Chapter 8: Awakening the ‘web’

As Villin walked out of the room he was grinning stupidly. He had been slightly scared all this time, what if the previous owner has magic but as an earthling he didn't? Even though this worry was small as the chances were tiny he still felt relieved at this time.

Somewhere he had hoped he would get to class A but he wasn't too disappointed, he always knew the possibility was very small and even if he did get in nobles were bound to act superior around him, trying to make him do things.

When he used the door he saw to get out of the room he got into a hallway the hallway was practically filled with doors, he noticed a few 13-year-olds walk out of some of the other doors before looking around seemingly confused at what to do.

Villin was rather surprised to see estimated fourth years do this until he spotted a certain someone. The door across from him just opened as a beauty walked out. She had bright red hair and a small nose, in a good-looking sheath on her arm was a wand with a basic handle. When she walked out she noticed him and froze in her steps, a faint blush appeared on her cheeks as she gasped just loud enough to be heard by him.

After this she kept her head down and moved to the left immediately, nearly sprinting down the hallway.

"This-" Villin felt stumped for a moment as he realized what happened. It seemed like awakening their magic the first years had physically aged three to four years at least.

Sadly there was no mirror in sight so he still had no idea what he looked like. After a moment he noticed most people were going to his right, the same direction the girl went, and so he followed.

He had to walk about twenty meters before the hallway turned to the left, soon after it reached what seemed to be a waiting room. Twenty-five chairs were standing there, most of which already had someone sitting in them. The red-haired girl was sitting somewhere on the right while the remaining seats were all to the left.

He simply went ahead and took a seat next to a rather burly boy wearing glasses. As soon as he sat down the boy seemed to implode as he immediately yelled out. "YOU, HOW DARE YOU SIT NEXT TO ME WITHOUT PERMISSION?!! I AM PIERSON SON OF AMEN, HEIR OF THE HOUSE SKULL!!!"

At first, Villin was shocked at the volume the kid could make using his mouth after which there was a bit of disbelief on his face. This was simply because this noble was acting too stupidly. Silver had assured them nobles were taught well and generally smart, usually not going after someone on their own and always getting a feel of someone's abilities beforehand.

Villin had taken this to heart and didn't expect someone like this to come along. Not only himself but some of the people sitting on the other side of him also showed a bit of annoyance on their faces, they didn't seem pleased with the youth's action.

Actually now that he looked at them, nearly all of the other kids sitting here seemed to have a wand sheath on their arm. Furthermore, the wands stored there wasn't the basic kind as each of them had some sort of handle at the least.

Villin felt this was odd since he was put in class B, how was it that he was here with a large number of nobles. The burly Pierson saw that Villin didn't seem to care about him and was about to yell again when an old woman came into the room, noticing the woman with her golden robe come in Pierson immediately stopped himself from saying anything more and sat down quietly. The woman soon started speaking.

"Hello children, my name is Crystal and I am one of the Class A pill-making teachers. The twenty-five of you will be taking your electives together for the following month since you all chose pill-making, magic arrays and enchanting. This is the first month so most of those that chose all of these electives are students of class A. There are a few exceptions but the headmaster graciously allowed them to go with class A for the first month so as to not have a class of four people."

As soon as Crystal spoke Villing felt weird. She looked very much like a nice person but he had a bad feeling when he looked at her, he wasn't sure why but he decided not to get too close with this teacher.

"For now please reach into your mind and attempt to connect with the web. I will be back in one hour. I will remind you once more not to try to connect any of the nodes with each other since every year there is at least one idiot who gets himself killed before the classes even begin."

After saying this she simply turned around and walked away, leaving the kids on their own. Pierson no longer tried to cause trouble as he closed his eyes just like the other kids in the room. Naturally, Villin followed as he tried to delve into his mind, into the region he previously didn't know existed.

This actually went surprisingly easy. When he first got into this region mentally only a few minutes had passed. After this he actively tried to explore the area at first, finding little success. After this, he attempted to instead widen the area he was looking at. This bore immediate results. It seemed like he was simply exploring a tiny area as the area he was 'looking' at was only a thousandth of the whole thing. It wasn't long before he saw the web. A collection of dots also known as nodes.

First, when he was still zooming out, he thought there would be a few hundred at most but he was soon shown to be incredibly wrong. The 'web' was actually a globe made and filled with these nodes. There were a total of about ten thousand of them, seemingly put there randomly as the distance between nodes and the size of each node was different.

When he looked closer he noticed a key difference though. There were about a hundred nodes in the center area that were a very light gray. Then a large area around it making for about a thousand nodes were a dark grey, the other nine-thousand were nearly black.

When he could see the web fully he opened his eyes as this was what they talked about as awakening your web in the books he read.

When he opened his eyes though he noticed everyone else was still sitting down with their eyes closed while only a dozen minutes had passed, so he figured he must've done something wrong.

He closed his eyes again and focused on the hundred nodes that were in a light gray color. Then he thought that maybe instead of just awakening the web, he was supposed to awaken the nodes too. Awakening a node was rather simple. You pour in some magic power and try to manipulate the magic to form a needle or drill so it can pierce and seep into a node for the first time, allowing you to cycle magic through it later.

The first node he began with was the centermost one as he started to pour some of the magic power he felt inside him into it. At first, it looked like it was succeeding as he barely managed to form a magical drill to start drilling through the wall protecting a node's core. He got about halfway through this wall before he suddenly felt empty as he no longer had any magic power left, then the wall soon regenerated making it seem as if he had done nothing.

'This must be another way to make nobles seem more important, after all with a beast bloodline they can hold more magic power giving them an advantage early on, furthermore, he had used all of his magic power earlier when touching the crystal and only about a third of it had come back thus far.'

Villin felt a little dejected as he opened his eyes, he looked around and noticed only the red-haired girl had her eyes open as she was currently inspecting her wand.

Only twenty minutes had passed at this point so he could do nothing but follow the girl's example and keep himself busy by playing around with his wand, grabbing it in different ways, and trying to unsheath and resheath it quicker.

About twenty more minutes passed before another person opened his eyes and then in the remaining twenty minutes all of the other people had also opened their eyes. The only guy that surprised Villin was a guy sitting on the utmost right. He didn't have a sheath and only had a basic wand such as himself. It looked like he was in a similar situation as himself and was actually a Class B student. Villin couldn't help but wonder how he had enough magic power to awaken a node. He had only started wondering this before the older woman came back. She looked over everyone shortly before speaking.

"Good, it seems like everyone has awakened their web. If you reach into your consciousness you should now be able to see a large globe made out of nodes. These nodes should hold three colors. Light gray nodes are those you should be able to awaken when you refill your magic power, the dark grey ones are those that you will probably be awakened if your lifetime while those that nearly reach black are those you are highly unlikely to ever awaken. Those with a bloodline generally had between one and two thousand dark grey nodes while those that do not have a bloodline generally have around five hundred dark grey nodes."

She spoke with a clear tone as her words made Villin let out a breath of relief. Not only had he been able to do the task required the fastest but the number of nodes he would be able to activate was higher than most others that didn't have a bloodline, even rivaling some that did! This was obviously an extremely good thing as it would make his future path easier.