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Sometime later, my team was once again called down to The Pit where we met our opponents.

After taking a look at them, I did not recognize any of their faces from the skirmisher group, meaning that this team most likely comprised of three fighters and two mages. But what made me weary of them, was because they had dog beast folk boy among their group, which most likely meant he was the main damage dealer or tank of the group.

Why am I weary you might ask? I was mainly weary for Dave and Sam. Because on average, while they were weaker in the area of magical arts, beast folk excelled in areas of physical and melee matters, and there are many stories of heroes or champions that come from the dog folk. So if this dog folk boy decides to target Dave or Sam, there is a chance he would steamroll them before I can do anything.

I mean I could steamroll my opponent and come help out, but I had told the team that from now on, I would fight more passively and keep it at the level of just ‘entertaining’ my current opponent, while Arabella gives out commands. Be it fighting or spell casting, I will keep it to their level, even if it means casting spells at their speed.

As we got closer for the assistant instructor to address us, the opposing team seemed to recognize us, or more specifically, me, and from the hushed whispers and the dog folk eyeing me with challenging eyes, I highly doubted that the dog folk boy was going to go after Dave and Sam.

Soon the assistant instructors sent us to our corners, and when we were ready, we were given the signal to fight.

As I predicted, the dog folk boy charged at my team, leaving his own team in the dust.

We were in the same formation as our first round, so the dog boy decided to plunge straight through the gap between Dave and Sam while blocking their strikes, that was where he met his objective, me.

He clashed swords with me, and after three strikes, we clashed again and locked swords. As our swords were locked, he said to me, “Hey, you are the strongest in class right? I see you are the only one who only spars with the instructors, does that mean if I beat you, I will be the strongest in class?”

That is a rather simplistic way of seeing things, but then again, I have heard that the cultures of some beast folk from tribes, clans, or villages far from towns or cities can be a wee bit… feral. Especially those who live in the woods or isolated areas, and this dog folk boy is the most feral I have seen so far.

I ignored his question and pushed the dog boy away with a kick to the stomach, making him stumble backward and recover his stance before he charged me again.

As I was blocking, dodging, and parrying the blows that came toward me, I heard Arabella shouting out commands like we planned.

“Augment: Lightweight! Henry, cast the other augment spell, I will cover you.” I heard Arabella say from behind me and saw Dave, Sam, and my blades shimmer with a dim glow.

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I then heard Henry cast his Augmentation spell for hardening, and the melee fighters on my team, including me, had our simple practice armor start glowing with a similar light as our blades, but a different color.

“Alright! Hold off those spells, I will help the front.” Arabella said, and after a few seconds, I heard her shout, “Sam, duck!” followed by what looked like air bullets flying past me and slamming into the boy Sam was fighting. Before the boy hit by the air bullets could recover, Sam had his sword pointed at his throat, and the downed boy was called off the field by an instructor.

This led to Dave and Sam ganging up on the other fighter as the opposing mages tried to salvage the situation by both casting spells at our team's fighters. Apparently, they did not communicate properly and left themselves open to a barrage of spells from our mages, knocking them out of the fight, but not before taking Sam down.

So as the rest of the group finished off the fighter engaged with Dave, I decided to wrap up my fight. As I was concentrating more on what was going on with my team, I did not hear what the dog boy was saying to me for the past few seconds, for some reason, he was sounding rather agitated.

“Fight me seriously! Why are you holding back!” I now hear him shout at me. But I could not really take him seriously. Sure he was strong, fast, and had a good sense for fighting, but that was it, I did not really see much finesse in his strikes, just raw strength that I could easily parry away from myself.

I parried his sword to the side, turning his body along with it, that was when I sent a swift kick to his butt, making him stumble to the side as I said, “Now is not the time or place for me to fight seriously, wait for Advanced Combat & Tactics to get back to its normal schedule and come find me during sparring sessions if you want anything more serious.”

For some reason, he took umbrage with what I said and charged at me while shouting. I dodged his downward slash with a sidestep and delivered a wack to his leg that made him break his stance. This made him stumble a little to catch himself, during his stumble, his hands were flailing for a moment which presented me with a nice opportunity to disarm him.

I aimed for his sword hand and gave it a light smack to his knuckles, making him yelp in pain and drop his sword. When he recovered, he was looking down at the flat side of my blade pointed at his neck. “Bonos, you are out.” I heard the instructor shout from the side.

Hearing this, the dog boy growled at me and stomped off. All that was left was Dave’s opponent who was defeated a few seconds later in a rain of blows and spells.

After we were declared the winners, I congratulated the team and we made our way to the stands. As we exited The Pit, I saw the fighter assistant instructor give me an appreciating nod. Turns out they noticed me holding back and appreciated me doing so for the educational purposes of this exercise.

***

As the hours passed by, my team went into The Pit a few more times. Each time, we rotated who the leader was going to be so everyone could get a taste of command. The two noble mages were not happy taking orders from Sam or Dave and barely tolerated taking commands from me, that was until I browbeat them into submission, and made use of their want or need to be perceived as grown-up or mature by telling them how childish they were acting by being angry of who was in command in a combat situation.

In the following team battles, we won most of them, but losses were unavoidable. With every match that we went into, the opponents’ team was also growing in experience and competence, developing their own tactics and tricks along the way.

In those cases that we lost, I would just surrender when I was the last man standing and outnumbered.

At the end of our time in the Arena for the day, Instructor Greyham gathered us up, said a few closing words, and told us to eat light before we gathered tomorrow morning, saying it was the “Main Event” of this field trip.