"The one in the stories?" Professor Richard chuckled before turning around, "The legendary PORTAL?! You actually believed those things?" 'Um...so...no?" Hearing the professor phrase it in such a way gave rise to doubts in Lera's mind, and she slowed down her excitement before taking a second look at the sets of massive stone pillars and ancient-looking architecture all the way down low. "Of course it is true!" Professor Richard laughed out loud as Lera glared at him with unhindered annoyance, "This is the Pinnacle Research Institute! Remember?!" Having been just trolled by the smiley old man, Lera wanted to dig a hole into the ground and bury her head. Seeing that she actually looked genuinely upset, Professor Richard felt a little bad. Scratching the back of his head, a good idea came to him. "You want to look at it up close?" Professor Richard asked, "Normally, only the second-year Guardian apprentices are allowed to approach the sets, but......I will make an exception for you." "Really?!" Lera's mouth dropped, and her heart has already started beating harder and harder. That is THE portal of legends! The portal that brought over the last three generations of Saviors of the world! And now Lera got to take a look up close?! "Heck yeah!" Without realizing it, Lera actually spoke out her thoughts as Professor Richard smiled and picked up his book from his side. "Wind blows, Sunrises, and the Charriot arrives." With a soft-spoken voice, he swiftly channeled his own Wave into the specific page of his Book of Casts. The book floated up and hummed gently before a surge of semi-transparent blue energy materialized from around the hands of the professor. Flowing through the incantations and sets of drawings across multiple pages on his Book of Casts as the pages flickered in the wind, Professor Richard then directed his attention forward, projecting his mind into the Book and forging a chariot made with fluffy looking strings of clouds in front of the two of them. "Woah......." Lera had never seen such an extravagant kind of Casting before, though to those Casters that regularly serve the high societies of this world, this is all but the start of it all. "I know you use far simpler verbal commands to drive your Casting." Professor mentioned as he hopped onto his chariot of air before gesturing for Lera to follow, "The way you string together and quick-fire your support casts are one of the reasons you have so much potential. And I am sure the meticulous way you organize your Casts and manipulate your Wave will translate to the research we do here." "I do wish I can sound more poetic when I cast too," Lera admitted as she hopped onto the chariot. The packs of clouds felt solid underneath her feet, despite what her instincts are telling her. The professor sat back before snapping a finger and slowly lowering the chariot down through the air. As they continued downwards more and more, passing the initial spiraling staircase located at the inner walls of the Tower of Constellations, Professor Richards pointed his fingers upward and looked up. Lera traced his glance into the skies, and that's when she realized that the word "Constellations" not only describes the stars above twinkling during the night but also the reflective stones sparkling during the day! It was as if pieces of the rainbow were shattered and sprayed all over the place.. As the chariot lowers, each of the individual sources of light started to blink in and out of focus. The entire insides of towers started to sparkle more and more the lower the two of them went, and she found herself lost in the moment just taking everything in. "I could never get used to this." Professor Richard said before he let out a long-held breath and turned his attention to what's beneath him. Lera felt a warmth approaching her feet and she looked down to see a transparent barrier formed around and over the Portal pressed up against the bottom part of the Chariot, "Let's get you inside." After going through another set of inner doors with the Professor leading the way, Lera finally got to see the legendary portal with her own two eyes. As per usual, she took in a big sniff of the air. Hmmm...smells like the forest... "Since we are here, I might as well get the basics out of the way." The Professor said with both hands on his hip, "You were admitted to be an apprentice, with progressions to become a Guardian Candidate, and that has been a tradition since the establishment of the Pinnacle Research Institute nine hundred years ago. Though times are...truly different." "Do you think that the War of the Fourth Millennium is going to happen?" Lera asked, and the Professor shrugged. "Who knows? All we can do is to learn all we can about everything, and prepare to the best of our ability. Keep an eye and ear out, and if things are destined to happen, then they will." A surprisingly pessimistic philosophy, but Lera can only imagine what learning the thousands of years of history will do to research like the professor in front of her. The Portal consists of various long columns of stones with strange unfamiliar incantations to even someone as well-read as Lera, and the Professor soon admitted that even in his years of research and publications, he has only managed to decrypt the functions of the various parts of writing. Those long columns then supported a massive stone ring with a tablet in its middle with deeper carvings and black paints, and even in nine hundred years, nothing changed about the portals when compared to the earlier drawings and documentations. There are faint light blue lines of the Wave connecting the Portal to the environment around it, and Lera's eyes followed one of the strands until it became fainter and fully disappeared into the air. "Is it somehow.....drawing Wave from the air?" Lera asked, and the Professor snapped his finger before giving her a thumbs up. "Atta girl." Professor Richard said, "Now before you get lost here, I am just gonna run through the pleasantries about what your roles would be." The professor then went on to outline the general pathways and plans for the Guardian Candidates at the Institute, though the more he talked, the more his voice sounded quieter and more distant as Lera became completely mesmerized by the sheer complexity of the structure in front of her. She has had only the bare-bones knowledge of