The Academy

Brewan shot Kai a weird look before stooping down to grab his flask of water from the bank of the stream. Somehow, Kai seemed to be looking forward to participating in Halia's torture research.

The only saving grace for Brewan was Kai's mana. After hunting and growing stronger, Halia had finally saved enough of Kai's mana to start using spells herself. If she exerted everything Kai had, she could even make a fireball similar to the ones pitched by Brewan, but doing so would give Kai a splitting headache.

If that was all she was doing with magic, Kai wouldn't be particularly motivated to help her out.

[I think I have a spell figured out to repair your robes. It's a bit tough, since they were originally crafted with a Qi imbuing technique, but it's definitely doable.]

After all of the battles he'd been through recently, the once-pristine, white robes now looked like rags that'd been used to clean a swamp. Along with Halia's necklace and the ruby sword, they were all Kai had left of his original world…and of Enla.

Washing them in the stream barely helped at all; the water couldn't do much for bloodstains or holes. If there was one person Kai trusted to find a way to repair them, though, it was Halia.

When they got back to the classrooms, Halia started muttering stuff for them to mark down on the whiteboards while Brewan started roasting more venison for lunch. Every available surface in their 'cooking classroom' was already covered in chalk, and the 'sleeping classroom' was almost completely used up, too.

[Hm, we might need to expand to the upper floors as well. We're starting to run out of space down here.]

"There are three of us, four if you count Sydney. We already have the lower floor of an entire school."

[I don't have any paper like back in the sect. Do you remember how much stuff I had to write while I was researching for the other disciples?]

The image of a younger Halia sitting over a desk piled haphazardly with paper resurfaced in his mind. Her eyes had bags under them, and there had been a few dirty plates sitting off to the side. Back then, it was such an unclean sight that Kai had to clean up after her and help her organize everything.

If someone else'd seen her back then, it would've disgraced our sect. Hmph, and no matter how much I tried, she never learned how to take care of herself. I don't know how she survived when I was away on sect missions.

The sudden rush of memories made Kai start pondering the past.

The other disciples were almost as bad as her. I couldn't even keep track of the number of times Edwin wandered onto another sect's land 'because he saw a cool rock'. Every time I went to bring him back, he'd always be pestering random people with his annoying geology questions…

The wide smile that graced the green-robed second disciple's face every time he talked about rocks or formations appeared in Kai's mind.

At least the other two didn't cause as much trouble on a regular basis. If they had, I really wouldn't have been able to deal with it all.

An adventurous fellow who was overly enthusiastic about rocks was one thing, but if the Apparition of Death drew too much attention, it wouldn't have been simple to get the surrounding sects to stay calm.

They better not be causing too much trouble here.

Kai was jolted out of his thoughts when Brewan nudged his side, then handed him a skewer of venison.

"Let's go feed Sydney again, maybe he'll finally wake up enough to tell us about this place."

After grabbing two more skewers of meat, Brewan headed over to the sleeping room. As they walked in, Sydney sat up on his cushions and looked over.

"Hey."

[Finally, this guy is awake, and he looks a lot steadier than before. I knew he would recover!]

After giving the prone man food and water, Sydney leaned back against the wall of the classroom.

"You said you've been here for five days, right? It's probably been at least a month since I set out for here, then…"

Brewan nodded.

"Almost exactly a month, according to the academy's logs. They told me that you were planning on coming here to train for two weeks."

Sydney just nodded, then glanced up and the evening sunlight streaming in through the window above him.

"Sydney, what do you know about this place? We've explored a lot, and it looks like no one has been here since before the beast wave."

Sydney nodded as he looked back toward Brewan.

"Yeah. This area was hit by one of the beast generals, there aren't many settlements left anywhere nearby. I couldn't even find any details about this place in our academy's library. I only knew that there would be something here from a traveling merchant I spoke with."

Sydney let out a sigh as he glanced down at what was left of his gear.

"I'm not even sure if the merchant was telling the truth. He claimed that there was a small branch of a large, old academy here. One of the ones that fell during the beast wave. This place is definitely unusual, but I'd think that there would be some information on it in the library if there actually used to be another large academy. I was hoping I could find some old artifacts here, regardless of what kind of an academy it was, but this place is barren."

Kai took a few steps closer as he listened.

"Did the merchant say what academy this was?"

Sydney nodded.

"The Crescent Moon Academy."