Spring had finally arrived. The air was still cold, but no longer biting. Thin frost melted beneath pale sunlight, and the world felt as if it were waking from a long sleep as the vegetation started to sprung again.
For Danir, however, it felt like something far greater than a new season.
Nervousness and excitement warred inside his chest as their convoy departed. This was the first step toward the academy—the first step toward becoming someone who could truly survive in this world.
Jared led the procession with his knights. They traveled in a three–three–three formation—three passengers per carriage—while Zebion trotted alongside them on foot. As a centaur, distance meant little to him. The open road was his natural domain. Known that centaurs are gifted travelers themselves.
Danir shared a carriage with his father and Alec. The ride was quiet. Too quiet. The wheels creaked over frozen dirt roads as they passed small towns and other travelers along the way.
Danir stole glances at his father, but Jared remained composed, eyes forward, as if already seeing the path ahead of them.
They traveled north through the Blossomdale Kingdom, leaving gentler lands behind as the terrain hardened into tundra. Wind swept across pale plains, bending brittle grasses and whispering through scattered stone outcrops.
By nightfall, they had covered nearly half the distance to their destination. Jared ordered camp to be set just outside the town of Platoundra.
"Father?" Danir asked, stepping down from the carriage, "why not stay at an inn? There was one in the town we passed."
Jared smiled faintly."You know, son… this is one of the best parts of being an adventurer. Embracing the wilderness with your comrades. This isn't just training. It's a way of life of being an efficient adventurer."
Zeke and the others raised tents. Yuri and Gradreel gathered firewood. Soon, the scent of pine smoke drifted through the cold air.
Jared turned to Danir. "Come with me. We're going hunting."
Before the sun completely sets, they walked their way to the hunting zone, they spotted a full-grown mountain goat grazing near the rocky base of a slope.
"You take the move." Jared instructed quietly.
"Common beasts are good for beginners. Enough to earn experiencefor leveling up."
As they crouched behind stone cover, Jared continued explaining. "The moment you opened your jobclass, you will be considered as a Novice. But you become official when you wear the collar. This—" he touched the bronze collar around his neck "—made me as Transcendent rank."
Danir swallowed.
Danir moved from rock to rock, minimizing his presence, heart pounding. When he reached the throwing range, he exhaled slowly and hurled his dagger with everything he had.
The blade pierced the goat's throat, slowly bleeding it out to death. Its cry shattered the tundra's silence. Birds scattered from the cliffs. Other goats fled up the mountainside.
Danir stepped forward—as just when he was about to pick up his kill, he noticed that there were three vast shadows passed overhead circling around.
For the first time, he felt fear crawling into his spine.
It did not come like a scream or a sudden jolt. It crept—slow and deliberate—like cold fingers tracing each vertebra, climbing higher with patient cruelty. His breath faltered. The air around him felt heavier, thicker, as though the world itself had tightened its grip.
"Winter Vultures!" Jared shouted, immediately rushed his way to Danir.
The massive birds circled. Their wings shimmered with frost, and shards of ice formed along their feathers.
"Elite-level magic beasts." Jared muttered. "We'll handle them together."
A surge of warmth flooded Danir's nerves.
Jared casted his son with his strengthening buff—ten minutes of overwhelming power, enhanced all his attributes up to 10x stronger. His limbs felt lighter, sharper, faster than before. Overall, it wasn't enough for Danir to easily defeat that kind of elite magic-beast due to his unleveled status.
The first vulture dove. Jared's mithril claymore flashed once. The creature's wing separated cleanly from its body. The second met the same fate. But the third— It seized Danir.
"Father!" Danir shouted.
"No! No! Danir!" Jared shouted, seeing his son snatched by the vulture high above the sky.
Couldn't do anything but to watch him and wait for some miracle, as the sky was the limit of his power.
The world spun as the beast snatched Danir, carried him into the sky. He stabbed at its scaled leg repeatedly but the blade scraped uselessly. They are getting higher and higher. His heart pounded in his ears. With desperate instinct, he hurled his dagger upward. A lucky shot!
The blade sank into the vulture's eye.
It screeched and landed violently on the mountain peak, thrashing in agony. Danir scrambled, trying to push it toward the edge—
But the creature just grabbed him again and they fell together. The vulture regained flight mid-plummet, but Danir clung to its neck. Gritting his teeth, he retrieved his dagger and plunged it into the second eye.
The sky vanished.
They dropped together as the vulture lost its eye sight completely that made it lost its sense of direction.
"…damn it! Looks like I'm going to die again?" he whispered, as he slowly accepting his fate.
Then he saw it. A lake below. A sudden slightest hope flickered. He spread his limbs to slow his descent, then shifted into a diving posture just before impact. The water splashed upward like a pebble strike.
His shoulders shattered. Feeling the pain as well as he felt his arms useless. Helplessly drowning in pain and darkness into the depth of the cold lake.
The winter vulture also died on the depth of the cold lake.
He woke up and found himself lying on the cold ground, wet, seeing his father standing on his sight.
