Leo had never felt so nervous and lost in his life. Judging from city lord’s actions, now was his turn to say something, but everyone watching made his stomach turn upside down and all he wanted was to dig a hole and hide in it. Fortunately he sensed a brief, but intense killing intent that returned him to reality. Obviously it was nothing fortunate, but he decided to worry about it later, especially since he might’ve been mistaken.
“Uhm …” Leo didn’t really know how to start.
He had heard a few public speeches in his life, most from the lady Evelyn, of course. But most of them were a random political nonsense she was trying to manipulate the crowd with. Leo had always despised such attitude and now, remembering those times, he felt like saying something honest. He had no clue what he was about to say, but quickly decided to not think too much about it.
“I was born in a mortal realm …” He began, “… and my dream has always been to come to the immortal realm where the strong and beautiful reside ... Back then I didn’t even know there were several immortal realms, but … anyway …”
With every spoken word Leo felt as if huge weight got lifted from his heart. These were the things he had never said to anyone and for some reason opening up to thousands of people at the same time had this strange calming effect.
“By a lucky coincidence I was blessed to visit the Golden city and my illusion of everyone being an immortal or at least at the Nascent soul stage was kind of confirmed, but …” He threw a quick glance at the Hubert siblings in the crowd of students and then continued, “… but it didn’t count. Actually the immortal realm has the same people like mortal realms do. They are born, grow up and love, and have families … people are … just people …”
Leo involuntarily had an artistic pause, looked around and said, “Everyone of us are people who have our home and our close ones … and there are those who want to destroy it. Some morons came up with a rune formation that is capable of causing disasters and kill thousands of people … destroy their homes and hopes, whatever their reasoning is … but when I fought the beasts ...”
He suddenly felt the guys who were holding him on their shoulders unconsciously tightened their grips. These guys got him! For some reason Leo felt joy and relief … these people were just like him!
“... I mean, when WE fought the beasts … I realized that … you guys are heroes! You protect your homes with your lives no matter what! And the bastards who were responsible …” Suddenly Leo was out of words and said the only thing that came to mind, “F*ck them!”
What happened next was akin to an erupting volcano. The stress that was piled up during the past days people released one after another and their shouts reverberated through the forest. The first ones were those who held Leo on their shoulders, but right after the rest who took an active part in defending the city joined them. The shout ‘f*ck them’ was so catchy, even the blushing girls and ladies involuntary cheered along and in the end even the city lord showed the solidarity to his citizens and shouted along.
The people who stood further away and couldn’t hear Leo’s speech were confused at first, but the crowd mentality did its work and soon every single person cheerfully cursed at the ones who were responsible for the disaster that struck their city. Even though they won, their doorstep was littered with bodies of dead beasts and the forests were void of them.
People knew it will take decades for the beasts to recover and hundreds of years for them to become higher ranked. And it only meant that the city will experience shortage of meat supply for the years to come. The beasts weren’t the enemies, in fact, this time they were victims as well.
The only ones who were set aback with the development of events were the students. While some laughed along with the locals and cheered at the vulgarities, most were angry at the country bumpkin that made the academy loose its face.
While Musa was lost in thoughts, Lily openly radiated killing intent, similar to others at the Nascent soul stage. There was even a point when Leo fainted for a split moment, but recovered soon after and managed to hide in the crowd. Of course, when the locals dispersed, he was left face to face with the fuming student leaders, but fortunately Alice came to help out.
“Leo! Seriously?” She barked at him by semi-faking anger, “How could you do this to us?”
Swallowing the question ‘what did it have to do with you?’, Leo, even though he didn’t know what he had done wrong, murmured, “I’m sorry!”
“I don’t think it was that bad.” Claude helped out as well, “If anything, people looked happy.”
“We’ll see about that!” Lily hissed through her teeth and held back the impulse to smack Leo dead.
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In the end he was left alone and the three squads with Leo in tow left Dzharla city. Two days later they teleported back to the academy where elder Li sent Leo back to the lake to cultivate.
Leo’s ‘inappropriate’ behavior, of course, was reported to the higher-ups, where it was received with mixed feelings, although mostly positive. Especially elder Jabari, the head of the Beast master division, passionately defended Leo and even claimed he had said too little. It was no secret the elder was in a permanently furious state ever since the whole endeavor with the beast tides began, but the fury was clearly directed at the Army of Freedom.
Even though he was no vegetarian, he loved and respected all creatures many of which also ate each other. That was the natural order of things. But a thought of someone sending thousands upon thousands of beasts to their deaths for political goals was unimaginable and all he hoped for was to some day get his hands on the author of this diabolic plan.
Citizens of Dzharla and a month earlier – Zhetikara, in addition to several other cities across the Immortal Alliance, already experienced what it meant to suddenly live in the midst of empty forests or jungle. What was even crueler – they had to kill their own, previously tamed ranked beasts as a preventive measure since they went berserk during the beast tides and often attacked their masters. One had to agree, the Army of Freedom managed to find an effective way to hurt the Immortal Alliance.
