Border City

The rest of the journey continued in a peaceful manner as every attack got fended off by a magic spell which one of the mysterious and concealed beings would cast.

Fraser already saw the hail of ice spears, a fire inferno which raged upon the grass of the wildlands and a seemingly alive fire snake which literally devoured the enemies and only left ash behind.

Since Fraser build a good relationship with the knight caretakers they would always give him a large portion of stew and an entire loaf of bread.

Naturally the children who saw the treatment of Fraser would be jealous of the food he received and thus shunned him.

However Fraser somehow was okay with being left alone. As somehow he remembered his childhood where most adults would care about the children with fighting talent or the talent to become knights. As Fraser had neither he got ignored by most adults.

Even his mother would rather care about his older brother who achieved the rank of grand knight with only a couple of year differences between Fraser and him.

The cruel thing was that the older brother wasn't even the son of his mother, instead Fraser could only call him half-brother as the older brother was from a different mother.

But since his mother had no talented sons, in order to survive in the dukedom she either needed the favor of the duke or join one of the mothers with a talented son. Thus she completely ignored Fraser in order to favor the talented son of the other mother.

'I remember caring about that a lot. Why do I feel that my struggles for attention were useless attempts in order to receive love? It doesn't matter anymore, AI show me my body numbers.'

As Fraser receive more food he was able to do a few session of the Basic Breathing Knight Technique. It hit a bottleneck at the number of 3 however it quickly dissolved with enough food. However the training speed halved and the increase in stats was slow.

[3.47 strength, 3.73 agility, 3.51 vitality]

Fraser was able to swing his short sword with ease, it felt like there was little to now weight in his hands. Though Fraser realized that even though he is freaky strong for normal 12 year olds, an adult who trained his entire life might have more strength.

Though the adult had to be a heavy lifter as Fraser after the Basic Knight Breathing Technique easily was able to lift dozens of kilograms, the number probably even reached hundred.

How did Fraser test his strength? He lifted the water barrel which was filled with water.

He also made a list of every material he could find, which included the organs from the snake, grass from the wildlands and even random stones, berries, mushrooms and weird objects he found.

The AI wasn't able to scan them so Fraser had to put every material into his mouth. It wasn't even a detailed material information but as Fraser had little to nothing to do he tried to do whatever could benefit him.

There was a mysterious reaction with the black stone as the AI warned from toxic danger. The stones were located in the leather bags of the twins which Fraser had looted.

However it somehow seemed important as the twins kept the leather bags hidden and in each bag were the same number of stones: 10.

So Fraser had a total number of 20 black stones which somehow contained a toxic substance according to the AI.

Fraser also distanced himself from the Eagle Brigade as there was no benefit in working with them any longer. He already received a huge portion of food as he helped the caretaker knights and Fraser realized that only Richard had a little bit of knight training but still was weaker than Fraser who only trained for half a dozen weeks or a little bit more.

'We will soon arrive at the Border City which will lead us to the main destinations: the magus organizations. I heard from a few caretakers that there are different branches of organizations and each had a different teaching technique as well as a different focus on magic. Though I won't decide my magus organization based on rumors as it is better to choose one based on my talent as well as my body preference of the elements.'

After a couple of days the wooden carriage block dissolved and all children arrived in front of an encampment with a wooden fence and a huge wooden gate.

People walked by and didn't even looked at the newcomers as most were children themselves. Though most of them had an emblem on their robes and either walked in groups, pairs or solo.

Quickly the new children got sent into a tent where an old impatient women pushed the children to touch a crystal before commanding the children to touch another crystal.

That is what Fraser saw as he stepped into the tent as the next test person.

"Hurry up and touch the two crystals." said the old woman before scribbling something down while saying to the former children: "Grade 1 talents and elements is mainly water with a little bit of light."

Fraser quickly touched the first crystal only to feel something drain his mind, in trance Fraser touched the second crystal only to see blackness surrounding him completely.

He only woke up after the old woman handed him a piece of paper and said: "Grade 3 talent, main element is darkness."

Grabbing the piece of paper the old women gave him Fraser walked towards the exit which lead to the tents of the magus organizations. Row after row the tents stood proudly while the flags waved in the wind.

'AI, what was that? I fell into trance and then somehow I only saw black.'

[Thesis is that the host got hit by deep hypnosis which allowed the normally hidden part of the mind to surface, not enough data]

Sighing inwardly Fraser moved past the first few tents before trying to ask people what there were for magus organizations.

Most people, or children just walked by ignoring Fraser completely. However there were a few who exchanged a few sentence with him. Apparently the swamp burrow mostly focused on water and earth magic, the volcano academy on earth and fire magic and the ender tower on general magic without any attribute or element.

Fraser realized from the small bits of information that each flag represented the magic and probably their name as the swamp burrow had a brown-blue flag with a swamp depicted on it. The volcano academy had a symbol of a red volcano on a brown background.

As Fraser walked along the tents he only looked at the flags in order to categorize the element and probably the names.

He searched for a flag with black things in it. Walking towards a corner he could see a flag completely black with only a white line in the middle.

Stepping into the tent he could see a man sitting on his chair while looking at his nails.

"So you want to join the Howling Abyss Academy, is that right? We specialize in darkness or any negative magic. We also have a few famous alchemists." said the man without even glancing at Fraser.

With a quick nod Fraser said: "Yes I want to join the Howling Abyss Academy."

The paper in Frasers hand floated towards the man. It resulted in a glance before the man said: "Grade 3 talent, 5 magic stones for being a true student, else 3 years as a worker for the Howling Abyss Academy."

Gulping Fraser quickly put three of the black stones on top of the table and hoped that the black stones would actually be the so called "magic stone".

Nodding the man collected the black stones before blowing dark mist towards Fraser causing an emblem of darkness and one white line in the middle to appear on Frasers leather armor.

"Welcome to the Howling Abyss Academy, student."