Night of the Demons

‘Night of the Demons’ was a phrase that everyone implicitly understood in the Saint Freya Academy. It was the first gift given to all freshmen after their enrollment, signifying challenge and opportunity. Achieving a good result at the Night of the Demons was one of the goals of the freshmen.

Despite its terrifying name, the Night of the Demons was actually just another night in the academy, just that it was made slightly different by the spirit guides.

The spirit guides, also known as little fairies, were intelligent lifeforms whose origin could be traced back to the ancient era. They didn’t have any particular appearance or gender differentiation, such that it wouldn’t be wrong to call them a bundle of self-conscious mana.

The spirit guides would have probably been thought of as harmless fireflies anywhere else in the world, but here in the Country of Scholars, they played the vital role of guiding individuals into dungeons.

The dungeons were mysterious entities unique to Brolne. No one knew where they were located, and they were only accessible through a spirit guide. Anyone under the lead of the spirit guide would mysteriously vanish into thin air as they were being ‘spirited away’ into the dungeons.

Each spirit guide could only be paired with an individual, so it could only bring a single person into a dungeon. They were sensitive to the pulsations of mana as they were beings made out of mana too, so it was impossible for them to mistakenly ‘spirit away’ two individuals at once. This meant that it would be futile to attempt to tail an individual paired with a spirit guide in hopes that one could enter the dungeon too.

Each person could only access ‘Night of the Demons’ once in a lifetime, and it could only be entered at night. It was one of the few safe dungeons that were like a dreamscape blurring the distinctions of reality and illusion. Any damage one sustained inside the dungeon would disappear upon returning to reality, as if awakening from a dream. This unique nature made it well-liked by the teaching staff.

For one, it allowed the young masters and young misses who had just left the warm comfort of their nests to experience the brutality of a real battle without coming to real harm, and the process didn’t require any manpower or resources at all.