Singha city is a circular city divided into four districts. The part of the town we are in is called the Trade district. It is the place where merchants trade various things with the villagers and townspeople. The other three are n.o.ble"s district, Knights district, and Residental area. The n.o.bles district is where most the n.o.bles live and from there all the administrative tasks are carried out. The Residental district is where the people live. It occupies two-thirds of the city and the inn that we are planning to stay is in that district. The last one is Knights district, it"s where knights and magician train and where the magic knight academy is.

Since it was getting late we decided to head towards the inn. It was already dark when we reached there but the magic light on the streets made our walk to the inn much easier.

After walking for a while we arrived at the part of the town that was a lot less crowded. The houses here were colorful and small flower gardens outside the houses. We couldn"t see it propoerly since it was night but it still looked beautiful. Most of them had two stories and concrete roofs.

We arrived at the inn that had a sign of cat on the board with "Amigo inn" written in it. We all went inside following Andrew.

"Welcome dear customer!... EH!!!"

A girl who was one of the Cat People greeted us with a bow but when she saw Andrew"s face her reaction suddenly changed. She had blue cat ears, long blue hair, and long canine teeths that could be seen comig out of her lips. She was a bit younger than us and was wearing a black and white maid uniform.

"Man, watching catgirls in maid uniform is dream come true."

A woman who was inside what appears to be inn"s kitchen shouted, "How many times do I have to tell you to welcome customers properly."

"No Mom, it"s Andrew. He"s here," The girl replied to the women.

Andrew started laughing and said, "Ria, you look as energetic as always. Good to see you."

A woman who was in her late 30s with the same blue-colored cat ears and hair came out saying, "Oh my, it"s Andrew and Jabal... It has been so long since you guys last visited us."

"Oh Diane, you look well too. How is the inn running?" Andrew asked looking at her.

"Oh, it"s good. We have a lot of customers at this time of year. It"s almost dinner time so it is going to get crowded soon. We have two empty rooms since some customers left this morning. You guys can use those," she said looking at all of us.

She turned towards Ria and said, "Ria, show them the rooms please."

"Okay everyone, follow me this way," said Ria, pointing her hand upstairs.

The room we were taken to was a lot bigger than Ronald and my room at the orphanage. It had a window from where we could see the front streets which were lighted using magic lights. All the girls were going to stay in one room while the rest of us were going to stay in another.

"Okay everyone, rest for a while while we prepare the meal," Ria said acting like a polite maid but her childish self was clearly visible.

We went to our room and took a bath in turns. There was a group hot bath at the inn but it was crowded at this time of the day so we decided to wait for the next day. After we finished taking the bath and drying our hair, Ria came to our room to call us for dinner so we went down at the inn"s dining room.

Diane had already prepared dinner for us and the other customers had already finished eating so it was just us.

Ria and Diane were also having dinner with us. The tables here had only 6 chairs on each so Diane, Ria, Andrew, and Jabal sat in one while the rest of us sat on another. The tables were close to each other so we could easily converse even though we were on different tables.

"So, they are the kids you talked about the last time you came. But I thought you told me that there were only five of them," Diane said looking towards us.

"Yeah, Nara just started living with us last year. I never thought anyone would be able to give the Academy"s entrance exam with just one year"s training but I think he will easily be able to pa.s.s at this point," Andrew replied.

She turned towards us and introduced herself and we did the same. Marina also introduced herself properly since we won"t be able to help each other during the test, this a good sign that she is learning to be calm around new people.

After finis.h.i.+ng dinner we went to our room to sleep while Jabal, Andrew, and Diane stayed up to have some reunion talk while drinking.

The test was going to happen the day after tomorrow. First, there was a practical test at which if you fail, you can"t move on to the next stage. The next stage is the written test which will be added to your practical score to determine the results. It basically means that the day after tomorrow is the most important test day where if you do good, you have a greater chance of pa.s.sing the test.

Tomorrow we are touring the city with Ria as our guide. Andrew and Jabal will be busy at their work here so they won"t be with us.

Our journey up until now was tiring so I was fell asleep quickly that night. I could hear noises coming when Andrew brought drunk Jabal to the bed but I was too tired so I ignored them.

I woke up early in the morning and went downstairs. Diane was already awake and was making breakfast for the customers. There were few customers who were having breakfast. Since it"s too early to have breakfast, they are probably planning to start the journey out of the city. She saw me come down and said, "Oh you woke up early, did you sleep well?"

"Yep, the bed was warm and comfortable... It must be hard for you to start working this early," I replied.

"No, No... It has become a habit of mine to wake up early. Ria is still asleep though, she wakes up a little late. She works very hard for someone of her age so I don"t disturb her in the morning," she said with a light smile.

It looks like she is the type of mother who is strict in front of their children but deep down is kind and caring.

I sat on one of the tables that was empty and after the first group of customers left the girls including Ria joined me. I greeted them saying, "good morning" to which they all replied in their own ways. Ria was taking a break from her work today and acting as our guide during the tour.

After a while, Andrew, Jabal, and Ronald came down and we all had breakfast. We had tortillas with curry as breakfast and they were delicious.

The city was too big and it was impossible to cover many places in a single day so we were only going to tour the Residental district today. We headed out right after Andrew and Jabal who were going to go to the Trading district for their work left.

"Okay everyone, so this is the town square, usually this place gets crowded in the evening since people come to see the lights in the water fountain but there are only few people in the morning around this part so old people usually come here taking walk," Ria said explaining things to us in her childish voice, without acting as a grown up maid like yesterday.

There was a big water fountain with five statues of maidens holding clay water pot from which water was falling.

When everyone was busy watching the fountain, Arica came closer to me and said, "Hey Nara, we should come on a date to this place sometime in the evening," in my ears.

"h.e.l.l yeah! finally a date! And a girl is inviting me to that"

As I was thinking this Arica started laughing and that"s when I understood she was joking.

"I haven"t dated a girl until now doesn"t mean you have to make fun of me!!!!"

There were very few places to visit in the residential area but it was enough to keep us busy all day. We went to the orphanage which had a lot of children in them. That includes both demihumans and humans. There was no openly visible direct discrimination against demihumans but when we observed closely some rich-looking people were acting rudely to some demihuman kids and were only donating clothes to human kids at the orphanage.

We also saw places like "children"s house" which was like kindergarten for kids, where they were taught how to read and write.

Most of the houses had small flower gardens with different kinds of flowers in them and the streets were pretty wide. We went to the park which had slides, wooden horses, and swings for children to play in. Marina and Sistina wanted to play in the swing so we spent some time in the park.

We came back to the inn from the park and had our lunch. Diane had already prepared it so we quickly had our lunch because we had some work at the post office.

After lunch, we went to the post office. We needed to fill our details for the test tomorrow but it was surprisingly easy. We just had to give the identification doc.u.ment that Andrew gave us and they did the rest of the work and gave us a three-digit number, my number was 442.

In the evening we went to see the light at the water fountain. There were many people who were there to watch the lights, it was really beautiful. I was sitting at the bench with Marina while others were still watching the colorful lights reflected on the water which made the entire square colorful.

"Did you hear, the elven princess is coming here to study at the magic academy?," I picked up someone talking in the crowd.

"It"s a lie, that"s impossible. Elven people rarely travel outside their country and we are talking about the princess here. Even if she had to come she would go to the royal capital," An old man with long eyebrow replied.

Since the noise got bigger, I couldn"t hear the rest of their conversation and it was already getting late so we all decided to come back to the inn.

Next Chapter: Magic Knight Academy Exam - part 1