“Attention apprentice summoners, attention apprentice summoners... Please proceed to the main hall immediately...” A bored voice continued ringing through the area, thanks to some warped fusion of technology from Lyndbaum and Loreilal that the teachers referred to as an 'intercom', and claimed it was from some strange world known only as 'Earth'. The apprentices had mused many times over that this 'Earth' story was a lie, made up to encourage students to try to find a way to unlock a method for summoning things from this mysterious sixth world that clearly did not exist. Even in the world of summoning, there was a such thing as myths. As of this moment however, few of those apprentices were musing about the implications of a vast summoner conspiracy to convince poor deluded newbies to the summoning world that there was a new world out there. In fact, most of the aforementioned apprentices weren't even fully in this world at the time of the announcement. A loud sigh echoed through the area before the voice continued, seemingly muttering to itself: “Why is it that practically every single person in the new batch can't...?” there was a brief period of static filling the ears of anyone awake before a new voice could be heard, distinctly more feminine than the first, despite the tone and language it was using.

“Alright, you scumbag wannabes! The last one of you to get down into the main hall fully dressed will be expelled IM-MEDIATELY! And no, that doesn't mean you get to avoid being disciplined, maggots! You have three minutes before I start dropping in 'Head execution squads, got it?!” With that, the Apprentice Wing of the Cerulean Society's largest school for summoners erupted into chaos, as the swarm poured out of hundreds of doors and sealed themselves into the hall, more akin to a nightmarish hive than any true human society. Amongst this hive of humanity, one student in particular ? a young man with short blond hair and green eyes - gaped at the crowd from his door, before closing it and speaking to himself.

“As expected of my fellow students...” With that, he opened up his closet, and pulled out a thick rope, tying it around his bed before speaking once more. “At times like this, the best thing to do...” He paused briefly, as he opened his window with a flourish and threw the rope out. He spoke up as he hopped out, quickly plummeting towards the ground. “Is to use the window!”

He grabbed the rope as he fell, slowing himself down. As the ground quickly approached, he put his feet against the wall, and launched himself across the garden. He quickly grabbed a statue, turning himself towards the entrance as he broke it, taking a gem-shaped stone along with him as he blasted into the main hall, quickly collapsing into the ground as a blunt object crashed into his head.

“Late, left your window open, property damage, wrong door.” The woman wielding the rod that had recently come into contact with his head said coldly, before pointing to a pew. “Your seat's over there.” With that, she began heading back towards the 'proper' entrance, waiting for the rest of the apprentices to arrive. She paused momentarily, shaking her head and sending her lengthy blue hair swinging across her head before speaking again, almost as an afterthought. “And don't expect us to heal those rope-burns.”

The student dragged himself back into a standing position and walked over to the pew in question rubbing his head as he sat down next to a girl ho seemed to be about his age. As he took his position in the pew, the girl turned her head to face him, her shining red eyes matching with her snow white hair and marking her as an albino as she hit him on the shoulder playfully.

“Late as usual, eh, Alden?” Alden scowled back at the girl slightly before responding.

“Come on, it's not like I'm the last person here.” The girl chuckled slightly in response.

“Of the graduates, you are. You're just lucky that everyone else sleeps in even more than you do.” As she continued her speech, Alden began slouching. “Seriously Alden, what happens if we have a rampaging stray run through the campus, and we have to stop it? You have to get used to waking up early, how long have you been here now? It's been at least a few years now.” Upon hearing that latest piece, Alden stood up straight, quickly preparing a counter-argument.

“Oh, that's easy. I'll get my Summon Beast to wake me up in the morning.” The girl barely stopped herself from bursting out laughing at that remark, and her next words seemed to be filled with barely contained laughter.

“Oh, your Summon Beast is going to take one look at you, and decide to forsake its old world, wake you up in the morning, make you breakfast, and ultimately marry you, right?” Alden snorted at that.

