After crossing the layer of the dark clouds of the portal, everything glowed bright white for a brief moment. The brightness was so much that I had to cover my eyes to prevent temporary blindness. The same was for Aya too, shielding her eyes from the intense light.
Slowly but steadily, as the light faded, I perceived that we were in some sort of a forest. It was just like Earth!

The portal behind us disappeared, vanishing into thin air. Aya, being in the corner of my vision, looked up at the sky, letting the light of the sun and the shadows of the leaves dance across her face.
I took a deep breath, inhaling the minty smell of the cool air around us, hearing the rustling of green leaves on the brown branches of the trees. This was a nice, peaceful moment I was experiencing, but not for too long as this peaceful state of my mind broke after I saw Julian and Valentina. 

They both stood in a steady stance and had a face that showed danger might be heading towards us. A concerning look appeared on my face while Aya kept on feeling the surroundings with her eyes closed. Now, I don’t know what type of ‘dangers’ are here, possibly some sort of monsters from fantasy? It can’t be, right?

“Here they come!”

Julian shouted, and soon, many brown-coloured porcupine-like animals appeared from behind the thick bushes in front of us. Fumu, what I thought was indeed true, but these were not your typical fantasy monsters, as porcupines are even present on Earth. One thing though, these were ‘porcupine-like’ creatures, and not sure if they really were porcupines. Anyways, offering a good guess, their numbers were around twenty or more. The coarse grey hair on their dark-brown skin stood straight in all directions, looking as sharp as the blade of a sword and as thin as the tip of a needle.
With fear from their sudden appearance, Aya swiftly grabbed me by my arm, her face portrayed with a frightened expression and her hands shaking with terror as they clasped my arms.

“Thundershock!”

Julian, putting his hands on the ground, yelled out, and a big but not-so-big cyan-coloured magic circle with lots of same, weird symbols imprinted on it formed surrounding his palms being around a few tens of centimeters in radius. The ground began to shatter with electric bolts travelling through it towards the porcupine-like ‘monsters’, faintly lighting up the area with cyan colour. I don’t know if they can be called monsters or not, but from the look in their eyes glowing red in colour, they surely looked like them. 

Those cyan bolts made their way through the ground, shattering it along the way and reached up to the monsters, electrocuting them while they cried out in pain. The bolts electrocuted more than half of them, but not all. The rest of the monsters fled from the area after experiencing their own kinds getting fried up like chicken karaage, but without oil. Lol.

“Valentina.”

“*Kokkuri* yes.”

Valentina took a few steps towards the porcupines that were senselessly lying on the ground discharging a few sparks of electricity from their body, and aimed her palm towards them.

“Vengeful incineration!”

Every time, Aya and I were hearing new words from their mouths. I wonder how many of these ‘spells’ or whatever they say, exist.

Valentina had a red-tinted magic circle forming around her palm, flickers of crimson flame forming and blasted out towards those monster corpses, burning them and turning them into a pile of ash which got blown away by a gust of wind.

Wow, that was a wild one. It’s our first time experiencing magic in ‘another world’, first time for both Aya and I.
Also, I just realized Aya was still holding my arm, tightly clasped but slowly loosening as the situation calmed down a bit. Seemed like we both realized the same thing at the same time, leading to us letting go and jolting a few centimeters away from each other quite abruptly and in a synchronized manner, our faces blooming rosy red with embarrassment.

"Gosh, when are you gonna stop coming up with your own spell names?!?"

Irritated expression was built all over Julian's face, and Valentina kind of brushed it off with a prideful laugh-

"Fufufu, I'm not that special, you know? Just my talent~"

"I wasn't complimenting you!"

Aah, what an egotistical person she is, huh.

She was really an egotistical person, having too much pride in herself, lol. Julian released an exhausted sigh and ignored any further of her nonsense, and began the introduction of this world, guiding us.

“That was a pretty explosive welcome for you two I guess hehe. Anyways, here we are in our world. Welcome to Brieztopia! There are many kingdoms here, and we are from the Fleerora kingdom. Currently, we are in a forest that is situated between the Fleerora kingdom and the Trouston Kingdom.”

He kept on explaining and started walking in a random, straight direction with Valentina striding beside him with a slightly pouted face, perhaps angry because of getting ignored. But he ignored her for good I guess, or else her cringey, egotistical behavior was getting on my nerves, not gonna lie, lol.
We two, Aya and I, followed them from behind, our feet shuffling through the uneven land filled with detritus.

“This way, we will reach our kingdom. The great and phenomenal, Fleerora kingdom!” 

“Oh god. Stop exaggerating.”

“Tee-hee!”

Julian’s confident smile was quick to change and let out a derisive laugh, scratching the back of his head. It was funny in its own way, lol, but I held back my laughter for now. Aya’s face developed a tiny smile too, meaning she might’ve felt the humor manifested in his expression.

After walking for a few minutes, we reached the horizon that led to the grasslands out of the forest.

