The Stargazer

by Nikostar A

  Suddenly, Alexander heard a loud series of footsteps coming from the side. The footsteps were fast and loud; their owners were jogging.

  Alexander turned and looked in the direction of the footsteps and sure enough, he soon saw a small group of soldiers running in a line.

  "Halt," exclaimed the leading soldier when he noticed Alexander's figure. He wiped out the sweat off his forehead and approached Alexander.

  "You are a student of the academy? What are you doing in the jungle?" The students were not forbidden from going to the jungle but it was still abnormal to find one here alone. The sergeant was curious and was simply fulfilling his duty of protecting the island.

  "Sergeant. I am indeed a student of the academy. My name is Alexander Vagras. I was just walking around, exploring the jungle. I am using it as an opportunity to train a little bit," answered Alexander. He noticed the insignia on the soldier's shoulder and determined his rank. As for the random excuse of training, Alexander could not say that he wanted to look for grass to send into his space.

  To Alexander's surprise, the sergeant answered, "D*mn, the students this year are quite something. You are the second student I meet today that claims to want to train in the forest. You can join us like your friend did if you want." He pointed in the direction of his soldiers.

  Alexander's eyes widened. Among the exhausted soldiers who were busy catching their breath, there was one particular figure that Alexander immediately recognized: Xale Radmon. The young man from Loha was unexpectedly training with the normal soldiers!

  "Xale? What is he doing here?" internally exclaimed Alexander. "Was this why he was able to be so strong later on? I remember him having one of the best physiques among the entire cohort. He was also very close to the soldiers!"

  Xale looked at Alexander, his eyes flashed briefly. However, he soon lowered his head, completely ignoring Alexander. He did not greet him, pretending to have never met him. Xale did not want anything to do with the people of Loha and from his last interaction with Alexander, it was clear that that person was close to some powerhouses in Loha.

  Alexander was neither surprised nor angered by Xale's action. He smiled at the sergeant. "Sorry, I like to follow my own method of training."

  "Your own method? Haha, tell me more about it!" exclaimed the sergeant.

  "Modern yoga," answered Alexander. He knew the sergeant was just looking for an excuse to not leave him alone here. Furthermore, the sergeant was probably just buying time for his trainees to recover.

  The sergeant heartily laughed. "Yoga? You are joking. Sure it's good to maintain your health but that's not called training. If you want real training, you should follow us. If not, I recommend you go back to the city. The jungle is not dangerous but it is not appropriate to wander around here."

  Naturally, Alexander did not want to return to the city so early. He even bought a take away to spend the day here! "I am confident in my own strength. I know that I am not allowed to use magic here but I don't need it to protect myself. Do you want me to prove it?"

  The sergeant sized up Alexander, doubtful of his words. "Sure, just punch me once. If I am satisfied with your strength, I will pretend I did not meet you there." Alexander did not have an outstanding body. He was healthy but he did not have a lot of muscles. Sure, he was in better shape than those mages who spent all their time indoor but it was not enough. The sergeant wanted to show Alexander how weak he really was.

  The sergeant took a step back and placed his hands in front of him in a defensive posture. "Hit here, let me see how good your yoga techniques can be."

  "Sure." Alexander smiled and positioned himself in front of the sergeant. He took a deep breath and started cracking his joints. To the sergeant's eyes, Alexander was simply trying to delay the inevitable outcome. What he did not know was the meaning of the posture Alexander sneakily took while cracking his joints.

  Alexander knew his body was not very strong but he had a cheat! Arado, the laborer. By adopting the body posture, Alexander temporarily became stronger. It was not at the level of the sergeant but Alexander's current strength would not lose to regular soldiers.

  "Bang!"

  Without warning, Alexander punched the sergeant.

  The latter grunted. His eyes widened. 'He is strong!'

  The sergeant never expected such an average looking youth to have so much hidden strength. As he was unprepared, the sergeant had no choice but to take a step back to stabilize himself. His arms shook as he closed his hand, locking Alexander's fist.

  "Wow, that was unexpected. You are indeed very strong," exclaimed the sergeant as he let go of Alexander's fist.

  "With that kind of strength, you are qualified to roam the jungle. You would not lose to any of those recruits in a battle of strength but remember that raw strength is not all there is to combat. I will honor my words. You are free to go. My name is Albert by the way. If you want to perfect your combat skills, you can look for me at the camp," said the sergeant.

  He had a deep respect for Alexander's strength. It was clear that Alexander did not have any combat training before but his physical strength was outstanding. It was a pity that Alexander chose to walk the path of a mage and would degrade his gifted body. What the sergeant did not know was that all his strength only existed because of magic!

  Alexander laughed and chose not to comment.

