Miri's POV

Today is my first day to attend classes and as much as I will deny it, I am so very much nervous. Alira and I got up early and coordinated our outfits, nothing too flashy, just a normal shirt and a jean and we headed out for classes.

Our first class was Empirical History and we had a Dragonian female instructor. She was beautiful, with yellow locks matching her yellow eyes, and thick-rimmed glasses and a stern expression.

She said,

"I will not go into the basics as I believe everyone already knows it."

And then someone snickers from behind,

"Well we have a human and a princess from the human realm here, so you might have to change that assumption."

With a loud stomp of her feet she says,

"I will not tolerate such comments in my classroom. Now, the two students in particular, stand."

Me and Ali slowly stand from our seat and look at her.

"Are you both aware of the basics of the empires' history?"

And we both give her a curt,

"Yes."

"Alright then. Both of you answer my questions so we can move on with the class. The one with red hair, tell me what is the color classification for each empire."

"Red is for the Demon Empire, yellow is for the Dragonian Empire, blue for the old Myrridan Human Empire and then brown after it became the Human Realm, and lastly black for the Shadow Empire."

"Okay. My next question is for our silver-haired friend. What empire remained neutral in the Great War?"

"It was the Dragonian Empire. They remained throughout the Great War, refusing to step in even after the Shadow Empire stepped in."

"Alright girls, sit down. Can you see the class? I believe they know enough. So, shall we continue?"

And no one says anything anymore. I might have never liked history, but I sure as hell knew more than enough let alone Alira, who has always been really good at literal subjects.

The class went on for a long time, lasting a total of two hours before we went for one more class before we had lunch and then both physical training and Energia classes.

Political Methodology was the next class we had after Empirical History. It was a very boring class for Alira, but I actually enjoyed it, as it made me understand the power dynamic that most ministers held and the various reasons why they held such power, and why empires cannot casually break some laws and burn some bridges.

The instructor even praised my attentiveness which everyone else obviously hated and I even heard someone say,

"We will teach her a lesson in physical training class."

That only made me visibly happy, if I am being honest and true, because if they wanted to teach me a lesson then I would give them a show of their life.

We head over to the cafeteria to meet up with the boys and we see they are already seated. As me and Alira picked up a tray of food, we were suddenly blocked by Vessara and her gang who were both shadows, the same shadows we had met on the ship.

She notices my gaze on her friends and said,

"Eyes on me, princess. Weren't you feeling all confident and such at the recognition banquet? What happened now? Not so confident anymore, are you?"

I smile at her.

"My brothers are sitting right there. Do you really want to try something stupid?"

"Ohh, so you need to rely on your brothers to protect you? Pathetic."

Her words make something in me snap, and when I'm mad I smile brightly.

"Why don't you touch me and see whether my brothers would be stepping in for my sake or for yours?"

"You little—"

She raises her hands to hit me, and then someone stops her hand, wraps another one around my shoulder, and pulls me close to them. Shocked, I turned to look at the face of the person who just did that to see it was Draven, the demon prince who is trying to marry me.

He stares at me before turning to Vessara.

"You have guts, I'd give you that. Cause if you didn't, you wouldn't dare to raise your hands at her. Don't you know that she is the most likely to become my wife? Your future queen?"

He says, shouting loudly that everyone turns their heads to look at us. Vessara bows her head, stumbling over an apology.

"I'm sorry, my prince. I'm sorry, my princess."

She looked so scared, shaking like a leaf. Gone was the confident girl from before and I stared at this man who just helped me.

Draven was as tall as Ryden, with dark black hair and scarlet red eyes which is a mark of his royalty. He has a playful boyish grin that makes him look harmless and a muscular stature. He is in his final year of the academy and has a good reputation among most students in the school.

So why is Vessara so afraid of him? Is it only because of the fact that he is her prince?

But before I can ponder anymore, I feel myself being dragged into another pair of arms.

"Please refrain from holding the unmarried princess in your arms like that. Some might speculate about your relationship, and that won't be good for her reputation."

I look up to see Ryden practically fuming as he warns the prince about doing the same exact thing he is currently doing. What a hypocrite

.

I regain my senses as I push him away from me and turn to the demon prince.

"Thank you for your help, even though it wasn't needed, Prince Draven."

"Please, just call me Draven."

"Sorry, Prince Draven. I don't think we are close enough for that."

"Well, school policy does state that unless it is a faculty member, no student is to use titles while addressing one another. So please, just call me Draven."

And I simply answer with a curt,

"Okay,"

before turning back to Ryden and Alira and telling them,

"Let's go."

Ryden picks up my food tray that I had previously dropped on the table and gives Draven a nasty look before walking away to the table where my brothers were already sitting.

