While cleaning the courtyard, Nick collected as many magical remains as he could. As he was a mere slave, no one paid attention to his actions.
In the eyes of the students, he was just a lowly slave whom they could kill on a whim or experiment without thinking about his health.
As he was working in the upper courtyard, a youth dressed in student garbs looked at him and said, “Cleaning all this mess every day must be hard.”
Despite knowing that the student was talking to him, Nick didn’t look him in the eye and continued cleaning. He was in no mood of getting killed just because he looked a student in the eye or something that idiotic.
He knew from the novels that most of the students are killing people just because of they looked or did something that could not counted as disrespectful behavior.
The student who spoke to Nick knew the reason behind Nick’s hesitation and silence. Yet, he tried again.
“My name is Marvian Armster. You don’t have to fear me. I don’t even like the concept of slavery, to begin with.”
This time, Nick decided to answer, but not because he thought that this kind-looking guy was telling the truth.
Back when he was living on the streets, he met countless people who seemed kind and reliable. However, when the time came, they would backstab the very people who put their trust in them. Which this means that trusting no one is the best solution for everyone who did not wanted to be backstabbed by their friends or the people they saw as their friends.
Some came with kind words and seemingly good intentions but left with organs of the naive population.
“Does it matter?” asked Nick without looking at the student’s face.
When Marvian heard Nick’s reply, his face went blank.
For a few seconds, he went silent, and his face showed no hints of what was going on in his mind.
After that, he asked,
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
With his head lowered, Nick cleaned the courtyard; at the same time, he spoke in whispers to avoid getting detected by the mage guards.
“It is good that you don’t approve of the idea of slavery. However, you alone can’t change an age-old tradition. Understand this: when two people of different statutes talk, the one in the lower position can never trust the one above, especially not in this setting we live in.”
After Nick was done speaking, he reported his work to the mage guard. On the other hand, Marvian just stood there, lost in thoughts. He had spoken to numerous slaves during his school years; not one of them had answers as crisp as Nick did.
Ordinary slaves were just happy that he started a conversation with them.
Most of them tried everything they could to make themselves seem valuable to a mage student like him. They hoped they would be bought by a kind mage student like him and possibly gain freedom in the future.
But not this one. Marvian did not even see a glimmer of fear when he was talking to this guy. It seemed like… It seemed like he had already been to hell and back, so he feared no one now.
There was no chance for a student mage like know the experiences of Nick at all.
How could he know that Nick was a street boy who was an orphan and lived all alone with other street boys and girls
The mage guard was a middle-aged man; he heard a brief cleaning report from Nick and then gave him some new orders.
“Go to the Testing Grounds and pick all the magical remains. Did you think I won’t notice if you only pick some of the remains?”
Nick gulped and just nodded as he started walking towards the Testing Grounds. Initially, he thought he was caught by the mage guard. But in the end, he turned out to be a naive fool.
Actually, collecting the magical remains was a slave’s job, to begin with. This was the reason why nobody paid attention to Nick. The magical remains were ordinary things for the students and they are accustomed to slaves who pick and clean the magical remains leftover from the spells casted.
In reality the spells used by a real mage should not create any magical remains but as they are still students who in the phase of learning the casting the spells, the magical remains still on the ground.
Nick shook his head and went to the Testing Grounds.
The purpose of the Testing Grounds was exactly what its name suggests. Students or mages could try their new spells or dangerous experiments on Testing Grounds.
Because of this, magical remains were abundant in the Testing Grounds.
An important thing that Nick did not know was that magical remains were hazardous to ordinary people but not the mages,
That meant when slaves cleaned the magical remains, they were slowly poisoning themselves.
Most of the slaves knew this, but Nick did not know. Even if he knew, it would not matter to him.
As he was a mage and could not be harmed by magical remains. Had he known about it, it would’ve increased his hatred for mages at most.
“I have to pick up many magical remains and hide some of them. I need to carefully examine the magical remains. It may not help me much, but it’ll be something.”
Nick thought as he was cleaning the Testing Grounds. While cleaning, he caught sight of a student practicing some spell.
The student he was looking at was a girl who looked like she was around 17. She pointed her finger at one of the non-living dummies in front of her and whispered something.
It was a whisper, but it could still be heard by others.
“Energy Bolt!”
After she was done with the chant, dark magical energy concentrated on her fingert
ip and then formed a magical energy ball. The very next second, the magical energy ball shot towards the non-living dummy. Within seconds, the spell hit the dummy and exploded. The damage to dummy was minuscule and explosion seem to have no effect at all.
Despite that the girl who casted spell was happy.
After the spell was successful, the girl revealed a jovial smile. Since Nick saw the spell, he used the system to list the spell.
“New spell listed!”
“Energy Bolt (Proficiency: 5%)”
After successfully listing the spell, he, too, revealed a jovial smile and continued with his work.
As he was working, he noticed mage guards running towards the dummy. Soon, he noticed that there was a young girl’s corpse near the dummy. The corpse of girl was fresh, It is easy to see that she died recently.
At that time, a group of mage guards started talking.
“When the spell hit the dummy, this slave was standing too close to it. Because of the explosion and her weak-ordinary human body, she died from internal bleeding.”
The senior mage guard nodded and said, “Find this slave’s master and ask if they need the corpse for experiments. If they don’t, just sell it to the teachers at a discount.”
After the conversation was over, the mage guards took the corpse and carried it away. That was it. She died, and the first thing they thought about was getting rid of the corpse or maybe even sell the corpse the other mages so that they can use it in their experiments.
