The Week’s End has arrived. Ronin was picked up by Professor Espinella from his dorm room, and took him to a carriage waiting by the Academy’s gates.
“Where are we going, Professor?” He asked as he sat down.
“The Headmaster’s h-home. It’s not too far from here, the road is just….. t-treacherous to walk on. Hehe…..”
He wondered what he meant, as they soon moved to the vast woods just behind the Academy.
Not many people go past these sides of the woods. He had always wondered why, perhaps there were wild animals…
But he was wrong.
It was not wild animals.
Large, thick thorny branches rose from the ground like spikes, and the carriage was then covered by a protective bubble from them. Possibly the driver’s Mage Focus at work.
Besides these branches, there was also much flora that resembled the Venus flytrap. They snapped at Ronin’s carriage, some even spewing acid or deadly fumes.
He was not scared by any of it, just amazed. He wondered…
What kind of paranoid man would live in the woods surrounded by these plants as protection?
They have soon reached a mansion overridden by thorny vines, looking for like a ruins than a mansion, actually.
No one would have believed someone lived there. Or if someone did…...
They must either be extremely desperate.
Or this house holds too many special memories for them to not leave it despite its wreckage.
Ronin was inclined to believe the latter. He stepped down from the carriage, and Professor Espinella offered his hand to him.
“W-Watch your step. The Headmaster is upstairs, he cannot meet us personally down here. so we will go to him.”
Ronin nodded. The Headmaster must be bedridden and slowly dying like this house.
It all made sense now why he would not appear in the Academy.
But….. Shouldn’t someone ought to replace him eventually? Why can’t they just pass up the position?
His question was answered the moment he stepped inside.
The whole house was beautiful from what it once was, but it was wrecked and the vines have reached inside. Some of the carnivorous plants even ate some objects and furniture.
But some of the frames still remained.
They were paintings. So many of them, spanning for what seemed to be hundreds and hundreds of years.
Ronin remembered one person from the paintings. This man….
He was the Academy’s founder.
He had a Diamond Heartstone.
“Headmaster Primo Diamant.”
Their last name was the name of the Creator Deity itself.
The one that made Magecia, and all that lived there, Celestials and Abyssal gods, humans and monsters.
The next picture seemed to be his son. He was mostly Diamond Heartstone, but Ronin saw impurities of Ruby in him.
And further down the line, the next Headmasters eventually lost their Diamond heritage.
The final portraits, the latest one it seemed…. Was a family portrait.
There was a picture of a father and a mother. Neither of them was Diamond, the father was Moissanite, and the mother was a White Sapphire.
They looked like Diamonds, but Ronin knew better. His keen eye for rocks did not fail him.
The children must have been the result of so much hybridization of ‘Diamond-looking’ Heartstones. Possibly because there was none for them to marry into anymore.
“That boy…” Professor Espinella pointed, smiling. “That’s the current Headmaster. He’s just over that room.”
“What happened to him and his family?”
“A disaster.” He gritted his teeth. “People called them a fraud. Their house does not always like this, those plants just now came from those people.”
“They were ostracized just because they were not ‘pure breeds’.”
Ronin saw a vivid image in Professor Espinella’s head.
They were three girls. Playing with a beautiful woman washing clothes by a river and blowing bubbles.
They were all Pumice Heartstones. The woman was light colored though, like a normal Pumice.
While the children were as dark as Espinella’s Black Spinel skin, yet still Pumice nonetheless.
Pumice was also known as the ‘froth’ rock due to their foamy, porous appearance, and can be used as bathing scrubs.
It was also a Commoner Heartstone. They were associated as the heartstones for laundry washers, maids, and all sorts of janitors and cleaners.
The image disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. Thanks to that image….
Ronin was now left with more understanding about this mysterious Espinella than before.
They went inside the door, avoiding the thorny bushes surrounding it.
The man inside was….. almost like a corpse.
He also seemed to be blind, but not naturally. His eyes were injured, possibly by the thorns.
“Good day, Headmaster. I have brought you the boy.”
He slowly turned to Ronin, so painfully slow that a sloth would have moved faster than him. His legs were also wrapped in bandages, the entire lower half of his body seemed to be paralyzed.
He also smiled slowly, revealing crooked teeth with some green flecks…
That resembled the vines near his bedside.
Had he been living off eating these plants alone? Stuck in his bed?
Ronin had seen many pathetic states of living from being a system. But this…
This reaches the Top 20 most pitiful and disturbing.
“Let me touch his hand. Our savior… The one who would change the Academy forever as my ancestor Primo had foreseen…..”
Ronin raised his eyebrow, not getting close to this living corpse of a man.
‘I have another prophecy?’
“He’s….. different than we anticipated.” Espinella shifted nervously. “He does not like touch….. he hates it very much.”
The old man chuckled, sounding more like he was wheezing. “That is no reason for him to not be our savior.”
Ronin narrowed his eyes. “Hold on, what is this prophecy first, exactly?”
“That what was lost from Diamant, the one we lost when it died….. Will be restored.” The man smiled.
“My family had a hold on to this vision, this reappearance of the Diamond Heartstone. Blazing fervently with the brightest Flame.”
‘You, my boy, would be very fortunate if you are indeed the one in the prophecy.” His dead eyes seemed to sparkle a little like dead stars.
“The hero that not just the Academy needed, but Magecia itself.”
Ronin just smiled bitterly, and shook his head.
“You have been mistaken, sir. I am no hero.”
The Headmaster furrowed his brows. “What must you mean, my boy?”
Professor Espinella inhaled deeply before he delivered the news:
“He does not want to be a Diamond Heartstone, Headmaster. He insists on becoming an Obsidian, the Heartstone of Daemons.”
Follow current novels on freewe(b)novel.c(o)m