Demon energy.
It's a power exclusive to demons that has no official name. Many believe it has a link to the Dark Forces given their similarities. This similarity being the more energy from either gathers in one area, a portal forms.
There was an incident in a village near Lockinge city that involved demons—imps to be specific—but was quickly resolved by an adventurer party known as Misteltein. From what rumors circulated from survivors, it was determined that the demons came through a portal. There had been many demon sightings in the last few years, all of which resulted from the same reason: demon energy gathering around an area in large amounts.
Since the incident in the aforementioned village, wizards and priests have been hard at work to get rid of the demons that were spotted by people. It's remarkably easy to respond to these threats quickly if you look at the patterns.
They're always found in or near villages or small towns in the countryside. No demon sightings have been reported in large cities in or around the empire.
These incidents were just concluded to be coincidental and that demons preferred to spawn near smaller groups of people without armies of their own. But a question remains: do the demons that are already in this world kill off a lot of living things and throw them in one place to let death miasma gather, which consequently forms portals to allow their kind to come through?
In any case, the demon portals can be closed off by indirect means. This means that the catalysts that result in demon portals—dead bodies infested with miasma or demon corpses—were disposed of or buried in sand. For some unknown reason, miasma cannot penetrate soil as efficiently as other energies. The aforementioned method of eliminating demon portals have worked most of the time before any major casualties were reported but what if hundreds of portals were discovered at one location? What if that location was a maze-like forest like the World Tree Forest?
The solution for this was simple—Freya's banishment spell that can cleanse an entire region if the correct preparations are made.
But even Freya cannot use that spell rapidly which is why she sought to teach it to her magicians.
…
Lauran starts her second year from today onwards. Even during the holidays, she either came to the library or spent her time studying back at the castle. With her teleportation magic, she can go from one place to another without having to travel for long periods of time so it's very convenient.
With permission from the First Lady, she was given time away from her duties as Head Maid to focus on figuring out Freya's spell. Unlike the other assistants, Lauran didn't have any partners to work with.
The Librarian, Lyra had been a great help since she could summarize basically everything from memory and skip all the "filler" contained in these books. Turns out there is a lot of bloat (useless information) that Lyra noticed in these books. Who knows how long Lauran would've been busy with this assignment if not for Lyra.
'How are the other assistants doing…?' she asked to no one in particular. She knows Adrianna placed this gargantuan task on her because she believes in Lauran. Still, letting a second-year student do this much work is so cruel… of course, Adrianna has way more work but she's experienced in arcane knowledge so she had the advantage. If wouldn't be surprising if she finished her research first.
Something hit the table next to Lauran while she was mindlessly doodling at the back of her notebook to take a break. Yes, she has been here since last night and took a cold shower a few hours ago—when it was still dark out—just to keep herself awake.
The scent of coffee beans reached her nose before she could look to her side. Someone walked around the table and asked politely:
"May I have a seat?" it was a young man with light blue hair, thick-rimmed glasses and wearing a blue and white mantle around his shoulders with signs of a cross, indicating he was affiliated with priests.
Lauran nodded before she could think clearly.
Looking silently at the cup of steaming coffee, Lauran addressed the person:
"…What's this?"
"Well, it's coffee haha." The sky-blue haired young man chuckled with a small smile.
"I meant—"
"I know what you meant. 'Why would a stranger go out of his way to make me coffee even though I'm not the only one here', is what you're probably thinking, right?"
Lauran nodded slowly.
"You could say I was just finding an excuse to come speak to you, hahaha. I've seen you go in and out of the library for quite a while, always carrying bundles of scrolls and bags of books. I was curious what you were doing and who you were so I asked around. Miss Lauran, right?"
"That's my name, yes…" Lauran picked up the cup. The coffee smelled bitter, probably because there wasn't a lot of sugar in it. Lauran likes her beverages sweet, even if it's coffee (which she rarely drinks).
Still, she appreciates the sentiment. Secretly, however, she chanted a conjuration spell and dropped two small sugar cubes into her cup. The spell was quite high-tier so she ended up draining a lot of mana just for those small things. No wonder it's an unpopular spell, she grimaced.
