Straightening my back, I looked around me. People just gave me a glance and kept walking.
I shrugged it off, running before guards came to me and made me pay for the damage.
I took a wide stride, poking a guy's shoulder. I asked, "Man, I'm late to the entrance."
He slowly turned in my direction, and I froze, seeing that familiar face—too familiar for my liking.
There stood Vahn, the game protagonist, with silver hair, blue piercing eyes, tidy academy uniform, green eyes.
His hair was long, reaching his shoulders. His shoulders were broader.
"Don't worry, the professors said there are still 20 minutes left," he said to me and resumed walking away.
I kept staring absent-mindedly at his departing back.
"Huh, who thought the first guy I need to get here would be him?"
Van Kaelthorn, the only son of a duke, demonstrated insane ability to handle mana compared to his age.
"Sigh, I still have a long way to go." I pushed my fists into my pocket and walked the other way.
I found an empty isolated place away from people and reached into my coat. "It's still here—the black stone!"
"I really feared he would fall when I was flying in the sky!" I sat on the ground, my back facing the wall, and watched the stone gleaming with the light.
"Death stone," an end-game item that only appears after clearing the shadow forest 100 times.
"It was really a coincidence Zyra had it," I muttered. This item had an insane story.
The Shadow forest was actually a grave for a necro god. It was a special kind of god who attained godhood by death, not belief power.
And this item was his core. In his last moments, he sealed it so tightly that not even a wisp of mana leaked.
Thus, people mistook it for a normal black stone. I lifted the stone to my face. "The mana reserve in this little fragment rivals an S-rank monster."
"But, I should find a way to cleanse the miasma in this mana," I said, standing up and walking to the front gate.
As I kept walking, students like me kept passing with different hair colors and eyes.
"This is really a different world," I muttered, looking at the scenes.
When we reached the gate, one thought I had, looking at the massive doors—enormous.
They were 100 m tall, engraved with golden runes. The frame traced with magical veins shone with golden mana.
The doors themselves were pure white, untouched by the world or time.
Passing the gates, we were welcomed by flying spirits of all colors of the known spectrum.
The spirits danced around the students, some teasing, some rubbing against them softly.
We kept walking through the corridor. There was light coming from the end, slowly expanding the more we walked toward it.
When we passed the light, we were inside the academy. A staff member motioned us to walk to an amphitheatre that was on a hill.
People connected fast, some making friends, some not. I was the latter group.
We entered the vast amphitheatre. Contrary to the outer academy walls, this amphitheatre exuded ancient vibes.
Pine wood and iron doors.
I took a seat all the way back in a corner. It gave me a good field of vision.
With my sharp eyes, I caught a poster: Selena Drayn, succubus arts user. "So she is a virgin, huh," I thought. Back in the game, it was an iron rule—succubus arts users needed to be virgins.
Shaking my head, dispelling those thoughts, my first-day-at-school trauma came back.
My heart was hammering. I wouldn't lie about it—the what if I said something stupid or the what if.
Then a female professor walked on stage. She had a tight uniform hugging her curvaceous body. Her uniform had two cuts: one down at her legs, the other at her breasts.
Her outfit got full marks from the male, enough to…
"I'm Selena Drayn, your upcoming teacher in Succubus arts for the next 3 years."
One student gasped. "Succubus arts? Isn't that the magic field that requires the user to be a virgin?"
Meanwhile, Lucien Vale thought,
"Now that all makes sense with how revealing her clothes are."
"Succubus or Incubus arts mostly depend on the user's body to absorb other mana through skin contact."
"That's why the user needs to wear little clothes, and the mana absorption increases proportionally with less skin area."
"Ahem, I guess that covers all the necessities you need to know before joining."
"Now—"
"Let's go to the back to test your ability rarity, and based on that, your class."
The moment these words fell, students swarmed to the exit, eager to test their ability rarity.
It was not luck. The rarity of your ability would determine your growth rate, and accessing a higher class was every student's dream.
Because a higher class didn't mean just better teachers, but connections and better materials to work with.
I snapped back to reality, seeing I was the only guy left in the amphitheatre, Selene walking to me.
"So, kid, don't want to test your rarity? I was like them too, you know, when I was young—excited."
"Sorry, professor. I just want to test only after everyone finished."
"Oh, okay. I guess it's your personal choice," she said those words before resuming walking to the exit, her hips swaying hypnotically.