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Iris Golden
🕑 Added 2022-08-29 14:44:50 +0000 UTCAfter gazing upon Seth’s divinity, Leora got even quieter than before. She would only do what she was told and practice in silence the entire day. She asked Seth once what she should call him from then on, but he insisted she just behaved around him like before and she mentioned nothing about his godhood again.
Their journey continued for the next two months, with the two encountering an average of three roadblocks per day. Be it bandits or simple animals, it was not a peaceful journey, but Seth easily took care of everything while also perfecting his use of space energy.
He didn’t use time and creation at all, only blindly absorbing the energy inside his sources. Not that he didn’t want to; it was just that there was still too much to learn. To use creation energy, he needed to understand the truth behind everything he wanted to create. Since it was still limited to simple materials and no ore ones, he didn’t prioritize it at all. He had the data inside the World Records to call upon, but he wanted to prioritize space and didn’t have the time to study creation yet.
With time, it was even more troublesome. So troublesome that he didn’t even know where to begin, planning on leaving time for last. From the theory, for the first shell, locking time in a small space was all it could do.
They spent the last month traveling inside the capital’s territory. This meant no more bandits or animals. Winter was already gone, but there were still patches of snow here and there. By the time they reached the capital, Leora had also successfully learned the alphabet of the world and could read, albeit a little slow.
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Enormous black walls, over 50 feet tall, appeared in the distance past a few small white hills and caused a smile to appear on Seth’s face. He was finally back here again.
Not moving his eyes away, he said out loud: “Leora, come out. We’re here.”
Leora walked outside the covered back of the carriage and gazed upon the walls in the distance as well. Noticing the smile on Seth’s lips, she asked: “Have you been here before?”
“Yes. A very long time ago. How is your source creation going?”
“I have the outline, but I don’t have enough energy to fill and stabilize it.”
“That’s fine. We can buy some energy vials and take care of that with ease after getting set up inside the capital.”
Leora nodded silently and remained by his side. It took them two more hours until they reached the southern gate of the city. During this time, Seth explained a few things to her but kept his actual face, only making himself taller. He looked like a 19 years old young man.
Two heavily armored guards walked in front of their carriage as they approached the gates and asked: “Can we see your merchant license?”
Seth shook his head and said: “We’re not merchants. We’re ascended, heading back to the academy.” As his words ended, Seth summoned a small cluster of destruction energy above his palm.
The guards bowed immediately and said: “We apologize for not greeting you properly, ascended.”
Seth nodded, and both he and Leora stepped down from the carriage. Entering the city inside a carriage was prohibited if you were not a merchant or part of the royal family.
“We don’t need the carriage anymore, so we want to sell it to the stable-house.”
The guards nodded and one of them picked up the reins and drove it towards a small gate to the side as the other guard said: “Sir, would you like to wait inside the guardhouse? My colleague will return as soon as the transaction was over.”
“No need. You guys keep the money. We’re in a hurry.”
The guard bowed respectfully, and Seth led Leora through the main gate. A bustling city greeted the two of them right after walking in. People were rushing, talking, and laughing everywhere. Seth still remembered how claustrophobic he felt the last time he was here, but Leora didn’t seem to have that problem. There was no change in her expression at all, but she still looked around.
Sighing quietly, he led her towards the middle ring of the city. The city was split into three parts.
The inner ring where the royal and other noble families lived. The royal castle was also located there.
The outer ring was where most of the population lived. It mostly had residential areas.
Shops, different organizations, the market, and so on occupied the middle ring. There was also where Seth’s target was, The Academy.
They had to walk straight north through a wide street for an entire hour until they reached the entrance to the middle ring.
An additional set of guards came to block their path as soon as they approached the gate to the middle ring. He used the same method as he did with the guards at the city entrance and was allowed entry again. With the status of an ascended, he could pretty much head anywhere in this city with ease.
Seth and Leora were soon both standing in front of the largest assembly of buildings in the entire middle ring.
The entrance was a building made completely out of pure white marble, with two simple words written in black letters at the top. “The Academy”
Next to the entrance, there was a giant pillar with exactly 723 names written on it. Seth knew this was the number of graduates of the academy ever since its creation, each one of them being an ascended.
He was number 752 in the past timeline, but now, in this timeline, he was already an ascended before he even reached the academy.
“Are we going in?” asked Leora indifferently from the side when she saw Seth lost in thought in front of the pillar.
“Give me a moment.” Replied Seth, without moving his eyes from the pillar.
He remembered coming back here in the year 695 and the entire place was but a bunch of ruins with only this pillar still standing. The Kingdom of Oath was not that big a kingdom and was always under pressure from all the nearby kingdoms. Their high number of ascended was the only reason they never attacked, but also the reason they had to face so much pressure. Every kingdom wanted to get its hands on the texts of the academy.
An alliance of the surrounding kingdoms in the year 682 allowed them to push forward and kill both of Oath’s armies and ascended.
