Chapter Text
The news reached Stella Academy on the day the class placement for first-year students was announced.
Usually, news about a backwater village being attacked by dark mages wouldn't make this much noise. It's not the first time dark mages attacked a village, many places in Aether fell to them, whether it be Persona Gates they summoned syncing with reality or invasions from their forces. It was just the matter of time for the village to fall, being outside of mages' territory and the frontline for dark mage conflicts, especially since the Dark Mage Cult made a large scale attack and summoned a high risk level Persona Gate.
However, this time was different.
According to the mages that arrived to the village after detecting a high risk Persona Gate, a couple of days late due to the heavy snow storm and distance, the village miraculously withstood the onslaught, long enough for them to save the villagers. The surviving villagers managed to give a vivid description of how their village was attacked by a large group of dark mages a few mornings ago. Their main protector, "Seol", ordered them to evacuate and slayed some dark mages, but was trapped in a Persona Gate the dark mages summoned. The villagers managed to hold out with the alchemy items and safe houses he made until the mages came.
It was a Risk Level 7 Persona Gate.
As they were deliberating on how to save the villager's protector and fight off dark mages, the Persona Gate was cleared, and the dozens of dark mages in the vicinity were slayed promptly by said protector. Working together, they managed to slay the dark mages, and the remnants fled for their lives. Seol promptly fell unconscious after seeing his village was safe.
Most shockingly, Seol the protector was just a 17 year old boy wielding a sword, of all things. He only used Blink and no other spell.
This fact was met with uproar, followed by speculations. Who's the boy? Why was he fighting with a sword? How did he defeat droves of dark mages with just a sword?
The Headmaster of Stella Academy, Eltman Eltwin announced he would meet Seol, nicknamed the "Dark Mage Slayer" by the press, as he was supposed to attend Stella as a first-year student.
"I see, " said Ma Yuseong, as he stood in an alley, listening to Raven relaying his findings.
A few days ago, Ma Yuseong arrived at Stella Academy as the freshman representative, being the top scorer. He looked around Arcanium while walking out of the airship, took in the view of the grand city and couldn't help but anticipated his life as a Stella student.
'I supposed that I had put my hopes too high...'
The Stella entrance ceremony was ordinary, he's not surprised to see Hae Wonryang among the top five ranked students, he expected nothing less from his rival since middle school. While the commoner girl named Flame was new, Ma Yuseong barely payed attention to her, knowing that she enrolled via the Headmaster's recommendation for her abilities to use non-human powers. Hong Biyeon Adolevit and Aiselle Molf being on stage were also within his expectations, as they were already pretty well known prior to Stella.
However, Aiselle Molf looked unexpectedly anxious, brows furrowed while she looked towards the sky, like she wanted to be somewhere else at the moment.
'Why does she look so worried, shouldn't she be glad to be ranked among the top five?'
Ma Yuseong quickly brushed off that thought, as it was time for his speech as freshman representative.
The class placement test that followed was too easy, not even the three devil questions could pose a challenge to him, and he spent the rest of the test staring outside. The rest of the day was uneventful too.
'So boring.'
The next morning began with students buzzing about the class placement. Ma Yuseong was placed in S-Class, so were the other top five students, just as expected.
"I got into B-Class, that's better than I expected."
"That's amazing Harillen! I only get C-Class..."
"This is preposterous, my grades are high! I should be in S-Class instead!"
"That's right Yuslek, you should be in S-Class! We should protest to the teachers about this-"
Then, without warning, the news dropped.
A Dark Mage Cult summoned a Risk Level 7 Persona Gate in a village far north, outside the mages' territory during an invasion, but the gate was cleared by a 17-year-old boy, with no magic but Blink and a sword in hand. More impressively, the dark mages summoned that Persona Gate to trap him to begin with.
Intrigued by the fact that the Dark Mage Cult went through all the trouble to trap a fighter his age in a Risk 7 Persona Gate (meaning the cult was at least aware of Seol's capabilities, and this spoke of long time conflict between them), only for Seol to clear it alone and just in time to stop the invasion, Ma Yuseong sent Raven to investigate about it. A few details in Raven's report caught his interest, to his own surprise.
The young Dark Mage Slayer, whose full name was Baek Yuseol according to Raven (the villagers were too busy dealing with the aftermath of the attack for interviews and paparazzi were chased away from the hospital when they try to pry for information of the boy, the mages only remember "Seol" as his name in the chaos), had been fending off dark mages around his hometown for three years, with only Blink, a shining white sword, and Alchemy items. He also fortified some houses with protective charms to make safe houses, and created items to sell to people in his village and the surrounding ones to defend themselves. This allowed the villagers to hide in the safe houses and fight the dark mages by throwing potions or items at them.
Baek Yuseol was also the first person they go to whenever dungeons or Persona Gates show up in their territory, and he already cleared an impressive number of them before high school, not including the Risk Level 7 Persona Gate that was the focus of the news.
'So him clearing the gate was not just a stroke of luck then...'
The reason why Baek Yuseol was only known in the border territories was through word of mouth and not many people dared to venture outside of the mages' territory, helped by the fact he wanted to lay low, presumably to avoid his enemies tracking him down or random dark mages wanting to try their luck. Furthermore, he seldom left his hometown lest the villages were at the mercy of the dark mages or dungeons, so he was mostly obscure to the central continent.
Not anymore.
Especially since news broke out that Baek Yuseol was supposed to be a Stella first-year student at rank 1141st, at the Headmaster's recommendation.
Now that Ma Yuseong thought about it, he overheard some Dark Mages complaining about a fighter at the North Border somehow kept foiling their raids, when he reluctantly returned to his father's fortress during middle school semester breaks.
"This brat keeps fighting our forces off, and killed several of our army!"
"I thought it would be easy since it's not a mage's territory..."
"Yeah, other places are protected by mages, we can't let it go! Where else can we get easy sacrifices?"
"Since when do they have a magic warrior?"
"Tell me about it, he was quick and unorthodox too. We need to think of something... "
But when asked more about the opponent they immediately clammed up. Now it made sense, they still had pride, and being defeated by a middle schooler without magic other than an evasive spell was a huge blow to their ego. They wouldn't admit it, nevermind that their statements would be met with ridicule and disbelief.
'Who are you, Baek Yuseol?' thought Ma Yuseong, as he fiddled with his newly resonated Edmurry Etemiri.
Ma Yuseong's greatest dream was to get rid of the dark mana within him. He loathed his father's power so much that he swore to not rely on it, only his mother's white mana.
(Ma Yuseong disliked the feeling of losing control over his emotions when using dark mana, after depleting his white mana reserves.)
The fact that Baek Yuseol managed to protect people without white magic is awe-inspiring; the fact that he was Ma Yuseong's age piqued his interest even more. If someone managed to achieve such amazing feats without magic, then he would try harder in training his white magic, to make it more powerful so that his dark mana wouldn't overwhelm him. Baek Yuseol solidified his determination to reach his goal. He would like to meet him one day, the genius sword-wielding Blink mage.
"Thank you Raven, do inform me if there is anything new about him."
'Didn't the Headmaster said that he was going to meet Baek Yuseol?'
So perhaps he would soon meet this boy at Stella Academy.