TBATE - Lightseeker

Ada and I walked to our temporary dorm in the first-year dormitories, settling in for the afternoon. Classes didn't begin until the first official day, tomorrow, and so we had nothing to do. We slipped into casual clothes, I put on simple grey sweatpants and a white tank top, and Ada put on the same grey sweatpants and a simple white t-shirt she had cut halfway to expose her stomach. We both had on regular black sneakers with touches of white.

"You sure like cutting up your clothes, huh." 

"It looks cool. I've always thought that I'd like to be a fashionista or a model if I wasn't a mage."

We left our dorm, spotting the occasional first-year walking through the halls, and exited the dormitory building. Exploring the whole campus would take us a day, and it was already 3 pm, so we decided to venture over to the large food district near the far right gate of the campus.

"Sh*t, there's a lot of restaurants." Ada gave a faint impressed whistle as she looked at the vast quantity of restaurants, all very high-class and aimed at the spoiled rich brats of Xyrus Academy.

We entered the most simple-looking bakery and sat down at a small table next to the big front window. We both ordered a small cup of tea each for 7 silver and a large plate of assorted cookies and cupcakes for 1 gold and 5 silver for us to share.

"Mmmm. So much better than the tea shop." I spoke in content. The tea was far richer, and the cookies were the best I've ever had - not that I've had very many. 

"You exited for classes tomorrow?" Ada asked me.

"I'm excited for Healing Arts and TFM. PMT should be fun, too. The teacher, Professor Sword, is supposedly super strong. Perhaps as strong as the Director. I just hope the class is aimed at strong people and not spoiled academy students."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean I hope it's hard and gruelling - as the name 'practical tactics' would suggest - and not some useless textbook subject. That's why I took all practical classes, with only Healing Arts 1 being both practical and theory."

"What do you mean? You do know that 'Practical Mana Manipulation 2' is mostly theory, right?" Ada looked at me, surprised I was unaware.

"What? You must be wrong. Why would it be called 'practical' if it's just textbook stuff?"

"Nah, I'm pretty sure it's mostly theory. You learn how to use mana practically by taking notes and revising in your own time."

"Ugh. That's so lame.." I lowered my head, upset that I would have to take notes. "You know what? I'll be fine. I won't need any notes. The teaching we got from Ilya and Rindo should be more than enough." I stated confidently, looking forward to not having to take notes.

.....

The two of us walked back to the entrance of the food district and saw two people sitting under a tree with a basket of various fruits and cheeses. The girl had long red hair tied in a thin ponytail that fell down to just above her bum and a short fringe falling down her forehead. It was the girl from the PMM room with Princess Tessia from over 2 years ago, the Captain of the DC, Claire Bladeheart. The boy next to her had very short military-cropped brown hair and a tough-looking face.

"They must be on a date. Cute." Ada sounded like a normal high school girl for the first time ever.

"Stop stalking them. It's creepy. Let's go explore the outdoor training grounds." I grabbed her arm and dragged her from the scene of the gentle couple relaxing under a tree.

We arrived at the first training ground, which was a 45-minute walk just to get here, and inspected the grounds. It looked like a simple martial art, weapon art and archery training ground with various straw dummies with targets stuck to their bodies for punching, cutting and shooting. The was a line of trees planted on the far side of the training ground out of the way of the shooting range. Far behind the training ground, obscured by a row of classrooms, was a tall stone structure with the Xyrus Academy logo carved into it along its side.

"Trees? They look intentionally planted, seeing as they are the only ones close by. I wonder what they're for... And what's that weird stone building?" Ada wondered.

"Maybe we'll find out."

"*Sigh,* it's already 5 pm. We have no time to explore any more. Returning to the dorm will take us at least 30 minutes, so we should head back now if we don't want to miss dinner." Ada advised we return and I agreed. We made our way back to our dorm and saw various first-years outside of the dormitory building caught up in duels and competing to find the strongest student amongst the fresh meat.

"These guys are all weak. Let's just ignore them." Ada was clearly disappointed with the lack of strong opponents and pushed through the crowd, making both of us receive weird and hostile looks from the students.

We finally reached our dorm, got changed back into our temporary battle mage uniforms and departed for the cafeteria.

...

We sat in a far corner of the cafeteria, not drawing any attention to ourselves, observing Arthur Leywin and his friend. A tall and weak-looking smelly brat approached him and began talking to Arthur's friend. The two didn't seem close, in fact, the boy with glasses seemed annoyed by the presence of the noble boy accompanied by various followers, one of whom was shockingly fat.

The fat oaf suddenly tried to attack the two sitting down at the bench, and thin green vines slithered from the floor, grabbing the group of boys.

A plant mage, and a powerful one at that. Their vines penetrated the floor without cracking it, only leaving wholes where the vines shot through. They must have quite fine control.

