A loud explosion followed by a clash between a deep crimson red mana and Aura’s dazzling silver mana, signaled the end of their “greet”.
Two figures perfectly tidied up descended next to their respective students, Aura had a slightly frowned expression as she gazed at Daimon, but she inwardly shook her head and put the thing at the back of her mind.
Daimon on the other hand saw the red mana fading away to reveal the appearance of the Nosfear matriarch, it was a slender tall lady who seemed to be in her late twenties or early thirties.
Her hair had a white-silverish tone and her eyes were red colored, she was wearing a black dress with red decorations and a floppy hat with the same combination of black and red colors, she was also wearing white long-sleeved gloves, giving her a noble elegant look, which contrasted quite a bit with the fierceness she showed earlier when she and Aura clashed.
Aura looked at the sky and then snorted, before saying.
“Miles I’m going to slash towards the area where you are hiding if you don’t bring your ass down here right now”.
A portal opened in the sky from which a group formed by students wearing a white and blue uniform and a middle-aged man wearing a white suit came out.
“Miss Argent is as straightforward as always, I just didn’t want to interrupt to old friends reuniting in person after what, two or three hundred years?”, said the white suited man as he landed along with his group next to Daimon and the others.
“Mm?”, Daimon frowned, he looked at the recently arrived human majorly conformed group, but the strange sensation that he felt suddenly disappeared.
“Oh my, it seems my Black Grave academy the last one to arrive this year, I beg your pardon but we had to deal with a small inconvenient in our way”.
Everyone’s attention was drawn by another portal which opened near the Nosfear matriarch from which another group came from.
They were all wearing black and red uniforms and had grinning expressions, among the four groups they were mostly conformed by male students, out of the fifteen thirteen were guys.
“You were here earlier than us Crowley, so stop with your bullshit”, the calm and elegant looking Nosfear matriarch, suddenly became sharp tongued as she pointed out that the demons and undead were hiding in the shadows all this time.
The principal of the Black Grave academy called Crowley stopped laughing, his face contorted for a split of a second and his teeth became spiked, his narrowed eyes slightly opened as he looked at Angela.
N/A (Angela is the name of the Nosfear matriarch).
“Such a bad mood, how about I invite you a drink later miss Angela”.
Daimon now understood why a large-scale war didn’t break out, everyone had problems with everyone, even within their own alliances.
“Now that is enough Crowley, we aren’t here for that”, a man wearing a classy black suit with a cup hat descended next to the principal of the Black Grave academy and tapped his walking stick on the floor interrupting him.
A man wearing a full body white armor appeared next to the principal of the Blue-Sky academy, before saying.
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Timothy is right, the four principals as well as the four executors didn’t gather just to mess around, where the hell is that bastard of a sage!”.
“Also, Argent matriarch aren’t you missing some students, if you are lacking some talents, I can lend you a some of my paladins”, added Miles as he smirked.
Aura ignored the principal of the Blue-Sky academy and instead let the field marshal deal with him.
Parzival waved his hand and a portal opened from which Alexander, the disciples of the Furious Whirlwind and the Earth Palace academies as well as the second-year students besides Arianna, Gina, Lana and Aleah, came from.
Arianna already told Daimon beforehand, she basically sold the spots to those who were able to move among her classmates, her cousin Reiner volunteered to travel with them to act as Arianna’s ears, so he got a spot, Aura also told her to include the two guys from the army free of charge due to a certain agreement she reached with the field marshal, and surprisingly the girl who fought against Aisha also got a spot.
Normally a four-star mage or knight realm was needed to take a spot in the second year’s team, so Riley who reached the three-star mage realm thanks to having refined both some drops of stalactite milk and a seed of the sun lily, shouldn’t have gotten a spot in the team, but since her element was strong enough to make up for the difference and because Aisha asked Arianna to, she got the spot.
Arthur didn’t say anything as he has already lost too much face recently as well as money since he had to reimburse Lars and Maxim, the mana crystals they lost in the bet.
“It seems we are all here, but where is….”.
“Booooom!”, as Angela was speaking in a soft voice totally different from how she spoke to the demon principal, a loud explosion followed by a huge shockwave and a tremor, could be seen coming from the south of the asteroid.
A ball conformed of black smoke and flames flew from that direction and landed in between the demon and vampire groups, creating a large crater raising a large amount of dust everywhere.
“Cough, experimental component number 102,578, failed, less dust of fire mana stone proportion for…”.
A blackened figure came out of the crater a few seconds later and started blabbering as he wrote down some things on a large book, for about three minutes until it noticed the presence of the four groups.
“You finally arrived damn it, I was so bored I started studying the components of the magic powder to increase its strength, explosion ratio and…”.
