Loyer

A few hours later, all the apprentices finished their fights. One fight, in particular, stood out to Ray and George since it involved the only other mage who managed to create a higher-tiered spell. The second the mage started casting the higher-tiered spell, George's eyes shot to the battle. When he realized the mage was using a light-based spell, George's eyes lit up and he told Ray that they would be immediately invited to Loyer.

The mage he chose turned out to be a young girl, which was rare since it's not often you meet a talented mage woman. Since the beginning of this world, the primary rulers have mostly been men, leading society to become mostly male-dominated.

For Ray, the gender of a person had no significance. All humans were equally under him; they were all resources for himself to become stronger! So as he watched the fight, he started to realize the girl could be useful in the future.

Just from the few moments he saw of the girl fighting, he could tell the girl had very little experience in actual combat. When she got hit by an attack, she shouted out loud even though it didn't even get through her shield! This gave even Ray secondhand embarrassment.

After casting for a few seconds, a large beam of light erupted from the girl's hands; it was like Ray's light ray but amplified to the max. The opponent stood no chance underneath the spell, he could only accept defeat quietly. In the end, her terrible fighting abilities didn't matter as there was nothing the opponent mage could do about her spells. The battle lasted less than a minute in total.

Once the girl appeared in his room, his thoughts were confirmed even further. The girl seemed somewhat timid and avoided eye contact when meeting Ray for the first time.

"Hello, my name is Ray Diant." He greeted the girl.

The girl nervously replied, "My name is Sophie Turner."

Once the two apprentices said their words, George looked satisfied and announced, "You were the last match, Sophie, a real surprise, aren't you? Anyways, now that the matches are done, I can show you around Loyer."

All three of them were instantly teleported outside the arena. They flew at a speed much faster than Magnus's speed straight toward the inner part of the city.

After a few minutes, a large wall appeared In front of them. There were guards lined up every so often along the wall, giving off an intimidating aura. Ray let out his aura to check the guards out, and to his surprise, they were all knights with a couple of mages sprinkled in.

"Identification!" One of the mages yelled out while approaching them.

George took out a badge from his pocket and put it in the air so the guard could see it.

Once the guard saw the badge, he respectfully said, "Please enter."

George flew Ray and Sophie over the wall, although Ray could feel a couple of stares directed at him coming from the knights. He ignored the gazes since the knights didn't matter in his eyes; he only paid special attention to mages.

Once you flew over the walls separating Loyer from the rest of the kingdom, it was truly a sight to behold. The entirety of Loyer was empty large expanses combined with shiny white rectangular buildings that gave off an overbearing feeling. Everything within the area looked almost perfect, without a single imperfection that Ray could immediately spot.

After flying for a while over the glowing white structures, they reached the middle of Loyer. A large building that far dwarfed the other building Ray flew over was placed on top of a small hill. Once they came close to the building, they descended onto the ground until they reached the door to the building.

"Welcome back, George. I see you've found new seedlings this time, two at that." A perky voice sounded as they entered the building.

"That's right, two apprentices this time. Get them registered."

"Alright. Come over here, you two."

Ray and Sophie walked over to where the woman was sitting. She took two familiar-looking badges and said, "Concentrate your aura on the badge."

Ray focused his aura on the ring until it started glowing. After seeing the ring start to glow, the woman quickly demanded Ray to stop.

"What you were doing just now is imprinting your soul signature into the badge. Now we can tell it's you if we inspect the badge." The woman explained.

Ray nodded and pocketed the badge; it would certainly be important in the future.

After seeing the two apprentices successfully imprint their soul signature, George pulled out 4 spell scrolls from his robe. "As a little gift for joining the faction, Loyer awards new apprentices 2 spells immediately upon registration. After watching your battles, I picked these based on what I thought you needed. Please accept it." George stated while handing each of the apprentices 2 spells.

Ray took the scroll from George's hands and then quickly replied, "This gift is too much, I will definitely repay you in the future!"

George smiled as he saw Ray's enthusiasm. "Don't repay me, repay Loyer. They are the ones giving these to you."