Arthur brought his hand high, making me expect him to attack the boy, but he pulled down his pants and raced out of the cafeteria.

"Haha! No way!" Ada laughed quietly. "What an interesting guy.."

"Speaking of interesting guys. Ada, who do you think 'Note' is? Do you think we've seen him without knowing? Judging by what I think his age should be, he's either going to begin next year or is in his first or second year."

"Hmm. I don't think we've seen him, but that does bring up a good point. Arthur Leywin has the same hair colour, eye colour and a similar-looking mana beast bond. No chance it could be him, right?"

"You make a good point, but Arthur Leywin is supposedly a quadra-element with two deviants. As far as we know, Note only has fire with a lightning deviant. I don't see why Note wouldn't use more elements if he had them. Even if he was trying to hide his 4 elements, using two would be fine. Dual-elements are rare but not unheard of. Statically, there's bound to be at least 100 in this academy. I'm a dual-element, for example."

"Mm. Sure, but how many augmenters do you think have a lightning deviant? I only know of myself, Arthur Leywin, Note, Koby - Badger's right-hand man- and Lance Bairon. There's bound to be more, but deviants are super rare. We would have likely heard of one from our various information sources." 

"Whatever. I doubt Arthur Leywin is Note. They act too differently." I concluded the discussion, and we got up from our bench and started the walk out of the cafeteria.

We headed back to our dorm, getting ready to stay in for the night.

....

"It's only 7 pm. Wanna play cards?" Ada asked me, holding a thick deck of playing cards. We had already gotten dressed back into our pyjamas and needed something to do before going to bed. Ada and I were both the type to go to bed late and wake up late, but tomorrow we had to wake up at 6 am for the DC first meeting.

We played cards for hours, until we checked the analogue clock on our wall, showing 12:17 am.

"Time to sleep. We need to wake up early in the morning. I'm setting the alarm for 5:45." I said, setting the alarm.

"But isn't the meeting at 6? How are we supposed to wake up, get ready and walk to the DC meeting room in just 15 minutes?"

"We're not," I stated flatly.

"Huh?"

"Who says we can't be a little late." I flashed her a knowing grin.

"You're right. Children need their sleep, after all." She put her hands on her hips and nodded slowly.

....

The alarm woke us up violently, making me jump out of bed and Ada fall to the floor.

"Enemy attack!"

"TAKE COVER!"

"Huh... Oh. It was the alarm." I looked over at the alarm, which was practically jumping up and down.

"Tch. Damn alarm." Ada didn't seem pleased with it either. "Can I break it?"

"Sadly not. We need it. Anyway, time to get dressed. I'll let you have the first shower."

.....

Once I got out of the shower, I put on my DC uniform and wrapped my right arm in bandages so that Note wouldn't recognise my scars. If Arthur Leywin really is Note, he'll recognise my scars at a glance.

After almost 20 minutes, we had both gotten ready and left our dorm room, careful not to wake up the other first-years. We slipped out of the dorm building and walked leisurely to the main Academy facility where the DC and SC common rooms were located on the top floor.

We arrived quite late, at almost 7, and after we opened the door to the common room we were greeted by an oversized dog barking at us. The force of its growl blew our cheeks and hair back. A tall, lanky boy with wheat-blonde hair and thin eyes introduced himself.

"Names Kai, Kai Crestless. Fourth-year. Nice to meet you." He threw out his hand and the took of us shook it. 

"Bah! More weaklings." A large young lady with a red upturned triangle tattoo under her right eye and blonde hair that had been dyed pink at the ends criticised as she walked over to us.

Must be a dwarf.

"Solis. Nice to meet you. This is my friend, Ada." I introduced myself to my new colleague, sticking out my hand for her to shake and Ada did the same. She slapped away both of our hands - with shocking strength despite not using any mana - and told us to drop the formalities as she was a first-year too.

"Name's Doredrea Oreguard. Nice ta meet ya."

She and Kai led us through the second set of large brown double doors into the common room area. The bottom floor had various couches, tables and bookshelves with a double staircase at the back. "Those are our rooms up there. The three on the right end are the remaining ones, so go take your pick before the last guy shows up." Doredrea told us, pointing over at the three brown doors with the Xyrus logo carved into them on the right side of the second floor. 

There was a boy with deep red-ish orange, almost brown, hair lounging on a couch in front of the bookshelves, who got up and walked over to greet us. "Curtis Glayder. Nice to meet you."

Glader....Glader... Where've I heard that name?

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Prince Curtis." Ada greeted the Prince and introduced us.

Ah.

"Please, I'm not a prince anymore. The three Royal Families disbanded after the formation of the council. Just call me Curtis."

Royal Families disbanded? Yeah right.

"My sister, Kathlyn, is up in her room. Second door on the left. You should go familiarize yourselves."

