Chapter 1 (1/2)

Chapter 1: Apprentice

s.h.i.+ning through the dense forest, the harsh sunlight was scattered all over the ground.

There was the mixed scent of moss and decayed trees with dragon-like roots scattered everywhere across the stones. Amongst the rubble and tree roots, four people were slowly advancing forwards. The person at front seemed to be the oldest, but was not of age just yet. The other three behind the person in front were all children, but no matter how much one looked at this group, they seemed as if they were all out on an excursion. But this “Forest of Illusions” was no place to be out on an excursion for. The eldest child up front held a chopper in his hands and cut a path through the shrubbery and vines in his way with the boy in the back holding all of the luggage on his back. In between, the male and female seemed to be walking around in relaxation.

“Seems like finding a place to set up camp before the sun sets isn’t as easy as we thought.”

“Jerry, climb up the trees and see if there’s any clearing nearby.” Kite commanded the empty-handed male.

Kite was the leader of the group, or so he’d like to think so.

“Me again?” Jerry grumbled. Although it seemed as if he was extremely reluctant to go up, he was actually quite proud of himself. After all, he was the only one in the group to know flying techniques.

“Spirit that holds dominion over the air, listen to my prayer. Obey my contract with the Wind G.o.d and release me from the shackles of the earth.”

Following the incantation of the spell, Jerry slowly began to rise up into the air towards the treetops before quickly disappearing into the foliage.

“About 2.5 kilometers southeast of here, there’s a hill.” Jerry’s voice could be heard from the top, “I’ll go take a look.”

“Going on a stroll by himself again!”

“He’s relying on his ability to fly too much.”

“I’ll smash his head in when he gets back.”

“Feed him raw meat later tonight!”

“Let him be tonight’s watch!”

“………”

By trial in absentia, the rest of the indignant members had already determined Jerry to be guilty. Poor Jerry.

After two hours, the group had finally arrived at the hill. The road had been truly a difficult one, by the time they had arrived, the sun had already set even.

Before the daylight is gone, any traveler had to have their tents set up already and have a campfire up and have plenty of fuel ready. Naturally, the remaining three jurors of a group hadn’t wanted to do any work themselves and forced their one prisoner to do all of the hard work in hopes of a lighter sentence. This was the most basics of rights in civilized society when it came to dealing with a prisoner.

“I’m beat! My legs are killing me!”

“Belladonna, how can you say you’re the one tired? You weren’t the one finding the path, or the one leading the way, or even the one carrying the luggage!” Jerry protested.

“Hurry up and do your tasks, stop talking.”

“Belladonna, could you act a little more ladylike now please?

“And who should this lady be?”

“These two still have the energy to quarrel, it seems that their burdens are too light.” Kite spoke to Unluck quietly.

The latter had nodded his head in agreement.

Nightfell. There was a campfire in front of the tents, and the firewood was naturally gathered by Jerry. The task of lighting the campfire had been left to Kate to do since he was studying fire based magic. To him, casting a small fireball or whatever was of no difficulty to him. At the same time, Belladonna was preparing the mountain pheasant Jerry had caught.

Observing the smoking bonfire, Unluck’s thoughts began to drift away back to his home.

His home was Savana, a small town located upstream the Tosli River. While it was small, because it was right next to the second major city, Sina City, his town had flourished. His father had owned a grocery store in this town. When he was young, his father would oftentimes call Unluck to come help with some customers or ring the bill up, cutting his time to play into nothing. Every single time this happened, his father would turn to him and say, “My son, in the future, I hope to pa.s.s down this store onto you.” As a result, he had grown up with a dream to open a grocery store in Sina City. He would usually see the merchants come from Sina City into Savana on rich looking carriages, which had motivated him. From his town, these merchants would change out their horses for camels. It was a favorite pastime of Unluck to listen to these merchants talk about the affairs in Sina City. For example, the recent construction of the central theater, or the majestic carnival celebration. But since he had never left Savana in his entire life until he had met his master.

