The campus is quiet. The majority of the classes happen in the afternoon. Most people that are up and around the campus at this time are either staff member preparing for classes or students conditioning for sports like jousting.

  The trio of me, Enrique and Reia arrive in classroom 3-A, the room Professor Colins teaches in. The room is set up like a typical lecture hall, where each row is elevated above the one in front of it, giving a better view of the chalk-board. There are 5 rows of 3 desks.

  We sat in the 3rd row. Not too far, not too close. Sat in front of us were Marley and Jonah, who were quietly talking to each other. Behind us sat the lady that fought Jonah last night, she is looking over her class notes.

  Early morning Conjuration wasn’t a very popular class it seems, as there were only around 10 students attending. I feel like my brain is defrosting at this point in time, I felt like I was ready for whatever this class was going to throw at me today.

  Reia and I are talking about mana gates while Enrique is talking to Marley and Jonah in front of us. They are trying to convince Enrique to join the jousting team. Enrique seemed to be interested in what Marley and Jonah had to say.

  The class bell rang, tellings us that classes had started. I looked towards the front of the room, and the teacher was nowhere to be seen. “Where is the teacher?” I asked Reia.

  She shrugged and looked around, “I guess he’ll be here later. Gives me time to prepare my notebook I guess.” She says as she took out her notebook and began to set up the structure of her notes. It looked like Cornell notes, but the structure is different.

  After a while we heard a noise from the back, we look to the door, but there was no one there. But I looked to the last row of desks to see a homeless man just waking up from a nap. He was dressed in a slightly dirty overcoat. His hair was long and his face was unshaved, not yet a full beard but something akin to a 5 o’clock shadow.

  The man stretched in the chair he slept in and yawned, “Good morning class.” He stood up and went to the front of the class. It took him a moment to gather his notes from his desk. “This is intro to conjuration, right?” he asked the class.

  He looked over the students. “You guys look too young to be in advanced conjuration, so I am going to assume this is intro to conj.” he pulled up a chair and sat in front of the chalkboard, he then glanced of his notes, “I guess it’s time for me to introduce this course and myself.” he said in a voice with a southern drawl.

  I whispered to Enrique, “Does he work here or something?” I asked. Enrique shrugged in return.

  The hobo looked over at Enrique and me, “You do know I can hear you?” He said glaring at us. “I was just about to get to introduction, so shut up and let me introduce myself.” he paused.

  He cleared his throat and yawned, before relaxing into the chair. “My name is Naram Colins, professor of conjuration at ReKeller College of Mana. I am also a famed gate 6 mana user, having multiple books published. Does that clear up the air on who I am?” he asked in a rhetorical tone.

  He looked over his notes once more, “This class is about introducing gate 0-3 mana users to the school of conjuration and its teachings. I am to make sure by the end of the year you all know how to cast basic conjuration spells.” he read over his notes to the class.

  He looked away from his notes to the student body, “Lets skip the syllabus, I think it’s a waste of time.” he then pointed to the first student in the front row, “All of you will be introducing yourselves. Stand up and give me your full name and something about yourself I guess.”

  The first person in the first row stood up, he was rather short and skinny. “I am Alester Sultan. I am a gate 2 mana user and I love reading books.”

  A guy in the 5th row shouted at Alester, “FUCKIN’ NERD!”. I look at the person who shouted it and I saw what looked to be a giant human made up of pure muscle. He looked to be sculpted by the gods themselves, jawline sharper than diamonds. His hair was a short blonde with blue eyes. He had to be at least 6’5” off of comparing to the people around him.

  Professor Colins glared at the man, “Please quiet down, It’s too damn early in the morning for shouting.”

  “Who’ gonna stop me?” asked the giant man who stood up from his chair.

  Professor Colins waved his finger in the air, forcing the man to sit back down in he chair. He then summoned a rope and used mana to tie the man to the chair as well as using some of the rope to gag the man’s mouth.

  “Thank you for following my words, we will get your name at a later time.” Professor Colins said in a passive aggressive tone before going back to the introduction. There was no one sitting next to Alester, so the Professor moves onto Marley and Jonah.

  Marley stood up, “My name is Marley Jones, I am from the Capital and I love hanging out with my best friend Jonah.”

  “That's great.” Professor Colins commented before looking over at Jonah who stood up.

