Professor Areson scratched his bald head.
"Ah, the son of old Capewell · Rail! Alchemy! Sure thing, all Rails are for Alchemy." He said in a high-pitched voice.
He wore a strange-looking monocle that magnified his crazy old eyes and scrubby old brows. His head was bald in the middle and hairy on three sides. He looked as crazy as he was old.
"Professor, scrubbing your head won't give you hair." said Victor politely.
"Pfffft!"Areson twitched and tried to smile at the joke, but the smile made his chubby face look like a fat cat caught in a net.
"Go with Mr.Huile over there, he will show you around the academy and help you arrange your luggage."
"It's Yue, baldy!" said a dark-haired boy looking the same age as Victor, the boy waved at Victor merrily and laughed, "That's a good one, I mean the joke about baldy."
Professor Areson chuckled and made no remark to Yue's offense.
"Ah, I'll leave things to you youngsters, old Warty wants me in his office." said the old man as he waddled along the corridor in surprising speed.
"I'm Stuart · Yue, from the Nine-Summit-Alliance of JiuHua, my real name is Yuejiming, but you guys can't deal with mandarin pronunciation so you can call me Stuart." Stuart reached out and shook his hand excitedly "You're from the Warstorm Empire, aren't you? black hair, blue eyes, crooked nose?"
"Crooked nose?" demanded Victor.
Stuart shrugged, "C'mon, they'll teach you aesthetics this year, we'll see about the nose problem."
"My father was a warrior in the Alliance, and my mother belonged to the Dragonkin Clan, so they were going to execute us three for heretic and treasonous behaviour, so mom and dad marched across the mountains and chucked five-year-old me into Starlit Academy where nobody can shed blood and fought their way out, I guess they're now on honeymoon around the world. Well I've been here for six years, you can ask me anything about this place"
Stuart was a talkative person and as he showed Victor around the dormitory he told him all about Starlit Academy.
Starlit Academy was a school for humans and semi-humans around the world, it belongs to no country and no race, takes no side and no stance. The sole purpose was to pass on wisdom. It was renowned throughout the four continents, but the reputation varied.
Applicants are evaluated in their physical and intellectual potential for admission. Enrolled students can take any course they want and learn anything they want. When they believe they have learnt enough they are free to leave, but no credentials will be given. Some students stay in Starlit Academy all their lives to keep learning and do research. Food and accessories are provided for free to students under twenty, but older students will have to work or do research to get livelihood subsidize.
"What do they teach you here?" asked Victor, breaking into Stuart's endless talking.
"I don't know, they only start when you're eleven, young students under twenty are taught separately from free scholars in the standard academy, I heard from a guy that we get Mathematical analysis, Algebraic Topology and combinatorics in the first year, but I think he's ranting."
"Get to the point."urged Victor, he had found out that his new friend liked to gossip and gab too much.
"OK, there's art, swordplay, martial arts, wizardry preliminary, alchemy preliminary, historical speculation, fantastic beasts studies and Taoism Ascension."said Stuart, not at all dampened after being cut short.
"Historical speculation?" inquired Victor.
"Speculation about the gods——more like, the gods, or to their disciples, the Lords, are mythical creatures, studying their origin and property could help us understand the world as a whole." said Stuart.
"Sounds pointless." said Victor.
"Oh, definitely not!" exclaimed Stuart. He rattled on and on about the significance of that course.
Victor suddenly had a deja vu feeling, it was like one of those days in Carving town when the old man with white beard spent hours praising the High Lord Feu.
In the end he gave in to Stuart and admitted that to open a course on historical speculation was a fine thing to do.
And it suddenly came to him the strangest urge to ask Stuart whether he worshipped Mother Death.
"Which Lord do you worship?" he asked carefully.
"Whichever comes in handy." laughed Stuart, "Every Starlit student knows this one."
"What about Mother Death?" he added.
"Who's that? never heard of it."
Stuart didn't linger on the topic, and continued to comment on the food of the standard Academy.
Night finally fell, the food was nutritious, enough to keep students alive and healthy, the but taste was awfully plain and unpalatable. The semester starts after a few months, he had lots of time to roam around and check things out, they had no textbooks to buy because the leaders of the Academy believed that acquisition of knowledge should rely on nothing but reason and abstract thinking, Stuart told him that some of the professors even forbade homework and notes.
Stuart was fast asleep beside him in their dormitory for two, but Victor could not sleep.
Wizardry, Taoism, fantastic beasts, these were all new terms to him, one could say that Capewell's education was crippled, then the mission school could be considered trash, and millions upon millions of little boys and girls who did not have the chance to go to Starlit Academy were fed trash everyday, how much bias and unwonted prejudice would soak their little brains as they grow. He was lucky, so lucky that he could have capewell, and gabbing Stuart, baldy Areson, and Starlit Academy.
His heart pounded at the thought of actually learning, and researching, and seeing the world differently from what the mission school asserts.
He was already shocked to see his to-be classmates, a boy from the Cardian Kingdom had cat ears which he insisted to be wolf ears on his head and cat tails protruding from his tailbone, a reticent girl from the Dragonkin Alliance who had horns and claws that could barely hold a pen, an actual elf with pointy ears and a tough-looking orc with whom she kept quarrelling.
A slit in the curtains shed silver moonlight onto the floor, and Victor slowly closed his eyes, he dreamt of exciting adventures and bizarre encounters.
And something even more out of the ordinary occurred in his dreams.
A sleak dark scaly reptile with four legs and giant wings, with dark fire burning in its eyes, it gazed at Victor with its ugly horned head and opened its mouth wide, showing sharp teeth.
But he was not afraid in the slightest bit, he reached out a hand and caressed the dragon's head.
What would have seemed ugly to others was beautiful and unique in his eyes.
He was different.