Chapter 5 – About Sharing a Room

The giant dragon circled down and finally landed on the open ground between the Central Castle and the lake.

The old mage in green robes waved his hand, and the group was once again lifted by the wind and brought back to the ground.

After enjoying the sight of the youngsters stumbling around, the old mage finally flew down from the dragon’s back and landed gracefully.

Xipo was the first to recover and performed a mage’s salute to him: “Thank you, Teacher Ansel.”

The old man in green robes, the one Xipo called Teacher Ansel, waved his hand dismissively, his tone full of disdain. Though he was short in stature, his voice was not. “Stop with all the thanking. You’re just like your teacher.”

Xipo had arrived here five years earlier than them and was also a student. Originally, it was his teacher who was supposed to bring them back, but coincidentally, this year his teacher was temporarily unable to leave Floating Sky Capital, so he entrusted the task to his student.

Lin Wei and the other two also called out “Teacher Ansel” following Xipo’s lead. On the ship, Xipo had told them that when addressing mages in the Magic Academy who were not students, they should add “Teacher” to their names. Once they became a personal disciple of a mage, they could simply address them as “Teacher” without the name.

This naming convention had been passed down for a long time. Although the Magic Academy was called an academy, the number of students was actually very small. Most of the people living here were renowned mages who had grown tired of life on the continent and returned to the academy to focus on researching magic and alchemy, occasionally taking on a disciple. Any one of them was erudite and experienced, so calling them “Teacher” was definitely not a loss.

After giving the three of them a once-over with a smile, Teacher Ansel said to Xipo, “Take them to see Old Sylvester.”

With that, he leaped back onto the dragon’s back and flew into the sky.

As Xipo led the three into the castle, he explained, “Teacher Ansel is the gatekeeper of the academy. He is a special ‘Beast Speaker’ among mages, capable of communicating across almost any race. The giant dragon we just rode is his partner, and the top magical beasts you saw in the sea are also his old friends.”

The “Old Sylvester” mentioned by Teacher Ansel was the white-robed Archmage who presided over the Magic Academy, the academy’s dean.

At this moment, the dean was in the spacious hall on the fourth floor of the castle, carefully studying the records of the three new students: “The North Star Tower… Qiu Na’s daughter, and the little one from the Duan family. The third one… the Duke’s eldest son?”

The dean paced back and forth with his hands behind his back, muttering a few “strange” words but not saying anything more.

At that moment, the door was gently knocked: “Teacher Sylvester, it’s Xipo.”

The dean put away the parchment in his hand, returned to his seat, and then replied, “Come in.”

Even including his past life, this was the first time Lin Wei had seen this Archmage. He wore a simple white robe, was slightly plump, and looked to be around fifty or sixty years old by the standards of ordinary people on the continent. His appearance and demeanor were no different from an ordinary person, perhaps even more amiable.

The academy only accepted a few new students each year, so as the dean, Sylvester simply asked each of them a few questions and gave them some instructions. When Xipo mentioned the unique little mermaid they encountered on the way, the dean pondered for a while and said, “There is indeed something wrong. We’ll have to send Ansel to take a look.”

As they were leaving, the dean suddenly called them back: “The Duan family child’s eyes won’t heal for a while. Let Lin Wei stay with him for now, so he can take care of him.”

Xipo acknowledged this, glancing at Lin Wei and Duan Yu, who both showed no reaction, and faked a cough.

Duan Yu said, “Thank you, Dean.”

Lin Wei, still processing the news, followed suit: “Thank you, Dean.”

It wasn’t until they walked out the door that Lin Wei realized what a foolish thing he had just done.

Why did he also say thank you?!

No, that wasn’t the point… The point was that he was going to be living with Duan Yu.

He was going to be living with Duan Yu.

In a daze, Lin Wei followed Xipo as he gave them a rough tour of the academy. Since his mind wasn’t on the task, he didn’t pay much attention to the route or anything else.

After a while, Lin Wei finally accepted reality.

Well, in this life, he and Duan Yu had no grudges, so it was fine to live together…

Besides, the future leader was currently blind, and Lin Wei wasn’t sure if he could take care of himself. Having done nothing good in both his lives, he might as well take this opportunity to experience what it felt like to be a good person.

By the time they finished touring the academy, it was already evening. Most of the people moving around were young magic students, wearing robes that matched the color of their elemental affinity.

The main island was very quiet, with only the rustling of the wind through the trees. However, the academy itself was far from peaceful, with the biggest culprit being the occasional loud noises coming from one of the floating islands.

A sharp explosion followed by a scream reached their ears, and the first time they heard it, it was quite a shock.

“That island is the territory of the alchemists. They like to research various magical tools and potions. What you just heard was probably another failure,” Xipo explained.

As he spoke, a pitch-black figure came screaming down from the floating island, barely managing to control his fall and float back up just before hitting the ground.

