The Third Party

Ken’s POV (12 yrs. and 3 weeks old)

“Arcane Magic: Teleportation.”

It’s early in the morning but me and my two friends are all ready for the day, -it’s Monday by the way-, using my magic we arrive at the outskirts of the field by the trees, walking towards the field we see our other companions, masters, and the new recruits.

“Good morning masters.” The three of us simultaneously said.

“Good morning.” said Master Klein.

“…” Master Ulysses just gave us a nod and looked back at the lined up students.

“You guys are pretty cheerful today, aren’t you, now off you go and join them on the line up.” said Master Lana. The three of us nodded and walked towards the line, it’s very long now, hehe, I think we might need to divide it into two soon. But right now, game face, ON.

3rd Person’s POV

“Alright, good morning to you all, my name is Klein Yvel, I will be your master/ teacher specializing on magic and sorcery.” said Klein as he addressed the teens in front of him, sweeping his gaze in the process of talking, before settling in front of him and over their heads.

“My name is Ulysses Neas, I will be your master/ teacher in Combat Prowess and assassination.” said Ulysses staring blankly at the eleven.

“My name is Lana Del, I will be your master/ teacher in Supporting and Initiation.” said Lana while smiling at the eleven. The three masters turned to look at the four new members of their class at their left.

Although the three had conflicting expressions -albeit handsome and beautiful-, they somehow made their ruling over the village residents work.

“We will be introducing to you the training regime you will be undergoing while you’re under our watch, Ulysses please give them each their schedule.” said Klein, Ulysses walked in front of the four, produced a paper out of thin air giving each one of them their own copy, he then walked at the left side of Klein.

“If you have any questions regarding the training regime, please feel free to ask any of us.” said Lana, which was then without wasting a second, two of the new recruits raised their hands to ask a question, which was Icarus, and Princess Lang.

“Yes, your highness.” said Klein. Icarus lowered his right hand, waiting for his turn.

“What is this Magic Education in our schedule?” asked Princess Lang after quickly browsing through the schedule, as she thinks that this will be just a cheap attempt to impress people, especially like her, to attend this session,

A royal like her who was fortunate enough to receive the highest education in magic, surely this wouldn’t compare to their measly Magic Education.

“That your highness, will be the time for us to teach you stuff about magic and the laws regarding it.” explained Klein. The princess cannot help but roll her eyes inwardly at the lame excuse Klein made but nodded nonetheless. Klein ignored the slight mock on the princess’s nod.

“How about you Icarus, what is your question.” said Lana.

“What is Physical training?” Lana widened her eyes in surprise before returning to their normal smiling eyes and explained…

“Just like what the name says, you will be undergoing physical training in order to improve the overall strength of your bodies.” but was asked again.

“But we’re of powerful lineage, don’t we already have outstanding strength to begin with?” Icarus asked, finding it hilarious for magical beasts to undergo such training.

“Yes, you have a point, but, you’ll be surprised who’s the strongest one out of all of you in terms of brute strength.” said Lana, which perked Icarus’s interest and annoyance.

“Huh? Who is it? Tell Me.” asked Icarus in a demanding tone, Lana laughed at his antics and said.

“You’ll have to wait for the end of the month to know, for the three of us will be commencing a one day practical exercise for each one of you.” The four had questioning stares and expressions on their faces, which had gone unnoticed by Klein and explained…

“The practical exercise which was mentioned by your Master Lana, is a day for all of you eleven to show us your strength by displaying it on the field or by undergoing a duel. It’s written below your timetable.” The four’s reaction also didn’t go unnoticed by the people present on the field,

One had a happy face, the other a proud one, the other a bashful one, and the last just smiling, but there was a hidden tint of wickedness in them. Flin noticed that the other seven didn’t really had that much of an expression and so he asked in concern.

“Are you not scared?” Allen, who was beside him looked towards him and shook his head softly.

“Why not?” Flin asked again.

“Because, we have undergone this when we were still four.” Flin can’t help but widen his eyes and glance at the other six who were calmly standing, some of them noticed his gaze and smiled his way (the ones who noticed were Celine and Ken, Ken waved faintly).

