37 The Fiv... Three Great Calamities

"Are you sure it is the Five Great Calamities and not the Three Great Cala… "

THOMP

The moment he started talking, all could see the old lady preparing a small snowball that was instantly launched on the forehead of Leodagan. Truth to be told, he did seek that punishment since all the noble children knew about the Three Great Calamities. Pointing the fact that this teacher was messing around with the number three and five was a deadly mistake and the son of magus ended up paying the price. He nearly knocked his head backward but his two friends managed to catch him before that potential accident. None dared to laugh at that sight and they were more and more convinced to get the hell out of this class as soon as possible.

"Besides the arrogant brat, anyone wants to try his luck?" She created more and more projectiles, from the same snowball that would only hurt a bit to a true ice shard that will be extremely painful to the receiver. The back of many kids was filled with cold sweats and a major part of the seated students tried to appear as small as possible. Seeing this, Owen had no choice but to step up before the fourth calamity arrived for them.

"From the dawn of mankind, numerous threats plagued the different nations and sometimes even brought the ruin and the destruction of the latter. But only three events were so important that the entire world was riddled with war and death. The main issue with those three terrible events is the fact that the memories and the writings about the most ancient calamity are nearly gone. The second and potentially most important of the three was spread enough thanks to the bards and musicians but numerous names and locations during those dark times are still missing from the archives. That's why it is difficult to really tell what happened."

His calm and collected voice manage to reassure the different children in the room. Even the teacher was visibly less angry and began to sit down at her desk, not blatantly threatening her students.

"Good voice sweet boy, you can continue your tale. At least you are better than your friend."

Talking about Leodagan, he had a huge red mark on his face, proof that the snowball was not as light as it seemed. Owen tried to search in his memory for a short time what happened thousands of years ago but only found a few things. Since it was the case, he didn't dwindle any longer and start his story.

"The most ancient Great Calamity was called the Age of Fire. It was at the beginning of our society and the humans were not yet divided into multiple nations. There was no war in the same sense that it has today but sometimes, the human tribes fought for water, food, women. The existence of magician was not even really known and those capable of manipulating the elements were often seen as gods. It is hard to know, but it is speculated that we already knew about numerous non-human races like the dwarves, the elves, the djinns, the vampires and such. However, like us, they were very few in numbers and the world was in a sense of relative peace."

The more Leilade listen, the more she knew it was entirely true. She was the only one in this room that understood what this planet was, a world entirely designed by the Ancients. All of them always served a purpose, whether it was to try a new species in a controlled environment or another experiment like that. Most of the time, the smartest beings of the universe started at a very small scale, to not disturb the created environment. The less their actions have a repercussion of the world, the better it was. As for the First Calamity Owen will talk about, she was certain it was the test the Ancients wanted to conduct.

"But everything changed when the mana suddenly run amok. It was not immediately known by the humans, but soon, the plants and the animals changed in a drastic way. Previously harmless rabbits turned into true killing machines, with sharp teeth and pointy ears. They could leap about … great distances. I don't know why one of the few texts still conserved detailed those mutated rabbits so much, but apparently, they were deadly foes. In the end, however, the previous preys turned into ferocious predators and the magical beasts were born. After all those years, we managed to reduce their numbers but there are still some regions totally under the control of such monsters. It was, in that regard, called the Age of Monsters."

The youngest descendant of a magus stopped talking for a bit and looked at the old woman Ella Romba. She harbored a huge smile and seemed quite happy by what he told to the class. But she still complained a bit about some part. It was still impressive for such a young boy to have learned so much about ancient times and since it was the case, she decided to change the tale-teller.

"Ok, the sweet boy was fine, who will talk about the next calamity? Arrogant boy? Or the dwarf next to him?"

The dwarf that was called like that was Jorien that was fuming internally.She knew she was small, but not that small to be called a dwarf. She was ten but even smaller than Leilade, but she knew that everyone grew up at a different pace, hers was just a little slower. After that insult, she still stood up and angrily describe the Second Great Calamity.

"We don't know how much time passed between the two events, but it was at least one thousand years. During that time, mankind managed to federate themselves around leaders and the Oracle talked about the future with each of them. For our case, it was about the Minalcar Teldil ruling Masslaia and the Gwendhir defending it."

