The Four Kingdoms: Gemini City

In a few hours the Von Jaeger siblings arrived at Kleure Academy. It was a beautiful building which somehow managed to look like a modern castle. It had high walls that spread past the eye could see. It looked like the Academy took up a lot of space. It had an old european theme in terms of colours and yet the architecture itself wasn't too flashy, going for simple and practical instead. The Academy was made up of various disjointed buildings connected by walkways, presumably some of those buildings were dormitories and other essential units. There was also a lot of greenery between the spaced out buildings where busy students were bustling around.

Emilia and Nicholas had to head towards the admissions department where as Raymond could go to his dormitory straight away. The campus was divided between the 2 levels of study it provided, Foundation and Growth, Raymond was in the 2nd year of Growth. Foundation started at 8 years old and went on for four years whereas Growth started at 12 years old and went on for 6 years, ending the school experience at 18.

The Foundation and Growth dorms were in separate buildings and the same for the classrooms. There were also separate dormitory buildings for female and male students in the Growth stage. As for the Foundation students, they were like primary students and so instead of having separate buildings, they were assigned to different wings of the same building with common areas in between the two. Aside from this there was also a separate dormitory building for those who were in the Perl Initiative, female and male dorms being separate buildings, which was where Raymond was staying as he was a member of the initiative. This explained 7 of the buildings that made up the campus and yet there was still more to learn about. Emilia also noticed that there was more empty space than buildings, she made a mental note to ask about that later.

Raymond left his siblings with a curt "Do well." and headed to his room.

When they got to the admissions department Clara and Robert went to fill up any last-minute paper work while Emilia and Nicholas were guided to the exam hall.

"Here are your temporary passes, please insert them in the timer at your desk once you take your seat. Once you enter the exam hall you have one hour to complete your exam, once the timer ends your pen shall stop working so you are advised to leave right away. Also no communication of any sorts is allowed inside, if you are caught trying to communicate then your admission shall be rejected regardless of your score. You may leave right away if you have completed the exam before the allotted time is up. Best of luck on your exam." the guide said to the twins as she showed them the entrance to the exam hall. Students were going in and out of the hall frequently yet it was pretty quiet inside.

"Good luck Mia!" Nicholas grinned at his sister.

Emilia smiled back "You too Nick." She said as they both stepped inside the hall and took their seats.

Emilia inserted her card and picked up her pen, fl.i.c.k.i.n.g open the exam paper that appeared on her desk when she inserted the card. The first section was economics but since she was only testing to enter the 1st year of Foundation it was all basic math, addition, subtraction and a little division. She finished the section in about 5 minutes and moved on to the literature section. In this world, 'literature' included history, geography, language, culture and more. Basically anything that was written in book. Basic literature would include the origin of the country one lived in, it's location in the world and a bit about neighbouring countries.

The first question: 'What continent is Alfenheim located in?'

Alfenheim was the name of the country that Emilia was from and where Kleure Academy was located. In the game it was known as the "Kingdom of Hearts" and was the setting for most of the scenes. It was located in the continent of Quarte.

'Who founded Alfenheim?'

Alfenheim was founded by Alfonse Starke however he handed the country over to his second in command after his passing as a result of having no heirs. He did many great deeds in his life leaving him a legend. Many people worshipped him and so his name became very popular in the country (hence her father's name being the same).

'What is the name of the current ruling family?'

The current ruling family was the Kaiser family. The Kaiser family had the king, queen and three potential heirs, one of whom was a target in the game, Wilhelm Lucius Kaiser, the first prince.

'Name 3 neighbouring countries.'

The three other kingdoms in the game were The Kingdom of Clubs, Floren, The Kingdom of Diamonds, Ashur, and The Kingdom of Spades, Fulmett. These countries also neighboured one another.

And so Emilia completed the second section of the exam very quickly as well. The final section was etiquette. This subject was one that Emilia didn't particularly like but she answered the questions anyway, in her own way and not how they expected her to answer. It wouldn't matter even if she got a low score for it.

After completing the exam, she put her pen down and took the card out of the timer, carrying the question paper to the collection desk. She submitted the paper along with the card and looked around once to find that Nicholas was still writing. She then went to wait outside the hall. Outside she found Clara and Robert waiting.

"Young Miss, how was the exam?" Clara asked. She was to be Emilia's personal maid at the academy and Robert would be Nicholas' butler. Both of them were trained in combat as well so they would also double as bodyguards.

"It was good," Emilia responded. "Is the registration completed?" She inquired.

"Yes, Mr. Silverbach will be waiting for us at the Perl Parlour and from there he will administer another a test. The accommodations will be arranged after that." Robert spoke up.

"That's good." Emilia nodded.

Soon Nicholas exited the hall as well. Despite taking longer than Emilia, he was still one of the faster students. As mentioned previously, slow in the Von Jaeger family is not the same as the societal norm.

"How did it go?" Emilia asked.

