14. To New School II

Mattheia and Kashia entered the main hall, accompanied by Nine and Junie.

It was a spacious room with two staircases and three corridors - one up front, and two left and right respectively.

The newcomers did not know a detailed plan of the school, but everyone could see from the main hall that the corridor up front was leading into a huge auditorium, and that was the place all students were walking to right now.

Past the entrance to the auditorium, even the guardians were not allowed, therefore Nine and Junie had to wait, while Mattheia and Kashia entered.

Inside, around six hundred students gathered, roughly two hundreds per year, then split fourty per class. While second- and third-years already knew their peers, it was not the case for the freshman year. However, each class level had their own badge, which allowed to easily tell apart first-years from second- and third-years - in case of the freshman classes, everyone had a black kitty's head among black lotus flowers as crest, then there was a fat, black cat lying on a bed flowers, then there was a slender panther with a lotus flower hanging by its ear, walking among fallin flower petals.

Due to all the crests referring to 'cats', it was the common way of people addressing the school members that way, though students from other schools would often use a slightly insulting term 'strays', diminishing the Black Lotus School's standing.

The thing was this school used to be a pretty big deal for decades, but since its peak power from the times a renowned student named Aukkleia was attending Black Lotus, the level of students was dropping, and the results of interschool competitions making the school slowly fell from the podium into the second half of the group. In a matter of twenty years, from emperors to beggars.

Since that was the case, many parents would have considered selecting a more prestigious school for their child, so why did Carrera and Farah made such a decision? Was it because of the recommendation from Nine? It was actually, but only to some extent - she indeed told them a lot of good things about the Black Lotus, but the main point was that, while the school was not winning in competition recently, its graduates continued to manage obtaining high-ranking positions around the country, and that was what Mattheia's parents were aiming for.

Nothing mattered more than secured future, though there was one more important aspect of the school that made Carrera and Farah make the final decision - acceptance of hybrids. In case of majority of schools, there existed a chance of being declined based on the ancestry, which was impossible for Black Lotus School.

This factor was unknown to Mattheia though. His parents and Nine agreed to keep unnecessary details away from the boy in order for him to focus on studies.

Speaking of matters he was not informed about, there was actually another, more important one Nine did not tell him even though she was fully aware of it - it was not that no one among first years knew about class assignments, rather than that, there were no assignments whatsoever yet. The reason was they were supposed to go through initial test that would serve the purpose of making the selection to split them into five classes.

Obviously, the introductory ceremony had to be the first thing to be done for the beginning of the school year, happening in the end of the summer time. It was a typical type of school ceremony, where teachers and selected students made the speeches, and then school choir sang the school anthem.

Following that, second- and third-years went to their classes, and first-years were left in the auditorium for the test. Students were murmuring to each other - apparently, many of them knew what was this about, but everyone understood immediately after a pedestal was brought in with a stone on top of it, one Mattheia immediately recognized as one being of the same type as the one they were tested on at the city entrance.

"They are going to test us" he said to Kashia "How do you feel about it?"

Angel girl, who was in the centre of attention as the only one of her kin in the whole school, was more concerned about people looking at her than what was happening in the auditorium, so she just shrugged and said:

"I just want to get this over with. The atmosphere here is uncomfortable."

Mattheia was preoccupied with the ceremony for most of the time and only now noticed that Kashia was bothered - surprisingly, one angry look was enough to make them stop for now.

When the stone was brought in, there were four teachers present, one of them being none other than Ricaud, whom Nine knew - the man smiled to Mattheia and Kashia when their eyes met.

Other three were: elderly headmaster of the school named Dante of the Elemental Swords, redheaded beauty Aaricia the Flamethrower, and lastly, strong and pretty in another league Elrich the Iron Fist.

First teacher to speak among the four was headmaster Dante.

"This is the most basic check" he started explaining, pointing at the stone "Aptitude test many of you likely already know. The only thing you will need is to touch the stone, and I will channel your energy into register to compare the results. It is just one of four tests we are going to have, so you should not worry about getting a lower score in one category. Now, please, we will be going in the alphabetical order."

The tradition of the country was calling people by their names and skill titles, with the exceptions being: children and teenagers, who did not reah adulthood, adults without skills and aristocrats that kept their lineage names instead of skill titles. Obviously, no one among the students had the title so they were going name after name.

In that order, from Mattheia-Kashia duo, it was the angel girl who went to the pedestal first. Once she reached it, whispers could be heard all around, and when she touched the stone - headmaster Dante looked as if channeling took a real toll on him. He felt bad enough to pass the duty to Aaricia.

The test continued for a while, and then Mattheia's turn came.

He did not notice this, but there was also a strange murmur coming from the students when they were looking at him. Either way, he had another thing to do so he immediately put a hand on the stone.

The reaction from Aaricia was crazy - first, her face got bright red, then she started trembling as if she was in pain, to finally laugh out loud with her arms crossed on the chest.

"Okay, Mattheia, put the hand away from the stone" Ricaud quickly reacted, and then he helped Aaricia stand up, whispering to her "Keep your masochistic behavior in check!"

Apparently, Aaricia nearly fainted during this last test, so now it was Ricaud who took over. With him in charge, the first test was concluded.