Martial Training the following day went much better than the previous. During the run, the front pack started using our magic to outpace each other.

Six different Combat Forms dominated the front group, with a couple using Air magic to keep up. Since two of them were Cage's friends, I think they didn't want Haru, Hoshi, Aspen, and me to make them look bad.

I was learning to control the increased strength and speed better now of the form; in other words, I only fell off the obstacle course twice instead of the dozen it was last time.

A few hours of rest, food and cultivation, in that order, found a few of us walking into our Beast Cultivation Lesson. On the walk, I noticed that Hoshi was carrying a box I hadn't seen before. Walking into the building was like walking into a wall of smells, not helped by all of our heightened senses. I could hear growls, barks and an assortment of other sounds from more profound into the building, but we followed the signs down a different hallway into a small room.

Of my group of friends, it was only Haru, Hoshi and me, but I did recognise a few others. Cage's friends, Ash and Skye, were already there; Aspen entered just behind us, which left the rest of the room unknown to me. Considering we were the six at the front of the pack using our combat forms this morning, I wondered if any of the others actually had a familiar yet.

We sat to the side, away from the girls, who had been glaring at me since we entered. Even though I didn’t consider what happened to be very important, apparently I was the only one.

As I looked around I noticed everyone was starting to stare at the front of the room, I turned back to see a small fox sitting on a table staring at us. It took me a moment before I realised there was too much intelligence behind its eyes for it to be a normal fox. Suddenly in a small flash of light, a small grey-haired japanese woman was standing there instead.

“Hello, I suppose that was a surprise to some of you.” she said with a smile.

"I will explain much to you over the following weeks but before that, an introduction, finding companions for some of you and finally you introducing yourselves and your familiar to your peers."

"To begin, I am Yuki and this is my oldest friend Michio." Yuki said, pointing at a small fox that looked similar to the one from before.

"You all start with a base combat form. This is only the first stage of the ability you get from your affinity. If you only have one familiar, your base form will change to take on features based on them and you can progress it to the furthest stage, which is a complete transformation into their form. There is also a mid-stage that is normally called Demi-beast stage. A good example of this is the werewolf, the naga and it is believed it was also one of the ways the people of Amphira created their society.” Yuki continued.

Before we move on to getting those of you, without one, a familiar, a word of warning for those of you planning on progressing in this direction. The feral werewolf society that propogated on the planet now know as Remus is an example of what not to do. They lost many of their people by losing control while in their demi-beast form. That is the inherent risk with that form and the full transformation, you are subjected to the instincts of the beast and without strong will power you can lose yourself.” Yuki finished.

From the small smile she had when she finished, she was intentionally trying to scare us. I thought about what she said, the only reason someone with more familiars couldn't complete the higher level of transformation would be because it takes alot of time to grow closer with the beasts.

With fear flashing on a few faces we all followed Yuki out of the room. I shared a glance with my friends, none of whom looked worried, Hoshi even had a small smile, I would have to ask them later.

It wasn't far before we entered a themed room. It was full of Shadow mana and manabeasts in cages. I saw almost a dozen Dark Wolves, considering how many were killed the day before, the academy must breed them.

"Who doesn't have their first familiar and is of Shadow affinity?" Yuki asked.

One boy raised his hand, he had deep blue hair, I was actually assuming he had Water not Shadow affinity.

Yuki studied him for a second before she pulled a stack of paper from somewhere. She flipped through the pages until She got to one near the bottom.

"Sam Shepard. Yes there you are. Says you don't have any animal preference so you can pick any beast in this room." Yuki explained.

Sam wandered around the room, with everyone's attention on him. I hadn't seen anyone else pick a familiar before since Clin chose me not the other way around.

The enhanced hearing from our affinity let all of us hear him muttering to himself.

"Multiple Dark Wolves could form a pack, or maybe this Shadow Trapper, they have good secondary skills for hunting. Maybe, I don't know," he was saying.

Sam continued to talk but he got quieter as he went, he kept moving around the room and looking into cages. I didn't know what was in most of the cases as all I saw was a wall of darkness.

He kept coming back to the Dark Wolf enclosure, he didn't even seem to notice he was doing it, not even looking at the enclosure. After a few more minutes Sam finally noticed and completely focused on the Dark Wolves.

He looked uncertain, unsure which one to pick, he kept dithering back and forth looking at the three that could be seen at the front. Suddenly Sam’s shadow enveloped him with a Shadowstep and was back seconds later with a tiny Dark Wolf pup in his arms.

"Now reach out with your Beast mana and form the bond." Yuki ordered, into the silence.