“Yeah, right, like that'd happen to anyone. Realistically speaking, I'm probably going to be lucky if I even get one that can speak our language, let alone have the physical capabilities to even try making any breakfast fit for human consumption. There's also the fact that very few Summon Beasts are even humanoid, and I don't think there are many creatures in any world insane enough to try breeding with something that doesn't even walk using the same limbs. Practically speaking, it'd probably be ideal to get something that can at speak our language, use weaponry, and run on the same sleeping cycle as humans. Nocturnal Summon Beasts aren't going to be too helpful if we're going to be doing work during the day.” Alden paused slightly, glancing at the girl from the side, not bothering to turn his head to face her as he continued.

“But we all know that you're going to interrogate your Summon Beast about what its world was like  at the first chance you get, whether it can speak our language or not. Isn't that right, Celia?” Celia laughed slightly before speaking up once more.

“Oh come on, I'm not that bad.” She sat back slightly, speaking rather wistfully to Alden. “But think about it, there are worlds that humans can never see, that we only know of thanks to beings from another world... Don't you think that's something special?” Alden brought his hands to the back of his neck and pushed his neck slightly as he thought up a response.

“Well, the worlds don't really matter to me, but when I think about all those sorts of creatures out there... think about it, there might be thousands of different kinds of Summon Beasts brought here alone... There's no reason to focus on other worlds when there's already so much here. I want to see everything for myself... I want to be able to understand them, to see this world from their eyes. Maybe from that, we can understand this place a bit better.” With that, a harsh voice came from the end of the line.

“What you mean to say is that you don't care about other worlds because you don't even have a place in this one, isn't that right? It shouldn't be any surprise that a runaway like yourself would want to empathize with strays. You're not so different from one, after all.” Alden instantly tensed up, moving to stand up at the other one's remarks.

“What was that?” Before he could stand up, Celia's hand once again moved to Alden's shoulder, and she shook her head as if to tell him “not here”. He sighed slightly, knowing she was right, and let himself reach his seat again, knowing full well that the person on the other end was undoubtedly smirking at his apparent victory right now. Celia's actions didn't stop Alden from muttering under his breath, however. “That Elric thinks that just because his parents are summoners that he's above the rest of us. He can't live off his parents' fame forever.” Sighing once more, he removed the pack he was carrying from his back, setting it in front of him, opening it up and pulling out an old, tattered book from it, setting the book on his lap and opening it up, reading it while Celia read it over his shoulder.

“That bestiary's pretty old now, isn't it? Shouldn't you get a more recent one?” Alden shook his head to answer Celia's question, explaining himself as he continued to read.

“I get more recent ones as soon as they come out, but that's not what's important. This is... you could say it's my precious item. It has to be this one...”

“Ah, for the summoning...” Alden simply nodded, never taking his eyes off the book, carefully changing the pages and reading as they continued waiting for the ceremony to start.

-----

The ceremony was for the most part uneventful, primarily consisting of lengthy rituals that were largely lost on the ten graduating students and the other apprentices, who were likely thinking more about when they would be up there than any genuine significance to the event. The blue-haired women smiled evilly as she continued the ceremony, knowing that she would have the last laugh by the time the ceremony was over. She turned to face the graduates, maintaining that smile as they all silently shuddered, knowing full well what that smile meant.

“Now it's time for each of the potential graduates to summon for their first time. We'll start with the one who arrived here first, Elric Querceta Ignis. Please step up and select your first Summonite Gem.” At the far end of the line, a young man with emerald hair and fiery red eyes stood up, and carefully walked along, bowing to each of his fellow graduates as he passed them on his way to the center of the hall, taking an opportunity to smirk at Alden as he passed by, earning a scowl back before he turned towards his former teacher, walked up to her, and bowed once more, before pulling a polished black stone off the pedestal in the center of the hall, closing his eyes and quietly speaking to himself as a humanoid machine equipped with drills for hands, seemingly freshly painted was pulled into the world and bound to his will. The machine quickly activated, spouting incoherent techno-babble at its new master before calming down, with Elric ordering it off to the side as they moved out of the way so that the next person could step up. With the theatrics for the first one done, the woman began speaking once more.

“Next, would Dylan please step up and select your first Summonite Gem...”

The process continued as one by one the graduates remaining seated dwindled down, each one in turn gaining their first Summon Beast, slowly but surely turning the ten that were originally seated into sixteen.

