Another reason Emil was looking forward to this class was them.

Arne and Piers, his two favorite teachers whom he met in the special admissions examinations.

They showed him much support during the test, not to mention Mr Nuemann even saving him on the orientation day.

And besides... They seemed to know his parents. He had many questions to ask them.

"Alright class, we'll be beginning the lesson with spars. Everyone come and grab weapons."

Piers didn't waste much time and begun the lesson.

The Combat Practice class wasn't held in the usual lecture room, it was an open training field filled with weapons and equipments.

"Hurry up hurry up, by the time you guys are done picking weapons the grass on my grave will be 6 feet tall."

The students were a bit slow to move which called for another yell from Arne.

Emil moved towards the weapon rack and picked a sword.

The weapons here weren't Magical Artifacts, they were normal weapons.

Once everyone was done making their pick, Piers started speaking.

"Knights will pair against Knights and Mages will pair against Mages.

You may use spells but you mustn't hurt one another, remember, this is just a spar.

Whoever admits defeat or is unarmed will be losing the match."

Piers and Arne didn't stand ceremony. They started the class as soon as possible as to not waste a single moment.

There was much to be learned and the sooner they started the better.

Combat Practice was gonna cover all fields of combat, from solo spars to team spars, Knight against Knight, Mage against Mage, or Knights vs Mage, and even students against Magical Beasts.

But first, the teachers had to understand where their students stood, their weaknesses and strength point so they could guide each and everyone one of them based on their abilities.

Such system wasn't possible in other mandatory classes since they only had one teacher, but having two teachers made it possible for each student to receive more individually-focused training.

Soon, everyone was done teaming up and the spars started.

There were 30 groups, and the students were to spar in groups of 10, five groups of Knights and five groups of Mages.

The Knights were supervised by Arne and the Mages were supervised by Piers.

Two boys could be seen sparring in one of the rings, both Knights.

This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

One of them held a spear and another held a great sword.

On the count of three, they rushed at each other. The first boy, holding the spear, was quick and skillful.

He barely gave the second boy any time to defend as he stabbed his spear towards him. But the second boy managed to raise his great sword on time and block it.

That wasn't the end as the first boy retracted his spear and made yet another stabbing motion, only for the second boy to dodge by curling his waist leftwards.

The second boy was having trouble against the spearman's speed. A horizontal slash was coming at his face before he even got the chance to recover from the previous attacks.

This exchange went on for another dozen or so blows before finally, when the spearman seemed out of breath due to his nonstop assault, the second boy attacked.

The spearman was helpless against the swordsman's attacks. His great sword held much weight behind it and covered a large area. The spearman couldn't imagine himself blocking the thing with his spear, not without getting disarmed or having his spear broken, so all he could do was dodge.

Eventually, the fatigue from his earlier assault and all the dodging caught up to him, allowing the swordsman to place his sword just inches away from his throat.

"Do you admit defeat?"

"Huff, Huff, yeah."

They might've fought fiercely but they acknowledged each other's skills and shook hands after the match was over.

They didn't use any spells throughout the entire bout. Frankly speaking, Knights' spells weren't too powerful in the lower levels, not to mention the students were still new to it, and were yet to get accustomed to integrating spells into their combat style. This was one of the areas everyone had to improve on. Spells could make a world of difference in any magician's fighting ability. But as it stood now, the Knights were more comfortable using their bodies alone. They had a long way to go in that regard.

On another ring, two Mages could be seen fighting.

One of them was a fire Mage and another was an Air mage.

This was a bad matchup.

As soon as the battle started, the air Mage cast a haste spell on himself while the fire mage cast a fireball.

Haste was a spell unique to the Air element, it allowed for less wind resistance and quicker movement.

The fire Mage, seeing his fireball was barely dodged by the Air mage, started casting another fireball.

The Air mage wasn't gonna sit around when his opponent was casting a spell, so he closed in on him while casting a spell of his own.

It was a battle of who was gonna finish their spell first.

Both mages were done casting and shot each other at the same time.

The Fire mage used another fireball while the Air mage cast a wind slash, small in width but powerful and visible.

The two spells collided and a small explosion occured.

The Air mage used his speed and got away from the explosion.

As soon as he reached a safe distance, he paused to scrutinized his opponent.

This was when a flying knife came towards him.

Too late to dodge, the knife connected to his chest, which was repelled by his armor.

However, that was enough to declare him the loser.

Taking another look at the Fire Mage, you could see how his hair and uniform were disheveled and his face looked slightly charred. It seemed like he was caught in the explosion, but instead of running away, he decided to throw a knife at his opponent and land a strike on him.

The distance was great so it was certain the Fire mage used telekinesis o throw the knife, a commendable move by him.

The fire mage had every intention to end the match as soon as possible, because the longer it went on the higher his portability of losing became.

Air was Fire element's natural enemy.

If the Air mage got the chance to, it wouldn't have been difficult for him to repel the Fire mage's spells and attack him instead.

The disparity between Fire and Air element was apparent n all elements.

Each element had three states.

What they were strongest against, what they were weakest against, and what they were equal against.

Fire was strongest against Earth, equal to Water, and weakest against Air.

Air was strongest against Fire, equal to Water, and weakest against Earth.

Earth was strongest against Air, equal to Water, and weakest against Fire.

While Water, the most versatile and balanced element, was equal to all three other elements, but not stronger or weaker than them.

Last but not the least, Light and Darkness element were one another's biggest counters, while being equally effective against the other four elements.