'Class Alpha, please proceed to the Virtual Training Room immediately.'
"But we're still eating our lunch, dammit!" Fred complained as they heard the announcement from the school's P.A.
"We will continue our discussion for a later time, and we can finish our lunch later," Sasha said as she stood up and fixed up her lunch.
"Okay." Lena sadly pouted as she put her lunch away. The others also put their lunch away and proceeded to the Virtual Training Room. Sephiram looked at the sky one more time before catching up to his classmates.
-Virtual Training Room-
"After some consideration from both the board of directors and the government's representatives regarding what happened last week, we concluded that starting next week, you will now take hands-on missions so that it may give you an insight into battling vampires in the future," Westeria explained as the entire class gathered. "But first, the reason that I called you here is that we will recreate the incident last week based on the statements coming from former Classes Beta and Charlie."
"Wait, but that will be traumatizing for both me and Cassidy?" Ciel questioned while looking worriedly at Cassidy, who looked at him back. "We came from Class Beta, and we were there when that happened."
Westeria sighed. "I know it's also traumatizing to you since you two got involved but we are not recreating it scene by scene." Then he looks at Sephiram with a concerned look on his face. "That includes the encounter with one of Dark Stars. And since Ms. Leblou and our eight demi-humans are not there in said incident, they decided to let them witness the incident firsthand." Then he looked at the entire class. "Any questions?"
"Sir." Leon raised his hand. "You said there are eight demi humans but what we see here is only seven here. May we know where the other one is?"
Westeria grinned. "Seems like I'm going to tell you then," he looked at the entire class with a serious look on his face. "Originally, there were thirteen of you before the first-class promotion exam. Your thirteenth classmate is a bit shy."
The class murmured among themselves. "Shyer than Ryan?" Fred asked teasingly, causing said student to stomp the latter's foot and howl in pain. The others only chuckled at him.
Westeria sighed at Fred's stupidity. "Yes since his race is known for their shy personality." He turned his head to the right and looked at the boxes that were stocked in the corner. "You may come out now."
A pair of hooded black cat ears with a shade of blue suddenly popped out of the boxes of crates and revealed an individual who is the size of a six-year-old child, with a face hiding under the hood whose golden eyes are only visible. He is wearing the school uniform but with baggy pants that are length up to the floor. His presence shocks everyone.
"He's Hinono." Westeria introduced him to the shocked class. "He's the first demi-human who is initially assigned to Class Alpha since day one but due to his shyness, he didn't participate in any of the previous activities, so he will be joining us today."
Sephiram was the first one to approach their classmate. None of them knew that they had another classmate like him since day one. "Hi there." He greeted him with a smile, extending his hand. "I hope we can be friends."
Hinono blinked twice and looked at Sephiram from head to toe before squeaking in fear while hiding from everyone.
"N-nice to m-meet you." A squeaky voice was heard behind the box. "I'm just startled because there's too many of you."
"Geez, this squirt's a handful!" Fred loudly complains as everyone sighs.
*
The Libertas Archive is considered one of the best facilities on the island. Thousands of books and data predated 600 years ago have been stored and preserved so that researchers may study and decipher the history that happened before everything went down. Also, students are allowed to enter the Archive with a special permit from the government.
Augustus sat at one of the archive tables, in the middle of deciphering one of the scrolls that he found on the mainland a month ago with the documents splayed on his desks, frowning as he compared the scroll with the document. He was working on the project for weeks, only to be interrupted by an emergency summons. So far, he is near completion of his job when he doesn't notice that Zirconia entered the Archives, is greeted by the staff, and approaches him behind.
"Frown more and you'll be an old man." Augustus jolted as he dropped the scroll he held onto the desk he looked behind and saw Zirconia smirking.
"Will you stop giving me heart attacks, you idiot?" Augustus growled in irritation as he saw the president. He turned around and grabbed the scroll. "You're interrupting my work."
"You mean the three scrolls you found a month ago?" Zirconia took one of the scattered documents on the desk and read its contents. He returned it to where he found it afterward. "I thought you'd have done that last week."
"Well, thanks to the vampire attack that happened last week, I put that on hold to take care of Seph." Augustus sarcastically replied before taking a document and comparing it to the scroll, then typed the findings on his laptop while scribbling some of the important notes on a piece of paper while the President observed him.
"Found anything on that scroll?"
"Much." Augustus put down his pen. "According to the scrolls that I've found, the records written on it contain the events from 600 years ago, two hundred years before the end of the Thousand Year War."
"Is that the time when the tides of war are in the Primal Beast's favor?"
Augustus nodded in reply. "For what I remember in our history class days, a powerful human sorceress sided with the Primal Beast, giving them the advantage to turn the tides of war to them. The sorceress had a deep and personal grudge against the Queen at that time and she wanted her and her descendants dead.