“Celia, please step up and select your Summonite Gem.” Upon hearing her name, Celia stood up, putting her hands together in a mock apology to Alden, as she went.

“Looks like you're going last as usual, Alden. Don't worry though, I'm sure you'll summon yourself a perfect wife.”

With that, she stepped towards their teacher, bowing slightly, then chuckling at some joke the teacher made before stepping up and taking a green gem, following in the other's footsteps in summoning forth a Summon Beast, bound to their will. In her case, what came forth was what appeared to be a girl, appearing to be extremely human despite the fact that she seemed to have black cat ears and a tail, with her hair the same color, and golden eyes staring blankly at her new master having no idea what was going on.

As Alden began to stand up in preparation for his turn, up, Celia opened up her eyes, took one look at her summon, then promptly tackled it to the ground, happily petting its ears as it continued trying to figure out what was going on. Alden simply sighed and put his face in his palm as he sat back down, knowing it would take a while as their teacher attempted to pull Celia off her newfound pet.

Later, with Celia removed from her position on top of her Summon Beast, she stood off to the side, happily continuing to pet the poor creature, which looked more than a little uncomfortable. Their teacher paused slightly, looking over those who had already received summons momentarily, checking to ensure that more chaos didn't ensue, before returning to her position and coughing slightly.

“Finally, would Alden please step up for the final summon of the day.”

With that, Alden put his pack on once more, and stepped forward, bowing to his teacher as he stood before her, as she spoke to him.

“Last to arrive, last to graduate... try not to wind up as the last of the summoners, will you? There were summoners who were practically flunkies and managed to avoid that.” She coughed slightly as she said that, seeming to imply something, but Alden was unable to figure out what precisely it was. Failing that, he responded to her.

“I'll take your advice to heart, Miss Heartrex. Without your guidance, it's doubtful any of us would have-.”His speech was cut off by a quick bash over the head with her rod once more. As he recovered, he glared at her, speaking his mind. “Ok, what was that for?”

“You're not my student anymore, so I won't have any of this 'Miss' crap.” She paused briefly as Alden tried to stutter out a response, but quickly cut him off. “HOWEVER! I'm still your senior, and I expect you to refer to me as such. From now on, you'd better call me 'Master Serena' or 'Upperclassmen Serena.'” Alden blinked at her a couple times as he tried to process that bit of information.

“...There's no way I can possibly do that...” 	Serena smirked victoriously as she looked at his reaction before continuing.

“I'll also accept 'Most Beautiful Princess of the Universe, Princess Serena' or 'My Master For All Eternity, Mistress Heartrex.” Alden sighed once more, and spoke up what he could muster for a response.

“I understand, Upper-class Summoner Serena.” With that, Serena took an offended stance as she spoke.

“Hey, that's not fair! You're supposed to choose one or the other!” She turned away from him for a moment, and muttered something under her breath, which was quite audible to him. “Tch, and I thought I could get 'im to call me 'master'” Alden simply stared blankly at Serena, wondering what the big deal was. After a few minutes, Serena turned back to Alden and waved her hand.

“Oh, by the way, you don't get to pick out a Summonite Gem, seeing as how you already have one.” With that, Alden paused, waiting several minutes to ask the obvious.

“...What?”

“That statue you broke on the way here, you pulled out the Summonite Gem from it when you busted it.”

“...So we just leave Summonite lying in plain sight in the garden.”

“Not in all of them, you just got lucky.”

“...What was Summonite doing there in the first place?”

“It was originally placed there to finish off the statue because it ran out of materials, and they figured it was too much work to go back and fix it, so they just painted over it and left it there.” Alden stared back at Serena, mouth agape.

“...You're serious.”

“Absolutely.” Alden sighed upon hearing that, and opened up his pack, scouring for that broken piece of statue.

“If this is a joke, you're going to pay...” As he pulled it out, he scraped it slightly against the pedestal, chipping paint off of it. He then brought it to his face, examining the paint-less area for any sign of color. “This is...” The gem let off a slight purple glow as he examined it.

“...Sapureth Summonite, isn't it?”