the Portals before applying to the Institute, and all that she knows are the popular stories of the Saviors of the past. Three, to be exact, each fought in a War of their Millenniums. The Pinnacle Research Institute keeps the majority of the knowledge of the Portals to the academic elites, and the information that are even more sensitive is kept in the shelves of books and notes located meters away from Lera. The years of knowledge, findings, and insights are all inches away from her! Lera bit her lips and tried to focus on what the professor's saying, but now, her curiosity is simply killing her with excitement! "You will have a few other Guardian Candidates joining you soon. All of the candidates typically have two duties, one being the maintenance of their skills with Wave through rotations with external organizations. Your External Corresponding Officer will be in touch with you in due time, as the Second and Third years are all out on their individual rotations at the moment. The second duty would be that of research......and I think I already know what you wanted to do." Pointing her hands at everything around her, Lera asked with her voice trembling, "......Can I?" The security chief of the Institute was initially hesitant about giving access to the Institute's most prized artifact to a new student at the Institute, but after that Professor Richard insisted and promised that he will directly supervise her through her studies, the permission was at last granted. The next thing she knew, she has already missed the social gatherings with the rest of the first-year Guardian Candidates and other first-year students. Channeling her second Identity Cast, the barrier moved aside and allowed her in. There are nowhere she'd rather be. The Light Casts brightened and lit the room when she entered, and Lera took a good look at the mountain of knowledge surrounding her before dropping her bag into the corner of the room and taking a stroll along the outer perimeter. As she watched the flow of the incantations from the base of the Portal structure wind up and combine at the stone columns before joining into thicker and darker lines, her theory was immediately proven. There is no question. The Portal of Through Space and Time is a type of Structure Cast! "Heheheh...perhaps I am a genius after all..." Lera spun around in a dance happily as her skirt flew up and down. Then, she turned around and noticed the first book right at her eye level. A thesis on How Through Space and Time functions as a Structure Cast and Preliminary Estimations of its Functionality. Published in the year 3700. It is currently the year 4022. "Well......" Looking around with self-embarrassment, Lera reached her fingers forward and grabbed onto that book while making sure nobody's there to witness her little victory dance, "Let's call it independent simultaneous discoveries......" Though 322 years is a bit of a stretch to argue for simultaneousness. Well isn't arguing what scholars do anyway? (No.) Over the next few weeks, she poured everything into her reading and Professor Richard came in every now and then to check on her research questions and progress made when Lera brought up a strange possibility that he had not considered for a long time. "From what I've read, each and every single instance of the Portal's activation are automatic......" Lera said, presenting her few sources on the whiteboard as Professor Richard sips his cup of tea, "From this particular source, it was said that 'when a fundamental understanding of the functions of the Portal is achieved, then a manual activation of the Portals is a possibility. So, I am thinking if it was possible to......" "Lera." Professor Richard said, putting his cup down and looking at her. That was when she noticed something in his eyes that she hasn't seen before. It was a look of anger and regret, or was it? "I know I gave you permission to work however you want to down here, and I still support your decision here." He said before standing up, "But I suppose it is my fault for this case. The institute outlawed any attempt to manually activate, or experiment on the Portals years ago after a certain accident." "An accident?" Lera asked. "Yes. One of the students here tried to experiment with what he didn't understand back then, and he and many others paid a great price. I know that the whole purpose of academia is the exploration of the Unknown, but playing with forces way beyond our current understanding brings only doom to everyone, not just us." Professor Richard said coldly, "They...Just know this. You are free to read and learn using all of the books year, but if you experiment with the Portals at all, then I will be forced to remove your permission to come down here, and that would be the lightest of consequences..." "I...I understand." Turning her head and looking at the towering structure not too far from the two of them, Lera nodded. Now, those pieces of stones and columns suddenly appeared rather ominous. "Don't feel too bad about it." Professor Richard smiled, 'The portals have been completely static and quiet for all this time. As long as you leave it alone, it might as well be a piece of decoration." Just the world's most powerful decoration. That was also when Lera realized why so many of the research and notes are mere speculations and based on theories. Knowing that there is nothing that she can do, the two of them moved on to the topic of her Rotations. In the meanwhile, in the forests two days travel away from Sonne, the Capital city of the Kingdom of Varous, a group of travellers dressed in clean white clothing rode along the cleared paths through the woods when one of the kids suddenly spotted a hand behind a piece of bedrock. "What's that?!" He asked, and the mother yawned before looking and screaming. That was when the bodies of the second-year Guardians Candidates on rotations were discovered in locations all across the outskirts of Sonne. A total of six excellent Wave Users, all died during their rotations. As the deans of the Pinnacle Research Institute met to discuss this matter, groups of unidentified wave users wearing dark-colored hoods made their move towards the Institute. Simultaneous explosions rocked the entire capital city as smoke rose from all around, and the perfect mirage of Lera's peaceful research life came swiftly to an end.