Right next to Elena was a man with an arrogant look. He had a uniform like mine but it was a black variant with red and purple highlights. He stood at 1.8 meters and had violet messy hair. His face was handsome but his overall demeanor gave me an overall idea about him. He was trouble.
Elena who was watching my "fight" if you could call it that, was surprised at the student suddenly asking her for a fight. I already knew her looks would've attracted attention but I never thought that it would make people fight her. But I thought about it more. Recently I I've been too ignorant and clueless on how life outside the neighborhood worked. Going by the law of the jungle, where the strong stands above the rest. What would someone who's strong get, by fighting a pretty girl? Obviously they'd come here to court the girl.
Realizing that, I had to do something.
"ELENA, RUN HES THERE TO DATE YOU!" I shouted at her. Even though she wasn't that far away, just a few meters away actually, I shouted to get both his and her attention, while also managing to get everyone else's attention as well. I admit that was an accident but what could I do now.
Elena was surprised at my shout and had a flustered look. She composed herself though and turned serious. She looked the student that came up to her, up and down before nodding slowly.
"A-Ahem, although it's nice to have a handsome guy like you want to date me, I'm not interested I'm dating anyone for the time being." She said loudly. A bit too loud if I may add, as all of the fighting in the building had stopped due to my sudden shout and the rejection she just said came out loud and in an echo as well. Although the building was massive, it was just a place to fight so there wasn't any actual furniture and decor, allowing her voice to echo throughout.
The place was eerily quiet. Everyone had shocked faces while some were trying their best to hold their laughter. Ash being one of them, but it wasn't too long before she crumbled.
"Pfft," She let out unwillingly. Everyone's heads turned to us and I felt like a mice staring up a bunch of predators.
The student who approached Elena also turned to us. His face was completely red and angry but it turned into shock and surprise when he saw Ash.
"L-Lady Ashley..? W-What are you doing here? W-We–" The student stuttered at the sight of Ash. It seemed there was more than what she let off.
Ash's face of laughter quickly turned into one of annoyance, which scared the student into biting his tongue, interrupting what he was going to say. Rolling her eyes she grabbed my wrist and walked to Elena and grabbed hers as well and walked towards the exit. Behind us I could hear the students talking and murmuring to each other, which only caused my curiosity about Ash to rise.
We exited the building as I turned around to see that it was still the shack sized half sphere. There was definitely some type of size magic going on, but I put that towards the back of my mind. I was more curious about Ash, specifically her identity.
"Lady Ash, eh? Are you famous here or something?" I asked in a slight teasing tone but mainly out of curiosity.
She looked at me with a stoic face, but behind her eyes I could tell that she was humored. Elena was glaring at me from my earlier actions but I ignored it.
"Yeah, I'm pretty famous here but all I really do is fight. There isn't much to me so don't worry." She said in a carefree tone.
I knew there was obviously way more to that but if she didn't want to tell me, I couldn't force it. Well I could but it's not like I was stronger than her. Elena who was quiet but angry, now had her chance to speak. She walked up to me and grabbed my precious hair while also pulling me towards her.
"Who told you to warn me like that huh?! You fucking asshole, I'll definitely kill you when we get home." She yelled at me, threats included. Even if she said that I knew she wouldn't. She never went past a few broken bones and that was when she couldn't control her magic properly. Now all I ended up with was a bunch of bruises.
If she couldn't hurt me too badly, she would hurt me everywhere. I swear I'll run away from her once I finish this academy, I can't be associated with a demon afterall.
"Bahahah, you two are pretty cute together. Why didn't you just say you were taken though, Elena?" Ash said as she enjoyed the sight of us fighting. She probably learnt of our names from Headmaster Burnvice and she probably didn't mean anything when she just said what she said.
It was a common occurence actually. People always mistook us as a couple and we're quite surprised when we weren't. Of course I have thought of Elena as a woman and it wasn't like I didn't feel attracted to her, I just felt like it wasn't right. We grew up with each other but I felt like we were more like siblings than anything, and I'm sure that's what Elena thought too.
With that said though, my face turned to an exaggerated annoyance while Elena's turned into a expression of disgust. She was the first one to voice her complaints.
"I-I would never date someone like him! He's too stupid and he isn't my type at all!" She said in a fit on anger. Her cheeks were slightly rosy though but I assumed it was from being flustered at Ash's comment.
"Yeah, she's too violet. There's no way a guy would like her. I want a nice and cute housewife that would take care of me when I came home from work, ahh that'd be great.."
Elena's face turned into a more exaggered face of disgust as I voiced my complaints and fantasy, but her eyes looked calculative as if noting something. Ash looked at us with humorous eyes while simply shrugging.
We continued on our tour where we saw different lecture halls and students that sparred with different weapons. There were also regular classrooms that taught and expanded on magic. There were labs that focused on alchemy and artifact creations. A bunch of forges for blacksmithing and niche classes like forging in the wild, which is the act of collecting natural resources, beast hunting, which went in depth about beast species, their history and their use in society.