We walked up the staircase and knocked on the second door on the left. The Princess, dressed in a very simple black ankle-length dress with small gold lining and trimmings - far less ornate than her brother - opened the door slightly and introduced herself. "Hello. My name's Kathlyn Glayder. Please just call me Kathlyn.

"Solis."

"Ada."

She gave a small nod after we gave her our names and then closed her door. "Not really one for social interaction, huh," I said to Ada.

We walked down the walkway on the second floor, passing all of the other doors and reaching the two on the far right. We entered our rooms, Ada taking the one to my left and I took the one on the far right. I walked into my room and saw a queen-sized bed at the back with a nightstand on either side and a desk to my right. There was a free-standing wardrobe next to the desk, and an armour stand in the far left corner.

A few minutes after unpacking things from my dimension ring into my wardrobe, I heard Doredrea burst through the common room doors and yell, "Everyone! The last guy is here."

Ada and I walked out of our rooms and viewed the figure that had just arrived.

Arthur Leywin..!

We all introduced ourselves as a group one final time before two more members emerged from a room upstairs. The girl had long red hair tied in a slim ponytail and the boy had military cropped short black hair. "Looks like we are the only ones who don't know each other, huh, Theo." The two of them walked down and introduced themselves as the Captain and Vice-captain of the DC. Theodore wanted to test all of the members, and shook hands with everyone, increasing the gravity around them. Kathlyn was fine - he probably went easy on her -, Curtis buckled slightly, as did Kai. Feyrith fell straight to his knees and we all laughed at him, he blamed it on the fact that he was a conjurer, to which Ada replied, "So are Kathlyn and Kai. They were fine."

 Doredrea was mostly fine but shrunk down a little before standing back up. Ada and Arthur were completely unfazed and only gave Theo a challenging grin.

Gravity... High intensities of gravity can distort light... This could be bad. He's a direct counter to me!

He finally approached me and shoved his hand at me, waiting for me to take it.

Here goes nothing...

I shook his hand and the gravity around me increased and my form distorted, light flickering off me and my legs melting and bending unnaturally as if they had been horribly broken. I struggled and stood my ground, not letting him show me up.

"Not bad."

"What the hell was that? What happened to you!?" Doredrea asked, worried for my health.

"High intensities of gravity can distort light," I answered mysteriously, sounding like a charlatan.

"The director gave me a basic report on everyone's abilities. According to the report, you can form, generate and become light, right?" Asked Claire.

"That is correct."

"Do you know a powerful adventurer who wears a weird cloak and hat? He and his lady friend have visited the Academy before." She asked me curiously.

"Yes. That man is my master. AA-class adventurer, Apollo of the Light. He taught me everything I know about light manipulation. By lady friend, you probably mean AA-class adventurer Tempest. That's Ada's teacher." I recited a lie I had rehearsed before coming to this Academy, sure that either she or the elf Princess would recognise my light. Ada gave a small nod, playing along with my harmless lie.

"No way! That's so cool!

Anyway, everyone sit down at the meeting table. I have something to tell you all." Claire announced and we all walked over to the long brown table with 11 chairs. Claire sat at the head of the table, the word 'CAPTAIN' written in gold on the back of her chair, and Theo sat opposite to her at the foot of the table, the word 'VICE' on the back of his chair also written in gold. The rest of us took whatever seat we got to first.

Claire pulled out a box from under her chair and stood up, handing out the contents. "These ornamental blades are the symbol of the DC. Everyone gets one, and they are colour-coded. On the whiteboard behind my chair are your names and your corresponding colour."

She handed me a leather pouch with my name written on it, and I opened it to find a silver double-helix dagger with no real edge. It was blunted on both sides and due to the double-helix handle, was quite hard to even hold. I looked over at the whiteboard,

Claire - Red

Theo - Purple

Feyrith - Green

Kathlyn - Blue

Curtis - Orange

Doredrea - Black

Ada - Violet

Solis - Yellow

Arthur - Grey

"Any questions?" The captain asked.

"I have one." I raised my hand. "How are we supposed to depict Arthur's colour on the silver daggers?"

Clare instructed Arthur to imbue mana into his dagger, and it lit up with a deep, dark grey colour. It was surprisingly easy to see. Everyone else's daggers also lit up grey.

"As you can see, once someone activates their dagger, everyone's dagger will turn that colour and be notified if their fellow DC member is in trouble. These daggers also serve as communication devices as long as you are on campus."

I took out some bandage wrap from my ring and wrapped it around my right thigh. Claire handed everyone a pouch, and I attached it to my thigh and slipped the dagger into it, keeping it at arm's reach at all times.

"Alright. Now, we need to introduce ourselves to the student body. After President Tessia's speech, marking the official beginning of the first school day of the year, she will announce the existence of the Disciplinary Committee and give a short speech on our role. While she is introducing us, we will walk on stage and show our faces to the whole school.

Now, let's go show those arrogant brats who they will be answering to if they break the rules!"