Jorien looked at Istuienn while saying this. It directly concerned the princess that was half listening half sleeping. She probably knew about that but was still very rude with that attitude. Even the mysterious girl with boy clothes at the back of the room was listening attentively. So why the princess was in that mood, no one knew and no one could do a single thing about it. Getting angrier for no reason Jorien resumed her monologue.

"As for the other nations, only the prediction about the Kingdom of Pankow was later known. The last surviving knights talked about their downfall. Seven dark stars will roam the world and only death will let you live. The seven stars referred to the seven Dark Gods and the latter part of the sentence described the undead state of that kingdom. Now, the former friends with the dwarves are all skeletons, lich, ghouls and other monstrosities. But that's not all that happened."

She noticed that unlike her brother, she was messing up her story. She hadn't even started and she already talked about the end of one nation. Pulling herself together, she started once again.

"The denomination of that calamity was the Age of Darkness. One day, without any warning, a huge roar resonated all across the world. Whether it was the orcs from the West, the vampires from the South, the humans, the dwarves, the dragons, everyone heard it. During a few days, panic was spreading and every power tried to uncover the reason of that roar. Whatever was powerful enough to produce such a loud sound was probably capable of annihilating a nation by itself. After all those searches, however, instead of finding it, the Kingdom of Pankow found near the border between our two nations a group of seven monsters. Only one magus of the 8th Circle managed to survive. But I shouldn't say it like that, how can I tell it?"

The little kid was trying to convey her thoughts and while some understood what she meant, the commoners were totally lost. For them, no one was of the 8th Circle so why the ancient people were that powerful compared to the current state of the Massalia Kingdom?

"Okay little dwarf, let me take it from here. The principle of the Magic Circles is just a denomination created by ourselves to differentiate two magicians. As you can guess, it is based on the strongest magic ever known. So, before the arrival of the Dark Gods, only the magic of the dragons was considered as the strongest and those getting close to it were the 8th Circle magus. However, after the Age of Darkness, all the magicians and magus, supervised by the Archmage himself, were reunited in a conclave to change that notation. The former 8th Circle was turned into 6th Circle. Yes, you heard it right, the current 10th Circle is someone capable of fighting head to head against the dark gods by himself. Not like what we did when we threw dozens of millions of lives just to hurt them. Now, you can keep going little dwarf."

The previously lost students all harbored a look of understanding. It made sense to update the system if the system is not relevant anymore. So if previously the strongest being was a magician but after that, someone came and crush that very dragon in one attack, that someone became the strongest being. They applied the same reasoning for the Magic Circles. For Leilade however, that information made her curious. Because, she imagined that herself when the Demonic Energy will be spread, will probably be at least a 10th Circle magus for the humans. So the dark gods were beings of her caliber.

"After that, the group of monsters split up and rampaged everywhere they went. No one was spared and blood flooded the plains and the fields. A week after that, twelve beings were blessed by a light coming from the Heavens. That was the only logical explanation. But that light was not biased by any means, meaning that those twelve beings were from different origins. All controlled a huge power in their own faction. One was a vampire, only his name was known, Count Von Kruger. Two dwarves, Vosni…

"You can skip the names, otherwise, we will never end this." The old lady cut Jorien in her speech but what she said made sense, who cared about the names?

"Ok, one vampire, two dwarves, two elves, one orc, one troll, five humans. Those twelve became the Heroes and were granted exceptional strength, agility, intelligence, wisdom and such. It was necessary to fight the powerful Dark Gods. Unfortunately, even with all that cooperation, the number of Heroes surviving were very low. Three people managed to not succumb immediately to their wounds, one was the prince of the Massalia Kingdom, Guillaume Minalcar Teldil. Another one was the dwarf Vosnik SharpEye and the last was a former noble of the Kingdom of Pankow, the Archmage Wilhelm."

She finished by that but Leilade was extremely displeased by it. Contrarily to her brother, Jorien was incapable of doing a good job of telling a story. She passed the descriptions of the Dark Gods and didn't even talk about the disasters that occurred. Also, she was familiar with the term 13 Heroes so why here there were only 12 Heroes? Feeling something weird with either her memories or the incomplete truth that she listened, she asked her question.

"So why did I hear about the 13 Heroes?"