After handing the two scrolls to the apprentices, George stepped outside the building and pointed towards the innermost part of Loyer's territory. "Do you see the bright light emanating from that direction?"

"It's a little faint, but I see it," Ray replied.

"That light is our most valuable resource, the stone of light. It is what gives us the ability to keep improving even though the capital was built on land with hardly any energy density. You must understand, that stone is the lifeline of this faction!" He proclaimed. After a small pause, he continued, "Every mage within our faction is allocated 1 day a month to train using the stone. Check your badge, it should tell you when your allotted time is due at the top left."

Ray took out his badge and inspected the front. There was a small number on the top left corner that said, "1."

George peaked over to look at Ray's badge. "You're lucky, you can use the stone tomorrow! Arrive there at exactly midnight to maximize the opportunity." He turned to look at Sophie's stone, after which he commented, "8 days, not bad! When I was first accepted, I had to wait 27 days until I could use the stone."

After commenting on their time until they could use the stone, George pointed to the top right corner of the badge where another small number showed.

"Although under normal circumstances you aren't forced to do anything, you are required to serve a certain amount of time as a guard to the wall every year. For apprentices, you are required to serve 3 months a year. For the official magi, only a month is required. Pay attention to the time and don't miss the date, otherwise, you will be in trouble." George warned.

"That should be all the essentials, you can figure everything else out by yourself. Inject your aura into the badge and it will show you the direction to your personal laboratory. Now if you will excuse me, I have some rewards I need to reap." He hurriedly blurted with an excited look on his face.

Without waiting for any response from Ray or Sophie, George flew into the distance, quickly escaping their sight.

Ray sighed as he saw George run away from him. 'I suppose it's my luck he explained so much to me in the first place,' he thought to himself.

Ray focused his aura onto the gadget as George instructed, but nothing happened immediately. He tried twisting his aura so it moved through the holes in the badge like a key. After a few moments, he felt an internal 'clicking' noise as the direction to his laboratory was revealed.

Meanwhile, Sophie had an anxious expression on her face as she struggled to use the badge. "Do you know how this thing works?" She pleaded.

At first, Ray wanted to give an excuse and leave to go to his lab, but he decided to help her anyway. Building good relationships is always useful; she could certainly have her uses later on. It would be stupid to not help her.

"Imagine your aura is a key, and the badge is a keyhole. Try to twist your aura to unlock the keyhole."

Sophie quickly got to work again, and after a few seconds, a relieved expression swept over her face. "I got it!" She yelled excitedly. "Thankyou."

Ray smiled in response, then said, "I'll be on my way then."

"Oh, okay." She replied in a slightly disappointed tone.

Ray internally sneered after seeing her reaction. 'What a simple girl,' he thought. However, his face had the same smile as before, as if nothing happened.

He started walking in the direction his badge glowed since he unfortunately did not have a flying spell yet.

While he was walking to his house, he took a look at the scrolls George gave him. The first skill that George gave him was a basic sword skill that coated a sword in dense light energy. It could add extra power and damage to all melee attacks. Ray agreed with George's decision to give him this spell since it became pretty obvious in his second battle that despite his strong body, he needed proper sword skills to comfortably fight at close range.

The second spell George gave him was a movement spell. It allowed one to travel from one point to another almost at the speed of light! It could almost be called teleportation, but it was technically a movement skill, not teleporting. While there were many pros, there was a small con in the range of the spell. The range is only 10 meters around him, so he would have to be strategic when using it. The cost is also fairly high at around 2 energy.

He nodded in satisfaction after reading the overview of the spells. If he had these two spells, he could have easily defeated Cole and have a chance at fighting back with Kruel. But there was no point in dwelling about past possibilities, now Ray only thought about his future possibilities and how he could win such fights if they occurred again.

After walking for half an hour, he reached the building that the badge indicated was his lab. It was fairly large, around the size of an average suburban two story house. The appearance however, was not anything close to your average suburban house. To put it simply, it looked like a giant shining rectangle.

With the satisfaction of the new spells still in mind, he happily opened the door to his new house. He certainly did not expect 4 knights to be standing in front of him when to greet him.