After thinking for a moment Elder Fata said, “Ok. Let’s try it this way then.”

She performed a few strange gestures and stretched her hand out towards Reino’s pet once more.

Alex suddenly felt his head getting dizzy and eyelids heavy, almost as if a wave of exhaustion was washing over him.

‘No, no, no, no, no! I can’t fall asleep! The kid probably got some kind of a pardon and now they’ll enslave me as a reward just like they did with the beasts earlier during the day!’ Alex inwardly screamed as a panic attack overtook him.

The exhaustion was suddenly gone as he sobered in an instant and with all the power he could muster bit the finger that was currently almost touching his forehead.

“What the f…!” Elder Fata’s eyes widened in surprise after she barely retracted her hand evading another bite.

In all her years as an expert beastmaster there has never been a spiritbeast below rank six that could resist her screening techniques. But this little guy was only a rank two blackrock wolf pup! It was basically a regular animal, not a spiritbeast!

She thought for another minute and then smiled at Reino like a caring grandmother.

“Do you plan to join the academy in the future?” She asked.

“Of course!” Reino didn’t really understand what just happened since from his perspective the wolf behaved just like it did with him – tried to bite when didn’t like something.

“Great! But since the next enrollment will take place only two years from now, would you be interested in becoming my personal student?” Elder Fata kept smiling.

“Personal?”Reino wasn’t really certain he knew what that meant.

“Yes, I’m the academy elder and can take a personal student if I want to. You won’t need to wait two years and I’ll start teaching you today if you want to.” She explained.

“Today? Like today today? Like now?” Reino wasn’t sure he was awake since what he heard was too good to be true.

“Yup! Do you agree?” She winked and asked.

“Yes! Of course!” Reino almost screamed out loud, his voice full of enthusiasm and joy, but then remembered, “Right … I have to ask my parents first.”

“Sure, Reino, let’s go. I’d love to meet your parents. You’re done here anyway and the other elders don’t care about you anymore since the problem regarding the beast cores you brought was solved.” Elder Fata said and immediately pulled him away.

Reino carried Alex as they walked up the hill and still couldn’t believe his luck. His greatest dream was fulfilled in an instant and at the age of ten he’ll become a student of the Beastmaster academy! Obviously getting his parents to agree was only a formality and their family soon enough will have another famous beastmaster.

“Where exactly are your parents?” Elder Fata woke Reino up from his daydreaming.

“Uhm …” Reino looked around in confusion in the darkness.

Currently they were half way up the hill that was packed with the student family members who were waiting for the closing ceremony to begin. The large bonfires reflected on their faces, but Reino had hard time recognizing any. Actually he had no clue where to go and thought he was following the elder, while the elder though he was the one leading the way.

Seeing his hesitation elder quickly guessed the reason. The kid was only a kid after all, but before she could say anything, headmaster’s pleasant voice reverberated through the academy grounds.

“Everyone, may I ask for your attention please? Our elders just finished calculating the results and we have updated the stone slates for all to see.” He passionately said, “I must say, there were quite a few pleasant surprises this year, but in the end Clinto Milas upheld the honor of his family and finished at the top spot.”

There was no particular reaction from the crowd since everyone already expected this result, therefore headmaster continued.

“Tomorrow morning all the students will have to report to their respective elders to receive their tasks for the upcoming year. While in order to complete those you will have to travel around the world, you are not allowed to forget your origins – you are the proud students of the Beastmaster academy and I, as well as everyone else gathered here, will look forward to your future accomplishments. Make us proud!”

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The speech was short, but passionate enough to provoke a wave of cheers and applause from the audience. Every student felt their blood boiling and even Reino had a feeling as if the headmaster was speaking directly to him.

The official part was finally over and most of the visitors began to leave while students flocked towards the bonfires in order to begin their celebration for real. To Reino’s big surprise, his new master didn’t become angry, but patiently waited for others to leave and he soon found out why – if he was lost, there were others who would definitely find him.

“Reino! Here you are! I was looking all over for you!” Danilo came running and intended to berate him, but noticed the elder at his brother’s side and quickly concluded she was trying to help to find their parents, “I’m sorry elder for the trouble. This is my brother’s first time in the academy and …”

“No problem.” She interrupted him, “Where are your parents? I’d like to meet them. Could you lead us there?”

Danilo didn’t expect such reaction, but quickly complied and a couple of minutes later they met up with Gregoro and Satra.

Reino was so excited, he didn’t even notice elder Jintoro standing next to them.

“Dad! Dad! …” He forgot all his manners and shouted, but his father didn’t mind.

“Reino, guess what! If you want to, you can begin your studies at the academy tomorrow!” Gregoro said full of smiles.

