The following day Kyrion was waiting with his group in the headmaster’s office with a tired look in his eyes. He didn’t sleep peacefully, which wasn’t something he usually had a problem with.

Max and Bella looked somewhat excited for entirely different reasons.

Bella was finally getting a chance to potentially cut loose while Cecil was given permission to drive the truck if the test was off campus. Although Bella would have to be his co-pilot as there were too many buttons, she was the only person who knew how to shut things off should Max mess something up.

Ander was wearing a green robe with black cloth-like bandages over his arms. A pair of metal stud earrings were on his ears. Those who didn’t know Ander would see this as an act of vanity. Most who did wonder what sort of boost to power they gave him.

“Why are you dressed like that?” Kyrion asked plainly.

“Apparently I’ve been promoted as a main cast character and have earned a power earring. This is apparently a battle uniform from his world.”

Kyrion looked at the green headband around Ander’s forehead and sighed. “I want one of those battle suits too. But in orange, like a tangerine.” Kyrion scratched his chin.

“Here I’d thought you’d go red to match your hair color.” Max said jokingly.

“Is it supposed to match hair colors? If so we can make it dark red then. I’d rather not look like a target.”

“Not sure if that would change much of anything.” Bella chimed in.

“You haven’t watched him disappear in plain sight. It’s disconcerting.” Max said plainly.

Kyrion did the thing, his presence fading as he sunk into the background.

“Disappear? Kyrion?” Bella looked through the spot where Kyrion had been standing and then past him, her eyes glossing over.

“Oh, that is disconcerting.” Ander seemed quite surprised, but unlike Bella, he hadn’t lost track of Kyrion and watched as he walked around her and began putting acorns in Max’s pockets. Until he noticed the weight.

“Huh. Do you happen to know what I’m doing?” Kyrion after he moved back to his previous spot.

“Nope, but it takes a bit of effort to keep you in sight.”

Max checked his pockets and squinted. “Really?”

“Really.”

“Eh em!” Headmaster Caeden cleared his throat.

“Oh sorry. What’s keeping the other group?” Kyrion asked, a bit more distracted than usual.

“No idea, so the choice is yours for our little game. Will you be offensive or defensive?”

Kyrion looked to Ander. “I vote offensive. If that’s what we’re doing.”

Max shrugged. “I’m not much of a fighter and only have a few animals at my disposal. I’d rather not endanger any of them however. Anything I bring with me can be killed in a tournament or test setting.”

“Offensive. It’s easier to attack than defend.” Bella stated.

“Two offensive and one I don’t know. Sounds like we are attacking.” Kyrion sighed.

“Here are the coordinates for where this is all taking place. You have four months to train and build cohesion before….”

“Oh come on!” Ander blurted out.

“We leave for the tournament, so we don’t have time to waste.”

“Oh.” Ander blushed.

“Now go, we begin a bit after noon.”

“Finally!” Ander bolted out of the room.

“What’s with him today?”

“He’s going to go all out and wants to show off..”

“I don’t really see how that will make much of a difference.” Caeden scowled.

“So you weren’t watching him.”

“Bastion is a bit of a handful. We went away on academy business.”

“Why would you?”

“You’re not the only one with surprises.”

“Great.” Kyrion led the rest of his group out of the office.

----------------------------------------

A half-hour later, Amadeus arrived with their team.

“You all seem a bit tired.” The headmaster stated.

“We just had a long training session.” Amadeus said.

“It was essentially a sword measuring competition to decide the hierarchy. I did some warm ups so my blood is pumping. Though do I really need to wear this armor?” Brion seemed a mix of energetic and annoyed.

Tiffany huffed. “The leader’s orders are absolute. No matter how redundant they are.”

“Shut up.” Amadeus commanded.

Amadeus received two irritated glares.

“Anyhow, since you were late, it seems you will be defending, here are the coordinates we start a little after noon. You have two hours to get there. Good luck.”

“As we do not have time to waste….” Brion started.

“We leave immediately.” Amadeus finished.

“How about breakfast?” Brion raised an eyebrow.

“What about it?”

“Kyrion told me it was the most important meal of the day and that you need to have at least one to be productive.” Brion stated.

“He also eats three of them some days.” Tiffany sighed.

“Can we not talk about him?” Amadeus said.

“I’ll talk as much as I want.” Tiffany said as she left the room.

“Oi!” Amadeus followed.

Brion laughed. “Gotta love team cohesion, what would you have done if the two of us didn’t jump sides?”

“We would ask inferior warriors for help and have lost because of it. Unlike Amadeus I’ve actually kept a watchful eye on you all. He can revive his unconscious companions, we can not.” Said a small voice.

Brion raised an eyebrow. “You’re not very confident are you?”

“No, I’m just pragmatic. We aren’t good at making friends and from what we’ve seen that one seems to have a talent for it.”