When they butchered their way inside the city, the headmistress of the academy stood on top of this very pillar and detonated her sources outwards. She was one of the few to ever ascend with two sources, fire and air, from the entire academy, and the explosion of her sources destroyed everything in an outwards radius of over a thousand miles.
Her name was there on the pillar.
Number 16: Iris Golden.
Letting out a sigh, Seth turned around and started walking towards the staircase at the entrance.
Two guards dressed in royal armor were guarding the entrance and moved to stop Seth and Leora.
“What is the purpose of your visit to the academy?”
Leora bowed her head, as Seth instructed her, but he didn’t as he said: “I’m here to apply for a teaching position at the academy. She is my assistant and student.”
“Have you ascended here at the academy?”
“No, my master was the one who ascended at the academy. I am a student he found while traveling through a small village in the south.”
The guard nodded and asked: “Can I see proof of your ascended status?”
Seth once more created a small sphere of destruction energy in the palm of his hand.
Both guards bowed immediately and one of them said: “Can you please follow me, ascended? I’ll escort you to see the headmistress.”
Seth nodded, and they both followed the guard inside the academy’s courtyard. He remembered the courtyard as this green place full of students, but since it was still cold right now, there were barely any people outside.
After walking for over ten minutes straight through the courtyard surrounded by huge white buildings, they arrived in front of a building right at the end of the pathway.
It was smaller than the others buildings inside the academy, but that was just because only one person lived inside there. The simple word “Headmistress.”, was written on a plaque right above the entrance, but Seth knew that behind that plaque, there was the original witting that said “Headmaster.”
Iris never got along with the previous headmaster and, when she took the role from him, she covered the original writing with that plaque.
Using the door knocker twice, the guard bowed and said: “Excuse the interruption, headmistress, but you have guests.”
“Enter.” A tired but clear voice came from inside and the guard bowed again before motioning for Seth to step inside. When Leora wanted to follow, a guard stopped her and said: “Only ascended are allowed inside.”
Seth nodded to tell her to wait, before opening the door and walking in.
The entire room he stepped in was like a library, with bookshelves all around. At its center was a small desk with tanks of books placed on the sides.
Behind the desk, there was a silver-haired woman who was reading through some texts while writing something on another piece of paper. She didn’t even lift her head to see who entered before asking: “What do you want?”
Seth remained silent as he looked at her. He thought she was the same as him back then, only striving to push forward, to know more, to grow stronger, but when he heard about what she did when the other kingdoms attacked, he realized they were in fact, not the same. He would have never given up on his path for anything or anyone else.
She wanted to push forward as well, but she was not willing to leave everyone else behind to do it. She probably loved this academy as much as she loved knowledge.
Hearing no answer, she put the pen down and lifted her head from the book she was reading. She saw a kid she didn’t know, looking no older than 19, maybe 20 if she pushed it, staring at her with a subtle smile.
She didn’t know why, but that smile pissed her off as she said: “Are you deaf? I asked you what you want.”
Seth looked at her spotless face that made her out to be in her mid-twenties, but he knew the truth. She was actually 215 years old. The further one went on their journey on the path to godhood, the longer their lifespan would be. Two centuries spent mostly surrounded by books. From what he could tell, she might have become the headmistress just to get rid of having to teach at the academy.
“I want to apply for the position of teacher at the academy.”, said Seth after bowing slightly. He was not required to since he was not a student here in this life and was already an ascended, which made them have the same social status, but he felt she deserved this bow after what she did in the previous timeline.
“Hmm, you are definitely not one of our own. Are you from another kingdom?” asked the headmistress with a nod.
“No. An ascended that visited my village taught me in passing.”
“What is your element? Water or earth?”
Seth shook his head. “Neither.”
Iris frowned and tried to feel the surrounding energies, but she could not feel a single trace of either fire or air orbiting toward him.
‘Since he said it was neither water nor earth and the guards let him in… is he destruction?’ she has heard talks about another element being discovered in the far north, but never got to see it.
Doubting her own thoughts, she asked: “Show me.”
Seth released the destruction energy from inside his source and formed an orb floating by his side.
“It is destruction…” muttered the headmistress as she stood up and walked in front of the orb.
“Can it really cancel any other element?” asked the headmistress, observing the floating ball of destruction.
“For material objects, yes. When going against other energies, there is a ratio depending on the difference in strength between the energies.”
The headmistress summoned a smaller orb of fire and pushed it into the destruction orb. The orb of fire was extinguished, and the destruction one also decreased as well by a bit.
“Shell?”
“First.”
“Can destroy my fire with such a difference.” muttered the headmistress under her breath.
She then performed the same experiment with an orb of air energy, ending in an identical result.
She soon forgot about Seth completely as she kept performing different experiments. She changed the form of her energy, amount, density, and so on.
Seth had to even resupply the orb with energy a couple of times, but he didn’t bother her when he saw how concentrated she was and let her run her experiments.