He looked at the ground beneath his feet and felt embarrassed for a moment, the others who noticed didn’t exactly know why but returned to their own business. Flin clenched his fists, and looked forward with a determined glint.

As soon as the moment died down, Klein instructed the eleven students to form a formation of two lines with five people in it horizontally, and called Ken to lead their first class, physical and magic training.

Ken introduced and taught the four new members the exercises they will be doing, mainly on jogging, push-ups, squats, sit-ups, core exercises, and many more, not more than forty-five times for each exercise,

But only ten laps for jogging, the weights were not introduced at this day for Ken still has to record the times the four can handle on each exercises, and surprisingly, his expectations where exceeded.

-3 hours later-

“Excuse me, you’re names Celine right?” asked princess Lang.

“Yes your highness, do you need anything?” said Celine, flabbergasted and at the same time nervous as the princess was talking to her.

“I want to know why your friend, Ken, led the class earlier and not our teachers.” said Princess Lang thinking to herself that the physical and magic training didn’t really amount much, it didn’t even make her break a sweat. Celine exclaimed an ‘oh’ in surprise and explained.

“Ken is tasked to measure the laps, times, and amount each one of us can handle during both the workout and magic training -” Princess Lang raised an eyebrow at an unfamiliar word and interrupted. “What’s a workout?”

“Oh, that’s just a simple term for physical training, Ken invented it.” said Celine, the princess nodded and gestured for her to continue.

“Ken records the amount of repetition we can handle during our workout, and the amount of time we can use magic, which he will then send to all the three masters, the masters will then discuss and adjust accordingly the training we will get in order to not leave a person behind.” Celine said smiling at the princess.

“Is he the leader of this group?” -Lang-

“No, he is not, our leader is Allen, as he was appointed to, and he’s also very good at being the leader.” said Celine.

“Then what else does he do?” asked princess Lang.

“Pardon?” -Celine-

“I meant Ken.” -Princess Lang-

“Oh. He keeps record of the progress of all students, including himself, and reports them daily to the masters, except for weekends, other than that, after all of us had adapted to the training, we will take turns in leading the exercises every day.” said Celine, and smiled,

But turned bashful and apologizes to the princess if she had done anything wrong, the princess got startled in her deep thought and asked her why.

Celine states that the princess is frowning, the princess realizes her actions and shook her head a little and stated that she was only thinking deeply that’s why she was frowning.

Celine released a breath she didn’t know she was holding and calmed herself down, the princess thanked her and proceeded to the field at a location where everyone had gathered along with the three masters, right after the two girls arrived the three masters summoned two tables one for them and the other for the students where they will dine in for lunch.

Over the course of the meal, the new four students were able to forge new bonds with the other seven, particularly, Riyah and Icarus, acquainted Saber and Lila, Princess Lang befriended Celine only, and Flin was acquainted to Allen, Ken, Wilbert and Glen,

After lunch, their next schedule would be magic education, which will be a lesson for the eleven, Klein opened a portal to his cave where he will be having the discussion along with the other two masters and everyone proceeded in.

Surprisingly -in Princess Lang’s thoughts- armchairs, a black board and a table was prepared beforehand. Books for the discussion? They were summoned out of thin air from their town’s library, for they did not want to discuss with the class inside the library for fear of burning, or accidentally destroying the building, that’s why they do it on Klein’s cave.

The lesson introduced was quite familiar to the eleven, the basics of magic, how magic is formed, how they are able to control and create elements, which made it easy for them to understand and fun along the way,

As Klein introduced a very practical teaching which made all of them engage in, seeing that the class wasn’t lagging behind in terms of knowledge of the magic arts, Klein proceeded to other deeper topics concerning magic.

Half an hour along the discussion, Ken stood up from his sit exclaimed that he would like to have some alone time at the other side of the center, to which Klein approved, the other six weren’t bothered by this as they had gotten used to Ken walking out of the class halfway through the discussion.

But the other four were disturbed, curious as to what Ken might be doing.

“Lila, what was that about?” asked Riyah to Lila.

