The other name of immortal cities, is "Cities of Fire", due to how the daily operation of these cities run on heat energy provided by steam, coal, and oils. Based on this, many immortal cities contain fire-related terms in their names, such as Fire something city, Burning something city, Something Steam city, et cetera.Compared to the mortal cities that are usually only a few kilometers by a few kilometers large, equating to somewhere between 4 to 9 square kilometers in land, immortal cities are almost 10 times their size, ranging somewhere between 40 to 90 square kilometers, or anywhere between 6.3 kilometers x 6.3 kilometers, to 9.4 kilometers x 9.4 kilometers.
The immortal city called "Dark Ash City", is split into 2 territories overall, with the bigger half controlled by the Azure Reaper Martial School, and the smaller half controlled by the Savant Snake Alchemic School.
A martial school is exactly what it sounds like, a school that focuses on martial arts and battle. This type of school is usually more compet.i.tive than others, with spars happening every day, and very weak punishments for when their students get into fights.
The best students in martial schools are the strongest ones, the ones that can trounce all others.
The Azure Reaper martial school focuses on sword, spear, fists, and guns. All their students will settle on one melee category out of the 3 during their elementary school years and train in it until they graduate.
The reason they limit the number of paths their students can take, is to raise the efficiency of the their subsequent practice. In addition, as students of an immortal city, all of them, without exception, have to practice gun-fighting.
An alchemic school is naturally, a school whose main focus is alchemy, which is the magical art of synthesizing anything from the materials found in the world. That may sound a bit vague, but that"s really how it is. In these types of schools, martial arts are usually not as focused on as the alchemic arts.
The best students in alchemic schools are often the ones whom can make the best products.
The Savant Snake alchemic school has 4 majors. They are "Medicine", "Alchemy", "Poison", and "Fire". The first 2 are purely technical, while the last 2 involve martial arts.
The students whom take the medicine major become physicians capable of fixing people using knives and needles. The students whom major in alchemy become alchemists, making various products for their school. Students of the poison major become poison makers, and also learn martial art techniques capable of helping them apply their poisons, including techniques utilizing, daggers, knives, and needles. Lastly, the students of the fire major, are gun-fighters.
Although this school has 4 majors, each of these majors can be treated as a minor, as the students of the savant snake alchemic school have to choose 1 of the 4 as a major, and then, if they had chosen medicine or alchemy as their major, they would have to choose one of either poison or fire as their minor, and vice versa. This is to make sure that all their students would have at least some combat ability.
Other than martial schools and alchemic schools, there are also other types of schools, such as crafting schools, or magic schools... although there are no magic schools in dark ash city.
All schools have a headmaster, elders, teachers, and students. The students are separated between graduates and undergraduates.
The headmaster is usually the strongest person in the school. He is the head of the school, and decides how the school operates and which direction it heads.
The elders have authority second only to the headmaster. Their position comes from their strength. Most of them do not have many duties, and only act when the headmaster calls on them. Whether they want to teach or not, is up to them.
The teachers are picked from those graduates with especially high mastery of technical skills. They would have a daily work schedule, and get paid depending on how many students they teach, and what grades those students get.
Graduate students are those whom have completed their education, and were afterwards, employed by the school. This employment is something that they would have no choice but to accept, unless they want to make an enemy of their school. The ones whom are not able to become teachers, become low paid soldiers of the school. If they get strong enough, they can be directly promoted to elder, and receive an incredible pay raise at the same time.
Undergraduate students are usually accepted into the schools during their teenage years or below. Those age 11 and below enter elementary school. Those age 12, 13, and 14 are in middle school. Those age 15, 16, and 17 are in high school. Once someone reaches 18 years of age, they are considered an adult, and normally would not be qualified to become students in a school. The reason why is simple. Generally, once people start considering themselves adults, they become harder to brainwash using ideological education or the like...
...
3 years had pa.s.sed after the battle between Haradur city and the Wolfing gang concluded.
The day after the conclusion, an elder of the Azure Reaper martial school, along with a troop of soldiers from their school, visited the Zefer family mansion, the home of the city lord of Haradur city.