Water burned in his lungs as he vomited it out.
Jared hovered over him, breath heavy, hands glowing faintly with healing magic.
"I've got you, son!" Jared said, voice shaking with relief. "That was a good kill." He said with sarcastic optimism in this horrible event that almost killed his son. Soon, his worried replaced with relief after Danir survived the dangerous fall.
Warmth flooded through Danir's broken limbs. Bones knit. Bruises healed. The pain vanished under high-level healing.
They returned to camp with the mountain goat Danir killed, his first kill.
"Winter vultures are too tough to eat." Jared explained later. "Meat's like leather. Maybe juveniles are tender."
After Gadreel and Yuri done grilling the goat meat, they sat and ate together around the bonfire, raising cups of water as if celebrating with fine liquor.
"With that little body of yours." Zebion laughed, "I can't believed you fight like a raging bull, can you imagine it?"
"No, it was just a lucky shot out of survival instinct and adrenaline." Danir said humbly.
"We only able to fought against slimes and demonic skeletons with novice and intermediate rank in the training-field labyrinth in the academy." Zeke admitted.
"Seriously?" Danir doubted.
Caspi nodded. "That's why leveling up is so slow."
Danir smiled quietly.
That night, in his tent, while Ulfzar and Caspi sleeping behind him, he quietly checked his grimoire. Finding out he already reached Level 7. Added +350 to each of his attributes, and his first magic obtained, the Ice Shard Daggers, a magic he obtained after killing a winter vulture.
Grimoire's 1st Page: Danir Granger, Level 7 BladeMagus—
BP: 504+350=854
MP: +350
STR: 4+350=354
SPD: 3+350=353
END: 2+350=352
INT: +350
Grimoire's 2nd Page: Magic spell—Ice Shards Daggers.
This little progress made him feel happy, despite what he'd been through of getting it.
"One hell of a lucky shot." he murmured with a confident smile.
By morning, they crossed the tundra and approached the Deadwood Forest. At its edge stood the entrance to the spider labyrinth.
"Once called as Deadwood forest." Jared said.
"Now known as the Labyrinth of Lady Arachnae. A cursed woman who became the Queen of Spiders."
Alec rolled his eyes. "You've told us this a hundred times."
Jared ignored him.
"Rumors say there's a shortcut by crossing through it on the other side. But we won't gamble on that rumors." Jared said, as he decided for them to better not use the rumured shortcut.
Soon, the grassy plains opened known as the Sill Plain, stretched ahead, and beyond it, they can see the city walls, massive, towering fortress walls surrounded it.
Danir's breath caught.
The fossilized bones of the Earth Dragon known as Scalebound—were assembled like a statue, stood in the heart of the city.
His jaw dropped. "This was no ordinary city."
"Scalebound had once been summoned by the demonlord to devastate the eastern continent. It was slain by one of the Ten Heroes...
(Jared paused explaining for a second, then he continued)
...Radomir Drogonovich, a Golden Collar Gunslinger. A Grandmaster. Said to be above Level 500. The only Dragon Slayer. The king of Blossomdale, who also ruled this city. A living legend. People considered him as the symbol of hope, bravery, peace, and camaraderie in the whole eastern continent."
Jared spoke quietly. "I was once one of his apprentice."
Danir stared at his father differently after that.
At last, they reached the Quarters, rooms for the scholars to stay in.
Jared said his farewell to his sons before heading back home to Pearl-Shire. "Boys, Look for each other. Okay?!"
Danir, Caspi, and Ulfzar shared room together in the freshmen and sophomore's Quarters. Alec and Nezcar in the Junior's Quarters. And Zeke and Zebion in the Senior's Quarters.
Danir stepped into their new room. It was simple. Clean. Organized. It reminded him of his home in Eastgate and his mother.
Excitement swelled inside him—but so did a quiet ache of longing. He stood by the window, staring at the towering walls of Scalebound Citadel.
"This feels... Epic!"
He found this world vastly different from the one he once knew. Here, a person's path was decided early—so early that children as young as seven began training for the roles they would one day fulfill. Swords were placed in small hands before they could fully understand the weight of steel. Grimoires were opened before bedtime stories were finished.
Childhood, in this world, was not a season of innocence but a preparation ground for survival.
The fundamentals of one's future were sharpened from the beginning, carved carefully into each child in exchange for the softness of youth. Play was replaced with drills. Curiosity was guided toward mastery. Dreams were measured against usefulness.
And yet… strangely enough, Danir did not feel suffocated by it.
In his former world, expectations had clung to him like chains—grades, comparisons, quiet disappointments hidden behind polite smiles. There, he had carried the invisible weight of not being enough.
But here, despite the harshness and the early discipline, he felt something different.
There was no silent judgment in his father's gaze. No crushing standard he was required to meet before he could even breathe. Strength was demanded, yes—but it was earned, not assumed.
For the first time in both his lives, Danir felt that the road ahead was difficult… but honest, and somehow, that made all the difference.