“That’s one of Ken’s habit, halfway through the discussion he excuses himself, sometimes he doesn’t say where he would be going, but after we find him either at the edge of a cliff floating or atop a tree hanging, but this time he said he would be at the other side, I wonder why.” explained Lila to her friend, Riyah nodded in affirmation and returned listening to the class.

One person who overheard their conversation, got intrigued at the information, and she wanted to know for herself what that person could be doing so she could humiliate them, Princess Lang sneakily went out of her seat while master Lana was discussing in front with her back to the class, and went to the direction Ken walked out.

Now that she’s mention it, she remembered that master Klein also went to the same direction Ken went, when he abruptly finished his discussion and let master Lana take over, now she was more interested on what they might be doing.

Not far away from her location about twenty meters away from where the others are she felt an immense magic fluctuation in the air making her hair stand on edge, prompting her to hasten her movements.

Upon arriving at the other clearing at the left side of the center, there she witnesses Ken floating, and surrounded by magic circles big and small with different colors, but the most dominant, was the color white, while some had stuck to his body and the others floating aimlessly around him with his eyes closed.

Suddenly, Ken opened his eyes making the magic circles disappear, Princess Lang thought that that would be the end of her astonishment but she was wrong, as soon as she released a breath, magic circles started to appear and disappear slowly in front of Ken who was facing the wall of the cave, and as each magic circle subsided,

Magic would be flung towards the wall stopping at an invisible wall, before bursting in the element they were casted, some magic that were flung had passed through the invisible wall and had hit the wall of the cave instead,

Creating craters, and sometimes burnt, frozen, slimy, thorny, blunt, patches, but the ones that hit the wall didn’t subside, as the element remained stationary as if their energy weren’t able to disperse.

As the last magic circle flung its magic towards the invisible wall, suddenly, a big magic circle the color of grey appeared below Ken, and the invisible wall sucked in all the elemental energy that were stuck on its surface by a black hole before disappearing, it then formed into a small orb the size of a palm emitting raw mana which then floated toward Ken’s open palm.

“I did it.” He exclaimed to himself he then faced to his left and showed his achievement to someone who came out from the shade of the tree, which was Master Klein.

“Master, look, I did it!” he exclaimed happily, grinning from ear to ear as his master approached him, Klein congratulated him for successfully converting elemental energy back to mana energy.

While this was going on, another individual was stunned to her feet, the princess could not believe what she just witnessed, nobody has ever done this before, not even their strongest magician, to convert all those elements into a mana orb.

She was just about to turn around and return to the class when a hand touched her shoulder making her jump and squeak out -which she never noticed-, she looked at the person who was holding her, only finding out that it was Celine, and behind her the others are present as well along with the other two masters.

Allen walked out of the group and approached his father and Ken and conversed with them, congratulating Ken for achieving such a feet, to which Ken returned with a thank you and a smile, eventually the rest gathered where the three where and congratulated Ken as well, leaving the two girls to themselves.

Princess Lang calmed herself down and asked why they were here, Celine said that the magic education class has ended fifteen minutes after she had left and that they decided that they will go watch Ken, so they did.

“What do you mean watch? What was this all about? This wasn’t in one of our schedules.” Princess Lang exclaimed. Celine chuckled a little and explained…

“Our next schedule was either one-on-one or self-improvement, clearly the masters must have given you the schedule of self-improvement since you don’t know about it, nope wait, it wasn’t written on your schedule rather.” The princess cannot help but feel embarrassed but still continued to ask about the one-on-one session.

Celine then explained that this schedule is free for everyone to enter either the magic one-on-one class with master Klein, combat prowess one-on-one class with master Ulysses, or support one-on-one class with master Lana,

It’s all up to them to decide which one of the masters they’d like to train within a day, but that it’s compulsory to attend one-on-one sessions with each of the masters at least once a month.

Celine then adds that once in a while the masters will make them form teams in an objective centered activity during the afternoon classes, reasoning out that it will train and help them in working together in a team,

For introducing them to teamwork will increase their chances of winning or in their case, claiming the objectives, even in surviving or survival activites.

The princess nodded in thanks of the information and they decided to join the others, so far the princess could not help the uneasy feeling rising within her, but one thing was for sure, the object of her discomfort, was Ken.

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