As always, every coin had two sides and the beast tides turned out to be a massive whetstone that honed the skills of countless youths, including the students of the War Academy. Even though there were casualties, during the next year many advanced, reaching the Nascent soul stage.
Because of that the War Academy, similar to other educational facilities across the Immortal Alliance changed its enrollment schedule and started accepting new batches of students yearly. It did slightly lower the quality standards, but the quantity generously compensated for that.
Musa’s squad as well as the one Claude was from, each had a talented person who stepped into the Nascent soul stage before the first year in the academy was over. They were replaced with a couple of new guys and Leo kept on playing the role of the thirteenth wheel.
Lily constantly kept a close watch on him and the events of Dzharla city never repeated, but since then Leo felt like he was walking on a razor’s edge. Somehow Lily seemed much more scary in comparison to lady Evelyn although the fire affinity the previous sect master had theoretically was much more destructive than Lily’s ice.
Apart from the ‘Ice queen’, how most people called Lily behind her back, members of Musa’s and the other two squads learned to more or less accept Leo. Him being a weirdo was the common knowledge, but he was never arrogant or threw his weight around for being the personal and only disciple of the legendary elder Li. The fact that he was weaker than most squad members also kind of helped, especially since he was also poor as a pauper.
While most students dueled for contribution points, Leo only had the beast cores to bet with which he looted after defending cities from the beast tides. Since everyone but him were from one of the immortal realms, be it the local Savage, Golden realm where the Golden city lie or any other of the six immortal realms of the Immortal Alliance, the youths were much better off. Not only they arrived with their spacial treasures stacked with spirit stones, their families continued to send cultivation resources since after reaching the Nascent soul stage the youths will inevitably become the pillars for the future of their clans, to not speak of their potential after stepping into immortality.
In the beginning some used Leo as a punching bag or to vent their anger after a random setback, but when he unexpectedly knocked out Dante, someone who defeated him after they both were admitted to the academy a year ago, and the guy lie in coma for almost ten days, the rest gained a newfound respect for the youth.
No one but elder Li knew the simple secret behind Leo’s wins and losses. The guy was simply too soft! He refused to use his own unique elemental affinity apart from the movement technique or, in the worst case scenario, dispelling the elements in his body the others used against him.
All Leo’s duels resembled boxing matches or simple brawls until the opposing side used an advanced combat technique and, for example, smacked a huge fireball in his face. No one could understand how Leo could laugh those losses off – the injuries he got were real! In addition, by now everyone had witnessed how he, using a strange technique, was capable of breaking the opponents weapon and as the result forcing an unarmed sparring match. He had to possess other fancy techniques to win in a similar fashion, right?
Elder Li was partially right. Leo was actually scared to use any of the techniques from the ‘Lightning series’. Approximately seven months ago their squad was sent to the Crescent Immortal realm. There, while defending a city named Vallenar from a beast tide, Leo had to face an annoying pack of beasts that somewhat resembled the familiar greenlanders. Locals called the six foot tall beasts ‘mountain goblins’ and they very much looked like humans, similar to the greelanders.
While some students had issues with killing the beasts who looked more human than apes, Leo didn’t care one bit. The plethora of scars all over his body reminded him how treacherous the beasts were and he even developed a new Lightning technique that allowed him to kill the beasts in one hit – ‘Lightning bolt’.
Of course, Leo was far from being able to freely control the lighting element outside his body and he wasn’t throwing bolts of lightning around. The essence of the new move lie in a concentrated stream of lighting Qi he channeled into the beast’s body after landing a palm on its chest, right where its heart lie.
While stronger beasts got paralyzed in an instant, the hearts of those rank five and below were turned into mush. The biggest achievement was when Leo managed to paralyze a rank seven mountain goblin, but his shoulder got pulverized in return thus preventing him from personally killing the beast.
Nevertheless Leo learned how deadly his own attacks could be and that was the reason he was weary of using the lightning element against the fellow students. The incident with Dante turned out that way only because the youth kept taunting Leo non-stop and in the end Leo’s hand simply ‘slipped’. Fortunately the outcome wasn’t lethal and served as a good lesson for both.
During the past months Leo got an unexpected surprise. Before one of the deployments the Hubert siblings passed a letter to him. When Leo asked what it was, both only had mysterious smiles on their faces while the only thing Alice said was: ‘It’s a surprise!’.
And it was a pleasant one.
‘You, damned bastard! If I knew the stories you told me were true, I’ve would’ve found a way to get here ages ago! The Hubert clan was reluctant to accept me, but Alice did send a word to one of her teachers that I might arrive and they took me in at the end. You were right, everyone below the Nascent soul stage are peasants in the immortal realm, but it’s fine, the job they gave me is good and I’m even getting payed in cultivation resources. Wanna bet I’ll form the nascent soul before you? Come to the Golden city if you have time, I’ll show you around! Jack’