After discovering that 2 of the children of the Zefer family have learned magic, they decided to seize them. That led to a fight between one of those 2 children and that elder.
It was during that fight, that an elder from the Savant Snake alchemic school arrived and offer that child an invitation to enter the Savant Snake alchemic school.
That child, Seth, immediately took the offer, which led to a fight between the two elders of the two schools. That resulted in all the men from the Azure Reaper martial school present in the mansion at that time, falling asleep in a puff of smoke...
Seth asked the elder from the Savant Snake alchemic school, elder Liao, if he could bring some others with him to the school.
Elder Liao allowed it.
Thus, Seth happily dragged the 2 girls, Nala Zefer and Irene Bilin, along with him.
His father, Merab Zefer, also forced him to bring along his 3 year old younger brother, Haides Zefer. This wasn"t done to grant the little guy some early education, but to make it easier for Merab Zefer to escape if the Azure Reaper martial school tries to take revenge.
Speaking of brothers, Seth also had an older brother, Ross Zefer. But that one had escaped the city during the battle with the bandits, and his location became unknown, causing his father to curse out in rage when he found out.
Seth, Nala, and Irene, were all enrolled into the Savant Snake alchemic school soon after arriving in the school"s territory in dark ash city. The former two were willing, while the last one was forced by Seth. Back then, the 3 year old Haides was still too young to enter the school. After all, a school is not a daycare. It was not until a few months ago that he was allowed to enroll, with the expenses paid by his elder brother of course. Irene"s tuition fee too, was also paid by Seth.
Speaking of expenses, when Seth was given an invitation to join the Savant Snake alchemic school... actually, not only Seth, but also Nala Zefer, was given the same invitation... Both of them were enrolled as "scholarship students". In other words, their tuition fees, textbook fees, as well as their living expenses, were paid by the school itself. Given that back then, their cultivation levels were already higher than most of the school"s newly graduated students, they were worthy of this special treatment.
The school had offered to prepare dorm rooms for Seth and Nala to live in, but Seth had refused. Upon asking about it, he found out that the dorms provided by the school are separated into male and females dorms. That was a problem.
Firstly, Seth didn"t trust them so much as to leave Nala alone. At the very least, he would not allow her to get too far away from him. With the people from the Savant Snake alchemic school knowing that Nala knows a magic cultivation technique, along with various spells, it would not be a surprise to him if they tried to s.n.a.t.c.h those from her by force. That is something that, if they had any brains, they would not dare to try to do with him, as they know that he was able to kill a 4th stage cultivator during the battle with the Wolfing gang. It didn"t matter that that 4th stage cultivator only reached that stage temporarily by doping.
Secondly, if Nala was to be separated from him, Seth would not be able to flirt with her, which would caused him to suffer. He couldn"t allow that...
Thus, Seth rented a 3 story house somewhere a half hour"s walk away from the school itself, where he, Nala, Irene, and Haides, could live together. Honestly speaking, the scholarship from the Savant Snake alchemic school wasn"t enough to cover the house. Most of the money that Seth was using to cover the rent, Irene"s and Haides" tuition fees and textbook fees, and their daily living expenses, came from his kitty, Gelard, going around getting money from the very kind (rich) people living nearby.
So, although on paper, the money was coming from Seth, in reality...
"Kitty is the real man of the house! Not the stupid master! Kitty goes around rubbing people!" Said a certain bipedal blue striped kitty as he bit his tongue.
Currently, Seth is 14 years old, and is in his last year of middle school. He had chosen alchemy as a major, and poison as a minor.
Nala and Irene are both 15 years old, and should have just entered high school. Nala had chosen the same major and minor as Seth, while Irene had chosen poison as a major, and medicine as a minor.
Haides is 6 years old, and has just entered elementary school. According to him, he wants to take fire as a major.
Last but not least, the kitty Gelard is... of indeterminable age. He spends every day either doing missions given to him by Seth, or just lazing around, eating anchovy pizza and planting some Catnip flowers by the windowsills...