By the time I was finished, it was already dark out, and by the growling in my stomach, dinner time was upon us. I bowed respectfully to Master Jaehyun as I left, still in awe of the almost overwhelming aura that leaked out from him from time to time as he meditated to refine his mana channels. If this was the pressure a B-ranker exerted without even trying, I wondered if I would even be able to stay conscious in the presence of an A-ranker or higher. I guess I’d have to wait to find out since I’d never actually met anyone at A-rank or higher in person.

‘Talented mages of that level had better things to do than to intermingle with ordinary people,’ I mentally surmised.

Fang had told me beforehand that he would head home early today since his father was back home for the weekend. Still, although I was alone today, I decided to go to a nearby café and sit by myself for a bit, not wanting to go back home yet. My younger sister Yoonah and her comatose condition weighed heavily on my mind today.

‘I’d like a large americano please,’ I ordered at the register as I made my way towards an empty window seat at the Mashikop Café on Sijang Street, not too far from the dojo. Although this was a popular destination, it was fairly empty tonight because Friday night had more of a ‘drinking and dancing’ vibe than a ‘sit and drink coffee’ vibe around these parts. Funnily enough, my father had told me that it was much the same back in his youth as well. It was reassuring to know that some things never changed.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see three girls around my age sitting on the table to my right, eyeing me from time to time. I had to admit, despite being an E-rank fire elemental from a non-elite family, I had always gotten a lot of attention from girls my age. 

I was after all six feet tall, and my slim yet well-toned body from practicing martial arts for two years was noticeable even through the slightly larger-sized clothing I liked to wear. And although my mother had been after me to trim the dark brown, almost mahogany bangs that fell across my forehead, almost reaching my eyebrows, I couldn’t help but think it gave me a slightly mysterious look. This coupled with my golden-brown eyes and quite chiseled jaw meant I had almost been ‘street scouted’ by modelling agencies a couple of times, although I had no interest in silly things like that. It would be pointless anyway, since the world’s top paid models were all elite mages. I let out a small mental sigh, slightly pissed off at the world’s obsession with mages as symbols of status and power.

The combination of warm coffee in my hands coupled with the old school songs being played in the background soon allowed me to drift back into my thoughts. Staring blankly out the window in front of me onto the street, seeing families and couples walking past with such vibrancy, I couldn’t help but think about how similar they were to my sister, who had always had a spring in her step. Even though my sister was four years younger than I was, she had always been my best friend. I surmised that being recognized as a naturally talented healer at the mere age of twelve had forced her to mature quickly. Still, sometimes I wish we hadn’t been so close. Perhaps then she wouldn’t have had to sacrifice everything for me.

My mind thought back to the night of the incident two years ago. My sister and I were out shopping for new clothes in a marketplace eerily similar to Sijang Street when we heard a loud commotion a few paces ahead of us. Being eighteen years old and officially an adult, I should have known to immediately grab my sister and run in the opposite direction. But being a newly awakened fire elemental, and seeing a crowd of onlookers gathering around the commotion perhaps gave me a false sense of security, and my curiosity won out over my fear. I still remember the look of concern on my sister’s face when I told her to wait a second while I went ahead to see what was happening. 

Unfortunately for me, what I suspected was a small brawl between two passersby was actually a full-on battle, with a member of the police force struggling with a criminal who resembled some sort of yakuza member. The battle seemed to have been the culmination of some kind of chase or operation that had spilled onto the market street, because the heavily panting police officer was yelling at the crowd of onlookers to get away, even going as far as to force out his pure mana to exert pressure onto the crowd. It worked, as the crowd buckled under the pressure of the police officer’s mana, realizing this was something serious and starting running the other way as soon as I reached the scene.

Although I too should have followed their lead, I noticed that while the police officer was distracted with crowd control, the criminal was channeling mana, as tiny red tinted spheres gathered around his arms, indicating a fire spell. Before the police officer could react, the criminal directed a heavily concentrated flaming meteor spell at the police officer. I don’t know what I was thinking as I channeled fire mana to my feet, lurching forward in a single dash and jumping in between the police officer and the radiant ball of fire hurling his way. Perhaps I thought I could block it with my own fire magic, although looking back there was no hope of doing so. Flaming Meteor was a B-rank spell, and as I had only awakened a year ago at that point, my mana control was nowhere near the level of that spell. 