"Hey Ryden, you're such a hypocrite. You tell Draven not to hold my waist or else others would misunderstand all while doing the exact same thing,"

I tell him with a laugh, and they all share knowing glances. But I pay no attention and dig into my food.

Still, I can't get how Vessara trembled at his voice out of my head. But I actually don't like the girl, so I don't give it much thought as I start having a pointless conversation with Aeren and Alira.

We finished our food and Alira and I headed down to physical training class, which was at another wing, and changed into our sportswear. We notice the looks people give us and we can already tell that they must have planned something.

When we enter the gym, everyone is sitting down on mats and me and Alira make our way to an empty spot beside Aeren and sit as Ryden walks in wearing a tank top and shorts which makes him look so good that I can't help but join the other girls in admiring him.

"Alright guys, today is our first class and I want to know the strength of everyone. Alright, so you all are going to take turns challenging each other.

The boys and girls will divide from one another. A person will volunteer and challenge someone else. Then the person who wins that match gets to challenge another person. If the winner remains the same for five consecutive matches, he is to sit out and will only come back to challenge in the final match.

You can challenge anyone present here from any empire. The only limitation is that it should be the same genders only, and once one person forfeits the match, the match is to end.

We will continue this until everyone has fought at least once. Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir!"

Everyone shouts in unison.

Then Aeren gets up and leaves to go to the other side where the boys are sitting. Ryden stands in between two fighting mats and asks the volunteers to stand up and make their challenges.

In the boys' sector, a member of the Dragonian Empire stands up as the volunteer and he picks Aeren as his challenge. I was pretty excited cause I have never seen Aeren fight before, but I did hear from Rian that he was strong.

While on the female side, we had a member of the Demon Empire volunteer, and she chose a girl from the Shadow Empire as her challenge which made everyone outraged, cause a minister’s daughter of the Demon Empire is challenging a general's daughter of the Shadow Empire.

The backlash the shadow empire girl would face if she loses would be bad, but my focus is on Aeren’s match.

Dragonian citizens are particularly known for their strong and almost impenetrable skin, which resembles a dragon’s scale, and their amazing strength in hand-to-hand combats.

But Aeren doesn’t seem the least bit worried.

He allows the dragonian to attack first, swiftly dodging his attacks and hitting only at vital enough points one punch to his rib, another to his face, and one to his gut. He uses his speed to breach the gap in strength, never even giving enough time for him to fully recover.

The dragonian was a bloodied mess while Aeren barely had a scratch on him.

Then the man forfeits and everyone cheers for him.

Back to the girls' match, as expected, the shadow won, and she beat the demon in ways that made it look like torture.

“Wow. General’s daughter doesn't play,” I hear Alira saying, and I agree with her statement, ‘cause truly, girls don’t play.

Back at Aeren’s side, I see he challenged another shadow as his next opponent, and the guy was sweating bullets as he was chosen.

I really didn’t recognize my playful twin when he was fighting. The man looked like a devil, completely annihilating all his opponents until he hit the benches after his fifth consecutive win.

The same thing takes place for the shadow fighting on the girls’ side, whose name I later learned was Nimara. I would love to have her on my side, ‘cause her fighting method was brutal. Imagine if she could wield her shadow it would be way worse.

After Nimara’s benching, another girl, a dragonian, volunteered. And this time, her challenge was Alira.

While over at the boys’ side, a new volunteer and challenge had been picked: it was a demon and a dragonian.

So I pull all my attention to Alira.

Someone snickers, “A human against a dragonian? Isn’t the ending already predetermined?” they say, as everyone laughs.

Alira doesn’t even look bothered. With her signature smile, she walks onto the mat, getting ready for her fight.

As soon as they tell them to start, Alira’s smile fades.

She moves with her usual lightning speed, attacking the dragonian before she could even move.

She steals Aeren’s tactics and doesn’t waste any hits on places that wouldn’t have effect targeting all the right places.

Even if she is a dragonian, she is also a girl who can’t and wouldn’t want to tolerate being punched continuously in the face.

Eventually, she forfeits.

Everyone was stunned that Alira had won, even the boys' match had halted as everyone turned to look at Alira in shock.

But she pays them no mind and asks Ryden in a confident voice, “Should I pick my challenge now?”

And he simply shakes his head.

Then she picks a demon girl who she had heard say that the match was predetermined.

I knew she would pick them.

Alira is a beautiful kind of petty. She doesn’t get mad, she gets even. That’s our personal motto.

That match is even shorter than the first.

And she picks them up one by one until she is benched from consecutive wins.

The male side has had no other consecutive win for more than two, so they didn’t need to pick a volunteer anymore.