The blacked figure kept running his mouth for another whole five minutes, without stopping even when the executors and other students told him to shut up, until Aura smirked and said a single word.
“Erin”.
The blackened figure stopped speaking in cold, he looked at all the directions with an afraid expression and only after making sure Erin wasn’t here, he let out a sigh of relief before he dusted off his clothes and face, revealing his true appearance.
Disheveled hair and a messy short beard as well as a moustache, although his clothes were blackened due to the explosion, once he dusted them off, they were perfectly fine, he was wearing a brown robe as well as a white cape with few decorations, small tubes and other instruments, it was clear that he didn’t care about fashion and just hanged whatever he wanted.
The guy combed his hair behind his ears and then kept his book on his storage ring, changing from that haggard guy to an erudite looking man.
Daimon saw the initials on his belt and he didn’t know whether he should laugh or cry.
“Is that truly the Andras Griffin, the acclaimed Greenwich Sage… I guess one shouldn’t judge a book by its cover”, he mumbled.
Aura giggled as she gave thumbs up to Daimon.
The principal of the Blue-Sky academy rubbed his forehead, the greatest theorist and the publicly recognized as the smartest man was a human, which brought honor to the human race, but at the same time, Andras’s personality brought shame to the human race, to the point that he was banned from a majority of planets in the Blue-Sky galaxy.
Once Andras finished tidying up, he looked at the four groups and then pointed at the large arc of stones which was standing a couple of kilometers away from their current position.
“That’s the entrance I placed a seal to stop it from decaying since those fools activated the countdown before dying, so just stand in the circle and you’ll be teleported inside… ah right have this”.
Andras looked in his pockets taking out many different objects until he got what he wanted, a box with some flat green bracelets, which he handed to the principals.
“These are “You die if it’s red colored bracelets”, each line represents a day, they are linked to the stability of the dimensional tunnel which leads to the entrance/exit of the magic ruin, good luck I have some stuff to do”.
Andras then flew towards the are from which he was blown away a moment ago and continued with his experiments, completely ignoring anything else.
Each principal created a barrier and then approached their students.
Aura waved her hand and a bracelet flew towards each of the students, she then nodded at Stella who took out a large coffer.
She opened it and revealed its contents, a couple of rows of white generic rings with the emblem of a claw.
“These are the special storage rings prepared for the exploration everyone grab one and use it instead of your normal ring, you already know what you can take inside of the magic ruin, and you’ll be scanned by the principals before entering so don’t try to cheat”.
Everybody already knew the ten potion and one weapon limit, as well as the rule that they couldn’t bring anything which surpassed the five-star mage grade, so they simply passed their stuff to the special rings provided by the academy as well as the book which Aliya gave them before and everyone was ready.
Alexander grouped with the guys from the Furious Whirlwind and Earth palace academies as well as Arianna’s classmates which included his cousin Samuel and distanced themselves from Daimon and the others which was what Daimon wanted.
“Come her for a second you all”, said Daimon.
Calvin and the others approached Daimon just to him extending his arm with his hand towards them, one by one Calvin, Michael, the Risha sisters, Loren, Haylee, Aleah, Arianna, Dana, Hector, Lana and Gina all placed their hands on top of Daimon’s as he said.
“I’ll do my best to finish the badge trial as soon as possible, watch each other’s back and don’t trust on the other groups understood?”.
Daimon’s voice became serious by the end, from this moment onwards he was the one in command, his position as captain actually granted him authority over his classmates, but he didn’t do this just for that, he took advantage of the moment to attach them the talisman of the silent protector to each one of them.
Which of course they noticed because they suddenly felt as if they could somewhat know where Daimon was.
“That would help us get together inside, it’s something Liz created for me”.
Everyone nodded and then the preparations were over.
‘Be careful Daimon’, said Aura in a voice only he could hear as she saw them walking towards the arc which would transport them inside the magic ruin, Stella tightened her grip on the other half on the black badge which Aster had with him.
According to the Greenwich Sage, once the badge bearer passed the trial, the one wearing the other half would be automatically transported inside.
Daimon tenderly looked back at Aura and slightly nodded at her.
‘Don’t worry we will be fine’.
All the students arrived in front of the stone arc and inscriptions illuminated on it, the last thing Daimon noticed was that he could somewhat see the others who had a badge besides him.
From the demon and undead side, it was a guy with gray skin and long black hair, from the vampires it was a guy which he perfectly recognized, one of Victor’s children more accurately the one he had with his concubine after Aisha but off any ties with everyone, from the humans it was blond guy with blue eyes which he didn’t see until now.
Then his field of vision was filled with a white flash and they all disappeared.
This day will mark the start of the wave that will bring huge changes to the Wonder Myriad stellar chart, a wave that will sweep everything in its way and that no one can stop, but that is a story for another day.