Halflings

Author Note: Hey, guys. Sorry about the late release. I was working on something regarding the novel and I ran into that sweet sweet AI tool Google made (Gemini) and I couldn't get enough of it, so I had to finish the Magic system which I wanted to introduce a bit later in Book 1.

Funny thing is it took me two days working to just get it wrapped up then I discovered I could make a lot of pics in Gemini (with some difficulties) but it was actually working as I intended it to do. So as I finished the spells, I said why not make SPELL CARDS! FOR EVERY SPELL Vivian will use in the future.

Yeah, so I did and after 48 hours without sleeping later, I am done. Well… kinda. After I finished most of the cards, I wasn't sure about the classic card style of MTG and YuGiOh so I made some touches on it and now I want opinions.

There will be a Voting Poll on Discord, Royal Road, and Scribble Hub so let's do this the Democratic way, your voice matters, the future is in your hands, blah blah blah! (Image included in chapter comment!)

I am not sure about doing spell cards for unique magic spells for each sorcerer character but let's keep that till then for now, and after not sleeping for that long, I bid you farewell as I got to bed and you read that chapter!

Enjoy~

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Villainess Vivian Moore, a professional black ops agent in a previous life and the sole daughter of the main family of House Moore, sat in front of her desk with a desperate face.

"F!~$^@%~!#^#!$#^&*!@#K!"

She sighed with an intense desire to shoot people indiscriminately. As if the world was ganging up against her, she sat in front of a mound of books while preparing for the world to just come and rain poop for the rest of the night.

Tomorrow is the beginning of the finals and she has never had this urge inside her since her past-life's highschool days. The situation was already bad and the period pains were making it worse.

Still, the past three days were a total war against the courses that the former Vivian had no idea about. These were Religion: Dawn of the Saints, Nature & Environment, Advanced Mathematics, and Technology & Engineering.

During those three days, there have been two major changes in Vivian's schedule. First, she moved from her bedroom to the main study of the mansion. There, she met a tutor provided to her by her father.

"Greetings, Lady Vivian. My name is Oscar Mason, I work for the Moore Conglomerate as a senior analyst and manager of employment. I graduated from the Advanced Mathematics department of the Third Royal Academy and now hold a senior position in the Human Resources department founded by the suggestion of your Ladyship."

Oscar Mason, a youth around the same age as Logan and a direct assistant of Lord Julian Moore. He looked tall, slender, and stylish for a commoner in his neat gray suit, short brown hair, and his light beard.

His presence in the Moore Conglomerate was very impactful since he opened the road to many commoner graduates to take good jobs in the factories. Moreover, after the late introduction of the Human Resources department by House Moore as well as their initiative to hire more graduates from the Third Academy, the situation was evolving greatly in the commoners' favor as they were enrolled into many work departments.

While this was merely the happenings of two weeks, a rumor was spread among the workers that this situation was the brainchild of Lady Vivian Moore. That was the reason why Oscar Mason rushed to Vivian's help the moment Count Julian asked him to tutor her.

"My Lady, I know it is difficult to keep up but we are trying to cover the basics as fast as we can. The more you know them, the faster things will be." Oscar spoke, trying to dissuade Vivian from her style of studying by hoarding information.

"I understand, but humor me a little with my questions, Mr. Mason." Vivian said as she kept her face to the books while skimming through them and asking questions from various parts of the book.

She was also taking notes but as far as Oscar was aware, this would get them nowhere.

In outright honesty, he wasn't sure he could help Vivian at all since all they had was three days. He made sure to promise nothing to the Count but his experience at tutoring the new engineers and accountants was the reason why he is tutoring Vivian right now.

This was all for the first day. At the start of the second day, Vivian had another visitor first thing in the morning.

"Greetings, Lady Vivian."

In front of her was another commoner from the Third Academy, one she was actually acquainted with.

"Miss Jane, what brings you this morning? Is there anything I can help with?" Vivian asked with a face that was refreshed by four hours of sleep.

"Actually, my Lady, this is my question. I have heard the rumor going in the mansion about Lady Vivian having some sort of mistake in her exam form. Is it true you have had more additional courses than what you signed up for? If that's the case, I am majoring in the Engineering & Technology department. I wish to help Lady Vivian if you would allow me to."

