CHAPTER 120 DISCIPLINE
“I am the scion of House Belthin, Jazzosaur Belthin. You may bow to me if you wish.”
For a moment none of us moved or said anything. Until I bursted out laughing.
I laughed until tears came to my eyes and my breaths came in wheezes.
“Your name… is Jazzosaur?”
Another fit of laughter took over me, “A dinosaur for jazz?”
It was too much. I would’ve killed myself out of embarrassment if my parents had named me that, and yet he walked around like he owned the world.
Oh, this was priceless.
It took a few more moments for my laughter to die down to a chuckle, “Oh man. That’s awesome, I needed that.”
Jazz just scoffed and turned his head away.
“Allllright then,” Lea said hesitantly, “Anyways, now that we’re all together and got our differences sorted for the moment. The rest of us can introduce ourselves as well. I’m Leathine, and that’s Alex,” She said gesturing to me, I was still chuckling and wiping away tears from my eyes.
“There isn’t anyone else in our team at this time, but that could change in the future if they decide they need to shuffle around a few groups. So we might end up with one more person, but that’s not likely. Going forward from today I’d like to start running team exercises on the weekends in the morning for a few hours.”
Jazz scoffed again and opened his mouth to say something but Lea just bulldozed right over him and kept going.
“Regardless of what you might think, we need to do this to be able to compare to the rest of the teams out there. I don’t know about you, but I’m not going to settle for mediocrity. I want to be one of the best teams in the field, and if that means we have to put in some extra effort to achieve that? Then that’s what we’re going to do. If you don’t like that, you’re free to quit. Any questions?”
Whatever Jazz had wanted to say he didn’t feel like it was important enough to bring up now. Either that or his question had been answered.
When neither of us was forthcoming with questions, Lea just nodded.
“Good. Well then, we can go ahead and get started then. I’ve got a few ideas for team coordination and familiarity exercises that we can do. To start with, I think it’d be a good idea to at least give each other a brief overview of our classes and what we can do. I’ll go first.
“I’m a ranger-fighter hybrid, my classes are designed more to give me techniques to utilize as skills rather than to provide me with elemental damage. So most of my skills end up just being force multipliers for the damage that I can do. Although most of my skills require a sword, not all of them have that designation. This gives me a bit of versatility in what I can choose as my medium for damage which is why I carry a sword and a bow. My favorite skill I have is probably [Warrior’s Arsenal]. It allows me to stow weapons all over my body in ways that are hard to see, even with magic. For example.”
She did a flourish with her hand and a pair of daggers just appeared there like they had been in her hands the entire time. She flourished again and they disappeared and then she reached to her left side around her waist and slapped both of her hands against the armor and pulled back with a great-axe instead.
I let out an appreciative whistle, “And you’re proficient with all of the weapons you have?”
She just smirked, “I’ve got a skill for that.”
I just nodded. That was pretty nifty.
“What position do you usually take?” I asked.
“I can fill, I’ll probably be our main front-liner, but I’m not the best tank. Although that shouldn’t really be an issue for us since we shouldn’t be needing to tank blows from large monsters or anything. We should mostly just be facing bandits and such.”
I let out a hum as I tapped a finger against my cheek, “I don’t know that I’d want to count on that being the case. It’s always possible a bandit camp would have one in a cage somewhere. Not likely, but still possible. Or it could just be we’re the only people in an area to deal with a monster, so we have to. In that case, we might be in a sticky situation. But I guess we’ll figure it out when we get there.”
She just nodded, “That we will. Alright, who’s next?” She glanced between the both of us.
Just as I was about to speak, Jazz stepped forward to place himself in the limelight.
“As you’ve rightly noticed I am a metal mage,” With his words he conjured a small ball of metal out of the air, letting it hover over the palm of his hand. After a moment he dispelled it and stepped back.
Lea and I just glanced at each other. Apparently, he didn’t want to share any more than that, not that he was really required to I guess.
“I guess that just leaves me then. I’m a spell-blade, with a primary focus on lightning. My first class is a mage, my second is the actual spell-blade class itself. My third is a purple variant nature-based support class.”
Their eyes nearly bugged out of their heads at those words.
“Your third class is a purple?” Lea asked incredulously, “How the hell did you manage that?”
I shrugged, “Circumstances that I don’t really feel comfortable with sharing right now. It’s the class that provides me with my weapons, armor, barriers, healing, and a localized form of omniscience, as well as a binding skill, although I haven’t gotten much use out of it in a real fight.”
“You said ‘localized omniscience?’” Jazz interjected, “What do you mean by that?”
He said it more like a demand rather than an inquisitive statement, which irked me slightly.
“Awfully curious for someone who didn’t want to share anything extra about his classes.”
He glared at me, and Lea just sighed, “Alex, please?”
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
I huffed, “Fine. When I say localized omniscience I’m referring to everything around you.”
They both looked around, frowning. I just smiled and waited for them to reach the conclusion. Surprisingly, or maybe not actually so given she was our leader, Lea reached it first.
“The lilies,” She stated confidently, “I remember those sprouting up right as your fight was happening. You summoned them because you can see through them.”
My smile grew a little wider, “Pretty much. I can see through any flora. My nature class gives me the capability of creating anything that would count as nature that’s not an animal. So plants, fruits, veggies, wood. Stuff like that. So I use that to see the world around me. It’s got a pretty hefty range as well so I can see up to nearly a mile away.”
“That’s… Insane!” Jazz interjected again, “How the hell are you processing all that information? The headache should be so overwhelming you shouldn’t even be able to move.”
I opened my mouth to throw a scathing remark his way again, but Lea beat me to the punch this time.