“Wait, is Amadeus jealous?” Brion almost started laughing.

“You can infer what you like.” The number two left the room, leaving Brion alone with the headmaster.

“So what’s their name?” Brion asked.

“We call her Hel. Her name is something she keeps close to the vest but we really shouldn’t go about keeping secrets from each other.”

“Sounds complicated. Ander would probably be a good match.”

“Romance in the air?”

Brion’s expression went blank as his eyes sharpened. “Please don’t joke like that… I’ve figured out what you were doing when Kyrion told us he’d been poisoned before the final round. Now that there are stakes, your political game is on pause.” Brion walked out of the room.

The door locked itself, and the headmaster looked into an ornate mirror.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“He isn’t as dense as he lets on. He could be dangerous in the future. So many young monsters in this batch.” Caeden smiled as he touched the reflective surface and vanished.

----------------------------------------

“Why am I blue? Shouldn’t you be blue, it’s your favorite color.”

“I’m red because I’m the main character.” Cecil stated.

Kyrion shut his mouth. “I am happy to let you be the main character then. But I want orange.””

“Huh, thought you would fight harder for red.”

“I couldn’t care less. I just want some of that nice equipment you have lying around. Like this weapon.” Kyrion picked up an odd rubber bell attached to a wooden stick.

“That’s not a weapon its a plunger.”

Kyrion pressed it on the ground and watched as It got stuck. His eyes glowed in surprise as he tested its suction ability.

“Can I get six of these?”

“Seven. I can think of twenty uses.” Karl whispered.

“What do you need with six plungers?”

“He eats a lot.” Bella joked.

Cecil shook his head.

“If I stick it to a wall then I could potentially use these to climb up? Also I need seven now.”

“Can’t you run up walls?” Cecil asked, crossing his arms.

“What about as a ranged weapon. I could throw them at people.”

“You can throw a lot of things at people…Just wouldn’t recommend this.”

“Fair enough. What about this thing?” Kyrion picked up a prototype chainsaw.

“Please put that down.” Bella demanded.

“Fine.” Kyrion put down the chainsaw.

“Didn’t you get your weapon?”

“Oh, right.” Kyrion pulled out a black case with the word Anesthesia written on the cover.

Kyrion sat down in a corner and waited. Finally, after a few minutes of waiting, Eden approached him.

“What’s going on?” She asked.

“The headmaster is making me fight again. So I’m forming a plan. How’s your training?”

“It’s sooooo boring. It also makes my head hurt. We argued for thirty minutes about my illiteracy. Apparently, I can read well, and I just didn’t know it.”

“Keep at it. Also no he gave you the ability to read, don’t ask me about the details all I know is that he expedited the first part of your training.” Kyrion gifted the kid in front of him with a voucher worth fifty A.P.

“What’s this?”

“Oh currency. Take this to the treasurer and you can add them to your account to spend later.”

“So this is like money. Ok, thank you I guess.” Eden looked at the scrap of paper and put it in a pocket.

“You’re welcome. Looks like my squad is ready to go.” Kyrion watched Max enter the driver’s seat, and Bella sat in the front passenger seat. Ander got in the back.

“Great.” Kyrion hopped onto the roof with grace and stood.

“Kyrion, that’s dangerous.” Cecil said stoically.

“I am not getting in this metal death carriage. It hates me, therefore I will stand right here.”

“But you’ll fall off.” Cecil tried to explain.

“No I won’t.” Kyrion reassured Cecil.

“I warned you.” Cecil didn’t bat an eye as he decided not to waste time on this.

The truck began to rev up without moving.

“You need to shift gears first. Remember?”

“Oh, right.” Max put his foot on the break and shifted the gear. To neutral, and the truck began to roll.

Bella grabbed the shift when Max scowled.

“Oh. I went one too far.” Max shifted to drive and began to slowly accelerate.

“The beast is moving!” Kyrion opened the case and drew a long black wooded great club with the words Anesthesia engraved on the body.

“Kyrion! It’s supposed to do that. Don’t you dare try to smash my prototype!” Cecil yelled.

“Fine. Onwards!” Kyrion pointed his bat forward, and the truck took off.

----------------------------------------

Despite the warning, Kyrion did not, in fact, fall off the vehicle. He did, however, swallow a bug or two whenever he started trying to complain about Max going too fast. The road they took needed a touch of work, and the ride was, in fact, bumpy. Kyrion had to occasionally redirect wild animals that were nearby. Kyrion was going to starve this monster if it was the last thing he ever did.

It took two hours to arrive at the general location as they dove at a consistent thirty miles per hour. Ander’s face matched his hair color as his stomach didn’t agree with the metal box.

Max was excited the whole time, while Bella seemed to have a heavy hand on the emergency break.