  “My name is Jonah. I forgot my last name, but I think it was very cool. I like looking at hot women and hanging out with my best friend Marley!” Jonah says with full confidence. Marley claps and cheers for Jonah.

  This kinda surprised the professor, he had a few words to say to Jonah but decided to hold back. He only commented “That’s kinda creepy, Jonah. I hope that isn’t an issue in my classroom.” he would then move onto our row, looking at Enrique first.

  Enrique stood up and fixed his uniform, “I am Enrique Angel Armando-Cortez. I have yet to open my mana gates, but I went to the shrine and it glowed a bright yellow. I love meeting new people and going out to parties.”

  “Bright yellow you say?” asked the Professor repeated back to Enrique, raising his eyebrow.

  Enrique nodded, “Yes, my party members say I have great potential.”

  “Great potential doesn’t mean you’ll ever reach that peak. I hope you choose to make that happen.” he would the move onto me.

  I stood up. I felt a bit of a lump in my throat. I swallowed it and introduced myself, “I am Darain Washburn. But everyone calls me Shrugs. I don’t like to talk about myself, I find it selfish.”

  “That isn’t what I asked, Darian. Please tell me something about yourself.” Professor Colins insisted.

  “I just did.” I replied, trying to avoid talking about myself.

  The professor sighed, “Aight… the woman next to you.” he then looked over at Reia.

  She stood up “My name is Reia, I am the student council secretary. I like to read in my free time.” she sat back down.

  “Good to see I have a student council member in my class this year. Last year’s class was lacking discipline. I hope you will be an example to some of your peers.” he said, then he moved his eyes to the woman who sat behind us, “Would you introduce yourself?”

  She stayed seated, “My name is Anya Helmstein, I am here on a scholarship from my time in the military. That’s it.”

  “You need to tell me something about yourself, Anya. I require everyone to do so.” the professor pressed her.

  “No, I won’t be doing that.” Anya stood firm on her choice.

  The professor shrugged, “We’ll come back to you, missy.” before looking behind her at the giant man who was still tied to his chair. “You gonna to be respectful?” the professor asked.

  Tied up guy nodded, so the professor waged his finger and got rid of the rope around his mouth. “I’M GOING TO TELL MY COACH ON YOU! HE WOULD NEVER ALLOW THIS TO SLIDE!” the man screamed at the professor.

  “Great, now please tell me your name and something about you.” the professor ignored what the man was screaming about.

  “DO NOT IGNORE ME! I AM THIS SCHOOLS JOUSTING CHAMPION!” he screamed out once more. This clearly upset the professor, who waved his finger in the air once again to gag the man and tie him up with robe. “Please don’t yell this early in my class.” he then would move onto the rest of the students in the class.

  “They do joust here?” I asked Enrique.

  “I guess so. I mean what other sports are they going to play? Soccer? Football? We are in the Middle Ages.” He reasoned.

  “I guess that makes sense. But what are the odds that one of the transported were from Britain and brought soccer here?” I asked a follow-up question.

  “Don’t know. Ask Reia about common sports that are played here.” He looked over my shoulder to Reia, who is paying attention to the other student’s introductions.

  I nodded and turned to speak to her, “Hey, Reia. I got a question.”

  She turned to face me, “Alright, but I get to ask a question in return.”

  I nodded in agreement, “What kind of sports are played around these parts?”

  “Well here in the North, people like to play strength focused sports like jousting, wrestling and mana combat. But in the South they play sports that use items such as balls and pucks. They also partake in mana combat.” she explained.

  “Alright, what question do you have for me?” I asked her.

  “None at the moment. I think I will keep it in the bank for now.” she said going back to paying attention to the professor.

  After all the introductions were done, the professor lectured us on the basics of mana theory and how it applies to conjuration for the rest of the class period. I and Reia took notes while Enrique stared blankly at the chalkboard.

  The class ended around noon. Then we went to have lunch in a local café. The café is small, only seating about 20 people at once. The three of us got a window seat that looked over the busy street.

  I sat right next to the window, Enrique sitting next to me. Across sat Reia. We enjoyed a good lunch, I had sandwich. Everybody chipped in to pay for the meal. Reia had to leave shortly after so Enrique and I spent the rest of the time I had looking in the market. Enrique got himself a razor as he forgot to pack the one Leah gave him. I saved my money, as I don’t want to be going broke at the very start of the semester.

