When Wren arrived at the Dead Fields with the rest of his class he was shocked at what he saw. He was only there yesterday so he was struggling to understand what had happened. What he should have seen was dead grass and dust blowing in the wind, a large open space with a clear view into the great expanse of the sky beyond the island, but instead he was presented with a wall of what looked like cloud. The recruits in front of him had all stopped in shock as well. Ash simply looked on at them with a smug look, clearly pleased with herself.

“The field is partitioned into five sections, one for each of the classes. It allows us to all use the space together but also have separate classes.” She told them.

“Did you do that? Is that one of your abilities?” One recruit asked her gesturing at the clouds before them.

“God no.” Ash replied laughing. “That’s one of Phelps’s abilities. It’s a really rare one that allows you to create, mould and shape clouds. But I shouldn’t say any more than that, its rude to talk about another elementals abilities without their permission.”

She walked up to the cloud wall and placed a hand on it. Starting from her palm the cloud slowly started to disappear and reformed into the shape of an archway, revealing a corridor behind it. The recruits filed in one by one behind her as she gestured to the recruits to follow behind her and moved down the corridor.

Wren stopped at the archway and placed a hand on the cloud wall. He’d never touched a cloud before and was curious to see what it felt like. It was a strange sensation, it was even softer than he’d been expecting, but still firm. It wouldn’t have made a very good wall if it was so soft that he could just put a hand through it. Strangely enough it was also slightly damp, when he pulled his hand away from the wall he could see a couple droplets of water running down his palm, it had to have something to do with the molecular form of clouds.

He looked up from the wall, remembering the rest of his class, they were quite a distance away so he hurried off to catch up with them.

The group had been chatting with the instructor casually as they walked, peppering her with questions about the lesson and her experience as an elemental.

“Why not just let us all practice together? Or just section people off depending on what weapon we use?” One of the recruits asked, Wren recognised him as the spikey haired boy from his elemental abilities class; he was holding a spear like Wren.

Top Knot came up behind him and punched him in the arm.

“And get your ass handed to you by Chadwick every lesson? I’d pass on that if I was you.” He said.

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“Of course there’s the difference in skill to take into account, but also splitting off into groups based on weapons wouldn’t be very productive. Sure you’d learn how to fight spear to spear, or sword to sword, but you’d never get the variance from a mixed group. There is another reason but we’ll get onto that later.” Ash told them.

She had a point. Gaining combat experience, even if it was only in practice, against a wide variety of weapons and opponents would mean that when they came to be in a real fight, they would perhaps be a bit more prepared and a little less likely to die. That’s what Wren hoped anyway, the outcome of a fight was never that simple. After all he thought he’d be carried away in a stretcher after his fight with Chadwick, but he’d been pleasantly surprised.

As soon as the last recruit had passed through the archway at the end of the corridor, the path was closed off to them. The cloud had re-emerged, blocking off the exit and left them enclosed within the training ground. Was the cloud sentient? Was that how it knew when to open and close the pathways? If so then that was one incredibly powerful ability, the things that could be done with sentient clouds.

“Okay everyone, line up.” Ash told them once they’d finished gawking at the cloud wall.

The recruits followed her directive, standing to attention in a line with their weapons by their side.

“The first part of today’s lesson will be attuning yourself with your weapons. As you all no doubt know, armaments are made using parts harvested from monsters. Now the interesting thing about monster parts is that they resonate with elementals, or more specifically the energy within us that all elementals have. It’s part of the reason that our abilities are able to harm monsters in the first place. Now what do you think happens when an elemental resonates their energy with an armament?” She lectured.

One recruit raised their hand, eager to give their answer.

“That was a rhetorical question. I was going to tell you anyway.” Ash chuckled at the recruit who raised their hand and quickly deflated in embarrassment. “When an elemental attunes their EP to their weapon, it can provide some kind of buff, enhanced speed, strength, stamina, that kind of thing. In some of the more rare cases, the weapon can even produce an ability of its own. You all have F rank equipment so the effect of attuning yourself with your weapons won’t be astronomical but you should get in the habit of doing it anyway, the higher the rank of the equipment, the harder it is to attune yourself with it, and besides, in a fight, any sort of advantage, no matter how small, is crucial.”

That was a lot to take in at once. To think that the reason they could hurt monsters was because their energy was somehow connected to them was shocking to say the least. It begged the question of what the monsters really were. As far as Wren or anyone else knew, the monsters appeared a few hundred years ago at the same time as the Enoi and the first elemental awakening, everyone knew that those three events were somehow connected but no one knew quite to what extent. Perhaps studying the connection between elementals and monsters would shed some light on that. But Ash still hadn’t finished her lecture, so Wren couldn’t think too much about it.

“Just so you know, you all have F rank weapons and they should be the easiest to attune with, so if you have any problems, feel free to come to me.”

Wren looked down at the spear in his hands and stirred up the energy inside him. It was time to get to work.