Nightmares have haunted my dreams even though the beast that killed Ryan and other boys was dead.

From whole group, only I survived. While Landon managed to escape, he rejected to leave and returned back in order to try to help. Teachers had to lead children outside of the area and no one followed him The Demon was later confirmed to be tier eighteen demon and wolves following it were tier twelve demon beasts, and therefore, no one could really blame teachers for not being willing to face the monster of such power. Even if this demon was rather slow, killing him would prove impossible for group of tier ten and tier eleven practitioners.

Landon’s fate was unknown and since he was not found during expedition of teacher Alaric and other magic experts, he was considered to be dead. I still had a sword that Ryan gave me and I decided to bring it to his parents.

In school, everyone was scared. Rumors of possibility that some terrible beast was descending from mountains and heading for four empires made even teachers uncomfortable. In forest incident, quite few children have died and headmaster barely managed to keep his seat.

Laura took both her studies and her job as my servant seriously. My room was always clean, I would no longer have to eat food from cantina, since she would make breakfast, lunch and dinner for me and what’s more, she even taught me basics of how to cook. And when I would wake up in the night screaming in terror because of nightmares, she would be there and calm me down like big sister.

Every summer from then on, demons and demonic beasts would descend mountains and cause trouble. Teacher Alaric had almost no time to come to Alsante city, since he was traveling around forest, hunting most powerful demons and demonic beasts that other practitioners of magic would have problems to deal with. He would only come to city after the beasts were dealt with and stayed for single weekend at most. He looked more and more tired every year but he still kept smiling.

I could describe those three years as years where little happened. But that would not be true. There were many things happening, only I did not really care. With death of Ryan Randolph and his friends, newly formed groups of older children and bullies started to fight over power in school. While Ryan and his closest friends were young, he had support of many older students in final years of school, who belonged to families supporting Randolph family. With Ryan gone, they basically started creating their own groups and fighting each other.

I couldn’t really care less, since no one really took notice of us little children. Anyone who was younger than twelve didn’t seem like worth noticing, since in order to overpower other groups, they needed power now, and potential talents who would become powerful in three or for years of time were ignored. School has basically become mess, and only few teachers really cared but they could do very little. All of it was caused by parents of these students, who were making them take their own fights into the school.

I know this might sound as common sense to you, but when parents interfere in friendships and relationships of their children, it becomes seriously ugly. Branch of generous was example of how twisted can school become because of that.

Like that, three years have passed that I have spent learning magic while helping Brant and Saffron and also Laura, when she asked. All permeating fear has almost disappeared. People started getting used to ‘demonical descents’ that happened every summer, since it became part of their life and there was nothing they could do about it. While there were still some doomsayers who were claiming end was near, but only few of them managed to keep their followers after repeatedly, their predictions were wrong.

End of my fourth year in school approached. I managed to reach tier eleven in the middle of school-year. When I told teacher Kalani who was still only at tier ten and only now, she was slowly closing to tier eleven, she was shocked. After all, I have been consistently managing to keep tier of magic I was able to use above my own age.

Big part of my success could be attributed to fact that during time I helped Brant and Saffron with their training I have learned almost thirty different spirit training techniques and I have merged some of them into single one, my own spirit method that was almost half as strong as first level of method I learned from teacher Alaric. After preparing this spirit training method for them, I have realized I could easily use it while I was reading and while, unlike [Spirit Capacity Meditation], I could not use it comfortably all the time and it was actually tiring, it was almost six times more powerful. Using it while I read my books was certainly helpful to my spirit growth.

I did not name the technique, because I was not even thinking about it, and one who actually named it was Brant. He called it impossible, because even after two months, he was unable to use it and learned it only after I spent two weeks focusing on nothing but teaching it to him, since Saffron learned it after mere five weeks and Brant, who was already overtaken by her, became so desperate he wanted to use all his wealth, which was eleven gold coins, to make me help him. I of course rejected his gold, even though it was extremely tempting. I could not take money from my friend. Therefore, name of technique was established as [Impossible Spirit Training].

If teacher Kalani or Alaric learned about technique I created, they would probably think me to be some demon-spawn, because creating new spirit training method that was not utter thrash was extremely hard. That technique was on par with many practitioner families’ secret techniques that were created by one-in-generation geniuses. But for me, it felt like I had some instinctive understanding of how should I alter technique to make it more efficient. At this point, even I was starting to realize that there was something wrong with me. I however paid it no mind, since except for having no soul power, it seemed like everything was fine with me.

But there was one thing I was not satisfied with. I still had debt to pay to teacher Alaric and lady Sable. I managed to save most of silver that lady Sable was giving to me weekly and I did not even touch iridium coins that teacher Alaric gave me every year with hope that I would be able to pay them most of what they gave me back. And now, I felt like I finally had chance to do so.

Over past years, I had finished more than ten books about spell-crafting and crafted about ten spells between tier six and ten. Most of them were completely useless, as there already existed spells with same effect of same tier, since I only created them to practice spell-crafting. At this point I could already compare with intermediate spell-crafting experts, but I had no clue about that.