  Then Enrique went back to his dorm and I went over to Professor Gilbert’s private office for the after class lessons. This time when I walk down the hall to his room, there is no screaming woman thankfully when I get to his door I just see him sitting at his desk writing.

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  I knock on the open door, “Afternoon, Phil.” I announced myself.

  He looked up from his paper, “It’s professor to you.” he looked back down at this writing, “Shut the door and take off the charm I gave you.” he commanded.

  I did as he said, “So commanding. This is a different side of you then the one I saw when we first were in here.”

  He finished his writing and evened the papers, “I am a professor at this college, when I am working I need to be professional. Now come sit.” He pointed to a chair on the other side of his desk.

  I sat down and reclined into the chair. He slid me the papers he was working on, “A little research I did after you guys left last time. Stuff about nulls and negative casting.”

  I glanced over the number of pages, there are 50 in total. All the pages are full of large wordy paragraphs. “A little?” I asked.

  “I was only able to get a hold of a few research papers. I expect you to finish reading this by the end of next week.” he turned around in his chair and looked at the calendar, “Today is the second Monday, the 9th month of year 1226. I expect done by the third Monday.”

  He turned back around to face me, where I was still glancing through the top few pages, “Besides reading that you need to open up two gates instead of one. From what I’ve read, null gates are completely separate from normal mana gates, meaning you will be needing to open up the first null gate in this class.”

  “How different are they from normal gates? Are they the same system just negative? Or are they different?” I barraged him with questions.

  “Negative mana isn’t as studied as much as normal mana, so research is hard to come by. Most of the research I found on my own was from 200 years ago, written and researched by the Dean himself. I had a meeting with him, and he suggested that there were more than 8 negative gates.”

  “Well, how do I open the first gate?” I asked him, glancing up from the papers.

  “Simple. You will read an incantation.” he says bluntly.

  “It can’t be that simple.” I asked. If it was that easy to open a gate, why doesn’t everyone start learning at a young age?

  He opened his desk and pulled out an old book, “Should be. From what I have read you just need to cast a low level negative spell.” he placed down the book and opened it. He flipped to a page nearing the back.

  He read over the book for a moment before sliding it and turning it towards me, “Read this out loud and uh…” he stopped for a moment and looked around his desk, he grab a blank paper and held it up, moving out from behind it, “Point your palm to this.”

  “What is this gonna do?” I asked him, as I did not want my first spell to blow up the man who is teaching me.

  “It’s a basic spell that supposed to bring your negative mana to your palm and slowly shoot it out. If you do it right it should blow a hole in this paper.” he points at the paper.

  “Alrighty, seems easy enough.” I began to read over the incantation, repeating the words in my head. It’s only a sentence long, so how could I mess this up?

  I looked at the professor who looked tiredly at me. I looked back down at the book and began to read the sentence out into the world, “To the vacant energy that lays, I call upon you to destroy the object that stands in my way”

  A moment went by…

  Another moment went by…

  I look up from the book and see the professor looking at me. I look at the paper and I see nothing has changed, “Did I say it right?” I asked.

  The professor shrugged, “I Don’t know.” he grabbed the book from my hand and read over the sentence himself. “Seems you did read it right.” he sat the book down, “Some people aren’t able to read incantations and have to skip straight to mana without incantations. It’s not common, but it’s not uncommon.” he explained.

  I look down at my hands, “So what do we do now?” I asked.

  “Well, I am going to do more research on this and get another meeting with the Dean. After that I will help you out with incantation-less mana.” he planned out quickly.

  “What do I do from now on?” I restated my question.

  He looked up to my, “Well for now take excellent notes in class and try to focus on channeling your mana.”

  I sighed, “Like I am supposed to already know how to do that.”

  “It’s really nothing special, you just need to meditate on it, I guess. Kinda turn off your thoughts and focus your nerves and stuff onto your fingertips and other places you’d expect mana to leave.” He explained it so easily, but I JUST know it is going to be a tough process.

  “I think I can do that…” I say with little confidence.

  “Great,” he hands over the book “This is yours for now. I had someone make a copy of it for me before this. Don’t lose it.”

  I took the book, “I guess I leave now?” I asked.

  The professor nods yes, “We can’t do anything until you open your first gate. So just get out of here already and enjoy your day.” He says.

  I nod back at him and stood up to leave. I make it to the door and open it, there stood the dean. His mask and hood covering his face as always.