There were no more trees covering the sunlight, and the rays fell directly upon our skins, letting us realize that it was brutally hot and humid. Gazing at the vast treeless land which was seemingly flat and almost barren that was tilted slightly downwards, we could see far away in the distance, a large city surrounded by tall walls that looked like a kingdom, which I suppose is this ‘Fleerora’ kingdom or whatever its name was.

“You can see our kingdom. We are almost there!” 

Exclaimed Julian as we walked down the tilted grassland. Well, I was right. I guessed it as a kingdom because a little beyond the city, a large, white castle with its finial having a sapphire-blue dome was visible, and surrounding the building were few tower-like structures having the same coloured cone-like finials. 

Soon we reached the entrance of the kingdom. It was heavily guarded by sentinels of the kingdom who wore silver-plated armor and had iron spears and swords as weapons. On top of the walls, there were many sentinels there too, wearing the same silver-plated armor and having bows and arrows as weapons, ready to shoot down hostile infiltrators at long range. Wow, was it truly a ‘Brieztopia’ or are we actually on earth, but at a different time period? 

“We both are magic instructors from Fedmorth academy, Julian and me, Valentina. And these are new students who'll be enrolling here.”

Valentina, pointing at us, said to a guard who was standing in front of a tunnel leading to the insides of the city, protecting it. Julian stood between me and Aya with both of his arms on top of our heads, his hand going jiggly-wiggly and messing up both of our hairs. 

We didn’t say anything, but felt really uncomfortable with what he was doing. Aya, too, stayed quiet but her face conveyed blatantly that she was getting undoubtedly annoyed.
Good thing that we didn’t need to wait for too long and be under his wrath of hair-tousling, getting the allowance to enter. 

We went through the tunnel and saw an enormous market. The ambiance there was just like any market on Earth! People roaming around buying stuff, even some chatting with others, it was truly like Earth.
Even though the houses and the market there were set up like those of medieval times, the people wore clothes of the modern era, that is, jeans, t-shirts, jackets, etc. Well, of course not jackets, as it was extremely hot. 

Wait, but then those sentinels were wearing complete armor, their whole body covered with silver-plated gears. Didn’t they feel extremely uncomfortable under this sweltering heat? They must’ve. Hats off to them for still doing their jobs dedicatedly. You guys should dedicate your hearts to your jobs too! 

Anyways, After crossing the market, we entered the residential area. There were people, specifically old people who were chattering, children were playing, and, unexpectedly, horse caravans that were travelling on the street. This led me to realize a mildly shocking thing, nobody seemed to use or show magic powers or anything related to that kind of stuff! This really made me curious.

“Do people really use magic here?? It doesn't seem like it…”

Well, Aya asked Julian and Valentina, on my behalf I guess, because I was about to ask about the same thing. Hearing this, Julian shook his head.

“Of course, they have. But those people are not here. Small children can’t use magic, or even if they can, it’s really dangerous for them. And older people have lost their control of magic powers, leading them to go berserk whenever it is used. That’s not the case for every old person though. Some still have the grasp or control over their powers. People who can use magic very well are always out of the kingdom, going on an adventure. Hunting monsters, gathering these monster’s parts that can be sold in the market to gain a lot of Lins, and  growing more and more powerful with practice. Lin is our currency, for your information.”

Fumu, I see. They even have their own currency. Well, I guess it was obvious, lol. So, anyways, what about students like us? Do they also go out on an adventure or something after graduating?

“It’s the same for you two also. You’ll be taught magic in our academy in a rank-wise manner. You’ll get to know soon about what I meant by this manner. Just before graduation, there will be an examination. There will be examinations at the end of each rank too, but the last one will be a major one. Having mock fights with the ten great sorcerers of Brieztopia!”

The ten great what?

What did he just mention to us? Everything flew over my head and I couldn't understand a single thing. Same was for Aya, building up a bewildered expression upon hearing Julian. I thought I could ask more about these ‘ten great sorcerers’ if I am correct, but Valentina interrupted in between. 

“By the way, we are almost at our academy.”

Me and Aya nodded at her, and a little later, just on the outskirts of the residential area stood the magic academy. A large sign board was hung at the main entrance, reading ‘Fedmorth, Academy of Sorcery’. 

So this is where Julian and Valentina work. It was a gigantic academy though. And, surprisingly, the walls looked fairly modern too! More modern and advanced than the ones of the houses near the market we just came across. 

Stepping inside a few blocks, we perceived that the campus was truly, yea, TRULY vast, and there were around four buildings joined together, each one of them having four floors. At one corner of the campus stood another building, which was probably the hostel and behind it was a broad open ground of slightly rough terrain, I mean, its terrain having ups and downs and stuff.

We went inside the building that the path leads directly after entering the premises, walked by the classrooms on the ground floor where students were studying stuff related to magic, some of them being empty and even some in which students could be seen using magic powers. 

At the end of the hallway stood a door and as we almost reached it, it could be seen that it was the principal's office. It was written on the door, that is why we were able to perceive it.

Julian opened the door and we saw a lady sitting on a desk, handling some paperworks and stuff, as there were some sheets of paper scattered over her desk.

“Madam principal, please excuse us.”