Reaching tier eleven, I could finally create spells that some noble and practitioner families could show little interest in. I could then sell them at auction and receive some money. That is, as long as they had some use and had different effects from common spells. With that, I would be able to repay my debts to them and then…

That was where my line of thoughts was ending. And then what? I had no clue what I wanted to do, after I grow up. But there certainly was one thing I enjoyed. Teaching others; helping Laura with her studies, finding suitable spirit and soul training methods for her, explaining everything I could to Brant and Saffron, those moments were certainly making me happy.

“Aiken!”

As I was thinking about what my future while I was going back to dorm from my secret hiding spot in gardens, voice of teacher Kalani stopped me.

“Teacher Kalani?” I asked surprised. I had no idea what could she want from me, but as I faced her, seeing her run to me, I had seen her serious expression.

“Headmaster wants to speak to you. I think it is serious.” she said.

If headmaster grew older over last four years, he did well to hide it. Now that my magic perception was much better, I could feel how powerful he actually was. Well, compared to teacher Alaric, it was nothing much, but that comparison was extremely unfair to him, since no one could really compare to Wizard of South. Pressure that was surrounding him was however about ten times as dense as that of teacher Kalani or aunt Sable.

In his office, he was sitting in his chair and there were two ordinary chairs prepared as well. One of them was still not taken, but on other sat boy of about my age, maybe bit older. His clothes were ordinary clothes that if one wore in branch of generous, he would probably end up being bullied.

As he looked at me, he was extremely surprised, and his expression was that of absolute disbelief.

“You!” he said, pointing finger at me, but at that moment headmaster spoke up.

“So you have finally bothered to arrive, boy. We were waiting for you for almost half an hour.” He said.

“I don’t know what kind of dispute is between two of you but I don’t really care. I called both of you here for reason. From your village, two people came today early in afternoon and they asked me to end your education and return some of money back to them.” he said.

“Since that is not how this school works and they were impolite, I had them kicked out of building without any politeness as well. That means that neither of you have any reason to fear that you will be expelled, you both will be in this school until your education is over according to rules that are in place, which means that both of you will probably study until the very end, and there is nothing those villagers can do about it.” he said.

“But whatever is going on, I am afraid that something bad happened in your village, if they were so stupid to send people here. Since from what both your teachers said about you, I can tell you are both pretty much ahead of your class by a lot and if you wanted to return to your village and see what happened, I could have you excused from your classes for some time.” he explained, looking directly at me.

While he used to dislike me and considered me weak because I had no soul power, he had to recognize other talents that I had. Teacher Kalani was doing her best convincing him that I was talented, since she was actually thinking that he was one who was probably responsible for watching over me for non-existent practitioner family I belonged to, based on her delusions. And he knew, that since Sable family was backing me, if my village had financial problems, he should tell me. After all, if he did not do so, he could anger person who had most influence in four empires, teacher Alaric.

“I don’t know what happened to Oakville, but if grandpa is in trouble, I should return home.” said boy, and I finally remembered who he was. He was grandson of old man Keiran, who also had same name as his grandpa. I looked at boy as his expression displayed enmity towards me.

“I can’t stop you, but let me tell you that offer is still standing after you return. To be honest, you are unique talent for branch of common, and we will provide you full scholarship for seventh to twelfth year of school if you decide to sing contract with us to teach on school afterwards.” said headmaster, then turning back to me. It might sound as weird and shady practice, making contracts with children, but that was way school acquired more than half of its teachers. And since they were just commoners, no one influential cared.

“I would also like to return to my village.” I said. If something bad happened to village, I could use money I received from aunt Sable and teacher Alaric to solve it.

“You heard him lady Sable.” said headmaster.

“Yes. Well, I expected that.” answered aunt Sable.

I turned around and noticed she was standing behind me. When she arrived, I had no clue. Maybe she was here before I arrived and simply did not want to make me change my mind with her presence, so she hid with magic. Or maybe she just arrived. There was no way to tell.

“In any case, you two should be traveling together, and Laura should also go with you. Two children traveling alone would be madness.”

“I don’t need to travel with this kid. I can take care of myself.” protested boy. I wanted to respond to him, but aunt Sable was faster.

“Oh? You seem to be quite a responsible young man. What if I paid you to make sure Aiken is safe? How does pay of four silver coins sound to you?”

I wanted to protest, but aunt Sable gestured with hand to stop me.

Boy didn’t want to accept, but at the same time, he felt like he could not reject the offer.

“Ok, I will do it.” he agreed after few seconds of thinking.

“Great. It was nice doing business with you. Meet us tomorrow in front of school.”

“Aunt Sable, why did you do that?” I asked after we left headmaster’s office.

“I think it will be better for you to travel together, right? What if something happened to him while he was traveling alone? Since you two are from same village, I thought you were something like friends.”

“Well, we are not.” I said, but since he was grandson of old man Keiran, I was thankful I could ensure his safety. It would certainly make old man very sad if something happened to his grandson.

“Aiken, promise me that you will take care of yourself and won’t do anything stupid. If there is some problem you can’t solve, just return and we can think about something together, alright?” she said, as she hugged me.

“Yes, yes, I know, aunt Sable.” I answered, with no honesty in voice.

I finaly have my energy back. Prepare for more.