Chapter 3

Somewhere, a young boy, having barely hit his teens, was sitting on a wooden bed with his back against the wall and his head resting on his right knee, while letting a longsword rest against his shoulder. His features, though not visible as he was facing down while being also covered with his slightly long, black hair, were above average and his body was completely wrapped in compact, well - built muscles.

The room he was laying in was small and dark with the only source of light being a window in the room, and with no furnishing other than the wooden bed, the room would appear dreary to anyone who enters it.

Suddenly, time seemed to stop as the boy's form rippled like a reflection on water's surface, before becoming still a second later.

Immediately after that, he lifted his head and inhaled a loud gasp of air, while his body started secreting sweat nonstop. His shoulders heaved up and down with every breath, but his sword remained firm in his grasp.

The boy was none other than Aizen, who had successfully taken over the body of his target using the final tier of his soul ability, Deceived World, to delude reality.

After a few minutes, his breathing stabilized and his body visibly relaxed. Exhaling a sigh of tiredness, Aizen mumbled to himself, "Finally free."

Closing his eyes, Aizen let his body relish the feeling of being completely free from someone else's whims, and stayed like that for a few minutes.

After that, he stood up and started moving around his body in the limited space that was available to him in the form of a room.

He stretched his arms and legs, while doing a few bodyweight exercises, before he finally stopped.

"Though the frame of this body is much different from my previous one, it feels as though I was born with it. Feels weird."

After having finished getting a feel on his body's movements, he closed his eyes and tried to focus his senses inward, while trying to ignore every information sent by his body in regards to his surroundings.

This was the moment when Aizen noticed the first thing different about this body, which even though felt as if it has been his' for years. He could not completely control his senses. His focus would drift towards any kind of external stimulation it received, whether it be the occasional sound that broke the silence that permeated this place, or a light itch on his skin.

Even though Aizen had taken over this body, it retained the old habits its previous owner had cultivated, and it seems one of them included staying alert of his surroundings to a very great extent, a condition which Aizen would describe as being overly cautious of one's surroundings.

After many tries, Aizen finally managed to focus his mind on himself, though he couldn't make his new body completely ignore its surroundings, but Aizen deduced it will be enough to do what he wants to.

Very soon, Aizen could feel that mana that was permeating his body, and he felt very sad when he found out that the mana capacity which he had painstakingly increased to the levels of royal guards was gone. He had become an ordinary man, through and through. Although he had known that it would happen when he used his ability, experiencing it still felt bad.

However, he soon noticed other things, which alleviated his sadness a bit. His soul weapon, a wakizashi with a blade length of 35 cm and handle of 12cm, which he had formed years before, was still present with him. This was good in two ways – first, it was an easy, but very tiresome task to create a soul weapon from scratch, and second, this weapon had been with him for decades, making him emotionally attached to it. Moreover, soul weapon will be a very important aspect of his new progress. However, similar to his mana, it was reduced to the very beginning stage, meaning, it was same as a dry twig right now.

Next, he noticed the changes that had happened to his soul ability. His tier 1 soul ability, Hypnosis, was back to square one, meaning, he couldn't plant suggestions in the minds of anyone who had greater mana capacity than his own.

His tier 2 soul ability, Illusory world, was also the same as Hypnosis, but its regression was worse than hypnosis, as the previous time he had awakened it, his mana capacity had been greater. As for his tier 3 ability, Deceived world, it was under a cooldown. Well, not cooldown per se, but since it required a great amount of mana and put his soul under enormous strain, the ability wasn't going to be used anytime soon.

Regarding his soul, Aizen noticed that he couldn't exactly feel his soul like he had been able to when he awakened his tier 3 ability.

After having checked his condition, Aizen started focusing on extracting any kind of information he could from the boy. In his career that had started at the bottom most post of recruit, and ended in one of the posts of upper strata, Royal Guard, Aizen had learned the importance of information, and that you never knew too much truth about something.

The memories of the boy were completely consistent, and Aizen could look through them freely, which he considered a good thing as he didn't want to go about his new life blindly.

However, the first thing he found out left him with furrowed eyebrows as it was very much different from the plan he had in mind. In his estimation, the boy should've been living in the land of Crown's Alliance, but the reality was that the boy was living in the lands of Seekers, more properly known as Seeker's Academy.

From the knowledge that Aizen had gathered while working for Kingdom of Arcadia, the land in the surroundings had three powers – Kingdom of Arcadia, Crown's Alliance, and Seeker's Academy. In terms of size, Crown's Alliance will rank at the top, and Seeker's Academy will rank at the bottom. However, in terms of strength, Seeker's Academy was ranked first, followed by Crown's Alliance and then Arcadia.

He didn't find much information on Seeker's Academy as it was a newly emerged force, however, what he did find had left him curious. The most popular knowledge was that Seeker's Academy was a brutal place, where almost everything was competed on.

Looking deeper into the memories, he started finding out the answers to some of his questions.

The boy whose body he had taken over also had the name Aizen, as he had previously known, and was also an orphan, just like him. However, unlike him, he had been taken in by an orphanage run by a kind old lady.

He spent initial years of his life in peace, being taken care of by the old lady and other, older children. Theirs was a small, poor orphanage in a town, so when a drought hit, they were put in a very bad condition.

However, fate smiled upon them, when they received an offer from a kind lord to move into his territory, which wasn't suffering from the disaster. They accepted and moved towards the offered village, but were attacked by bandits on the way.

Due to some miracle, they ran away from the bandits, but with the ruffians following after them, they couldn't get away too far. It was at that time that Aizen, out on a mission, came across this boy, who was but a child at that time, and learned that they shared a name. It was at that time that he formed a complete plan which led to his betrayal a few years later.

Aizen killed the bandits while letting the innocents go. They settled in the village under that lord's lands, and again spent a few years in peace, this time, to be attacked by slave traffickers. The whole village was massacred, with only children below ten left alive and made slaves by putting soul shackles on them.

They put the boy through rigorous training and survival tests, which the boy managed to survive through his luck and determination to take revenge for the death of the old lady. However, he never got the chance as he was then sold to Seeker's academy. Going through one more survival test, the soul shackle placed on him was removed and he was accepted as a student, with the inauguration ceremony scheduled for tomorrow.

And it was at this time that Aizen took over his body, succeeding in getting away from Arcadia kingdom. After going through the memories, Aizen felt a bit weird. The boy went through rigorous training, survived in conditions that would have killed others of his age, and his determination was oddly strong for someone his age.

When Aizen was enslaved and put on the battlefield, he also survived in such conditions. But after having gone through many battles, he knew that it would take a great amount of luck for an amateur to survive on the battlefield, which he always found somewhat unbelievable.

And now that he had another of such example before him, what should he feel about it? That the people named Aizen were prodigies? However, he knew that it was wishful thinking, but without any clues, he couldn't properly form a guess.

Letting his mind wander, he realized that he knew nothing about the inauguration ceremony, whether it was about the venue it will be held at, or the content of ceremony itself, or about how the academy worked, what would it teach, and also, why was this place considered a place of brutal competition?