While for the girls’ side, a new person volunteered that she was a demon, and she challenged a shadow.

Safe to say, the shadow won.

And the shadow had the gall to pick me to be her fight.

And with the amount of people remaining, if I fight now, I would be the last as after my five consecutive wins, everyone would have fought.

So I stood up and joined her at the mat.

I looked up to notice that my brothers were looking at us from afar and even Draven was there as well.

I was wondering why and how long, but I paid them no attention and focused on my fight.

I allow her to strike first and I take the first hit without dodging, since it was a simple right jab, nothing too much.

But after that hit, I launched a tirade of moves on her, alternating from punching in her face to her gut.

When she noticed a pattern, she blocked two of my punches. But then I used my legs and gave a kick that sent her flying and coughing up blood.

My legs are stronger than my arms. She brought that on herself, not me.

But after that move, she forfeited.

And everyone was more surprised than when Alira had her first win.

And it was quite satisfying.

Then after that, I picked them out one by one until I had won them all.

My next battle was now against Nimara, and I was a bit excited for it.

Over at the boys’ side, someone had won them all and was now about to fight Aeren as the only one left.

But I had witnessed enough already to no longer worry about Aeren; he will surely be fine.

So I focus on my match with Nimara.

She attacked first, but as I was about to dodge it, she redirected and used her legs in an attempt to take me from lower grounds.

I was able to dodge it once more, but it would be a lie if I didn’t say I was impressed.

She was good.

So then no need to hold back with her.

I hit her with full force, and just as she catches my arm, I give her a kick to her left.

She stumbles but gets back her bearings.

I think she noticed that my kick was worse than my punch, as she was making more deliberate efforts to avoid my kicks and was being sloppy.

If she had a chance before, once she started acting like that, she killed it.

And before long, she willingly forfeited while wheezing.

Then it was time for the last match and it was with Alira.

Aeren, who has now won his match, was watching us as we were about to fight.

Alira looks at me and smiles.

“I won’t go easy on you. Hope you’re aware.”

“I wouldn’t want it any other way.”

Everyone watches us in anticipation, even my brothers, who have never seen Alira and I actually fight against one another.

She attacks me, and I catch her hand in mine and throw a kick.

She holds my leg and flips me.

I land on my feet and am back at it again.

We were perfectly in sync, predicting a large number of each other’s attacks and throwing harder attacks each time.

Alira did a good number on me, and I did the same on her.

Our smiles get wider with each punch that lands and with each kick that hits.

We must look psychotic to every other person but to us, we were having fun.

And then, before you know it, I land a punch that hits Alira square in the jaw and sends her flying.

She stands, spits out blood from her mouth, and laughs.

And with that, she forfeits and I win the match once more.

Malric and the rest run up to check up on me and Alira to make sure we’re not hurt.

And we just laugh, saying we’re fine.

Then Ryden announces the end of the class and now it’s time for energia class.

Malric told us he will take Alira back to the room to rest, since she isn’t doing energia class, while me and Aeren head over there.

I genuinely thought I would have to fight again, but upon reaching there, Renn announces that it’s an introductory class, so there will be no physical aspect, only theoretical for now.

And I was so thankful for that.

As we were learning the practical aspect of all of it, Renn kept showing examples with his own magic.

He explained how the Headmasters, with help of ancient magic, kept the barrier that stopped us from using our energia in any part of the school except here.

He showed how different concentration of energia can lead to different forms it would take, and he said his is black ‘cause of his shadow lineage.

He said others would be affected by their lineage and told us that he would teach us how to manipulate energia more than we know how to move our bodies.

And said since today was first for physical training, he will allow the class to be cut short and let us rest.

At his words, everyone starts shouting and cheering and soon runs out of the class.

We take our time moving across the large field that leads us out of the energia building.

Aeren had said something and got a very angry Renn, who kept trying to hit him with energia balls as we were still in the building, and Aeren was dodging and taunting him.

Then out of nowhere, a dragonian appeared in front of me and looked me dead in the eye.

And as if possessed, kept muttering something like:

“All opposition must die. All opposition must die.”

His eyes looked musty and glazed over.

“Hey big guy, are you okay?” I ask cautiously as I back away.

And before I can move, he uses what I can only describe as the most bizarre thing ever. He spits out a large ball of blue concentrated energia from his mouth.

It resembles the spell Dragon Breath but with something wrong.

I managed to dodge a bit, but it still hit me as a part of it divided and charged at me, hitting me directly at my chest.

A guttural scream rips out of my throat that sounds like it came from someone else.

I claw at the part that was just burned while wriggling on the ground, as I see Renn and Aeren run up to me their concerned faces were the last things I saw before it all went black.