The rest of his roommates soon joined him in the cafeteria, just missing the twins’ departure.

They ate together, while Gavin tried to convince everyone that he hadn’t been the one snoring. He wasn’t very successful.

Their stomachs full, they left the cafeteria together to attend their first lesson of the day. As everyone was still unfamiliar with the large campus, it took them a while to find the auditorium where the lesson would be held.

Though because they had gotten up early and been quick to eat, they still made it in good time. Except for a few students, the auditorium was still mostly empty, so they snatched some good seats in the very front.

Kaden sat down right next to Ewan, and to his displeasure, Derrik took the seat next to him.

Not that he disliked Derrik; he didn’t. But he doubted that the boy would be able to pay attention, and refrain from disturbing him during the lesson.

Oh well, as there wasn’t anything he could do about it now, he would just have to deal with it.

While students continued to trickle in behind them, Kaden passed the time chatting with the others.

Apparently Derrik’s war hammer had fallen out of his bed when he had woken up, which had dented the wooden floor.

Kaden was sad he had left so early he didn’t witness it, and couldn’t help but question why Derrik had even slept with the war hammer in his bed.

This started a long explanation that was thankfully cut short when the instructor walked in from the backroom.

On his way up to the podium, the instructor clicked a button on a remote he carried, and then, a red light started to glow around the doors leading in to the auditorium.

Kaden wasn’t entirely sure, but he thought that he could hear someone start to bang on the door from the other side.

After exchanging a look with Ewan, Kaden knew that he had heard the same thing.

“Theres always one or two…” The instructor muttered, frowning as he stared at a monitor attached to the podium.

“Let this be a lesson for you all.” The instructor looked up, a stern expression on his face. “You better be punctual, I won’t tolerate any tardiness,” He said, as the screen behind him flared to life, showing a view of two students outside, desperately banging on the door to be let in.

“Oh well, their loss.” The instructor shook his head and turned the screen back off, like he didn’t care about the two students that had arrived late. “Let’s get on with the important stuff.”

Kaden couldn’t help but pity them a little. Sure, they were late, but it was only the first day. He knew from firsthand experience that it wasn’t easy to find your way around the campus.

It was their problem though, and since he didn’t know them, there was no reason for him to speak up on their behalf.

“My name is Artur Lien. I will be your instructor for weapons history, which is a required course for your first school year. Because of this, there are almost five hundred of you attending this course, which means that arriving on time is very important. If I don’t lock the doors, late students will come in one after the other, disturbing the course for the rest of you. I’m drilling this into your heads now, so I don’t have to keep dealing with it for the rest of the year. As for those stuck outside right now, they can come in during the break.”

The instructor cleared his throat and took a sip of water before continuing.

“In this course, we will go over the history of weapons, starting from the dawn of humanity, and finishing with the modern age we are in today. We will assess the practicality of certain weapons, focusing strongly on why some of them are still so effective today, despite all the technological advancements. It may surprise some of you to hear this, but most of the weapons you’ve all chosen, were invented many millennia before you were born.”

A low murmur arose in the auditorium, as some students clearly didn’t know about that.

It didn’t come as a shock to Kaden, however, who had been pondering over that for some time. After all, spears were just simple weapons, and even the guards in the Underworld had them. His father had also briefly mentioned that they were an ancient weapon.

With all the unimaginable things he had seen since coming to this world, it was clear that it was far more advanced than any human civilization he had read about in his books. Because of that, it made little sense to him that they hadn’t progressed beyond the primitive weapons wielded by the first of their ancestors.

***

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The moment Ewan stepped into his range, Kaden swung the padded training spear, sweeping the boy’s legs and sending him tumbling to the ground in a mess of limbs.

After the weapons history course was over, the next thing on their schedule was the melee training course. In the beginning of the lesson, the instructor had paired them up for some light sparring, so that he could assess their individual abilities.

Kaden had been paired up with Ewan, but there hadn’t been much sparring about it, as Ewan was just getting his ass handed to him over and over.

“Way too obvious,” Kaden said, offering Ewan a hand.

Taking his hand, Ewan used it to pull himself up.

“What do you mean?” Ewan asked as he dusted the dirt off his uniform.

“Well, you need to be more unpredictable if you want to attack someone with a much longer reach. Right now, you’re just running straight at me. I don’t know how intelligent the monsters in dungeons are, maybe your attack will work on them. But as you are now, you couldn’t get a hit in on Derrik, let alone me.”

“Ouch…” Ewan winced.

“Well, maybe that’s not such a fair comparison after all,” Kaden said, gazing off to the side Derrik was currently sparring with some guy wielding a two-handed sword. The boy wasn’t the most intelligent or levelheaded, but he definitely had a very keen battle instinct.

“He’s better than I expected,” Ewan said after also observing Derrik.

“Indeed.” Kaden agreed. “Oh well, let’s not get distracted. You want to try again?”

“Sure.” Ewan nodded. “I’m not giving up yet.”