His master was called Victor, a mage. Before his arrival, Savana had no mages. So when Victor had came to Savana, the inhabitants had been overjoyed, for they finally had a mage. But not too long after, the excitement had faded. The reason for this was because this teacher was not like the regular mage. Or perhaps it was better to say he didn’t give the feeling of being a mage. His master was lascivious and a heavy drinker, unlike the steadfast monk-like mages who swore off alcohol. Because a mage had to hone their mind and spirit when casting an incantation, they were always serious, and self-regulated their lives quite stringently. But Victor being a h.o.r.n.y drunkard had not been his biggest shortcoming. His biggest fault was actually due to his magic being very bad. His control over his magic was horrendous–if he didn’t go overboard, he didn’t use enough magic. Sometimes, the spell wouldn’t even work. Ever since he had caused a series of disasters for the town, no one had the gall to request for any type of magical help from him. Some of the richer families in the town had originally planned on using him to get to know several other mages to open up a connection to the Mage a.s.sociation, but they soon gave up on that idea. There had been rumors saying that Victor had a bad reputation however. Like embezzling the funds of the a.s.sociation, or seducing the wife of his employer, or stealing a statue of a church, or exploiting his status as a mage to cheat a girl, or…in any case, there was one more malicious thing that Unluck was clear on–Victor did not pay back debts easily.

In the end, Unluck’s parents were at their wits end when Victor came to their grocery store to purchase some things, (with credit, of course), and then began to talk about the matter of payment. After arguing for half the day, Victor had realized that the father would not budge and begrudgingly asked to put half the bill on credit, and the other half would be paid off by the next month’s allowance from the Mage a.s.sociation. When Unluck’s father had agreed and turned to get their account book, Victor had seized the chance to walk up to Unluck and beamed at him, “Little boy, would you like to learn magic?”

“Yes.” Came the unhesitating answer from Unluck.

“Very well, I will now accept you as my student.” His master had suddenly declared.

And thus, Unluck had become the only disciple of Victor. Naturally, the bill he owed was written off, and in the future whenever he had an errand for Unluck’s father, he would send Unluck. After many years since, Unluck’s father was still ever so shocked on why Victor was a magician and not a merchant–he certainly had the apt.i.tude to be an unscrupulous merchant.

Ever since then, Unluck would come by his master’s place early in the morning to clean up, and every night at a specific time, he would drag his master back home from the tavern. Sometimes, he would run an errand (Most of the time back to his own grocery store for a few things. It was fortunate that his master would only ask him to bring the necessities rather than the more pricy things), but he had his free time as well. Normally, his master wouldn’t even get up from bed until the sun had set. At times, Unluck had truly thought, “Does this guy have a lineage of vampires or something?”. The majority of the time, his master would pull himself out of bed to go to uncle Todd’s tavern to drink. Uncle Todd was the only other person aside from Unluck’s father that was willing to sell to his master. However, the difference between uncle Todd and his father was that Todd seemed to have taken a liking to his master and had never asked his master to pay his debts. Before Unluck had became Victor’s disciple, Victor would often times sleep over at Todd’s tavern. It was only natural that he had the experience of falling asleep on the road as well. But now every evening, Unluck would come bring his master home. In the beginning, Unluck would be puked on by his master, and so Unluck went from carrying him to dragging him. If he puked, he’d puked on himself. Victor’s way of teaching magic had been independent study mainly–he had never taught Unlucky any type of magic. Instead, he had only thrown the books at Unluck before telling him to memorize the incantations and meditate.

Soon, Unluck had memorized the incantations inside out and had more or less understood the meditation methods. He had even experimented a few times, but no matter what he did, he was unable to cast any spells.