Jane Smith-Waters, the daughter of the family's gunsmith, seemed more than just eager to help. Most of the family retainers would indeed try and curry favor with the family members whenever a chance would arise but that's all good. After all, it's their job to be useful in situations like this.

"Thank you, Miss Jane. I will accept your assistance but mind if I ask about your personal studies. Don't you have your finals set as well?" Said Vivian.

"I do. However, I am confident in my position and sure about my studies. Normally, I would spend those coming days practicing in the workshop."

"Great." Vivian smiled and accepted Jane's help.

With Oscar Mason as a tutor for Advanced Mathematics and Jane Smith as a tutor for Engineering & Technology, she wouldn't need to worry about what's coming.

Vivian had her thoughts organized by the second day. Tomorrow was the last day she had to study and then she was going to study after the first exam was over.

What worried Vivian wasn't the Advanced Mathematics and Technology since Vivian's alien half, Nadia, was quite good at those. Since she was a good shooter and a thief, she has accumulated a lot of knowledge about physics when calculating bullet drops, architectural weak points, and many other things.

But with four additional courses in her way, there was still a lot for her to complain about. After all, her grades average would be affected badly by the amount of subjects she had to go through.

It was demonic, satanic, and diabolical how the scheming went down this time. It seemed that her statement about attending the exams as if nothing happened had truly upset someone and they caused her to face this situation.

Initially, Vivian tried to find the Academy Management and appeal to it if possible but as it is a Royal Academy, any official paper it has that carries the King's name is akin to a royal document. There was no room for arguing here.

Secondly, the signature at the end of the final exam summons was that of Lord Albert Morgan. Once Vivian read the surname Morgan, she immediately connected the dots.

"Morgan, that stalker Ronald Morgan, if I want anyone to fail their pursuit of the Heroine, it is that moron."

The Morgans have a lot of influence and ability to affect the inner workings of the kingdom. They normally have no feud with anyone but Ronald Morgan except for a minor rivalry with the House of Marshall, their 3rd generation heir was also very fond of the Heroine and would occasionally serve Prince Liam if the latter asked for anything.

If there is anyone that can cause this, it is only him. He becomes increasingly irritating in his route as well, especially with his sister being the third Villainess.

But Vivian collected her thoughts and returned to the study with Jane as she introduced her to Oscar Mason. Initially shocked, Jane was very taken by the fact that Oscar Mason was tutoring Vivian. It seems that in the third academy, Oscar Mason is quite the celebrity.

Speaking of which, the third academy and the first academy are like the opposite two ends of the education system in Elgard. One is for the elite in the High Society, another is for the common class, albeit it is limited to the cream of the crop of commoners.

However, two of the additional courses Vivian was taking were entire majors in the third academy. While the level of difficulty is as shocking as it sounds, the additional courses cut a lot of the unimportant parts of the subjects unless one is interested in doing postgraduate studies in these certain courses.

The most important things for an aristocrat to learn are Warfare, Magic, Diplomacy, and Alchemy to produce Military Officials, Magic Officials, Government Officials, and Medical Alchemists. These important majors, however, are fairly rare in the Third Academy since the higher-ups aren't too keen on allowing the common folk to earn any form of power and limiting them to simple civil and service studies.

Putting this and that aside, Vivian focused on her studies during the second and third day under the tutoring of both Oscar and Jane. The two of them tried to get her around the basics of Engineering and Mathematics but during the third day, she refused to continue.

It worried them greatly but Vivian wanted to focus on the other two subjects, Nature & Environment as well as Religion.

The Nature subject was mostly revolving around biology and natural science. Vivian had to run through the subject on her own away from Jane and Oscar as the two of them never really studied that subject. The real challenge came when she had to memorize the names of many plants and living organisms but she still had her wits about her and kept cramming everything into her head.

The real problem came when she studied the Religion subject. Religious studies were never her strong suit during her two lives but she wasn't that much hopeless before. During her time as a Medjay, she studied ancient mythology and she was confident she could push through this nonsense.

At the beginning, she studied the stories of the saints and found it rather moral and entertaining for the most part. Athena's wisdom, Arthur's might, Joan's insight, Heimdall's justice, Florence's kindness, Hermes's craftiness, and Amadeus' songs were all the stories this world needed.

