The rest of the week passed by in a blur for Wren. It was lesson after lesson after lesson. He quickly found out that there was no such thing as a weekend on Ventus. Lessons and training went on day after day without a break which he was kind of surprised about. But nevertheless he threw himself into the elemental lifestyle and was even starting to enjoy it. His elemental abilities lesson was his favourite. Not only because it was taught by Anastasia but also because it was something he actually felt talented at.
They’d carried on with the same lesson structure as they had the first day of classes. The first part was always meditation. Wren was really starting to get to grips with his EP, he felt like he was understanding it more and more every time he meditated. It was a wild wind inside him that raged throughout his body and he felt alive whenever he tapped into it. That wasn’t his favourite part of the lesson though. The release of his abilities was what really gave him the excitement. To be able to shoot off wind slices until he was a completely spent was a joy unto itself. He made sure never to completely run out of EP though. He didn’t want another experience with elemental depletion.
He was also hoping that skill would level up again at some point, but it hadn’t. He didn’t mind too much though, he’d only had two more elemental abilities lessons since his first one so he figured it would take using his abilities a bit more for the skill to level up again.
He also enjoyed his martial arts classes. There was something incredibly satisfying and perhaps therapeutic about throwing punches. He also really enjoyed winding up his instructor Snake. The man was so serious and also so easy to make fun of that Wren actively struggled each lesson to control himself. Since their first lesson they’d moved onto a bit of light sparring. It was fully supervised of course so no one seriously got hurt, but Wren did walk away from the lessons with a bit of light bruising. He’d chosen to limit himself in those lessons and not use his speed as much. He figured it would be more productive if he actually learnt how to fight instead of just running around trying not to get hit. Of course this also meant that he got hit a lot more, but it was all in the spirit of education, so he didn’t mind all that much. He had a sneaky suspicion that Snake also got a sick satisfaction over watching Wren get hit, but hey, whatever floats your boat at the end of the day.
They kept on focusing on the open palm thrust over the course of the next few lessons and Wren had really gotten the hang of it. Of course he’d gained the right hand palm thrust as an official skill in his first lesson and the left hand palm thrust in his fight against Chadwick, but he knew he could do better so he kept at it.
Monster studies was by far the most boring of Wren’s lessons, it was always in the morning, just after he’d woken up so he was never able to fully pay attention in the first half an hour, but once he’d got past that stage he did try to focus as much as possible. He knew that it was an important lesson, arguably the most important lesson out of the four. They needed to know what they were up against out there after all. But even still he couldn’t stop himself from getting bored. He’d come to the conclusion that he wasn’t built to be stuck behind a desk all day. He needed to be up and about doing something or he’d go stir crazy, it made him doubly glad that he’d been awakened as an elemental. Although he had to sit in class behind a desk for a few hours a week, he knew that if he’d gone into some boring old office job back on Earth he wouldn’t of been able to take it.
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From what he could remember, they learnt more about the Cloud Buffalo, Dusk Vultures and Wyverns. They seemed to be the main monsters in the surrounding area so it was the most relevant to them. They also began learning about something called a Tremor Worm. Unlike the monsters they’d learnt about so far, the Tremor Worm had an earth affinity, so they were a bad match up for wind elementals. Unfortunately they also inhabited many of the floating island on Ventus, living underground and burrowing their way through the dirt, so they very much needed to know about them. They were large creatures, about the size of a fully grown man, with very hard skin, and incredibly sharp teeth arranged in a circular pattern around the mouth. According to Lops they had the ability to bite limbs straight off and many wind elementals had come away from a fight with one missing a leg or two. He’d definitely come away from that lesson with a couple nightmares.
Now, although monster studies was the lesson that Wren found the most boring, it wasn’t his least favourite. That special position was held exclusively for armament training.
After his initial depression over not being able to use his first armament, in the following days, Wren decided to put it out of his mind and go into the next lesson with a fresh perspective, determined to start again new. He’d decided to place his skill point into strength, in the hopes that it would aid him in the use of swords and other weapons. He was right in the end. After gaining the small boost in strength, he no longer found some of the swords or axes too heavy, they were still heavy of course, but the weight was manageable. The only thing was, was that his fears had come true.
In the end he wasn’t able to attune with the sword, nor the axe. Ash had even taken pity on him at the end of their most recent lesson and taken him back to the armoury to try out the rest of the weapons. He tried bows, he tried longswords, great swords, maces, hammers, pretty much anything he could find, but nothing would work. He couldn’t attune with a single weapon.
He’d come away from every armament training lesson with the same depression he’d got after his first lesson. Carlos and Liam were great about it though. They never pushed too hard, or made a big thing about it, they simply just let him do what he needed to do. Though they must have got frustrated at him at some point for all the moping about, because on the morning of their second week on Ventus, they dragged him out of bed for some fresh air, claiming it would do him some good.
They took him down to the sky docks on the south side of the island, and it was there that they saw it. It was an Ark approaching.
And on it, were the second year recruits.
They’d finally arrived.