Finally, one time his master had been sober for once when Unluck had asked him about a problem with using magic. The answer had been heart-stomping. As things turned out, Unluck was not suited to learning magic in the first place. That was because in this world, the majority of the magics used by mages relied upon the mage using spiritual power to gather magic and control the elements in a way to bring it out. The stronger the spiritual power, the faster the magical elements would be gathered. Their connection to the elements would be greater, and their control over it would be even more accurate. For that reason, there were Trainee Mages, Lesser, Middle, and Greater Mages, Magus, and Magisters. There were two types of people unsuited to learning magic. The first type of people were those with weak spiritual power. The majority of people belonged in this category, and for that reason, mages were quite rare. The other scenario was that some people had even stronger spiritual power, but their divergent nature made it hard for them to concentrate. While they could gather the magical elements, they were incapable of preserving the gathered magical elements together. Unluck belonged in this later category.

KNowing this reason, Unluck hadn’t been too distressed. All in all, his original desire was to become the boss of a grocery store, so not being able to learn magic hadn’t been an end all blow to his life. However, Unluck did not divulge this secret of being unable to learn magic to his father and continued to practice meditation despite it being useless to him in order to preserve his tranquil lifestyle.

Although his master wouldn’t wake up early often, what had left an impression on Unluck was that every month, there would be a day where his master would freshen himself up. He wouldn’t even drink wine. That day was the gathering of the Mage a.s.sociation. At the same time, his master would be able to receive the monthly allowance from the Mage a.s.sociation. As per usual, his master would walk up to the library on the second floor where his portal was to be happily transported to the Mage a.s.sociation. But this time had been different, before it was even noon, his master had came back. Whatever was it that had caused him to abandon the Mage a.s.sociation’s gathering meal? The kingdom would usually take out some money from their funds to prepare and conduct a grand banquet for the mages in their honor. That had been one of the reasons why his master had looked forward to the gathering.

“Master, why have you returned so early, was the banquet canceled?” Unluck had asked in curiosity.

“Quickly now, clean up and come with me.” His master had given a brief order.

“But….”

“Don’t dawdle. Whatever you want to know, you can ask later on the road. Hurry up and pack.”

“How many days will we be gone?”

“Don’t know, prepare enough for a while. Hurry up now.”

At his master’s urging, Unluck had ran out the door through the streets to get back home.

Seeing his son come running home in a hurry, Unluck’s father had instantly left his customer to greet his son.

“What happened?” His father had asked with worry. Ever since his son had began to follow that scoundrel of a mage, he had always worried that something would happen one day.

“Oh….no, dad… don’t worry….I’m fine….I’m just here to gather a few things. Master is going to take me somewhere.” Unluck hadn’t even waited for his breath to come back before answering so as to put off his father’s concern.

“Where are you going?” His father asked.

“I don’t know. Master didn’t say where or how long. He only told me to prepare adequately.” Unluck had told his father all that he knew, but he himself didn’t know much in the first place either. After finis.h.i.+ng up his words, Unluck had begun to mind his own business and start to pack.

Seeing that there was nothing else he could ask, his father could only help his son pack up. It had been fortunate that Savana received many travelers, so the grocery had many essentials for traveling and supplies. It didn’t even take long before they had gathered all that they needed.

Carrying his luggage out, Unluck didn’t have much, but it was enough to deal with the most common of traveling problems such as traveling through the desert or deep in the mountains. Unluck had never traveled before, but after helping his father with the store for so long, he had talked with many travelers before. So at the very least, he was a specialist in picking out the right supplies for a traveling trip. Unluck stood by the doorway to the store and put down his luggage. Turning around, he bade farewell to his father. Seeing his son, Unluck’s father suddenly had the feeling that his son would be forever leaving him and the store. The son in front of him had always been a traveler at heart. The world of a grocery store was simply not enough to hold him down.

Picking up his luggage, Unluck ran back to his master’s laboratory.

“Lock the doors and come up to the second floor.” His master’s voice called out from the floor above.