The truck parked near a castle that wasn’t on any map Kyrion had looked at. There wasn’t even a town or settlement nearby.

“I don’t like this one bit.”

“Why do I feel like the carriage is still moving?”

“Don’t you fly around faster than this?”

“That’s different.” Ander climbed out an open window with his thin form. Falling to the ground, he then began to kiss the earth.

Max opened the trunk and released a caged mastiff that seemed confused. It did not look happy as it hopped to the ground and began sniffing.

“What have you done to my comades?” Kyrion asked the inanimate object.

“He just has motion sickness. Which is stupid given how much he flies around.”

“My ailment is not stupid.” Ander said from the ground.

“It is… What’s the difference between this, and you flying about?”

“I’m not sitting still when that happens. Flying is freeing, this. This is like locking myself in a box and getting pushed down a mountain..”

“You should have stood on the top like I did.” Kyrion told his shorter and lighter ally.

“I’ll try that next time.” Ander then pulled himself to his feet.

“What now?” Bella said as she left the truck.

Max also left the truck, the engine was still roaring, and oddly enough, it began to roll forward as they approached. The beast had gone wild.

Kyrion smiled as the vehicle ran away. “That’s right. That’s right.”

Bella slapped her forehead as she saw the vehicle continue forward very slowly. “You forgot to put it in park.”

Max was quick enough to catch up and fix the problem by parking the truck and taking the key out of the ignition.

“There is a lot to remember about these things.”

“Yeah…. These are a century or two too early. No offense, but Cecil is trying to start a magitech revolution. He has a lot of theories to test.”

“What’s he going to do with the giant wand?” Kyrion asked.

“It’s a giant wand, probably to cast really big spells.” Bella threw up her arms.

“Well I’m bored now. Kyrion do you still have your disc thing? I wanna play fetch.” Max asked.

“You want to use one of my weapons to play with your dog?” Kyrion raised an eyebrow.

“No I want to use it to help warm up Snickers.” Max pointed to the dog that seemed to laugh as it sniffed the ground.

Kyrion pulled out two of his ornate wooden chakram and debated letting Max get his way. He then sensed a presence watching them from the shabby castle. So he threw the first disc in that direction before sprinting to the wall.

The chakram embedded itself in the building a foot to the widow’s right while Kyrion prepared for a running leap.

Using momentum and his mana, he managed to hop to the second story by using a platform of air to jump a second time. Where he made it through the window.

A dazed blond girl in a dress lay on the ground, frozen. Her life flashed before her eyes as her consciousness faded.

“I told you not to peek through the window, young lady.” The headmaster sighed and grabbed a teacup.

“Huh?”

“That was a rather aggressive entrance, Kyrion. Did you skip your second lunch or something.” The headmaster took a sip from a teacup.

“I may or may not have been a bit bored. I also don’t like ambushes, for all we know this was hostile territory.” Kyrion said from the window.

“The others are still late. I doubt that they’ll be here in the next two hours. Didn’t expect you to be early either.”

Kyrion settled on the ground and rolled the unconscious girl onto her stomach. “Curses. What are we doing now?”

“Well the easy answer is here. Your job as the offensive force will be to kidnap this girl.”

“But why?” Kyrion asked before quickly adding. “This isn’t illegal is it?”

“She has consented to being kidnapped in our little game.”

“So we are the attackers and they are the guardians.”

“Yup. I won’t say anymore on the subject until the other team arrives.”

“Who is she?”

“One of the Daughters of Etravonia, there are around thirty of them. The Patriarch wanted a male heir and went through quite a few marriages until one appeared. The Patriarch was very unlucky in that regard and only had two sons out of thirty two children. Most of the daughters have been disinherited for obvious reasons.”

“Thirty sisters… and here I thought I had it bad.” Kyrion felt for the two younger boys he hadn’t met. A kind of kinship, one could say.

“The Patriarch, is well over four hundred years old. The sons were born from his thirteenth and fourteenth wives and are his most recent batch of children.”

“That is bizarre. Wait, why did he have a second son?”

“It’s how the world is. Live long enough to watch various loved ones come and go, and your heart hardens. The mother died a week after giving birth and the son was premature and sickly.”

“Still… I asked for a name.”

“Mildred is the name.”

“That’s an old person’s name.” Kyrion scowled

“... Please don’t say that aloud again. Especially if she’s awake.”

“Fine. So she’s technically a princess and she’s here because she wants to be entertained.”

“Oh no, apparently I’m a really sick kid who wished to meet her.” Bastion pointed to his odd eye.

“So you tricked her… Well I guess I’ll wait up here for a while.”

“She is also hopeful for our academy. If we can impress her then she may join the school as a student.”

“You aren’t going to inform your teammates of the goal?”

“We don’t need the handicap and as I won’t be taking an active role in this game. My early knowledge won’t be spoken.”