Xipo sighed and facepalmed: “It seems to be Master Sirius again. He likes to throw out the students who are helping him with his experiments when he’s in a bad mood after a failure.”

Lin Wei thought to himself that the rumors about mages being eccentric were indeed true.

Haitie asked with some concern, “Will our teachers also have such bad tempers?”

Xipo was silent for a moment, and his words did nothing to comfort them: “That depends on your luck.”

Haitie: “…”

As they talked, Xipo led them to a place where the vegetation was quite dense, but it was clear that it had been deliberately planted, and all of it was rare magical flora from the continent. The island’s magical elements were already very dense, but here they were even more concentrated, likely due to the presence of these magical plants.

Among the lush trees and verdant grass, seven small courtyards were scattered, each containing a delicate two-story building.

“Mages have different attributes and attack methods. The academy has always encouraged mages to work in teams and train together, so every year the students live together in these small buildings,” Xipo glanced at the three of them, “Although there are few of you this year, you still get an entire house to yourselves.”

After leading them to the courtyard gate, Xipo bid them farewell. However, the house for his year was very close to this one, so they would likely see each other often in the future.

The first floor of the house was a hall and meditation rooms, while the second floor was the dormitory. Each dormitory room had two beds.

Haitie naturally got a room to herself, while Lin Wei resigned himself to entering the same room as Duan Yu.

Although the two beds were not close to each other, the room was not large, so there was no such thing as “out of sight, out of mind.”

Before Lin Wei could decide whether or not to strike up a conversation with Duan Yu, it was Duan Yu who spoke first.

He said, “I can take care of myself. You don’t need to worry about me.”

Was he afraid of inconveniencing him? Well, that’s even better, I wasn’t planning to wait on you anyway… Lin Wei grumbled inwardly while trying to play the role of a friendly classmate, but for a moment, he couldn’t think of what to say in response.

Instead, he switched to a topic he was more interested in: “Will your eyes stay like this forever?”

The dean’s words, “they won’t heal for a while,” carried a lot of information. It was almost certain that Duan Yu’s blindness was not permanent, and the dean knew the reason for it.

Duan Yu replied indifferently, “No.”

This guy only answered what was asked, so Lin Wei had to press further.

“Is it because your eyes were injured?”

“No,” Duan Yu closed his eyes, as if sensing something, “There’s an elemental turbulence in my body that suppresses my perception.”

Lin Wei studied Duan Yu.

In their past lives, even when they were on the battlefield together, they had never been this close. So back then, Lin Wei only knew that this man was good-looking but had never examined his features closely.

Now, he couldn’t help but marvel again at how devastatingly handsome Duan Yu was.

Especially with his eyes closed, his delicate and serene features added a touch of fragility, making him look as if he were carved from ice and snow. One couldn’t help but hold their breath, afraid of disturbing such beauty.

If it weren’t for the vivid memory of Duan Yu fighting against a hundred enemies on the battlefield, Lin Wei might have wanted to cradle him carefully in his hands.

“So how will you recover?”

“It will be fine when I become a High Mage.”

After this conversation, the two fell into silence.

Soon, Duan Yu took off his boots, leaned back against the headboard, and sat cross-legged. He let down his hair, and the setting sun shone through the window onto him, making his long hair flow like liquid gold, mesmerizing to the eyes.

Watching this man immediately enter meditation without a word, Lin Wei had to exert considerable effort to tear his gaze away from him.

Lin Wei suddenly realized that while Duan Yu’s ability to enter meditation at any time was partly due to his talent, it was more out of necessity.

To maintain a normal life, he had to constantly expend mental energy to observe the outside world, which made him more reliant on meditation than ordinary mages.

No wonder he could wear the white robes of an Archmage at such a young age. The vast mental energy of Archmages had been accumulated in his youth through endless use and exhaustion day after day.

Mages only officially began learning magic at the age of fifteen because the fragile bodies of children couldn’t withstand the physical burden of communicating with magic elements. The same was true for mental energy. Duan Yu had undoubtedly endured pain that ordinary mages had never experienced to reach this point.

Having thought all this through, Lin Wei, with nothing else to do, couldn’t help but recall various messy events from his past life. Suddenly, he was a bit worried that he might wake up in the middle of the night, unable to distinguish between this life and the last, and end up grabbing a knife to kill Duan Yu.

To prevent such a situation, he took out a piece of paper and solemnly wrote on it:

Duan Yu is my close and dear friend.

I will do my best to help and protect him.

And I will never do anything to harm him.

…

After writing it, Lin Wei reviewed it with satisfaction, quietly despising his own hypocrisy, and hung the paper on the headboard.

From now on, he would recite this every night before bed to avoid any mishaps.

—After all, that guy couldn’t see it anyway.