"It was good! I answered all the questions! But Mia you left so fast, you're so cool!" Nick spoke excitedly.

"If you paid less attention to others and more attention to your paper then maybe you would have finished faster." Emilia said rubbing his hair. She was currently taller than him, since girls grow faster than boys at this age, she expected that she would be shorter than him after puberty hit.

"Hmph, I only paid attention to you..." Nicholas mumbled.

"What was that?" Emilia hadn't quite caught that but she noticed that Carla and Robert were smiling at them. Shrugging it off, she reminded her brother. "Never mind, we have to go to the Perl Parlour quickly to complete the admission into the initiative."

The four made their way to the parlour which had a very conspicuous entrance. The entrance was a large mahogany double door lined in gold with a sign in gold font that read "Perl Parlour" in cursive. The parlour itself was designed very beautifully. It was separated into two large areas by a glass wall that was right opposite the entrance. The first area seemed to be a common lounge for members of all ages to meet with each other and any guests that they may have. It had a white, gold, blue and green theme where all the furniture was white with gold accents and the other two colours were mostly from decor and the view that the glass wall provided. The glass wall looked out onto a blue sky and green garden and a sort of wide patio which had a few outdoor seating arrangements. The wall had a glass door at the centre which allowed students to move between the two areas.

There were also two curved stairways, one on either side of the entrance that lead up onto a second floor. There were a lot of students of all ages milling about in the common area, some with hopeful looks where as others looked like they were too tired to be bothered with anything. One of those students was a cute little girl who looked to be about 6 years old. She had pink hair that was tied in two pigtails and big blue eyes and she looked like a proper porcelain doll. There were tears in her eyes as she held onto the sleeve of a boy who looked to be a couple years older than her.

"No! Big brother you can't leave!" She said, stomping her foot to show her anger but only succeeding in looking cute instead.

Emilia looked away from the sibling pair and found that a man with silver hair and blue eyes who was dressed in a suit was heading towards them.

"Emilia and Nicholas Von Jaeger I presume?" He asked and then introduced himself. "I'm Karl Silverbach, pleased to make your acquaintance."

"The p.l.e.a.s.u.r.e is ours Mr. Silverbach." Emilia responded. "Have you received the letter of recommendation?"

"Yes, please follow me to where you will be tested." He guided the siblings and their caretakers through the door on the right. It lead to another lounge area that seemed to be solely for the Foundation students. He lead them further still to one of the many doors on the far side of the room, this door lead to a private multipurpose room.

Nicholas was very nervous throughout the whole encounter. He knew that he wasn't as good as his siblings at economics or etiquette or literature and he wasn't feeling very hopeful, but he really wanted to work towards his potential. He wanted to prove that his family was right to have faith in him.

"Since you have already been tested on the basics we will just analyse those scores instead of having you test again. What we will be examining you for now is your Dimensia regeneration rate, physical fitness and creativity." Emilia briefly pondered how they would assess creativity but then decided just to wait and watch.

The physical test went about as well as Emilia could expect. She was very average in that area, at least for now. Nicholas, however, did very well, he exceeded expectations. The next test was to take place in the private room.

Karl placed a slab made of a type of stone on the long table and asked Nicholas and Emilia to place their hand on it one by one. As he was conducting the experiment he explained the process. "This is called Ziehnite and it absorbs the Dimensia around it very rapidly. By touching it you are allowing it to drain the Dimensia in your bodies. I have a general idea of your Dimensia capacity but your regeneration rate can be tested by observing how long you are able to hold onto the slab without feeling physically uncomfortable. Please remove your hand as soon as you start to feel it as losing too much Dimensia is dangerous."

It was a pretty inefficient way to test the regeneration rate but was the best one they had and so they spent most of the afternoon testing it. Nicholas' regeneration rate was pretty good, about 65% per hour. The average was 4-20% per hour. Emilia's rate was much higher, it was 95% per hour. That basically meant that she would almost never run out of Dimensia. This, however, was only try so long as she didn't use up a large amount of it in one go.

The final test was very interesting. Karl placed a box with a pin lock on the table and a few coded riddles next to it and then instructed. "Find out what is inside the box, solving the riddles will give you the password to enter in the lock. Both of you have to use different methods but if the second person wishes then they can change the task however the second task can not be changed." He said.

"Nick, you go first." Emilia said. Nicholas nodded and went up to the box. He briefly debated trying to solve the riddles but then soon found out that he couldn't so instead he held the lock, directed some strength to his hand and broke the lock. He opened the box and found a pen inside, showing it to Mr. Silverbach.

"There's a pen inside." He said.

When it was Emilia's turn she debated solving the riddles as well or probing the item inside with Dimensia to figure out what it is but figured the faster way to do it would just be to unlock the lock. She knew how these locks were made so she used Dimensia to move the bolts inside the lock until they clicked in place and then the lock fell away. She opened the box and found a book.

She held it out to Mr. Silverbach, waiting for his verdict.