Paramount Magus

I woke up the next morning suprisingly in my bed and feeling refreshed,I guess the old man moved me to my bed after I fell asleep from sparring.

The old man didn't bother me with studying much yesterday, but I guess it was the expection because of the awakening ceremony. Because the second I walked out the door of my bedroom, I heard him screaming.

"You slept in shithead! Go make us breakfast and then we're hitting the books."

So I did what any good apprentice would do, I flipped him the bird and then went and made breakfast for us, but I made Alaric start the fire with magic to make things quicker.

I made food with the eggs and meat we bought at the market earlier this week.

After finishing all of that, and cleaning our dishes we headed off to the study room, but it was just the living room where I sat on the couch and Alaric stood infront of me with a board infront of him to draw on with chalk.

Today I had to study history, which was more boring then usual , the history of our land mass can be summed up in one word…

War.

Sooooo much war, we always seem to be at war! And for some reason I have to remember every fucking war we ever fought, and the details of it.

The land mass we live on is called Marebore, and too put it in simple terms it's massive, like five kingdoms wide massive.

Well surprise surprise it's not only humans that live on Marebore, there's many races.

You'd think each kingdom would have different races right?

The short anwser is maybe?

The long anwser is that while the kingdoms used to be one race each, during periods of peace they started to mix races. So while the royal family of each kingdom stayed true to its ancestry, the citizens are now a little mixed, nevertheless the majority of each race resides in their initial Kingdom.

Speaking of kingdoms, it's probabaly a good idea to revise them quickly. Alaric will probabaly test me on that later.

Hmmm, if I remember correctly the five kindoms are..

The Balan Kingdom, which resides down South originating from the Dwarves.

The Orc kindom is located in the North, they named it after the god they believe in, The Valkan Kingdom.

The Elven Kingdom located in the west, is called Elwen Forest.

And to the East is the humans, where I live. Similar to the Orcs we named our kingdom after its first ruler, the Rividen Kingdom.

And the fith and final kingdom is located in the middle of all four of these mighty empires, it's called Libertas. It's named after the God of freedom, or so I've heard. It's ran by the magus association and the merchant association in tandom, it's also where the best magus academy's reside.

Every kingdom has its own magus academy's, although they are quite popular with its citizens, they dont compare to the Kingdom of Libertas, where there are two pinnacle academy's that run uncontested.

Castor Academy and Pollux Academy.

And I want to attend one of them, in all honesty it's not that hard to get into one of them.

Their are three main problems, the cost, the distance and the talent requirement.

So I guess it is a litttttle difficult, but I'm pretty lucky in that I have most of the requirements set.

All I've done is work since I was a kid, so I have enough money to pay the entrance fee of fifty silver silver coins, even if it's still expensive for me. And even if I didn't fifty silver coin means nothing to Alaric, heck fifty gold coins probabaly means nothing. So I'm sure he would've spotted me if I asked.

The distance isn't a problem whatsoever, the town Alaric and I are currently staying in is called Alva. And the reason distance isn't an issue is because Alva is on the outskirts of the Rividen Kingdom, and it's almost directly beside Liberta.

And for the talent requirement, my skills are about average for my age if you only count nobles who were taught since birth, if compared to kids without as much formal education, I'd walk the park with 99% of them.

Meaning I have a solid chance of making it into either Castor or Pollux.

Anyways this isn't important right now, I got distracted. The point of todays lesson is, what happens when you have a lot of land and greedy kingdoms living in every corner of it?

The anwser is that funny word I said earlier, never ending war. And from the history Alaric is teaching me, it's not even for big reasons. It's almost like these kingdoms are bored and want to find somthing to do.

And the fucking lame part is that the wars don't even start for somthing cool, they usally start from somthing ridiculous, one story I found particularly ridiculous was an earlier war between humans and dwarves.

Want to guess how this war started ?

A prince from the human kingdom called a princess from the dwarven kingdom a short-statured whore, and how did the princess react?

The next morning she fucking bombarded the human gates with magic spells that fucking looney, the war went on for three years and thousands died. All over being called a whore.

And stories like this just seem to happen everywhere, it's ridiculous.

But that was in the past, now that the kingdoms live in peace ,expect small scuffles here and there. So these wars aren't really important anymore, which is the reason I find it so fucking boringg.

Anyways the history lesson ended with Alaric telling another story of war and the history of how it happen and when, well…it was about to end before he tried to tell another story.

"Ahh! This war reminded me of the war between orcs and elves for the fruit of life, I haven't told you about that one have I?"

But before he could go on another tangent I cut him off.

"And you don't need to, I'm done for today, it's been three hours old man."

Alaric sighed and then said shooed me away so he could continue his own studies on the Mana stone mines.

He was trying to find ways to utilise them for healing magic, although he didn't seem to be making much progress, it's been three years since he got here, and all he's gotten so far for results is me.

Even after making breakfast and studying for three hours it's only about lunch.

So I did what any normal teenager would do at lunchtime, I had a snack and then practiced my spearmenship and swordsmanship for an hour and a half each, untill my hands were covered in blood from my calluses breaking apart.

I didn't like to get Alaric to heal my hands from training, I like to see my progress on my hands with each new callus that breaks and forms once again, some people would probabaly find that pretty weird but it's fine, it's not like I have any friends my age who can judge me.

All my buddies are thirty year old alcholics that work in the mines, they're not the greatest at functioning out of the mines so I haven't had much contact with them for the last year or so, whenever I convince Alaric to let me leave for Liberta, I'll go say goodbye to those guys, I miss joking around and having some drinks with them after shifts, and sometimes if it was a slow enough day, during shifts.

Anyways it's now the afternoon and my routine has changed a bit since becoming a magus. Around this time on my usual schedule I would workout for an addition hour and a half and then go hangout with Alaric for a bit, we'd finish the night on sparring till I couldn't stand it anymore and then go to bed relatively early, excessive healing magic tires you out quite thoroughly, so I sleep for a long time every night, which in turn means I go to bed pretty early.

But now that I'm a mage that schedule is changing, the new schedule Alaric made for me is simple but effective.

Make breakfast for us in the morning.(While flipping Alaric off when he tells me to do so.)

followed by a three hour lecture on whatever stupid subject Alaric choses that day.

A well needed lunch break follows.

I then have three hours of weapon mastery, split between spear and swordsmanship.

Two hours of meditation towards my first mana circle, followed by an hour workout.

I will then rest and get my muscles healed and recovered for my daily sparring agaisnt Alaric, supper will vary between before and after the spars, depending on how lazy Alaric is feeling.

I only have around four months untill enrolment of Castor and Pollux begin, I'm going to become a whole different monster by then.

End of chapter 4