  He steps back, “Oh, I am sorry dear student. Am I interrupting a meeting?” he asked. His voice is whimsical and charming.

  I didn’t realize I would be face to face with the dean this early. I step aside and let him into the room, “I am sorry to intrude Phil, but I have things I need to talk to you about. Mostly about our meeting we had earlier.” The dean sat down in the seat I had just left.

  The professor points at me in the doorway, “Don’t leave. This is about you, Shrugs.”

  The dean looks over at me, “Oh?”. I feel him study me for a moment, he has no gaze, but I still feel him peeling me apart with his vision. He pauses for a moment and brings his fingers to the chin of his mask, as if he is thinking.

  “I get it now.” he says before breaking out into laughter, “Come here boy, sit down.” he used mana to pull up a chair next to him.

  I followed his directions and sat down in the chair. “You are Shrugs, I take it?” he asked me.

  “That’s right, my name is Darian, but everyone calls me Shrugs.” I responded.

  “And your last name?” I can hear how he is getting more and more excited with every question.

  “Washburn, Darian Washburn.” I answered him.

  “Now where are you from, my boy?” He asked one last question.

  “I am from the village of Ever-Col-” I spoke, but he cut me off before I could finish. He laughed, he chuckled, and he was nearly falling out of his seat.

  “I see! This is wonderful!” he then looked over at the professor, “Why did you not tell me that this man is a transported?” he asked.

  This surprised me but didn’t surprise the professor, “I thought you’d figure it out once you met him.”

  The dean claps with joy, “This is wonderful! WONDERFUL I SAY!” he erupted. He has a lot of energy for someone his age. “And he’s a null!” he keeps going for a while about how great this is. The professor remains in the same joyless state he had with me.

  After the dean calmed down he looked over at me, “So, what part of Earth are you from?” he asked.

  “I am from the United States, sir.” I replied.

  He pondered a moment, “Oh yeah, I remember hearing about the US from another transported I knew. Now another question, why did you hide your identity when coming here? You know that we have a long history of training and teaching the transported, right?” he asked. With a wiggle of his finger he summoned a notebook and pen.

  I started to explain everything to the Dean “Long story. Firstly I pushed a large red button on Earth which transported me and my best friend here. Then I woke up in a hospital that is run and owned by The State of Araki. There I kidnapped by a Demi-human named Leah. After that we met the Gold Wing leader, Mika Grimaldus, who joined us to the shrine in Ever-Cold. There I learned I was a null, and so they decided to put me and Enrique into ReKeller, but Leah made sure to tell us to lie low and avoid the State’s watching eye.”

  The dean jotted down a lot of notes after I finished. He then looked over at me, “If that is true, why are you so open with me?” he asked.

  I thought for a moment, “Well, you are the first person to come up and straight up ask if I was a transported. And you seem trustworthy as you run a school that prides itself on its separation from the state.”

  “That… could have gone wrong if you spilt your secrets to the wrong person.” Chimes in Phil.

  The dean nods in agreement, “You were right to trust me. But I do not recommend telling anyone else, as that can cause problems.”

  “Enough questions for now, we need to discuss what we are going to be doing for you.” the dean explains.

  The dean laid back into the chair, relaxing. “So, you and the other transported are attending my college trying to keep a low profile. What do I do to help you out?” he asked himself.

  The three of us thought for a moment, “I think the best idea is to keep going through your classes and study with Phil.” says the Dean.

  Phil nods in agreement, “I can do that, but how are you going to be helping?” he asked the dean.

  “I don’t know yet. We’ll figure it out as we go along in this journey. That includes the whole negative mana stuff.” the deans says in calm tone.

  “I can get behind that.” I agree with the dean.

  “Then that's that. I do have private things to attend to with Phil here, so I ask you to please leave, and we’ll meet again later in the week.” The Dean seemed to have remembered something and is now rushed with his words.

  I go along with it as by now I have had a fairly long day of study and classes. So I take the papers and the book that the professor gave me and I left to my dorm where I studied and attempted my first mana channeling.

  Channeling was easier than I thought, I was able to conjure a tiny bit of whatever I have to my fingertips. It felt as if I was pulling the heat away from my fingers, like I was touching something cold.

  This drained my energy and after I kept trying. I ended up passing out in my bed, sleeping the rest of the day away.