With an apprehensive heart, Unluck walked up to the laboratory on the second floor.

There was a transportation magical array on the second floor with five disks made from bronze in the center.

Master Victor was sitting on one of the disks. Pointing at the one to his side, he waved Unluck over, “Come here and sit down.”

Like his master, Unluck sat down. In the instant he had sat down, an otherworldly sensation suddenly arose in him. His surroundings seemed to have gone still for that moment before countless of images came flying past him. Ocean, desert, alpines, forest, city, and wastelands. Unluck had seemed like he was flying through all of the many different sceneries, the colors began to blur and the images began to distort. From sunset to sunrise, from icy mountains to glaciers….

Unluck didn’t know how much time had pa.s.sed before the illusions had cleared away from his mind.

“How do you feel now?” His master had been watching him attentively. From the very moment Unluck had awoken, his master asked straight away.

“I’m sorry, I let the Dreamland overtake me.” Unluck had spoken up in embarra.s.sment.

“That wasn’t the Dreamland. The sceneries in this image are certain spots in the world. What you saw are the memories of the magical array.” When his master saw the distinct look of bewilderment on his pupil’s face, he continued to explain, “This magical array has gone to every single area in the world. Each area only adds to its memory….Some people take these images to be illusions and dismiss them. Some people take these images to be a method of communication with it….”

Seeing Unluck at a complete loss of words at trying to understand this, Victor hurriedly snapped his student back to his senses, “Don’t think too much about it. We’ve already wasted enough time, prepare to set out!”

Hearing his master telling him about a method of meditation, Unluck immediately closed his eyes in accordance to adjust his mind. Seeing his student begin to calm down, Victor sat back down and began to make several hand signs with his hands and chant out loud, “Fei-So-Fei–Fa–Fa–So–Fei–Fa–Ka–Na–Da”

After a sudden tremor had pa.s.sed, Unluck had felt another wave of tremors. .h.i.t him over the head straight after.

“We’re here.” He heard his master say. Opening his eyes, Unluck could only see themselves standing on a platform. As he stood up, he looked around himself. The platform was made from white marble into a circular fas.h.i.+on. A hundred meters away on both ends of the platform, a giant magical array could be seen. It was many times larger than the one back in the laboratory, but these two magical arrays were completely different to it.

“Quick, pull me up!” The forgotten teach had sputtered angrily.

It was then that Unluck had suddenly remembered his poor master Victor. Half-pulling and half-dragging his teacher, Unluck managed to pick him up. After tidying up the luggage, he hurriedly began to follow after his master.

On the road, the two began to talk as they walked with Victory explaining some things to Unluck.

Originally, when a mage took in a disciple, the Mage a.s.sociation had stipulated that the mage would have to have the disciple registered with the a.s.sociation. A year later, the a.s.sociation would have an examination ready. After pa.s.sing the examination, the disciple would be granted an apprentices.h.i.+p, formally registered with the Mage a.s.sociation and would be allowed to learn magic. However, if they did not pa.s.s the examination on the second year, then their apprentices.h.i.+p would be canceled.

Last year, mage Victor had signed Unluck up to take the examination without his permission. This year would be the year that he would have to personally come take the examination.

“You have two paths you can walk on right now. The first, you give up on this exam and return back to your father’s grocery store. The second, you take the exam and return back to your grocery store after failing it.” Victor spoke. It seemed that he didn’t wasn’t very optimistic about his own student.

“….I wish to take the examination….”

Hearing his own student speak, Victor didn’t feel anything was unexpected. After spending two years with him, he had a good understanding of the nature of his student.

As they spoke, the two finally reached the Mage a.s.sociation.

They walked through a circular archway. Victor took Unluck through into a long a.s.sembly hall where three people could be seen seated already.

“You should stay here for a spell, go acquaint yourself with your fellow comrades in the exam. If there’s anything you don’t know, you can ask them.” As he finished, Victor left Unluck and walked away.