"But my concern is the contents of this scroll here." Augustus looked at the paper containing the nearly finished interpretation of the document which was written in one of the scrolls he studied. "It's some sort of a story but I found it... sad. I don't know how it was included in the records, but I suspect that they were written during the Thousand Year War."
"Give me the document," Zirconia ordered as Augustus reluctantly handed the document to him.
"By the way, what I wrote is a summary. That's what is written in the scroll." Augustus warned as Zirconia read what was written in the document:
[There was once a noble family in a village far away from the main kingdom. The family loved the townsfolk, and the townsfolk loved them in return; for they are well known as noble and kind folk. One day, the family magician announced to the people that the family matriarch had been blessed with children. The people were overjoyed at the announcement.
On the day of the matriarch's labor, the husband prayed that his wife would give birth to his children safely while he could hear his wife's painful screams of childbirth. The magician and the midwives did what they could to save both mother and child.
Eventually, the wife gave birth to twin girls: one with a strand of black hair like a moon and green eyes like emeralds but with a plain face as plain as which mistakes the child as that of a common folk. The other one is with a strand of golden hair as a sun, cheeks red as a cherry, skin white as a porcelain, and the face of a cherubim. The magician performed a magic test to see if the twins inherited powers from their parents. As expected, the younger, blond twin inherited most of their powers while the older, darker-haired twin didn't inherit any, making her a normal person.
When the family head, who was the husband's father at that time, found out that one of the twins didn't have any of their powers, he ordered to send the dark-haired child away to the orphanage in secret while keeping the other one. So, he entrusted the dark-haired child to one of the maids to send it away while he paid the midwives a hefty sum of money in exchange for keeping its existence a secret to his son, who was in the other room, praying and to his daughter in law, who was passed out after giving birth. And so, the family head told the couple that one of the twins died stillborn, making the couple and later, the people believe that the dark-haired child died.
The maid who entrusted the dark-haired child traveled far away from the village and due to the bad weather, eventually ended up in the slums instead, where she decided to abandon the baby in the alleyway and return to the mansion in haste before the weather worsened. A mother who lost her baby recently found the child a moment later and brought it home, raising her as her own.
Years passed and the twins grew up into childhood, but they were raised in a different environment, with a life in contrast to each other.
The golden-haired child is a prodigy in her own right; she excels in magic, swordsmanship skills, poetry, music, and history; befitting of the noble house's heiress. She was loved by the servants and knights of her household and the townsfolk adored her with her kindness and humility. Her parents spoiled her, and she was under the tutelage of their family magician when it came to her control of magic. Her quiet, sheltered life was surrounded by love and adoration from the people around her.
The dark-haired child, on the other hand, grew up in the worst place of the slums, where the people living there are struggling to survive. The woman who took her home years ago sadly passed away from overwork when she was only four and her adoptive father was an abusive man, swindling all the money on booze and gambling. When her mother was alive, she and her mother were beaten up by the father for not bringing enough money to cover his vices, which made things worse after the mother died as he forced his adopted daughter to work at an early age to bring some money home. The child never received any form of parental love or affection as far as she remembers due to the father's negligence and abuse. She envied children who had loving parents passing by while she was selling flowers in the city plaza. She endured the hunger and the cold to please her father, who only lashed her for not bringing enough money in return. At night, she was silently crying from the loneliness and pain she felt. She dreams that someday someone will truly love her and tell her that everything will be okay.
Another decade passed, and the twins grew up into womanhood, but society kept them apart. The plain, dark-haired girl never smiled at least once in her life and always wore a sorrowful expression, especially as her adoptive father passed away from overdrinking, leaving her alone entirely. One day, she decides to go to the village to work as a maid and she is employed by the only noble house which unknown to her is her true family but since the family leaves no evidence of her existence when she was a baby, she will never know the truth behind her birth.]
"And the rest of this?"
"Still deciphering. If you want to read the rest of the story, you'll have to wait another week."
"Ouch." Zirconia pretends to be hurt as he puts down the document. "I order you to finish deciphering the rest of the scrolls by next week, as your presence is required for the preparations for Libertas' third millennium." He smirked as he saw Augustus boil his blood in anger.
"I'M NOT AN AUTOMATION ROBOT, IDIOT!"
*
"Now that we persuade Hinono to get out of his hiding," Westeria said via a microphone as the entire class was on the training field after an hour to pull out Hinono in his hiding place. Westeria is in another room as always. "We will begin our Virtual Training. Make sure to check your equipment first before calling out to me so we can begin."
The class checked on the equipment if they were in good condition and adjusted their VR headset before nodding to Sasha, as she signaled 'okay' to their professor in the other room. The staff proceeds to run the Virtual control.
'Activate Battle Simulation'
"Good luck."