Magical Academy.

Flashbacks 

(QIAO RUO'S PAST LIFE)

"Cree, I'm afraid," she moaned. The nurses pushed her on the patient bed towards the operation theatre. Her husband brisk-walked with the nurses, assuring her with his voice.

"Xiaoruo, it's going to be fine."

He was lying. She wasn't. 

She was about to undergo surgery for a threatening endometriotic cyst to be removed from her right ovary, and they knew the risks and complications. The operation had ended up taking more than that. She lost one ovary, while the other was not in a good condition to allow her to conceive through.

She was twenty-three years old, and they had just been married for not long.

Under the bright light of the operating table, she made her first vow. She would live and die for Cree, and everything they had lost. Little had she known, that she was wrong. Luck was not on their side, and it left her with nothing.

...���.........….

CURRENT WORLD, HUAXIA (REBIRTH LAND)

An auburn-haired girl cracked an eye and jumped out of bed. 

"Strange dream I just had," she laughed to herself. "Now, Term 1-X, I am going to beat you to death for disturbing my sleep!"

In the magical world of Huaxia, their basic lives were reigned by magic. no alarm clock, no noisy honking streets of the city and no need for water heaters and showers - everything was magically-controlled!

Almost every citizen there was endowed with magic. And the magic of what sort, it was hard to explain. For instance, she, twenty-one-year-old Qiao Ruo and a fourth-year student at the Bluer Academy of Magic, was an arcane trickster, a rogue that enhanced her stealth abilities and trickery with magic! 

Probably a normal human of the twenty-first century would not be able to understand, but Huaxia was not a world in the universe! It was a parallel world of Earth, and though it existed in an era similar to 2020, the noticeable difference was that the inhabitants used magic!

The city she now existed in was named Walla City, the city of nothingness. She didn't know how she had come to live what she was doing in this place, and the few memories she had retained of her seemingly 'past life' was still very vague! It was called Walla because it was the quietest city in Huaxia and had the least inhabitants.

The roads were clear since magic allowed them to travel to a maximum of 100,000 miles without the need for driving vehicles. However, a few prominent ways of transportation still existed: the old school-styled buses, private jets and the magic subway! For senior citizens or those were still not very proficient with magic like Qiao Ruo (she would get exhausted from all the casting), they would normally take the subway to get to places that were further away.

The city also had malls and skyscrapers like any place on Earth, but the magic they used to get around was remarkable. They also had a few portals in the city centres that required special access passes for anyone to even use them. And of course, the requirement was their special currency: zion. Portal access ranged from fifty thousand zions to millions of zions! Qiao Ruo contemplated that even if she graduated from the academy and got a job in the city, it would take her decades to gain that amount of money.

And of course, anyone could use a teleportation pad, given they were rich enough and had the magical license to operate one. Which of course, she did not have, considering she was a mere orphan who had 'somehow' popped up like a mushroom on one of their white sand beaches. She had no prior memory of her childhood, and every memory she had appeared to stem from the day she had woken in Huaxia. It took her about half a year to get accustomed to life there.

The people of authorities were very kind and had assigned her a foster home for a short period of time before she enrolled at the academy three months later. She was provided with an allowance of 300 zions every month, which would automatically appear inside one of the magically-protected metal drawers inside her home.

She recalled the dream, as she cast a sloppy spell to blink towards the nearest subway station located five minutes away from her house. Unfortunately, it didn't go well, and she ended up materialising right in a muddy puddle right outside the station. Cursing under her breath at the smell, she waved her fingers over her blue-and-white magus uniform to rid herself of the dirt, before pushing through the steel bars to enter the station

"Miss, again you have not paid for your month-old concession fees to us," an elderly man with whiskers stood squinting at her at the gate before she could walk up to the platform.

"Just this one time," she pleaded with her adorable eyes. "I will definitely pay you after I receive my allowance."

"Isn't that what you said the other time?" the station staff complained. "Miss, we aren't running a charity here."

All of a sudden, Qiao Ruo and the elderly man sensed a breeze blow past them, and a handsome and tall man with deep crimson spiked hair and carrying a smart briefcase came into sight. She found the man oddly familiar, but try as she might, she could not remember the man. He looked at her school uniform and indulged her with a glance into her eyes.

Her eyes glistened with emotion as she felt a feeling between them that seemed so much like….they were bonding. She connected with him instantaneously, breathing in deeply as she recognised the supreme power he had. This man had so much untapped power that it was all flooding through here in excess as if she was a vessel! What had just happened?

"I will pay for her concession," the man said in an icy tone. The elderly man nodded and hurriedly produced Qiao Ruo's concession pass, trembling as he handed it over to the younger man.

"Miss Qiao, see you in class," the cold voice said. "Remember, don't be late. I don't like it when people are late for the sessions."

Qiao Ruo held the pass so tightly that it was all wet from the clamminess of her palm.

"What a weird man," she said out softly. The man's crimson hair was striking, being of such luminosity that it hurt her eyes. She imagined him as a rooster, crowing away with its red crown. The man's hair was so red, like a rooster's crown.

She laughed and went on her way, boarding the next available ride towards the academy. In a matter of months, she would graduate and the authorities would give her a first possible assignment, like what they called internships on Earth. In Huaxia, it was called a magic assignment.

Because she knew magic, she was told that she should be assigned to one of those bigger companies that used magic in their day-to-day tasks. Magic was so profound and so potent that she had trouble understanding how she could have been endowed with the power to cast.

The Magic Ministry had informed her that she had innate casting abilities even though she believed herself to be 'reincarnated' into the world. Apart from being skinnier than before due to having to handle tasks on her own, she was at a smaller frame than she was previously. She was at her dream weight and eating as much as she could, have little to no impact on her weight gain.

Her session for the day was 'Manual Processes over Magic', and she fathomed that it was not going to be easy.

'Jiayou (add some oil),' she told herself. 'You need to be strong and graduate as soon as you can!