The Seven Saints were the sacred figures of this continent while according to the current doctrine, the other races venerated nothing but fantasies and demons. The Draconian Races venerated their Dragon Ancestors, the races of the southern continent venerated a version of this world's devil which is known as Blackthorn, and the Adnani Sultanate venerated their own Saint, known as Hazrat Ishqullah, whom they gave the title Mevlana, which is an honorary title used with various personalities of faith in their culture.

If the world agreed on one thing, however, it would be that there is a monotheistic God and he is universal. Many religions like the Faith of the Seven Saints insist that the Saints have Divinity within them as God's chosen, while the Adnanis rejected the idea completely and had a different outlook on theology, which caused many religious wars between these factions and infighting in their own ranks as well.

The history of religion aside, the Theology and Legislative parts of the faith were completely awful. It seemed that most of the mythology in the faith of the Seven Saints was taken as historically inarguable facts with set dates and numbers that vary between nations sometimes. The real problem, however, is that one is not allowed to reject their facts and must always use them as the starting point of any theological argument.

In other words, you have to press the fact that what you believe in is the truth and you do not need any logical evidence to support it. This makes the term Faith a belief without evidence.

This didn't mean that Logic was separated from Faith but if they were to oppose one another, schism would spark out and would usually lead to war. After many thousands died on the battlefield, the Temple of the Seven would later come and change their scriptures to fit the current Logic.

Here where things get a bit haywire. After the change of faith by the clergy to fit the new Logic, they get to do these reformations to each of the Seven Scriptures. Seven books for Seven Saints gathered in one big chunk of paper known as the Scripture of Saints.

However, the best thing about the Scripture in this world is that it contains pictures, a lot actually. One of them was for a mural that portrayed the Invasion of Albion during the Age of Chaos. On it, two armies were clashing, one behind the Seven Saints and the other behind a weird-looking black thing that is probably the devil figure, Blackthorn.

What was truly interesting was what was drawn under that black thing as there were different kinds of people in the Devil's army. Some were the little folk called the Duergar and the others were large men drawn mostly in Bronze but with a few larger variants in Silver, and a couple of Gold ones.

"Bronze people?" Vivian frowned.

She then had to call Esmeralda and ask her about the image of the scripture. Maybe the Hulkling girl had some knowledge different from what this part of the world has.

"I am sorry, my Lady, but I lived most of my late life in Albion. I've seen the image many times before but I don't know what my people did and I don't even think they know either?" Esmeralda said.

"How so?" Vivian asked.

"From what I know, our race was once as mighty as the Duergar race before their fall, but our fall rendered our people broken in many parts of the southern continent and in many scattered tribes. Moreover, we are the bronze folk but there is no Silver or Gold folk among us. Not since a very long time ago as I speculate."

"Like… they were relative spices that died out?"

"Maybe. There is no evidence as far as I am aware." Esmeralda shrugged, "Our race has lost most of its ancient heritage but from what we know, we are the Hulkling race that descended from the true Hulks, the Giants."

"Hulklings and Hulks?"

"Yes, small Hulks, that's us. The true Hulks must have been legendary with their Silver and Gold skin. But this is a recurring theme across the many races of the world. Much like Hulks and Hulklings, there are Draconians and Dracolings among the Dragon-like races, also known as Kobolds, then there are the Toskans and Impish Toskans of the Black Sahara of the south, and Humans and Humanlings who are called Halflings like that small auctioneer man from the De Clare Auction House."

That was true for the most part. Many races had variants of their own such as the Humans and Humanlings, those who are also known as the Halflings. Still, each race has its own halfling and the Hulkling race is a halfling of the ancient Hulk race.

"Interesting pattern." Vivian commented and left it at that, "You sure have seen a lot of the world, Esmeralda."

"I indeed have." Esmeralda smiled, "From Sauran to Albion, from Lozan to Elgard. I have seen things."

"And why did you leave your people?" Vivian asked.

"Well… it is not like I wanted to. It is just, In fact, I am half-human, half-hulkling… after some point, living among my people was impossible." Esmeralda replied with a slight bitterness as if it was something she had already resolved.

"If you don't feel comfortable about it, I am not going to snoop."

Vivian stated that she wasn't interested in whatever Esmeralda wanted to keep a secret and in return, Esmeralda smiled kindly. Still, Vivian was curious but not enough to be rude.

For now, their lives were entangled based on benefit and opportunity but the Maid and her Lady would soon realize how close they can be to one another.

But tonight wasn't the night as tomorrow is Vivian's first day in the finals.

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