“Jazzosaur, no more questions from you. If you want to know anything more you first need to start sharing more intricacies about your class. Until then, please keep quiet.”
He looked like he wanted to say something, but a stern look from Lea made him close his mouth and look away.
Apparently, he wasn’t curious enough about my capabilities to share about his own. Not that it mattered, I wasn’t that interested in what he could do in the first place. I had a pretty good idea of it, especially with [Mana Sense] active and the fact that he wasn’t blocking it anymore.
Several of his pieces of gear glowed with powerful magic. So his fighting style was supplemented by magical gear his family had procured for him. Probably how he went invisible and possibly flew.
“Well, that’s pretty interesting,” Lea said, taking control of the conversation in our lapse of silence, “I’d like to move on to other things now. Namely discussing team comp. Obviously, I think I’d be best suited for running the front line. My armor skills are probably the strongest out of the group. Jazzosaur will be our distance fighter, I want you well out of reach of fighters and, if you have the range and accuracy, arrows as well. Alex will run our interference and support both of us. You're fast enough to quickly move from both positions and you're the only one with healing in the group.
“Now, I have a few ideas for some drills and exercises for us to do to start getting comfortable with our positions. Here’s what I want us to do-”
***
A lot of drills were just handling various situations that might arise in the field based on Lea’s experience in the Guard. It was vaguely entertaining, or at least I thought so.
Jazz certainly didn’t seem to think so, but he had a callous disregard for anything that wasn’t his own ego or the stick up his ass, so I didn’t really count what he thought of anything.
“That was a good start,” Lea said, wiping a bit of sweat from her forehead.
“I think we can stop here for now, I’m sure we all have stuff for classes we need to handle. We’ll meet here tomorrow at the same time unless there are any objections?”
“I object,” Unsurprisingly, Jazz had something to say about this, “I have no need to attend this, my education under my family is comprehensively extensive.”
“Denied, you will show up or I’ll report you for dereliction of duty.”
Jazz made an undignified squawk of annoyance. Lea just chose to ignore him.
“Alex, you got anything to say?” She asked, giving me an eyebrow raise as she did.
I just shook my head while smiling, “No, I actually somewhat enjoyed this. As long as I get enough time to complete my assignments for class I don’t care how long we do these or how often. It gives me something actually entertaining to do. As much as I’ve enjoyed my classes here, I still would like to do active stuff as well.”
Lea nodded approvingly.
“Very good. Well then, gentlemen. We shall meet here, in this room, tomorrow at the same time.”
With that she turned and walked away without another word, on her way by she leaned over and picked up her basket of stuff that I had made before continuing on her way.
I took a moment to glance over at Jazz, who returned it with a distasteful look.
I let out a sigh and shook my head.
“Look, man, like Lea said. We don’t have to get along, you don’t have to like me. But at least be tolerable to be around alright? I don’t think that’s a lot to ask for.”
I walked by him and started towards the door, “Feel free to take one of the baskets or all of them. Or none of them if you want. I don’t care.”
And with those final words, I left the room and started to head back to the room before changing my mind halfway and started making my way toward the bathing area.
I had yet to actually check it out. I think it was about time I rectified that, I did not like how sweaty I had gotten.
***
The baths, like everything else, were segregated by gender. There was a changing room before the baths with little baskets you could place your clothes into while you changed. On the inside of the baskets, I noticed little runes, stitched into the cloth.
On the cubbies surrounding the baskets, I noticed more runes that led all the way to the back of the shelving and off to somewhere. Maybe some mana array to keep the runes charged? I couldn’t tell for certain, I could tell that the runes were designed to clean the clothes inside the basket.
Which was pretty neat. I guess that saved everyone the effort of having to clean their own clothes if they visited here regularly.
It also seemed extremely extravagant. Maybe it just wasn’t that expensive to implement and maintain, but it seemed like the kind of thing a military unit wouldn’t bother to spend money on. Or at least it wouldn’t have been on Earth.
I guess that was just another difference between this world and my last one.
I quickly shed my clothes and left them in the basket, pushing them back into the cubby. It felt strange to be fully naked and surrounded by other people. This wasn’t a common thing back in the U.S.
But looking at all the guys around, I just decided to follow what they were doing. So I grabbed a towel and made my way into the bathing area. There wasn’t a place where they expected us to wash off, which seemed slightly curious to me. You would think that they’d want you to clean off slightly before getting in the water that tons of people would be sharing.
At least, that’s what I thought before I actually saw the baths.
They were an architectural work of beauty.
The stone ground eventually gave way to marble, there was a statue rising out of the center of a woman holding a globe in one hand and a scale in the other. I didn’t recognize her, but I wouldn’t recognize much about stuff like that from this world.
From the pedestal that the statue stood on, water flowed down in a torrential downpour. Which, considering the size of the baths, it would need to in order to fill it.
Around the pedestal, there were more runes that glowed with power. From what little I could read about them, much like the ones in the changing room, I could tell these were cleansing and purifying runes. How exactly they were being implemented was still a bit beyond me, but I at least understood the intent behind them.
The water was constantly being sucked out through vents all around the bath and then sent to the center where it was purified and redistributed back into the baths, keeping the impurities out.
It was exceedingly extravagant and well beyond anything I would’ve expected from the NSA. I guess I should have expected something though, considering the fact that the administrative building looked something more like a governmental courthouse, rather than a teacher-faculty lounge.
I was suitably impressed.
I climbed into the water in the most secluded spot that I could find, I let out a sigh of contentment as I did, luxuriating in the feeling of the warm water as I slowly submerged myself up to my chest.
I leaned back against the marble walls, enjoying the slight chill it provided in contrast with the water, and just enjoyed the feeling of the warm water lapping at my chest as I did.
I could definitely get used to this.