In such an unfamiliar setting, this was the very first time Unluck had felt a rather lonely emotion. He didn’t know just how he would be able to make talk with a random stranger.

After a small period of silence, the eldest of the three took the initiative to walk on over, “h.e.l.lo, I’m Kite.” he extended his right hand. Reflexively, Unluck stuck out his own right hand to shake it, “I-I’m Unluck. Nice to meet you.”

With the silence broken, the atmosphere had grown far more lively. After the self-introduction, the others came forward to introduce themselves.

Kite, Jerry, and Belladonna were now all acquainted with Unluck. Kite was 18 years old this year, and was the disciple of Sina City’s director general of the Mage a.s.sociation, Collins. He specialized in fire based magic.

Jerry and Belladonna were both the same year as Unluck at 16 years old. Jerry was the disciple of Mage Pierrot and specialized in wind based magic.

Belladonna was the disciple of Greater Mage Bellissa. Her focus was in water based magic.

Out of the three, Kite was born into a family of Knights with lords.h.i.+ps. However, his orthodox knight training had been completely different from the other n.o.bles. He hadn’t that overbearing att.i.tude that many of the other n.o.bles had.

Belladonna’s parents were clergies, as a result, she had an education into the divine since childhood. Originally, her parents had wanted her to take up a holy related occupation. But because Belladonna herself had wished to follow in the footsteps of her maternal aunt Bellissa who was a Greater Mage, she had decided to choose the path of the Mage.

Jerry was the son of a rich merchant. His parents had wanted their family to one day obtain the t.i.tle of being a n.o.ble, and so they had made sure their three sons would be sent into the best educational establishment to further their careers. The eldest had joined the Imperial Knights. Jerry was the second son, and he still had a younger brother who was currently undertaking training to become a clergy.

In comparison, Unluck being the son of a grocery store owner was quite a wretched status. But Unluck hadn’t treated this to be a disgrace. In fact, he had even made mention of the fact that he had a physique that was unsuitable to learning magic.

Upon hearing that Unluck was still taking the examination despite not being able to wield magic in the slightest, Kite couldn’t help but respect such a character. Without any further words, the two had already become good friends.

With all of the enthusiastic chatter, the time had quickly gone by. Soon, the halls opened up to reveal a trainee mage.

“Are you the examinees waiting to take the exam?” The mage spoke.

“Yes.” Kite spoke up as the representative of the four.

“You will first fill out several forms and then head to your area of residence to put down your luggage. Afterwards, you will all attend the banquet.” After he spoke, the mage handed out several forms and then a pencil.

With the help of Kite, Unluck had managed to fill out the forms with some difficulty.

Taking in the four completed forms, the proctor began to tidy them up before leading them out. Unluck and the others had to carry their own luggage and follow from behind.

After reaching the residence, the three males were given a shared room while Belladonna was by herself.

After a.s.signing themselves a bed, everyone threw down their luggage and followed the trainee mage back out to the banquet.

Upon entering the banquet hall, everyone had felt the atmosphere to be rather noisy and warm.

Seeing the large crowd, Kite spoke, “We should walk together so we won’t get lost. It’d be extremely difficult to locate anyone in here.”

The other three nodded in agreement.

“Let’s first go eat then!” Jerry suggested.

“Fine.” For Unluck who had only ate breakfast and skipped over lunch, this suggestion was more than enough to stir his stomach.

With difficulty, the four had managed to squeeze themselves onto a dinner table. Unexpectedly, there had been very few people here. But most eye-catching was teacher Victor eating by himself with wide open chews. Seeing his table manners, it wasn’t hard for the four to deduce why there had been so few people near the dinner table.

Seeing this clown, the other three couldn’t help but feel some pity for Unluck.

Just then, Victor raised his head up to look at Unluck and the others. With a wave of his hand, Victor beckoned to Unluck.