"Professor Adrianna von Berkley is an incredible woman. I admire her strength as a magician and strive to become as strong as her one day. I've heard that she sponsors two first years, with one being you on the list. Not just that but she took you in as an assistant. My interest in you grew a lot when I found out you can cast teleportation!"
"Ah, that…" frankly, she didn't know why people made such a big fuss over it. It was quite easy to learn and follow since the steps are recorded in books. Then again, not everyone is like her so she couldn't just expect anyone to be able to do it.
"I hear the Magic Towers are fighting over you. This might even cause even more conflict between the towers."
"Even more conflict? Why are they divided?"
"All the towers elected leaders through popular vote ever since Freya York started dumping all her work on her assistants and board members. This decision to maintain order in the towers got the support of all the nations so Lady Freya couldn't argue against it. But that created a rift between the towers. None of the towers do joint-experiments anymore and don't share as much of their research with each other anymore. In fact, I think they see each other as competition now. Even Lady Freya stopped doing join-experiments years after the split of the towers. So, while she does remain the Chairwoman of the Six Towers, she doesn't have the same power as she did in the past. She's just the CEO of a company with several branches but her shareholders control the company from sheer numbers alone."
This must be why Freya didn't share the divine spell and seek support from the other towers.
"Anyway, Professor Berkley is very choosy over who she allows to work under her. Not just the most popular greenhorn at school but also the rumored candidate for Archmage." He stared at her with soft eyes and a kind smile that could make a pure maiden's heart stop, "I heard a lot about you from my cousin. She's in your class, Felicia of the Moonstear Duke family from Royagard Kingdom."
Moonstear Ducal House… That's one of the 40 ducal houses of the empire and stands next to Ayried, Berkley and Penston Houses in prestige, wealth and history. Unlike the three aforementioned houses, Moonstear didn't really have anything special about it besides its wealth. There were no exceptional warriors or magicians born into the house and they didn't rule a territory with lots of gold or magic crystals.
Besides her intelligence, there was nothing else that was special about her. She was quite dull personality-wise as well, appearing more like a generic disciplined student who never says no to her superiors.
"She's our class president." Lauran forced that rude thought of hers to the back of her mind.
The second-year arrangements will be the same as the first year since no one was transferred to other classes (They're the A class so why would there be transfers anyway), so Felicia will be in her class again and will probably be president again. Lauran wasn't very sociable (which proved to be a good thing sinceshe can keep people at arm's length) so she didn't have any friends yet but she knows everyone's names.
Felicia, despite knowing Lauran is the top student in the first year, always used to come up to her and ask if she needed help with anything. She's far different from the other students who tried to use Lauran to improve their grades since it was already out there that Lauran could use teleportation magic (a Seventh-Rank spell). Since she could only use one Seventh-Rank spell and a few other spells higher than third-rank, most academy students thought that teleportation is just a special ability of hers (she hasn't used the other spells yet). She's never corrected them. It was better to go along with it since after this rumor started going around, institutions, sponsors and guilds stopped pestering her. This didn't stop elite magicians from the six towers from interfering though. Adrianna had to keep them away from her and manage her position as an adjunct professor of the Magic University.
Lauran silently thanked the First Lady for looking out for her.
"I thought Miss Lauran is from a foreign noble family given your…" he looked at Lauran's short red hair, "—unique features..."
"No, I grew up near the slums."
"The… slums…? That's… interesting."
He probably meant to say "unbelievable". Was her appearance that rare outside nobility? She recalls that all the children of the Ayried Family have red hair but unlike Lauran, they had red eyes. Her blue eyes gave her visage a strong contrast, drawing one's eyes to hers one second then back to her blood-red hair the next. Arnold told her one time that her eyes look like aquamarines. That was a year ago, on the second day of the week, at noon, in the Jeweler's Quarter markets in the capital. He was there to buy Olivia a birthday present and noticed the aquamarine jewels in the store and compared them to her eyes.
Lauran recalled recoiling in disgust when she got complimented by that man… But oddly enough she could remember the exact day he said it, how he smelled, what season and day it was, and how low his tone of voice was.