“You aren’t trying to lose are you?”

“We will win without my combat ability. Is it cheating if I walk around a bit?”

“It would be prudent, given your team arrived first. You have first right to scout the area.”

“Uh huh.” Kyrion nodded to Bastion and then walked over to the unconscious princess towards a set of double doors.

“Karl? Can you scan this building?” Kyrion thought towards his dungeon spirit.

“Oh now you remember I exist. Only when you want something.” Karl said in a monotone.

“It’s a castle. We’re going to make a map. It’s also a new blueprint.”

“Fine, but you owe me one. You should also use some of these goblins. If some die then we can place them in stasis until the cit- I mean the dungeon has enough resources to support them all. After that we can work on reviving monsters?”

“No. I will not. That’s inhumane.”

“You let go of a squad of our most efficient builders. I need time to get them situated. Let that Max person lead them. I don’t care. Your supply of food is also running low as all they do is eat and sleep while training for their positions.”

Kyrion sighed. “I don’t like this. But fine. Anything else?”

“I want to scan that metal behemoth.”

“I can’t do that without Cecil’s permission. I’ll ask him when we get back. How does that sound?”

“I need an oath.”

“You have my word if that isn’t good enough...”

“Bah. I’m trying to build you a habitable environment inside your domain and you’re being stingy.”

“You could build a castle there couldn’t you? Put one of your main defenders in the castle.”

“Fine.” A cube appeared out of Kyrion’s body and began to scan the castle. It took all of two hours to get everything, and by then, his own team had wandered into the place to check on him.

When the job was finished, the four met near the truck for lunch before the test began.

“You want me to lead the charge?” Max said with a considerable amount of skepticism.

“Your dog is as strong as a practitioner and is more than capable of defending you. You will also have a small squad of five goblins at your disposal. Let the headmaster know that they are expendable and can be revived later on.”

Bella will follow behind and provide support with her magic.”

“So I’ll be working on crowd control.”

“Correct, Ander you will be our attacker but you won’t go into the castle. Assault from the outside and draw whoever you can out of the building.”

“Divide and conquer. What will you be doing?”

“I’ll be running around taunting Amadeus, wasting their time while you fight anyone who exits the castle. Aside from that I will be a mobile healer.” Kyrion looked to Ander.

“There is one thing you didn’t account for. The rank two has the ability to control bugs. It’s what they use to fight, scout, and paralyze enemies. They can use a lot of them as well. If the opponent is thinking strategically then they will be in charge of defending the building.” Ander stated.

“Bugs?” Kyrion pulled out a spray bottle filled with a blue liquid.

“What’s that?”

“It’s a perfume that makes you invisible to insects.”

“You could not have known to bring that for this fight.”

“It’s what I use to keep bugs away when camping. They’re pretty peaceful and all but I’d rather not sleep eat. Some bugs can be poisonous, you know, others are covered in bacteria.”

“So you happen to have a tool that nullifies someone’s powers?”

“No. If they can direct them personally then this will be useless. So long as the owner doesn’t know your location you should be fine but once spotted.”

“Would you happen to have a cardboard box?” Bella asked.

“What’s cardboard?” Kyrion asked.

“Nevermind. Max, you and the dog.”

“Snickers. His name is Snickers, and he’s a mastiff not some poodle.”

“He looks like a runt to me. Listen here Max, do you have a weapon?”

Max drew a shortsword from a sheath on his waist. “It’s for self defense.”

Bella sighed. “What do you do when Snickers fights?”

“I stand in the back and give orders. Using my mana to grant him strength and speed.”

Bella squinted. “So you’re just a squishy target… Stay in the back and if anything gets past your squad. Retreat.”

“Kyrion?” Max looked at his friend.

“Sounds good. Retreating is probably for the best if you’re vulnerable.” Kyrion opened his domain, and five hobgoblins appeared.

One had a head that came out of the horn of a tuba while the body was protected by brass plate armor. The second was covered in various tools for tinkering. The third had a bandolier of what Kyrion recognized as crude explosives, along with a pair of dark goggles. A fourth held a small black box floating above their hands. The fifth was covered head to toe in blades, from butter knives to machetes. Some even resembled sheers and branch cutters.

“Boss!” The goblins said at once.

“At ease. You have a mission. Protect and serve under Max here. He’s a monster tamer capable of boosting your abilities. Our mission will involve subduing our opponents, so we avoid lethal attacks.” Kyrion looked at the blade-covered hob before the explosive hob until they nodded in understanding.

“Yes Boss!” They agreed.

“Good now, feel free to discuss what’s coming next.” Kyrion lay on a grass bed.

“Are you going to take a nap?” Ander asked.

“Wake me when the others arrive.” Kyrion did not hear the protest as he drifted into the dream world.