Age: 5
August 1st, 1253 KE
After the Awakening Ceremony, not much has happened in Sunrest. It's been around eight months since then and now it's finally time to start Cedric's and I's education. Tutoring—what most nobles start at five years old before their formal training begins. Right now me and Cedric are just sitting in a medium sized royal blue room, sitting on wooden desks with windows showing outside the estate, waiting for our tutor.
"Who do you think will be our tutor?" He asks me.
"It's probably some smart person since they specialize in teaching nobles." I reply.
"Well, hopefully they aren't too strict. I can't sit here forever!" I roll my eyes. Really? You can't sit here for four hours.
"Maybe it will be interesting, at least the magic stuff they'll talk about will be."
"Yea I guess so."
Cedric starts bouncing his foot under the desk. I look at the clock on the wall—only a few minutes had passed. Then, footsteps echoed in the hall outside… Slowly they stop in front of the door and the handle turns. A young woman of average height with dark black hair and sharp green eyes and the refined beauty that comes from core progression, walks through the doorway.
"Good morning Lord Cedric, Lord Kade. I am Mrs. Rathyre and will be your tutor for this next year." Her voice is calm, tone steady as she introduces herself. I wonder what kind of tutor she'll be.
"Good morning Mrs. Rathyre." I say while Cedric quickly follows.
"Over this year I will teach you both how to read, write, mathematics, and you will learn about general magic and the awakening process in more detail." Interesting. Since I already know math, reading, and writing I don't think I'll struggle much. Though looking at Cedric I already know he will struggle from the nervous look on his face.
"Kade I've been made aware you already know most of this material so I will mainly focus on Cedric's learning until he is caught up. In the meantime I will teach you more about magic and world." Great! I can help Cedric after tutoring if he struggles and I will also learn more about this place and more importantly magic!
"Though, I will give you a test before so to see the level in all three. This will help me determine if you will need one teaching on the subjects or none at all." A test? That's fine—I just need a perfect score to skip the basics.
She walks over and hands me two sheets of paper, one with math, the other with spelling and reading.
"You can start whenever, just let me know when you get to the spelling portion and I'll call out words for now I will begin with Lord Cedric." I nod and look down at the paper. The first page is filled with basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Quickly I start going through problems. The first ones are addition and fly by those easily, the next is subtraction and I do it with the same speed as addition. Multiplication and division take slightly longer but they are still well within my range.
Flipping over the page I see a list of numbers 1-10, I raise my hand and she walks to collect the math portion. Her eyes widen slightly in surprise and gave me a small nod.
"Very good Lord Kade, I see the talk about your intelligence wasn't exaggerated."
"Thank you, Mrs. Rathyre." I don't need you to tell me that but praise is always welcome.
"I'm going to call out the ten words to you shortly. Spell them to the best of your capabilities."
I give a small nod that I'm ready and she begins.
"Expectation." That's easy. I spell it without a second thought.
"Calligraphy." Little harder but I still feel I get it right.
"Encourage." Easier than calligraphy but still harder than expectation. She continues with the words and none of them are super difficult so I believe I get them all right.
"Excellent Kade it looks like so far you won't have to do the math, and next you will begin with the reading portion in the back." I turn over the paper and she walks back to Cedric who looks like he's struggling with his own work, he gives me a glance and I can see it in his eyes. Despair. I give a silent prayer and go back to my own work.
The reading portion is just a small story with multiple choice questions at the end. I read through it and go to the questions that ask "What was the main idea of the story, what was the lesson the character learned, and the like." I finish in 8 minutes and Mrs. Rathrye walks over and checks it.
"Well Lord Kade, you won't have to do much work besides the magic portion of your education until we get to more advanced subjects. Maybe you can even help Cedric with his own work?" Nodding, I walk over to my struggling friend and sit next to him. Looking at his paper it's all basic addition, not even double digit numbers are on the paper with the highest sum being ten.
"Kade, how do you do this, man? It's so difficult." Yeah, he's completely lost it. I sigh and lean over to help teach a way to do this basic addition.
"Cedric, just use your fingers, it's easy! Let's use this question for example; two plus two." I raise my hands and put up two fingers on each. "Look, I'm using my fingers for the numbers instead of in my head, now how many fingers am I holding up?"
"Um, four." I'm a genius.
"Exactly. Now your turn, try it on another question." I watch and see the question he picks is three plus four. Carefully he raises the appropriate fingers and realizes the answer is seven. I start worrying for him as he begins to laugh quietly delighted, in how the math suddenly seems.
"Good job Kade, I was going to teach him how to do this after your test but it seems you did it before me. But Cedric you won't be able to use this when the math gets harder remember that." Cedric's smile instantly fades.
It takes a couple hours but Cedric has now completed his work for the day and we begin with magic.
"Now, young Lords I'm aware both of you have witnessed an awakening day, correct?" We both nod.
"Excellent, do you have any questions on what happened during it?"
I raise my hand and she lets me ask. "Why did nobody try to help when he started seizing?" That scene definitely wasn't kind to my mind, I had a couple nightmares of seeing the boy twitching on the ground looking half dead for a couple weeks.
" Ah, good question, Kade. The reason no one helped ease the pain was due to his mana channels being developed throughout his nervous system. The nerves tend to freak out when this happens and interference with the process can reduce the quality of the developed channels, though it will not cause death, only a good deal of pain." Oh, so everyone goes through that… I shudder, if the pain is so bad it makes someone fall to the ground spasming unconscious then I fear the worst.
"What are the affinity ranks? We were only told the worst and best ones." Cedric asks a question I was also hoping to get an answer to.
"Another good question. The affinity ranks are: Nullborn, Dull, Spark, Adept, Gifted, Attuned, Ascendant, Mythic. Nullborn and Mythic are the rarest—one being the best and the other the worst. Only about ten people a year get a mythic affinity rank and the number of people vastly increases from there for the other ones until dull where it drops." Hmm, I wonder what I'll get, hopefully not Nullborn. An imaginary shiver goes through my body "The average rank people get is Spark-Gifted and there's no way to garuntee what you will awaken." I see. Hopefully I can get attuned or higher but as long as it isn't below adept I can make it work.
"What are the core stages?"
"Well the first one which is what you have right now is called Dormant, since you can't use any form of mana yet." So I have a Dormant core right now? That makes sense I guess, thank goodness I won't have to make one. "The ranks after Dormant are: Initiate, Tempered, Refined, Crystalline, Condensed, Polarized, Ascendant, Immutable. There's also rumors of a higher rank but it's not known."
"How do you make your core rank higher?"
"Mostly just condensing it and increasing the density while also cleaning your mana channels of impurities. For example I'm at the Refined rank and am about 9% complete until the next rank. It has taken me 15 years to reach this but affinity rank helps with learning speed, mine was Adept." She seems a little dissatisfied with her core rank but maybe it wasn't her focus since she is a tutor.
"What else are we going to learn about magic?" This time it's Cedric.
"We will learn about the weaknesses and strengths one element has over another such as water being stronger than fire in a direct battle."
Interesting I guess there's still a lot for me to learn about magic.