I couldn't sense anything while he formed the bond, basically just watched a guy stroke a small wolf. Sam barely acknowledged any of us as we moved to the next room, too infatuated with his new familiar. I will admit that the Dark Wolf was adorable, I tore my attention away from the pup when Clin licked my cheek.

"Are you jealous, little one?" I whispered, stroking his head.

In response he left his habitual place of my back and rested his body along my neck onto my head, watching the room.

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We kept moving throughout the building, bypassing different elemental rooms, stopping at the Earth, Water, Light and Lightning rooms.

A boy called Ash, who was built like a wall with brown hair chose an Earth elemental that looked like a couple floating pebbles.

A small skinny girl with turquoise hair called Rosemary coaxed a Grindylow out of a tank in the Water room.

A tall Arab boy, with light green hair called Muhammad picked out a small Light Fairy, which currently looked like a moving dot of light. I realised he was the first person I had seen, even on the streets of London from that area of the world. I made a note to ask Mason about it later, the information was probably something learnt in history class before your core was awakened.

We finished in a room most of us couldn't even enter, Lightning, from the yelling and the sound of thunder it looked like a potential familiar was throwing a tantrum. That didn't stop a girl I had barely noticed before walking in though, a shimmer followed her as she left the group and entered the room.

"Who was that? I didn't even notice her," Someone asked.

A small laughter came from Aspen next to me. I looked at her for answers.

"That was Kat, she's my roommate, she's really shy and can't control her Light mana properly yet. It reacts to her emotions and causes a veil of reflected light to conceal her body. She told me the Enigma Squad gave her a scholarship in return for her working for them for five years. Once she masters the technique she will make a perfect scout." She explained.

It was more seconds later after Aspen finished that Kat left the room, this time without the concealing light, with a two-tailed fox in her hands. Both Hoshi or Haru gasped when they saw it.

"I can't believe they found a young Kitsune." Haru remarked.

"Only two tails, it was probably thrown out of the den," Hoshi responded.

"Huh?" I intellectually asked.

"Kitsune that will eventually grow into their full nine tails are normally born with three tails. Those born with less are either hybrids or rejects that get killed in the wild." Hoshi answered.

“I assumed we would learn that kinda stuff and haven’t really studied different manabeasts,” I answered trying to coverup my ignorance.

Kat hurried over to Aspen, forgetting her shyness in her pleasure.

“Look how cute she is Aspen, I named her Spark.” Kat started.

I was confused by the name until Spark sneezed while sniffing Aspen, causing a zap of lightning to jump off her tail onto Kat, making her giggle.

By the time we walked through the building, gaining familiars for everyone, almost the entire lesson time had elapsed without us realising. As we were leaving Aspen finally showed us her familiar, a small Purple and Gold Scorpion peeped past her hair, before hiding again.

On our way out the building we were all given two spell books that I quickly put away before reading properly.

We all left, going our own way to cultivate before dinner, Kat joining the group as well. Apparently, Aspen didn’t want to bring her before because she didn’t know if we’d accept another random person and because of how shy Kat was. Kat had been getting her food and going back to their room while Aspen had been taking her meals alone.

The next day was another thought provoking lesson on mana, with a small amount of history of where things went poorly. Our instructors were giving each other notes as the story of Remus was included as the warning for losing control in a high-mana enviroment.

*

Advanced Weapon Training had me in my combat form being attacked by a second year assistant, under the watchful eye of Sergeant Peterson. As I was knocked back again, I quickly looked across the area, only a bit over twenty people that were “qualified” to be here, I was the only one unable to fight back.

“You must use your speed, i’m not even moving that fast. You’re not getting better.” John, the assistant ordered.

I tried again, I tried tracking his movement but I couldn’t keep up, I was madly scrambling to get away from his attacks instead of fighting back, I was getting desperate, I didn’t want to be a failure.

After another fifteen minutes of getting my ass kicked and doing exactly what the Sergeant accused me off during our first Mana Beast Hunting lesson, overthinking. The clanging of metal on the ground in front of me snapped me out of my head, I looked down to see a small curved knife with a ring on the handle, resembling a claw, on the ground.

“Pick up the Karambit and stop thinking.” John ordered me.

I did what I was told, I first held the knife with it sticking up from the top of my hand, but with the short handle, that left my thumb sitting on top of the blade. I flipped the knife around and had the blade coming out from the bottom of my hand, getting John’s nod at this action.

I tried to connect with Clin again, using his instincts. This time, when john attacked, it appeared slow, I didn’t stop to think about how to dodge or whether to attack, I just leant slightly to the side and attacked.

Slashing out with my claws had John bring his sword back to block, I slashed with the blade at his elbow holding the sword. In less than a second I was back on the ground.

