It took a day to swim from the shores of the English Channel to the magically shielded island that Liseranna Academy was situated on, and Arata was fairly impressed by all this. Since when did the world become so big? It felt like it had just been yesterday that he could reach the edge of the world within a week’s worth of rampaging, and now? Who knew that there was so much more land once you passed the sea? Such a novel idea.

Perhaps, if the Night Parade had not been sealed all those centuries ago, they could have made their way to exotic lands such as China and Saudi Arabia and challenged new kingdoms, clashed against the elephant infantry or the firework-throwers or everything else. But, alas, what was once legion was only one now, and though he could feel the nine hundred and ninety-nine dormant flames that smouldered within his body, Arata still couldn’t quite shake off the loneliness that ate at him. It didn’t help that, for some stupid reason, alcohol was now prohibitively expensive, and that there were no longer any wars or grand battles to cause a ruckus now.

That dwarven representative had promised him glorious things such as Erasers, scourges who attacked newcomers, and the Magus Games, a festival of blood and violence as students formed teams…but as he rose from the brackish sea and shook himself dry, all the sun-haired oni saw was peace. Where were the Erasers that sought to remove his head from his shoulders? The grand battles of might and magic that would scorch the skies and scar the earth? Hell, outside of the occasional, erratic beating of Raijin’s drums, there really wasn’t anything at all.

The island was pristine and picturesque, featuring the foreign, European architecture that he had become accustomed to in the week of travel he had partaken. There was a boorish sense of ‘newness’ to the whole place, but perhaps people preferred neat, clean things these days. Didn’t quite coincide with his image of exorcists drowning in rooms full of archaic scrolls, but hey, maybe they’ve changed over the years.

Order was a hell lot more boring than chaos though.

[b]“Ah, Izanagi’s balls,”[/b] he groaned, shaking droplets of salty water out of his ragtag kimono, [b]“Guess I’ll just scout out this place then. Maybe Liseranna has bandits or something that'd try the steal the clothes off my back or something."[/b]

Didn’t seem like it though.

With a lethargy expected of an oni that spent too much time thinking and not enough time doing, Arata began to walk to the central hub, the mall, of the island.