They returned to their starting positions.

When they were both ready, Ewan came rushing at him again, wielding a chakram in each hand. It was the exact same as he had done every time before that.

Kaden just waited for him to get close enough and then sent him sprawling onto the dirt.

“That wasn’t any different.” Kaden shook his head. “It obviously isn’t working, try something else.”

“I know, but what?” Ewan asked, the frustration he was feeling showing on his face.

Kaden considered what he would do in Ewan’s shoes and quickly came up with a decent idea.

“Well, the instructor gave you two of those rings, right? Maybe you could use one of them as a distraction. Try throwing it at me and use that opportunity to close in.”

“But this is a melee training course… I don’t think it would be right to use ranged.” Ewan seemed hesitant to do it.

“And? You have no intention of ever relying solely on melee, do you? You should always exploit the advantages you have, it’s the best way to make up for and overcome your weaknesses.”

“Hm, maybe you’re right,” Ewan said, looking convinced enough. “Let’s give it a go.”

Kaden nodded and took a few steps back so that they were at the right distance from each other.

“Ready whenever,” Kaden said, setting into his stance.

Once more, Ewan came rushing at him.

When he was almost within range and hadn’t made a single move to throw one of his chakrams, Kaden started wondering if he had decided to do the same thing again after all.

Kaden didn’t let down his guard though, and that was a good thing, because just before entering his reach, Ewan raised his arm and flung a chakram at him.

Aimed at his face, it blocked his vision as it came speeding at him, far faster than he had expected and with a ton of power behind it. Thrown from such a close range, it was already too late to dodge.

It was only a training disc, so he knew it wouldn’t injure him, but the blow would definitely still hurt.

Bringing his spear around, he smacked the disc off to the side, just before it struck his jaw.

With the chakram no longer right in front of him, his vision was once again clear. His eyes widened in surprise as he saw Ewan right in front of him, preparing to attack.

The spearhead was off to the side, and Ewan was too close for him to maneuver it around for a strike.

But he had trained for situations like this. His mind blanked as his muscle memory took over, making his hands slide further up the shaft. With a tight grip, he put the full force of his body into the blow, as he struck Ewan in the stomach with the back of the spear.

Ewan immediately lost all momentum, falling down on his knees and wheezing. “You… You..” He tried to talk, but the air was rapidly escaping his lungs.

“Are you alright?” Kaden started getting worried as he realized what he had done.

He hadn’t intended on striking Ewan that hard, but when he had been caught off guard, his body had just reacted by itself.

“I… I’m fine.” Ewan struggled to get the words out and took a couple of deep breaths to get his lungs under control. “I didn’t expect that. You can attack with the end too?”

Seeing that Ewan looked like he was going to be alright, Kaden breathed out a sigh of relief. It was a good thing the training weapons were padded and light, or Ewan probably would’ve been a lot worse off.

“Well, why not? A staff is a weapon too, after all. My father made me practice it a lot, insisting it would come in handy at some point.”

“It sure did…” Ewan was still rather pale, but it seemed like he was mostly just bummed to have missed out on his one chance.

“Don’t beat yourself up over it though, you did well. Almost had me too.” In fact, it was a little closer than Kaden would’ve liked. If his muscle memory hadn’t kicked in as quick as it did, Ewan probably would’ve gotten a hit in.

“Key word being almost.” Ewan scoffed.

“But I knew it was going to happen, and you nearly succeeded anyway. It’ll definitely work on anyone else, they won’t be expecting it.” Kaden smiled and then remembered something. “Oh yeah, did you throw it at my face on purpose? It was brilliant, I couldn’t see a thing.”

“I did, but I wasn’t sure if it was going to work. Bit of blind luck that I even threw it accurately, I’m still not too used to these things.” Ewan said, twirling a chakram around his finger.

As he saw him doing that, Kaden couldn’t help but feel a little wary, reminded of what happened yesterday. The edge wasn’t sharp this time though, so it wasn’t as scary.

“You’ll get better, just keep practicing.”

“Thanks, I will.”

“Kaden, come over here before you hurt your partner again. Ewan, go find someone else to practice with,” The instructor yelled, having seen the entire thing.

“Well, looks like I’m going to get a stern talking to,” Kaden chuckled.

Worry spread over Ewan’s face. “Want me to come? I’ll tell him you didn’t mean to do that.”

“Nahh, I’m sure it’s not going to be anything too bad. I can take care of it.” Kaden was thankful that Ewan had offered to do so, but he doubted the instructor was actually going to reprimand him all that much. “Go try your new trick on Derrik or something.” Kaden smiled mischievously, already getting excited to see it play out.

“Oh! That’s a good idea.” Ewan nodded eagerly, hurrying over to ask Derrik for a spar.

Kaden was sure that he wouldn’t have much trouble getting Derrik to agree to it. That boy looked like he loved fighting more than anything.

“What is it instructor Wynter?” Kaden asked after walking over to where the instructor was standing, watching all the students.