He looked at the giant clock hanging from the ceiling and, finding out he had plenty of time, bought himself some bread from the nearby bakery and then set course for Cyoria’s central plaza, intending to eat his newly acquired food while sitting on the edge of the fountain there. It was a nice place to relax.
Cyoria was a curious city. It was one of the most developed and largest cities in the world, which was at first glance strange, as Cyoria was dangerously close to monster-infested wilderness and wasn’t in a favorable trade location. What really catapulted it to prominence was the massive circular hole on the west side of the city — probably the most obvious Dungeon entrance ever and the only Rank 9 mana well known to exist. The absolutely massive quantities of mana gushing out from the underworld had made the spot an irresistible magnet for mages. The presence of such a huge number of mages made Cyoria unlike any other city on the continent, both in the culture of the people living there and, more obviously, in the architecture of the city itself. A lot of things that would be too impractical to build elsewhere were routinely done here, and it made for an inspiring sight if you could find a good spot to watch the city from.
He froze in his tracks when he noticed a swarm of rats staring at him from the bottom of the stairway he was about to descend. Their behavior was strange enough, but his heartbeat really sped up when he took notice of their heads. Was that… were their brains exposed!? He swallowed heavily and took a step back, slowly retreating from the stairwell before turning around and fleeing in a full sprint. He wasn’t sure what they were, but those were definitely not normal rats.
He supposed he shouldn’t be so shocked, though — a place like Cyoria attracted more than mages — magical creatures of all breeds found such places just as irresistible. He was just glad the rats didn’t pursue him, because he had nothing in the way of combat spells. The only spell he knew that could be used in a situation like this was the ‘spook animals’ spell, and he had no idea how effective that would have been against such clearly magical creatures.
Somewhat shaken but still determined to get to the fountain, he tried to circle the rat gathering by going through the nearby park, but luck just wasn’t on his side today. He promptly ran into a little girl crying her eyes out on the bridge he had to cross, and it took him five minutes just to get her to calm down enough to find out what happened. He supposed he could have just pushed past her and left her there to cry, but not even he was that cold-hearted.
«T-the b-bike!» she blurted out finally, hiccupping heavily. «It f-fell in!» she wailed.
Zorian blinked, trying to interpret what she was trying to tell him. Apparently realizing she wasn’t making any sense, the girl pointed towards the creek running underneath the bridge. Zorian looked over the edge of the bridge and, sure enough, there was a children’s bicycle half-submerged in the muddy waters.
«Huh,» Zorian said. «Wonder how that happened?»
«It fell in!» the girl repeated, looking as if she was going to cry again.
«All right, all right, no need for waterworks, I’ll get it out okay?» Zorian said, eying the bicycle speculatively.
«You’ll get dirty,» she warned quietly. Zorian could tell from her tone of voice that she hoped he would get it out anyway.
«Don’t worry, I have no intention of wading through that mud,» Zorian said. «Watch.»
He made a few gestures and cast a ‘levitate object’ spell, causing the bike to jerkily rise out of the water and into the air. The bike was a lot heavier than the objects he usually practiced with, and he had to levitate the bike a lot higher than he was used to, but it was nothing outside his capabilities. He snatched the bike by its seat when it was close enough and placed it on the bridge.
«There,» Zorian said. «It’s all muddy and wet but I can’t help you there. Don’t know any cleaning spells.»
«O-Okay,» she nodded slowly, clutching her bicycle like it was going to fly out of her hand the moment she let go.
He bid her goodbye and left, deciding his relaxing time at the fountain just wasn’t meant to be. The weather seemed to be worsening pretty quickly too — dark clouds were brewing ominously across the horizon, heralding rain. He decided to simply join the diffuse line of students trudging towards the academy and be done with it.
It was a long way from the train station to the academy, since the station was on the outskirts of the city and the academy was right next to the Hole. Depending on how physically fit you were, and how much luggage you had to drag around, you could get there in an hour or two. Zorian wasn’t particularly fit, what with his skinny physique and shut-in ways, but he had purposely packed light in anticipation of this journey. He joined the procession of students that was still streaming from the train station in the direction of the academy, ignoring the occasional first year struggling with excessive baggage. He empathized with them because his asshole brothers didn’t warn him to keep the luggage at a minimum either and he was like them the first time he arrived at the train station, but there was nothing he could do to help them.
The threat of rain and bad luck aside, he felt invigorated as he drew closer to academy grounds. He was drawing on the ambient mana suffusing the area around the Hole, replenishing the mana reserves he spent levitating that girl’s bicycle. Mage academies are almost always built on top of mana wells for the express purpose of exploiting this effect — an area with such high ambient mana levels is a perfect place for inexperienced mages to practice their spellcasting, since anytime they run out of mana they can supplement their natural mana regeneration by replenishing their mana reserves from their very surroundings.
Zorian took out the apple he still carried in his pocket and levitated it over his palm. It wasn’t really a spell, so much as raw mana manipulation — a mana shaping exercise that was supposed to help mages improve their ability to control and direct magical energies. It looked like such a simple thing, but it took Zorian two years before he mastered it fully. Sometimes he wondered if his family was right and he really was too focused on his studies. He knew for a fact that most of his classmates had much more tenuous control over their magic, and it didn’t appear to be inhibiting them too much.
He dismissed the mana construct holding the apple in the air and let it fall down on his palm. He wished he had some kind of rain protection spell — the first drops of rain were already starting to fall. That, or an umbrella. Either would work just fine, except an umbrella didn’t require several years of training to use.
«Magic can be such a rip-off at times,» said Zorian gloomily.
He took a deep breath and started running.
«Huh. So there is a rain protection spell,» mumbled Zorian as he watched raindrops splattering upon an invisible barrier in front of him. He extended his hand over the edge of the barrier, and it passed unimpeded. He withdrew his suddenly rather wet hand into the safety of the barrier and followed the boundary as far as his eyes could see. From what he could tell, the barrier encircled the entire academy compound (no small feat, as academy grounds were quite extensive) in a protective bubble that stopped the rain — and only rain — from penetrating it. Apparently the academy upgraded its wards again, because they didn’t have this feature the last time it was raining.
Shrugging, he turned around and continued towards the administration building of the academy. It was too bad the barrier didn’t also dry you out when you passed it, because he was soaking wet. Thankfully, his bag was waterproof, so his clothes and textbooks weren’t in any danger of getting ruined. Slowing down to a leisurely stroll, he studied the collection of buildings that made up the academy. The wards weren’t the only thing that was upgraded; the whole place looked… prettified, for a lack of a better term. Every building was freshly painted, the old brick road was replaced by a much more colorful one, the flower patches were in full bloom, and the small fountain that hadn’t worked for years was suddenly functional.