in his school and people he knew seemed to care about such things. They took it as a fact and didn't care to delve further into it, which weirded Orin out.
The world was thought to be shaped like a pyramid, and the people lived on the bottom, plain surface. The higher area from where the mages come was called the higher realm, and you could reach the higher realm if you did good deeds in life, and when you die, you reincarnate into the higher realm. Which was why the elusive mages from the temple were treated with such deference.
The book recorded about the wars, major inventions, and major figures throughout history. It also talked about the geography of the world and how kingdoms came into being.
From the book, he found out that the lower plain, where most, if not the people, lived, was divided into 23 kingdoms, and he lived in one of the more developed kingdoms called Redmere. It was a midsized kingdom but held a lot of power in the world.
The town he lived in was called Summer Peak." A quiet, large town in the Kingdom of Redmere. It was located near the border, neighboring the West Vale Kingdom. This place was a mediocre town with not so much going on except for a few businesses and trading with the other kingdom. Because of the dense, dangerous forest that divided the kingdom, the place couldn't realize its true potential, and the people here were very bitter about it. If the mages helped to remove the danger in the forest, their lives could improve immensely.
The whole country had dozens of temples of the Oracle, but only a few consisted of mages. Luckily their town was one of them, which made them a tourist destination and a relatively safer place inside the town.
He then closed the book and sighed in disappointment. Although he had expected that finding out about mages would be tough, he didn't expect such a lack of information about magic and mages. He had read about numerous texts on the history, geography, and culture of the world, but he didn't find any useful information about mages.
He was disappointed, but he didn't give up and continued to read more books, and by two weeks he had already devoured more than ten books; however, his reading and findings led him to nowhere in the path of being a mage. But fortunately, he gained many useful insights that he didn't have access to in the past, which helped him understand the world better.