I could feel the police officer instinctively let out a wave of pure mana from behind me when he noticed the spell hurling towards us, weakening it somewhat. But the spell was too fast and too strong for such a simple countermeasure to work. The last thing I remember was being on the ground, staring up into the night sky. My body felt heavy, almost numb with a peculiar warmth enveloping me from head to toe. I must have passed out right away because when I came to my senses the next day at the hospital, I had no memory of what had transpired next.

I couldn’t hold back my tears as I saw what had occurred on camera footage obtained from the scene afterwards. I saw my body, heavily charred and lying on the ground; parts of my skin still glowing red from the intensity of the flaming meteor’s heat. My arms seemed to have almost turned black after taking the brunt of the attack, while my torso was unrecognizable. I wish I had turned my head away at that point, because what I saw next was even more difficult to process than my body’s condition. While the police officer capitalized on the enemy’s weakened state to rush towards him and pin him down with some sort of a binding spell, I could see my sister’s figure walking up to my unconscious body, clearly distraught. 

If she had been overwhelmed for more than a second though, she didn’t show it. My sister, the natural born genius must have taken less than a few seconds to determine her next course of action because almost immediately, she started casting the most intricate spell I had ever seen in my life. While my sister was an extremely talented C-rank healer, she was also a fourteen-year-old girl with no formal education in mana arts at that point. But as I discovered later, that fourteen-year-old girl had somehow managed to cast an A-rank healing spell to save my life. As my sister finished her casting, I could see my body begin to repair itself in the footage, as my sister immediately fell down next to me, unconscious. When the chief healer at the hospital explained to me what had occurred, I couldn’t help but wish I had actually died that night.

My sister had cast what seemed to be an A-rank healing spell called Hestia, which the chief healer at this hospital, himself an A-rank healer, had never cast before. It was an advanced spell capable of repairing a mage’s body by channeling the caster’s own mana into the other mage’s damaged mana channels, forcing their body to fast-track the process of cellular regeneration to repair itself extremely quickly. Where my sister had learned the spell however, was still a complete mystery. 

The chief healer theorized that perhaps being a naturally talented healer, she had simply let her subconscious thoughts guide her mana rather than what should have otherwise been a complex series of conscious commands in the form of a spell. Although the effect was largely the same, and my body had healed completely, my sister at that young age did not possess nearly enough mana for such a high-level spell, depleting her mana channels so severely that she had needed to use part of her life force to fuel my recovery, herself falling into a coma.

A cool stinging sensation on the back of my right hand brought me back to reality, when I noticed I was crying, tears slowly trickling down from my cheek onto my hand tightly wrapped around the coffee mug. It had been two years since the incident, and my parents still hadn’t completely forgiven me. As for forgiving myself, I don’t think I could even begin to think about that until I had woken my sister up. Because of how heavily depleted her mana channels had become, the chief healer at the hospital told us that there was only one known way of waking her up, and that was by using a rare healing crystal. 

Of course, that was easier said than done, as there was only one alchemist in the world with the ability to create crystals out of pure mana to incorporate particular effects, such as healing. And this mage was an unknown member of the Knights of the Round, our kingdom’s highest order of mages, working directly under the king. The healing crystals, or mana stones as they were more commonly referred to, which were created by this mysterious mage, were normally reserved for either royalty, CEOs of large corporations, or for S-ranked mages. 

And apart from their exclusivity, even the small crystal needed to replenish my sister’s life force cost at least one billion wingtips; our kingdom’s currency roughly equivalent to the former United States’ dollars. Still, I was determined to get my hands on a crystal, one way or the other. I didn’t understand why they were so exclusive or expensive, or what mysterious abilities they possessed. I just wanted to cure my sister, and I was willing to make my way up to S-rank to do it.

Realizing I had finished my americano, I decided to look out the window for a few more moments, watching people walk by. At least this would be a good opportunity to practice my mana sense for the upcoming examination, I thought as I channeled mana into my eyes to take a peek at different colored mana particles dancing around people walking by. And that’s when I noticed it. Two men, perhaps a decade older than me based on their appearance, standing at the corner of the alley on the opposite side of the street in front of the café. 

Normally I would have completely missed them, but what I saw fueled my curiosity. Dark red, almost maroon colored mana particles dancing around these two individuals; different from the lightly tinted red, blue, green and yellow mana particles I had always perceived for what I believed were the four elements. But this was something different, something new. Before I knew it, I was getting up off my chair, and heading towards them for a closer look. Little did I know this would be another big mistake.