“Much better, between your instincts when you stop thinking and that knife, I can probably make an assassin out of you. Especially once you get some higher level Void Spells and your demi-form.” John remarked.

I didn’t answer, a little uncomfortable with his words. He snapped me out of my thought with a single word.

“Again,” he ordered.

*

Friday morning I was back on the obstacle course, now used to my increased strength and speed, was actually able to complete it. I still wasn't the fastest by far but managing to walk away without being covered in mud was the one of the best feelings all week.

Lunch with all my friends and a couple hours of cultivation later and I was heading to the final class of the week.

Void was my first class without any of my friends, and the added bonus of being in class with Cage, a fact I found out after I walked into the room.

"If it's not the leech himself." He snarled as I entered.

That was my final straw, I hadn't done anything to this guy and he wouldn't let up. A vicious smile pulled at my lips as I looked back at him. I wasn't proud of what I said next but in my anger it's what came out.

"If it isn't daddies little Angel, no crew of bootlickers today I see. Not paying them enough to follow to class? Or is it because you actually went to your class today?"

"Don't you dare bring my father into this! You are everything I hate in life, just kissing Masons ass to get into the academy, the rest of us had to be good enough, working our arses off!" He screamed into my face, just about leaping across the room.

He took a half step back when Clin moved, he clearly knew what Clin was by the flinch of panic.

In that moment, I got why he hated me. The asshole was wrong, but i got it. My anger disappeared in seconds.

"You know nothing, get off your fucking high horse when you don't know anything about me." I said tiredly and walked past him.

Not in the mood to talk to anyone else for the lesson I sat on the opposite side of the room to the rest.

"I know enough," was hissed behind me.

I sat there trying not to think about anything when I realised the lesson had started almost ten minutes ago and there was still no sign of the instructor.

I finally looked around the room and saw that Cage was also sitting off to the side by himself and the rest were chatting together, every now and then looking towards Cage and me.

We all waited another half hour before a voice rang out and a person was suddenly standing at the front of the room.

"Good, not a single one of you left." He stated dryly.

A spell book dropped onto each table, I looked at the cover as he started talking again. The cover said Void Bubble.

"Come back when you can cast that within two seconds using a shortened chant or better. Then you might be worth my attention." He ordered before walking towards the door.

He looked back over his shoulder just before he left the room.

"Free use of the cultivation rooms but no free resources, they cost."

Cage was the first to leave, closely followed by the rest, who left as a group. I was left alone and glad I wouldn't have to come back until I could get a solid grasp of the spell.

It took doing a loop around the building but I eventually found the cultivation rooms in the basement of the building.

Clin slithered down my body and into a corner of the room, I assumed it was where the void mana was strongest.

I sat down in the middle of the room and started reading the spell book.

Void Bubble

Tier: 1

Element: Void

Spell Chant:

A Protective thought

pulled from the world between worlds

forms a shield

seperating me from this one

Void Bubble

A thin film formed above my head and spread around me slowly, it closed up below my feet. I tried touching it, but it just felt like a really strong soap bubble. I only noticed what its true effect was when Clin reacted, looking around the room for me confused, my bond with felt distance but I could still hear him moving.

Void Bubble not only creates a defence field that I felt could be expanded to a larger size if there are others around me but also essentially cut me off, visually, from the world. The best part was there was no mana cost for upkeep.

I really was turning into an ambush attacker. I guess the familiar does affect the person, I gained Clin so fast that maybe his traits would affect all of my abilities in the future. I was kind of looking forward to seeing the Naga or Lamia like demi form in the future though, sounds pretty cool.

I looked down to see Clin was hard up against the Void Bubble so I dismissed it so he could get back to me. I felt some annoyance from him for 'disappearing' though.

Thinking of him, I remembered the two books that I received at the end of our Beast affinity lesson. I retrieved them to look. One was a book about taking care of your familiar, mainly focusing on three tenets. Food, Mana and Emotional, even the most animalistic familiar still had a reasonable amount of intelligence from the bond.

The other was much more interesting, it was akin to a spell book, but instead of actual spells, it was how to withdraw your familiar into your own body, which increases they're healing speed and reduces their need for food. This also meant that those with larger familiars no longer needed to leave them in the Beast affinity building. It was recommended not to leave the familiar in this state for too long as there was no interaction while they were in that state, basically asleep.

I experimented with the abilities for a little while, they were relatively simple, surrounding Clin in a layer of Beast mana and pulling the mana into my core, and the healing was just pushing void mana into Clin to vastly speed his healing, letting his own body guide the flow.

After a few hours of this, forgetting to have Clin cultivate, we left, keen to hang out with my friends and take in all the new information from the week.