She mentally slapped herself.
"Ah, forgive me for my rudeness." The boy got up and bowed his head, "My name is Kyle von Moonstear. I'm currently a fifth-year divine magician student and I often come to the library to study."
"Really? I haven't seen you before."
"I usually study on the third floor. There's no one around so it's nothing but peace and quiet." Kyle leaned over the table to glance at the books, "That's quite a lot of material to go through."
"Everything you see is just a summary of a bigger archive."
His eyes went as wide as saucers then looked at one of the headings, "You're researching Lehitcus? That's an extract from the Divine Archive's new edition."
"You know them?"
"Well, sort of. I know that the older editions have way more knowledge than the newer editions which is why I only ever studied the old stuff. The reason why scholars made new editions is because they prophesized that newer generations won't be interested in the core history of every ritual, text, spell, scrolls and event surrounding divine studies so they left out a lot of stuff. But even if they left out a lot of stuff, it seems there's equally as much information in some of these newer editions."
He picked up one of them and frowned.
"I see the names of famous scholars in these texts from hundreds of years ago but their contributions to Divine Studies isn't highlighted or why they decided to create what is listed in these texts. Are people really not interested in the foundations anymore? Who made these summaries?"
"The librarian, Lyra… Why is it important to know all of that? I'm only trying to find information to help Lady Adrianna with her project."
"You need to understand the background of something you're willing to learn before attempting to learn it, Miss Lauran…" Kyle scrambled through the notes, "Here's an example: this rune does not exist. It was made up by a phony who took advantage of everyone's ignorance surrounding runes to get a Nobel prize." He pointed at one text.
"And look here, White Needle is impossible to cast since no one can handle the magic control alone and even with a group, you might run out of mana before you can even use this exorcism magic. If you can tell me what you're looking for specifically then I might be able to help you quicker."
"…It's not supposed to be revealed to anyone outside the Magic Tower."
"Can you at least give a hint?"
Why is her senior so interested in this?
"No..."
"Pity. But you look like you need a hand. Have you consulted any of the sisters from the Melis Temple? Even if most of them are quite young, they learned the wonders of divinity since childhood."
"Is it that easy? I should've gone ages ago." she bumped her head on the table and put her arms around the back of her neck, moaning in annoyance. Lauran isn't usually so verbal with her frustration but this was the first time in her life that she had to do this much work. The work itself was something that looked way too difficult for someone as inexperienced at her.
"Yes, but you need to be part of their faith to receive guidance for free. They typically teach in short classes every two days at noon."
"Part of their faith… So, I need to be a sister-in-training?"
"Unfortunately. Or you can contribute to the church in some way."
Lauran doesn't really have money to spend. Of course, as Head Maid, she makes astronomically more than before but she wanted to save that money for the future. She wanted to buy a house in Toril Imperial Capital where she can live out her retirement years.
She regularly sends gold to her parents while the rest remains in her bank account.
"It seems we are at a dilemma, but worry not! I shall stay up with you day and night to help you solve this even without knowing the goal you are striving towards!" Kyle puffed out his chest and laughed "mwahahaha!" like some hero who saved the princess from a monster.
'This guy is… weird…'
But his input would be valuable to her. While Divine Magic is a derivation of Arcane Magic, it has entire theories, equations, and all that other scientific nonsense, of its own that are completely different from arcane.
"But! I will help Miss Luaran on one condition."
She couldn't expect him to help her for free so she could understand that he'd want something. What would a noble want from her? Maybe he wants her to help him become friends with Luke? On the surface, Luke might not be that remarkable when it came to feats or academics but he was still the future Duke Berkley.
Kyle stood upright and lowered his head. While holding one arm over his chest, he spoke in a clear and confident voice:
"Please accompany me to dinner, Miss Lauran."
"—She'll be busy tonight."
A familiar voice almost made Lauran jump from her seat. Looking over Kyle's shoulder, she saw a young man with short silver hair and wild golden eyes.
His hair color and eyes were different but she knew exactly who this was—
"—Arnold?"