There were also major classes. These classes weren't actually special compared to the other classed, they were just popular because of the topics they taught. A couple of them includes, basic magic classes, advanced magic classes, fighting skills, spearsmanship, swordsmanship, ranged fighting, and more.
Although they had sword and spear in their name, there were actually more than that included. I learned that in spearsmanship, people also used lances, poles, and basically anything that had a long shaft and could be used as a weapon. While in swordsmanship the same pattern applied. They had sabers, katanas, cutlass, rapiers and more.
And although those classes were the most popular, there were more weapon classes than I thought. People who used knife like weapons had their own specialized classes and people who used their fists as well. There were even classes that taught people how to make traps and use explosives, which really added onto my confusion.
Although I had limited knowledge of the world, I was taught that world peace had already been achieved. This happened around 2120, almost a thousand years ago. This was due to the planet, Earth, evolving. Unbeknownst to scientists at the time, inside the core of the planet was actually a nervous system. This meant that the planets were actually living beings. And inside of the nervous system, there was mana. It was what allowed planets to function. Mana itself had an unknown origin but it was actually found in space as well. The reason why it went undetected for so long, was because it couldn't be captured by known means at the time. It wasn't a gas, solid, or liquid, it was just mana.
It took the Earth billions of years to finish implementing the mana into its system, and when it was finished, it's skin, the water, land and air, also evolved. The entire planet now covered had mana everywhere and people slowly began to forcefully evolve due to breathing in said mana. At first people died due to this painful way of changing but people started to successfully evolve. But it wasn't just humans that evolved, animals too, evolved.
This led to humans falling down the ladder while Beasts, animals who evolved, climbed up to replace humans as the top predator. Humans struggled at the sudden change of pace and people started dying left and right. Eventually leading to our demise as humans. Instead, Pro-Humans were created. They were considered to be the new species of humans that evolved from mana. They thought, acted, and were overall way better than the old humans. They eventually repopulated the human race and took back their spot as number one.
It was said that if a Pro-Human were to appear in this day and age, they'd definitely take over the world. This was due to two main differences from the present and the past. When Earth released all of that mana, there were so much that mana actually became visible. The humans that evolved into Pro-Humans had way more mana than the current humans today. This also applied to beasts as well. But after hundreds of years, the Pro-Human's descendants actually devolved back into humans. This was due to how a woman's fetus absorbed their mother's mana. This meant that the more mana a female had, the more mana the child they birthed had. But the child normally wouldn't surpass the mother's capacity as while in the womb, although they could absorb mana, it wasn't like they depleted their mom's whole body.
Of course there were unique cases where the baby would have more mana than the parent due to unknown reasons, but that was a minority. This would lead to the eventual demise of Pro-Humans as regular humans once again rose. Albeit these humans could still use mana so a term like "Semi-Pro-Human" would be better, but that's pretty inconvenient to say.
Back to where why I was confused, these classes were practically useless as world peace was already achieved. So why the combat and fighting classes? Sure you could argue beasts were still a threat but then why was beast hunting considered a niche class? This led to me thinking back to what Ms. Clare had said when she informed us that we were going to school.
Flashback
"I'm not sure.. But, this is purely from my own speculation, I believe that they want more magic soldiers to use" Ms. Clare said with a worried look.
End of Flashback
At the time it passed my mind as that day was pretty chaotic but now that I thought about it, it made perfect sense. The government were in need of soldiers, but why? There was world peace already but then I had a sudden crazy thought.
'Aliens!' Although these humanoid species were definitely not humans but they looked like us, for some reason they're merely copying what we looked like. They were in truth, beasts. Although some beasts were dangerous and a threat, most of them actually evolved to have a higher form of thinking and sentience, like one of humans. This led to beasts and humans living peacefully after hundreds of years.
If before we couldn't detect mana through normal means, why couldn't we now? What if there were planets that evolved with the addition of mana way before us, but we're hidden due to it being covered with mana? Like a natural stealth barrier. So it'd make perfect sense if the government found aliens and they'd wish to prepare in case of an invasion.
"Greyyy.. Greyy ugh.."
"GREY!" Elena shouted, finally bringing me back from my inner thoughts.
"Huh?" I said confused.
I was standing still and staring off in front of me with unfocused eyes while Elena and Ash had been staring at me with weird gazes. We were already in front of the next place in the tour but I probably stopped moving to space off again.
"Ah.. sorry I spaced off again. Where are we now?" I apologized and explained myself.
"We're at the Arena now. This is where people fight to get a higher rank in this school." Ash explained to me.
It was the stadium I saw back at the beginning of the tour and it was massive. There was a constant flow of people going in and out and they were all students. Most of them were gossiping of what they saw in there but there was a common topic that tied them all together. They all talked about the fights they saw.
