The several days following the Awakening Ceremony were a trial by scrutiny. Daemon was subjected to endless examination by Arch-Magi and ranking Priests, each attempting to isolate and categorize the triple-affinity—Healing, Fire, and Water—coalescing within his sixteen-year-old body. He endured the tests with the perfect, quiet compliance of a terrified but miraculously gifted orphan, offering only the calculated ignorance that the priests expected. He understood that his greatest asset was not the magic itself, but the seamless control he had over his presentation, maintaining a simple, grateful facade while his mind absorbed the complex data of their testing methods.
His silence and obedience were misinterpreted as profound respect; his clinical detachment was mistaken for spiritual focus.
When he was finally released from the Temple's holding and formally enrolled, the transition to the Magic Academy of the Kingdom of Berlin was jarring. The air itself felt different—no longer the dense, ritualistic charge of the temple, but a subtle, pervasive hum of entrenched wealth and organized power.
The Academy was vast, built not on raw faith but on generations of accrued resources. The central quad was paved with polished stone, and the buildings were soaring towers of imported marble and iron, etched with ancient, complex protective sigils. The sheer, deliberate expense of the place screamed of an absolute separation from the poverty Daemon had known.
He was escorted to the Commoners' Dormitory—a clean, sparse annex tucked away in the least scenic corner of the campus. As he carried his few possessions into a tiny, solitary room, his observational skills, sharpened by years of intense academic focus, instantly cataloged the environment and its inhabitants.
The students were easy to categorize. They were a visible hierarchy, an immutable social law enforced by both tradition and magic.
At the apex were the Nobles and Aristocrats. They moved in small, tight clusters, their backs straight, their voices modulated to tones of casual authority. Their robes were the first sign: deep, resonant colors—crimson, sapphire, emerald—woven with precious metals and imbued with low-level enchantments that made the fabric impervious to dirt and cold. Their magical talent was often inherited, passed down through careful lineages, granting them immediate mastery over complex spells. Daemon observed that their inherent arrogance was merely a natural response to a world engineered entirely for their benefit. They had never had to struggle for power; it was a birthright they simply had to maintain.
Below them were the Merchant Class. These students were slightly louder, slightly more eager to prove themselves. They tended to favor practical, functional magic—precise Telekinesis for transport, Body Augmentation for labor efficiency, or Earth Elementalism for construction. Their magical aptitude was backed by financial capital, making them functional and useful to the nobles, but never quite equals.
Then came the Commoners. Daemon saw Gareth, the Fire-affiliate, wandering the grounds in the Academy's rough, grey uniform. His face still held the triumphant, aggressive confidence of the successful, but his posture was slightly hunched—the ingrained subservience of the commoner who knew his place. These students were resources, raw military power to be deployed, but rarely trusted with institutional knowledge.
And at the very, very bottom was Daemon.
Orphan.
He was a commoner with the bloodline of nobody, a name that carried no weight, and a history that was an official blank slate. His Tria affinity made him invaluable, but his status made him immediately vulnerable. He lacked the financial shield of the merchants and the political armor of the nobles. He was a spectacular, priceless anomaly that belonged to the institution, making him subject to the scrutiny and casual cruelty of everyone above him.
He felt no humiliation, only the cold, steady satisfaction of having accurately defined the constraints of his new experiment. His low status was a powerful form of camouflage.
He was arranging his meager things on the cot—the rough, itchy tunic and the scrap of parchment that served as his personal journal—when the system asserted itself.
A group of three students, all wearing the distinct blue-and-gold of the highest nobility, paused near his door. They looked at him, not with aggression, but with a distant, casual curiosity reserved for examining a prize animal.
One of them, a tall young man whose dark hair was meticulously braided with silver wire, stepped closer. The soft, controlled energy around him hinted at powerful Body Application Magic, likely focused on speed and agility.
"The Tria," the noble drawled, his voice pitched to carry just enough for Daemon to hear. "Daemon, isn't it? An interesting designation. You are famous before you even learn to read a proper spell."
Daemon simply met his gaze, his face utterly blank, projecting the silent, slightly overwhelmed gratitude expected of an orphan.
The noble, perceiving no threat, allowed himself a thin, condescending smile. He made a subtle gesture with his hand—a slight, almost invisible twist of his wrist. Daemon's cup, which he had placed on the small, wooden desk, instantly rattled, twisting itself upside down, spilling the few drops of stale water onto the wood. It was an effortless, petty demonstration of low-level Telekinetic dominance.
"Remember that your gift is a chain, commoner," the noble said, his eyes glittering with cool amusement. "It links you to the Kingdom, and it links you to the noble houses who pay for this school. Your purpose is service. Do not mistake rare talent for rank."
The noble walked away, his two companions following, their footsteps echoing perfectly down the silent hallway.
Daemon did not clean the spill. He stared at the water soaking into the cheap wood. He felt no anger at the calculated humiliation. Instead, his mind was already dissecting the Telekinetic signature. The noble had expended too much energy for the simple task; his control was sloppy, his technique relying on brute force rather than finesse. He was strong, but predictable.
The system is fundamentally inefficient, Daemon concluded. They rely on inherited power and social intimidation instead of precise application and focused research.
His goal instantly crystallized. He was at the bottom, which meant his movements would be the least anticipated. He now had access to the materials (the library, the training rooms), the energy source (the Academy's vast mana accumulation), and the subjects (the predictable, arrogant students).
The social ladder of the Kingdom of Berlin was not a barrier to Daemon; it was simply a highly organized, beautifully complex set of variables. He would spend his time not cultivating obedience, but carefully studying the leverage points—the political rivalries, the inherent weaknesses in the noble bloodlines, and the gaps in their magical knowledge.
His focus now was to learn the language of this world's physics, to master the three opposing affinities he possessed, and to rise with calculated, unstoppable momentum. The Academy was his laboratory, and the social hierarchy was simply the first system he intended to hack.