Chapter 5 - A Fated Journey

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[1st POV - Arthur Leywin]

The clanging of metal echoed through the dining room as our mother dropped her fork onto her plate.

"What? Reynolds! Arthur and Cain aren't even four yet! And besides, you said that if even one of them was an augmenter, you'd teach him! And they're both augmenters!" Mother spoke with desperation evident in her voice.

"I never expected our sons to be such prodigies in mana manipulation. Who has ever heard of awakening at the age of three?" Father's response was calm and measured.

"But that means they'll have to leave home! They're only four, Reynolds! We can't have our babies leave home at such a young age!"

"You don't understand. When I observed their bodies while they meditated, I couldn't help but feel that all of this was natural to them. Did you know that Cain can already augment some parts of his body that I didn't even know could be augmented? Alice, dear, I'm holding both of them back by teaching them things they could do in their sleep," my father responded, his tone much calmer than my mother's.

And so, my parents' argument began.

Though, to be honest, I was surprised to hear that Cain could already augment some parts of his body that dad wasn't aware of.

As they continued their argument, they kept reiterating their initial points: my mother insisting that we were too young, while my father maintained that they couldn't hold us back from reaching our full potential.

Meanwhile, I entertained myself by playing a game of war with my food; the peas attacking for the mother empire, while the carrots valiantly defended their territory for the father nation.

As the argument continued, my brother sat quietly, observing our parents' disagreement. Eventually, he spoke up. "Mom, Dad, can't we all go together? Why do we have to be separated?"

Silence fell upon the house.

Wow, despite his appearance, I could have mistaken my brother for an eight-year-old with his eloquent speech. My parents didn't seem bothered by it, though. Well, considering that we've done things that were thought to be impossible, they probably got used to it subconsciously.

After a few more seconds of silence, our mother sighed and sat down.

"You're right. We could go together. We have enough money for the trip, so we'll at least have their mana cores and channels formally tested."

As our father nodded in agreement, we began preparing for the journey the next day. When Cain spoke up the night before, I had assumed that we would be traveling to a nearby town or city, perhaps at most a day's worth of travel, but I was mistaken.

We were actually making preparations for a three-week-long journey through the Grand Mountains. We would be traveling by horse-drawn carriage to a teleportation gate that would take us to a city called Xyrus.

As we made preparations, a book I had read popped into my mind. I recalled reading about a floating piece of land built by an ancient organization of conjurers for the sole purpose of housing the most prestigious Mage Academy. A city was later built around the academy, and both the city and the academy were named after the leader of the organization - Xyrus.

I wondered how it was possible to keep a piece of land, hundreds of kilometers long, afloat. Did they use magnetism? If so, wouldn't the land beneath the city be affected by it? Or maybe the city had its own gravitational field?

In any case, this journey was going to be long. I couldn't help but wish for modern transportation. To get to Xyrus, we had to enter through one of the designated teleportation gates in the Grand Mountains. Otherwise, it would take months to travel across towns to reach the gate situated beneath the floating city near the border of the Kingdom of Sapin and Darv.

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