  "Alright! You have rested enough! We shall continue, follow me!" exclaimed Albert as he looked at his soldiers. There breathing had calmed down significantly, it was time to resume the training session.

  And so, the group of soldiers soon started their grind, following behind sergeant Albert while Alexander chose to walk deeper into the jungle. The latter did not notice that from the group of soldiers, Xale was curiously looking at Alexander's disappearing back.

  ***

  In the meanwhile, Aila met Lyana at the restaurant for lunch. "Aila, how did it go? Did you get any information?" happily asked Lyana. She left the couple early last night and went to look for a suitable prey herself. She enjoyed the life here, there were so many men ready to give themselves to her.

  "No. I don't know if he is really weak or his will power is just too strong. I did not drain a lot of mana from him last night but he still slept very quickly after the act. Considering his strength, it is very likely that it is the latter."

  "Ohh, some people are like that. It will take more than one sessions. As long as you persist, no one can resist you. But I have a question. Why did you agree to give him all that water?" asked Aila with a curious expression.

  "Water is not very expensive, we can afford to import quite a few bottles. Furthermore, I need to make him come here regularly. Lastly, I wanted to see why he needed so much water and how he would use it. I believe he has some sort of storage ability. Earlier this morning, I saw his pour water on his hand and it would disappear out of nowhere."

  "A storage ability? But that does not explain how the twister appeared!"

  "Who knows? Some techniques are weird and have strange requirements. Maybe he needs water as a fuel?"

  ***

  While the two girls were chatting, in another part of the city, Carmen Ashmore frowned as she looked at the person on her screen.

  "Mr. Lombardi, I am afraid we are unable to lighten your son's punishment. He will spend the next two months at the internal part of the island and will contribute his mana to power the arrays. All the evidence shows that your son attacked first. You know very well that it is a light punishment. Had Alexander been the one who attacked first, you would have immediately asked for his expulsion," said Carmen while looking at the hairy man on the screen.

  Frederik Lombardi caressed his beard, "Miss, I believe the statement of my son. It is very possible that the student named Alexander is somehow able to hide his use of magic. I suggest an intensive investigation on this matter. My son was framed by that student. Two months is too long. He is the champion of his cohort; two months without meditating is no different fro
m destroying the future of a genius! The Flemming Organization is willing to transfer $100 million worth of materials from Loha if you agree to lighten his sentence."

  Frederik Lombardi painfully spoke the last sentence. $100 million was not a small sum and it was all coming from his own pocket but for the sake of his son, he was ready to pay the heavy price.

  "This claim is ridiculous but we are not ignoring its possibility. Alexander is being closely monitored. In any case, once we go through the weekly test, he will have to reveal his real strength and if he can really hide his use of magic, then we'll see what will happen then."

  Carmen deliberately paused for a moment before continuing, "As for your son, the best I can do is to lower the duration of his punishment to one month. My role is to maintain fairness and discipline. No matter what, your son needs to learn his lesson and serve as an example for all those who think they can break the system."

  Frederik Lombardi bitterly smiled, "Alright, I will transfer the resources soon." He put an end to the video call and instantly cursed, "Little b*tch! If it was not for your twisted sense of justice, you would never have obtained your post. You are just a tool used by governments to enforce their stupid rule. If it was not for that, you would never dare to speak to me like that!"

  Chapter 22: Ancient crown

  Alexander's life considerably slowed down after he returned from the jungle. He decided to lay low after the incident with Marcus Lombardi. He went to the lectures according to his timetable and spent the rest of his time practicing the body postures and meditating. Occasionally, he would go to the crafting club and mess around with the materials he previously ordered.

  Whenever Aila called him, he would go to her restaurant to send the water in his space. Alexander did his best to stay as far as possible from Aila. His heart was pained to do so but it was even more painful to see Aila trying to seduce him. Every night, he would think of how he could explain everything to her but he was scared. He was scared that it would ruin his chances with her. Alexander did not want to become Aila's subordinate, he wanted to support her but the current Aila was very likely to just plot against him if he revealed his stargazer's power.

  Time flew by quickly. It has already been one month since Alexander arrived at the Earth Academy. Alexander lived a dull student life. He was walking down the path of a mage but that did not stop the other subjects' lecturers from giving him a ton of homework.

  During that time, Alexander gradually faded into the background. As he did not show his power, people gradually forgot about him. At the same time, other talents emerged, taking away the limelight. To gather attention, they publicly challenged Alexander to a duel to take his title.

  It all started with a woman called Sonya Kress. She was rumored to be a member of The Watchers. Although she was just a first-year student, she was quite proficient in sneak attacks and could use [Stealth], the weaker version of [Invisibility].