“That is great!” To fathers great surprise the pretty lady who came along with his sons said, “Reino just agreed to become my personal student! I’m elder Fata, by the way. Nice to meet you.”

While Reino cluelessly beamed with joy and his father fell in confusion, elder Jintoro’s face turned ugly.

He could read Fata’s lips soundlessly saying ‘too late, old sucker!’.

“Those are great news. Elder Fata is an amazing beastmaster and you will learn a lot, Reino. Elder Fata, don’t forget to regularly report your findings to the headmaster. I’ll take my leave now, Gregoro, I still have some things to do.” Elder Jintoro said holding back his displeasure and after patting Reino’s head disappeared in the darkness.

After elder Jintoro abruptly left, only elder Fata understood what caused such reaction, but she couldn’t care less – she won this small battle. While Jintoro, or probably even the headmaster, wanted to monopolize Reino or rather – his wolf, they were too late and to maintain their face they had to give in on this one.

Of course, the loss was only formal and elder Fata would share the results of her research in the future since all of them were beast researchers and the particular oddity that currently was resting in Reino’s arms spiked curiosity in all of them.

Starting the next day Reino’s life changed completely. He moved to live in academy together with Alex and was currently the only student here. To his great surprise he was not only enjoying the teachings of his master, but other elders as well, including elder Jintoro and even the headmaster. He was learning quite a lot and since he had no clue about the regular teaching program, he didn’t find it strange how much attention the elders payed to his wolf pet.

Alex, on the other hand, didn’t like this one bit. From the very first day he felt something fishy about the atmosphere in the academy and the more he learned the language, the less comfortable he felt. He even tried to sneak away to the woods behind the academy in attempt to escape the place, but was quickly caught by elder Fata’s rank six rainbow parrot.

Despite that failure, Alex continued to forbid anyone to touch him apart from Reino and even got in a large fight because of this. When one of the elders carelessly made a move on him just like the pretty busty elder on the first day, he caught the old man by surprise and almost managed to bite off his finger, but was attacked by a rank five silverclaw raptor who rushed to protect its master.

Needless to say, Alex suffered quite badly despite elder Fata’s quick reaction who managed to kick the raptor away and was on the ‘bed rest’ for the next two weeks. To his annoyance he could only observe how the academy elders used the best medicine at their disposal to cure his wounds in their attempt to befriend him.

Actually elder Fata didn’t like the huge attention Alex was drawing to himself since she considered him to be her personal research project, but there was no way around it. Even the headmaster began to frequent her place, to not speak about other elders and she couldn’t say ‘no’ to them otherwise she would be quickly stripped of the title ‘Reino’s personal teacher’ and become the public enemy number one.

Alex getting hurt had a bright side to it – the ‘free’ weeks he got came as a blessing and he could extensively study the local language while lying at Reino’s side. In fact, many of the exercises elders made his owner do with him were about teaching some words and phrases.

Of course, for a regular animal it would take a long time to understand the human tongue, but Alex learned everything quickly and found the exercises to be silly simple. Fortunately he taught his owner the necessity to read out loud to him and pretended to be in distress every time it didn’t happen.

This way he even managed to learn a bit of the writing of the people in this world. To Alex’s great relief they also used letters to describe sounds and form words, but he had hard time learning the alphabet this way and mostly remembered how the particular words looked like almost as if he was learning Mandarin or Japanese.

At this point Alex long understood his mistake about thinking of his master as being an underachiever and realized that the kid’s quick advancement was due to their performance in the woods during the festival. Therefore to not raise any unnecessary attention he mostly pretended to be just a simple guard dog, but for some reason the attention he got from the elders not only didn’t lessen – it even increased. Especially when during the earlier days Reino tried to give him a name and he continuously kept ignoring his owner.

After some tine Alex finally thought of a way to hide from the eyes of elders – he persuaded Reino to go to the training grounds every day and spend hours there increasing his physical abilities free from the annoying watchers.

Either because of the active lifestyle or the good nutrition he received, Alex grew very fast and his senses developed similarly quickly. He soon began to sense the presence of people he couldn’t see and even smell their familiars. Turned out he was still under continuous watch and since he could not escape, he could only learn why. Thus during the next weeks Reino had to frequent the library to get new books he could read to his moody pet. Luckily for him, he enjoyed the process and learned quite a bit himself as well.

The diligence Reino showed finally was enough for his master to start teaching him the real beastmaster skills, at least he thought so since elder Fata began to hold private lectures for a couple of hours every morning. Of course, the poor student didn’t have a clue his master was mostly doing this to observe the blackrock wolf pup, but even if he knew he might not have cared much.