We walked past the people and entered the Arena. Suddenly the place shook as the crowd all cheered in joy. The crowd itself was massive. There were at least a hundred thousand people in the stands and they were all white in coloring.
In front of us though was a large sand field. I could see two humanoids fighting but they moved so fast that it was like a blur. Sparks clashed as they swung their weapons but it was obvious that the feline girl, was winning. The soon to be loser was a fiery man, literally. His whole body was in flames and the only remnants of his clothings were a pair of boxers. They were probably the most reinforced clothing as they didn't look harmed in the slightest. Afterall a man's dignity hid in there. He also had a pair of gauntlets that were black in coloring. He swung wildly at the blur that is the girl, but he missed everytime. The feline had two daggers in her hands and wore a sporty attire. Her sports bra didn't cover much and her sports shorts were tight, probably to avoid them falling off.
The man screamed in anger as his flames grew more wildly but I knew that was a fatal mistake. The feline threw one of her daggers at him. It was barely a hairs length away before it stopped. Soon the crowd erupted into cheers and above the sand field a massive hologram appeared, which a voice announced what was on it.
"THE WINNNNERRRR IS... SARA!" As the commentator said that, a flutter of confetti appeared out of no where and the crowd went even more crazy.
The hologram changed as the two fighters faces appeared and there were numbers under the two pictures as well as their name.
Sara, the feline, her number had a dramatic change that went from 1278 to 998. While the fire man, Brian, but his picture was just him without any flames, his number changed from 998, to 999. I saw Brian walking towards us to the exit as his face was obviously angry. Everyone cleared away from him and good reason to, his flames that he combusted during the fight were quite the show.
Ash had a smirk on her face as she looked at us watching the fight. She quickly dragged us to a booth where there was a line. She skipped it though and made way to the person managing the booth. People suddenly started to complain but instantly became quiet when they realized who they yelled at.
The manager at the booth was another student. It was a man with a tuxedo but he had wings at the back. His mouth was also slightly sharp as it it pointed outwards, like a bird. He was some type of bird species while under the guise of a humanoid. The manager had eyes so wide when he saw Ash that I swear they would've popped if they went further. I looked at his uniform which was blue in color and had white and yellow highlights, I also took notice of the academy's symbol this time. Specifically, his year and rank. The words under his badge said: "Year 4 Rank 19882".
I assume over more than a million students, probably getting into the top 100,000 was difficult, while being under top 50,000 meant you were an elite. That meant that Brian and Sara were at the top of the school, that was probably why there were so many people watching the fight.
"L-Lady Ashley! What brings you here?" The bird man said quickly.
Ash rolled her eyes while bringing me and Elena in front of her, like presenting us.
"I've come here to accept the challenge of Silvia, in return I want you to look after my friends, they're greenhorn trial students." Ash said with a carefree tone.
The bird man had a shocked expression on his face but he quickly composed himself.
"O-Of course! You'll be called to the Arena soon, and friends of Lady Ashley are friends of mine! Come come, I'll show you what you need and want to know." The bird student said with a awful cheery voice. He was being way overly happy for something like this, he was definitely a asskisser.
Ash left towards a door that was labeled "PLAYERS ONLY" and when she left, a storm of murmurs erupted around us. The bird student though quickly dragged us away, leaving the people in the line to the booth to complain again, but a quick glare from the bird student shut them off. We walked quite quickly towards a room that said "VIP" and entered. There, we could see a room filled with furniture made for royalty and drinks and fruits that laid on the table. The couches were red and black, they looked sleek as well. In front of the couches were holograms that were sized down but still displayed what was neccessary.
The bird student halted and turned around to face us, he still had a smile on his face but it looked strange due to his beak like mouth.
"So then, friends of Lady Ashley. Please make yourself comfortable and enjoy your stay. My name is Victor and come find me whenever you are in need of something." As soon as he said that, he left the room and probably made his way back to the booth he was managing.
I looked at Elena and she looked at me and we shrugged. We slumped down onto the crouches and they were extremely comfortable. Despite their sleek look, they felt like cotton instead.
The hologram suddenly made a noise, specifically what was happening outside, in the Arena. The hologram displayed the empty sand Arena, but suddenly it changed. From sand, it became a snowy field, there were snow falling down from nowhere and the winds made it look like a blizzard.
The commentator from before spoke again, but this time his voice sounded slightly different, as if his face was in surprise.
"T-THIS.. LADIES AND GENTLEMEN ASHLEY VIERA HAS MADE A RETURN TO THE ARENA! AND SHE ACCEPTED THE ICE PRINCESS, SILVIA'S CHALLENGE!!!"
The crowd erupted to a new level of noise I didn't even know was possible. The whole room shook as the commentator continued.
"WHO WILL WIN? THE UNDEFEATED CHAMPION, FORMER RANK ONE, THE TYRANT ASHLEY? OR THE ICE PRINCESS, CURRENT RANK ONE, SIVILA MAHOOGAN!!!"
"Eh?"