  When he was challenged, Alexander simply answered, "What would I get from that?" and immediately, Carmen notified him, "No betting is allowed!" The headmistress did not know Alexander's strength but no matter what, she would not allow him to suddenly increase his Earth Credits again.

  And so, with Carmen's intervention, Sonya's challenge was ignored. Noticing Alexander's cowardly behavior, other students started to challenge him. William Sheperd, a member of Nuevo Mundo and Christ Bantey a second-year student from the Flemming Organization both followed Sonya and challenged Alexander.

  When the public saw that Alexander refused the challenges, their opinion of the champion naturally changed. Aside from those three, there were two other individuals who raised into prominence. The first one was Lyana from the Sacred Mountain. She captured the heart of many and by showing her skills, she became known as the Queen of the first years. The second person's name was Olon. He was also a Lohan and belonged to one of the four major forces.

  Alexander was not bothered by these events. He spent his time with his friends and practiced diligently. He knew that fighting the other students was going to happen eventually. From his memory, some of the exams would involve duels between the students. He needed to be ready for them.

  His mana reservoir expanded slightly and now held enough mana to allow Alexander to cast two advanced spells. As a byproduct of his meditation, Alexander's space also increased in size; it was twice as big as it originally was. The situation in the pocket dimension also improved considerably. The soil had been irrigated regularly and the water content in the atmosphere there increased. The soil was no longer cracked and there were even a few sprouts scattered around the space.

  Alexander was very careful during his meditation. He knew his life force would be drained if he meditated and as a result, he used his remaining Earth Credits to purchase a few herbs. Those herbs had the unique property of containing mana. By chewing them during his meditation, Alexander could use the mana from the herbs and inject it into his mana reservoir instead of using the mana in his mana source.

  It was a neat trick that could allow him to conserve his life span.

  Alexander also made considerable progress on the stargazer path. During the past few weeks, Alexander managed to master a total of twelve different constellations and was on his way to learning three more. Most of the new constellations had supportive abilities but they were all useful to some extent.

  The two most important ones were [Ianto, the Mariner] and [Lunara, the Geomancer]. Those two constellations gave Alexander control over water and earth respectively. With that, Alexander could now use his star energy to mimic the four elements like any other mages.

  Thanks to his stargazer's abilities, Alexander was already on par with any third-year students. However, he did not become complacent; he still trained diligently. Stargazers were powerful. Compared to mages who needed three years to learn how to use most of their spirit circuits, stargazers needed only six months to master all the different constellations.

  That was the strength of stargazers, in gaming terms, they would be considered as an early game focused class while elemental mages would be the scaling late-game class.

  Alexander was bored. He leaned against the wall and listened to the lecturer speaking about the anatomy of the Xal. It was the biology class where he was supposed to learn about the Xals and the different herbs and animals that were found in the other worlds. It was very boring as Alexander already knew the majority of the course but soon, his nightmare would be over. Just one more minute and the class will be over.

  As attendance was compulsory, Alexander needed to attend the classes even if they were useless to him. However, it did not mean that they were a waste of time. During these classes, Alexander would typically be busy practicing hand seals! Body postures were not the only was star energy could be used, hand seals were another method but since the power of the constellations would be weaker when using hand seals, Alexander did not use it much. Still, it was good to have a backup plan and after a whole month, Alexander's fingers became quite nimble.

  "Alright, the class is over. Please complete exercise 1 to 20. Submit them only before the next session."

  Today was Thursday and generally, Alexander would have the rest of the afternoon free but today was different. He needed to go to the crafting club. A few days ago, he received an email that was asking for all the members of the crafting club to take a look at an ancient relic!

  Ancient relics were very rare but the academy did have a few. In normal circumstances, they would be kept in a very secure place or given to the higher-ups to use. But today, the academy was receiving a new ancient relic and it was actually going to be displayed at the crafting club for a few hours.

  Whenever a new ancient relic was brought to the academy, it would be briefly examined by the researchers of the crafting department. At the same time, the students of the crafting club would have the opportunity to take a look.

  It was an opportunity that Alexander did not want to miss. He did not remember such an event tak
ing place in his past life but it was probably because he was not part of the crafting club. He did not find it unusual as the organizations would often salvage one or two relics from their explorations and by law, they were required to submit a quarter of their harvest to the governments.

  After a quick lunch, Alexander made his way to the crafting department. The earlier he arrived, the better it would be. There was going to be a lot of people there.

  Alexander had seen a lot of ancient relics in the past but he never had the opportunity to own one. They were extremely rare and even if he had enough money to buy one, none was available for sale. It was a pity that Alexander never found a way to craft an ancient relic. Even after browsing most of the library where he worked, there was no detailed record of any crafting technique.

  "How great would it be to get an ancient relic. It will be hard to do so now but in the future, who knows? Once I go through the rift, I'll be free to explore."