26 The Third Section of the Academy

The gate that they entered was in between the wizard and warrior sections. A wide street led straight to the huge tower in the middle of the city. Lining the street were luxurious buildings, even the most casual building were comparable to the finest ones in the `City of beginnings`.

Even the street had cobblestone of better quality, with sound eliminating properties that made the horse's steps soundless. Only the wagon was making squeaking sounds.

At this late hour, no one was in the street. The lack of bustle made the sounds from the wagon sound even louder, when they broke this quiet scene.

They followed the street to the tower, and then circled around it to reach the third section of the academy. In this section, although most of the houses had material with high quality, they were all in varying degrees of collapse.

Many houses also had patches of wood and such, which then again increased the impression of this being a slum. The only bright side was that there was no dirt and junk on the street. And no foul odors either.

According to Yorick, the houses were designed to use magic in order to keep its structural integrity. This would allow the builders to ignore pesky things as load calculations and such, basically allowing them to build anything their imagination could think up, completely disregarding physics.

This led to all the houses to have strange shapes, odd colors and some even had moving parts. Of course, the third section in the academy barely had any of that anymore, only the other two sections did. Except strange shapes; the only thing more strange than the strange shapes were strange shapes that had collapsed in an even stranger heap of rubbish.

The result of using magic as a part of the building was that when the magic then run out, the building could not support itself, and thus fell apart. Normally it was not a problem, as the resident or the sectional caretakers would refresh the magic. But during the years where there were no `Magic warrior` in the section, the caretakers had finally stopping to care for the buildings, due to cut downs, and thus the houses started to collapse.

First when the entire section was more or less in ruins, did the academy decide to have the `undesirables` move there. And the `undesirables` had not enough skills, power or money to restore the houses to their former glory.

It would not be a problem if they just used reinforcement magic to strengthen the houses, but they used active magic, which would allow them to remodel the house relatively easily. The usage of active magic also granted the wizard apprentices an opportunity to train, and also to encourage interaction between the warriors and wizards.

But due to the conflicts between the warriors and wizards, the warriors had opted to change their buildings to passively reinforced ones, in order to gain independence from the wizards.

Had the same change been made to the third section, the houses would still be standing proudly today. But such changes required lots of money, which no one were prepared to sacrifice for something that was not used anyway. And if such an investment had been made, the `undesirables` would definitely not had the opportunity to live there, as that section was the most luxurious one.

In fact, a large reason to the fall of the third section was that both the wizard and warriors wanted to move there. As neither of them wanted the other party to take control of the third section, they let it fall to ruins.

Taking their wagon to Yorick's dilapidated house, they then carried the luggage inside and sent the wagon back to the rental department.

After cleaning up the house a bit, the sun had already set, and the siblings went to bed. They were exhausted by the panicked rush to the academy, and thus fell asleep the moment they hit the pillows.

On the other hand, Foo was not sleepy at all. Strolling out in the fresh night air, Foo decided to go for a little sightseeing.

The city-like academy was quiet. Only a slight breeze could be heard when it passed through holes in the run-down houses.

When coupled with the slight moonshine, the spooky sound of the wind was giving a creepy impression. However, to an avid horror game fan as Foo, this was nothing at all.

He continued down the street, trying to find something of interest. He did not want to go to the other sections of the academy, though. It could invite unnecessary trouble. From what Foo had heard, there was no patrols in the third section, but there was lots of them in the other two sections.

But then again, he could probably get out of trouble with the help of the token that the warrior had lent them. But it was best to not take any chances. The third section was huge anyway, so he could take his time to look around in the other sections after he had properly enrolled in the academy.

Feeling the call of adventure, he strolled onward.

---

After some walking, Foo reached a huge park. In contrast to everything else in this section of the academy, the park was in its full splendor. The plants were lush with life, the air even cleaner and there was some nocturnal birds that were chirping peacefully.

Luckily the birds had minimal sentience, and as such their voices were easy to block, and left were only a pleasurable bird song.

Walking through a forest, he soon reached the middle of the park, where he saw a pond. The pond was crystal clear, and shining mysteriously in the moonshine.

Approaching the pond, he noticed an old man in an pavilion. The old man was smiling sadly, when gazing out over the water in reminiscence. Dressed in old tattered robes, and was looking really decrepit, the old man looked like a weak and friendly old man.

Everything about him sent Foo's important-powerful-old-man senses tingling. This was a template moment, where one talks to the old and seemingly unimportant caretaker, fully unaware that he is actually a really important person that is undercover.

The old man could possibly be the principal, or maybe an ancestor. Whoever it was, Foo sure was going to con the old man... Eh... He was going to connect with the old man. Yes that's it, connect with him. Having a friendly chat, that just might end up in getting an inheritance or some awesome stuff...

With great ambitions, Foo joined the old man to look over the pond surface.