Cerberus Blackborn

Chapter 9

There were two soldiers that acted as guards at the entrance of the building. They gave off a threatening aura that Cerberus had never felt before. It had a tinge of bloodlust mixed into it that showed just how many life and death situations they had been through. This made Cerberus respect them as warriors.

Cerberus arrived Infront of one of the guards who was checking the IDs of students before letting them in. The guard had a broadsword attached to his waist and a suit of armour covering his entire body.

The guard checked the ID card and after confirming that it was authentic, he nodded giving his approval to pass through.

The inside of the Food Hall was a large area that was much spacious than what one would expect when they observed the exterior size of the building.

There were rows upon rows of long tables and chairs lined up neatly in the hall as well as a few separate tables and chairs along the edges of the hall. There was a thick red line on the ground that divided the hall into different sections and on each section was a number.

Cerberus could see six different sections which represented where the six different year groups would eat. He noticed Shawn sitting among a group of third year boys and girls on a table in section 3. He could be seen laughing while chatting with his friends and at one point Cerberus saw him pointing towards a boy sitting a few meters away and snickering. The boy noticed but other than simply clenching his fist in anger he did nothing. The boy turned back to his food after calming himself and continued eating in silence.

Cerberus noticed that the type of food eaten varied across different people. Some of the students sitting exclusively in their own groups like Shawn were eating lavish food that appeared to be made of meat that he couldn't identify while most of the students were eating chicken, pork, or beef.

Cerberus came to understand the reason for this when he arrived at the front area of the food hall. There were cooks lined up in white overalls who were handing out food and above them was a menu of the available food which could only be bought with money.

The money system in this world was similar to the medieval type consisting of gold, silver and copper coins. A hundred copper coins equalled one silver coin and a hundred silver coins equalled one gold coin.

Most commoners mostly dealt with copper coins, the middle classes with silver coins and the nobility with gold coins.

Silver and gold coins were difficult to earn among the commoner classes with silver coins being the highest amount a commoner could only ever dream of acquiring. A thing to note is that the number of nobles in a kingdom only amounted to around 2 or at most 3% of the population. Middle class people made up about 20-25% of the population while the commoners contributed to the rest.

This meant that commoners made up at least 65% of the total population.

65%!!

That is a high number in contrast to the entire populace.

For example, if one assumes that a small kingdom is made up of at least 4 million people, then the commoners would amount to 2,600,000 people. That's more than half the population.

On the menu was variety of dishes most of them costing silver and copper coins while only a few cost gold coins. The dishes costing gold coins were in an entirely separate section of the menu that was highlighted. On closer observation he now realised why the food in the special menu cost gold coins. This was because unlike other dishes, these dishes were prepared using the meat of mana beasts.

In this continent there existed beasts capable of controlling and using mana known as mana beasts. They were quite common as one would almost always come across them when travelling from one town to another. The reason why mana beasts were capable of using mana was because of the mana core they possessed within their bodies. Its function was similar to that of a heart except instead of regulating blood flow it controlled mana flow instead. The stronger the monster, the larger the mana core and the purer the mana within. When the mana within the core circulated the body of a beast, it mutates the organs, flesh and bones of the beast making them stronger and well as more resistant to attacks. In some special cases it even increases their regenerative capabilities.

When the flesh of a mana beast is cooked and devoured, it indirectly slightly strengthens the body of a person through the mana within the flesh and also slightly increases a person's sensitivity to mana.

The effects of the meat depended mostly on the luck of the person as there were times when mages and warriors ate mana beast meat and felt no changes whatsoever. 

Although the effects might be minimal, they are still incredibly effective. Besides who wouldn't want a method that increases their body's vitality and sensitivity to mana by simply having a meal?

Since that's the case then one might feel inclined to ask why people didn't simply stop eating normal animals and consume the meat of a mana beast instead.

Well for one, mana beasts are incredibly strong with even the weakest ones being able to kill ten full-grown adult men without breaking a sweat which means that only mages and warriors are capable of hunting them. However, there weren't a lot of warriors and mages in a kingdom with the ratio of warriors to common people being 1:1000 meaning that for every thousand people there was one person among them who was a warrior. Mages were even rarer as they existed in a ration of 1:10000 which meant for every ten thousand people there would be only a single mage.

This was also why kingdoms highly valued mages no matter how weak they were. This could be seen with how the students of Abyss academy were provided access to their own individual rooms as well as high tech items like ID cards which were uncommon in most schools.

Cerberus' mother always said that mages will never fall into poverty and hence becoming a mage was the same as attaining a pathway to riches be it a high circle mage or a low circle mage. They all lived good lives as mages.

High circle mages would be mostly work for dukes and marquises within various kingdoms while the top breed among the high circle mages would mostly be chosen to serve the royal families and while the greatest representing the most powerful or most talented being called upon to serve the Imperial families which were the among top ruling families within a continent.

This was basically climbing to the highest positions of power.

Low circle mages would end up serving barons and counts depending on where their services were required. Most of the time they would offer to be tutors to the children of barons and Lords of small territories who couldn't afford to hire high circle mages for their children or if in severe cases they couldn't afford to send their children to mage academies.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand. Mana beasts were essentially incredible beasts whose body held numerous benefits but whose flesh was too difficult to acquire due to either the lack of strength or money and hence the fact that the academy food hall could serve dishes made from mana beasts meant that the school was either incredibly rich.