A few days later, the week was already ending. Nothing different had happened between these days as we were introduced to other spells and how to properly manage larger quantities of mana. There had been a few training sessions with the same fire, and thankfully, Victoria didn’t suffer another mishap while using magic, so it had been a rather normal week—at least according to what I think is normal in this world.

Nicole had been coming to the room a few times as well, and I was impressed by how fast she learned to use fire spells. She wasn’t nearly close to able to summon an Imperial Fire Phoenix, but she no longer accidentally fired other spells either.

Right now, I was sitting in a class while Stormwind reviewed the things he taught during the week. It wasn’t anything I already didn’t know about magic, so I was just comparing what he said to the things I knew.

Next to my sides were Victoria, who was earnestly taking notes as Stormwind talked; and David, who seemed completely uninterested as he rubbed his neck and yawned.

The man who used to sit at that same spot where David currently was no longer showed up. Daniel had been missing from classes ever since I broke a barrier with Holy Power. I had been keeping my attention on anything related to him, from people dressed like him to anyone who looked like him, but so far, there was no sight of him. I could only hope that there wasn’t anything going on, but chances are that there was and I’d have to deal with it, but until then, it was better to just be on the lookout.

Lastly, another couple of people in the classroom also seemed to be slightly out of their ordinary selves. Steven and Brian—who were sitting closer to the front—carried dejected looks that combined with the few band-aids and bruises they accumulated during the week to make them look like defeated soldiers.

I didn’t know exactly what kind of training they’ve been trying with David’s coach, but judging from their power levels, and the warning that Doctor Fraga gave them at the start, it seems like they didn’t advance nearly as close to what this rank requires them to, which means that they’ll be sent back until they’re ready for this rank.

“Pst,” David quietly called out to both me and Victoria. “What are you guys doing later?”

“I’ll go home and train,” I said in a hushed voice so Stormwind wouldn’t notice.

“I’m not sure yet… but I’ll probably do something similar,” Victoria followed up with a just as quiet voice.

“Then, if you’ve got the time, would you like to come with me to meet my coach?” David asked.

I was somewhat curious about the Beastkin that was likely training him, so I found the proposal acceptable. “Okay.”

“Eh… I’m not sure… your coach sounds difficult,” Victoria said with a wry smile.

“The thing is that I’ve been asked about the two of you ever since I mentioned your names, so I think it would be great if you at least meet up,” David continued.

“Um… okay… I think…” Victoria agreed.

“Alright, then it’s settled, once we’re done here, we’ll go over and you’ll see—”

Suddenly a small water ball came quickly flying from Stormwind. David—despite being distracted while talking to us—managed to block the water ball with his hand without even turning to look at it; he didn’t even seem surprised about the sudden attack.

“Pay attention please, or at least, if you aren’t going to pay attention, then be quiet,” Stormwind said with a frown and his finger pointed at us.

“Yes, sorry,” David replied and sat back up straight.

I worried that perhaps Stormwind was going to admonish both me and Victoria, but his eyes simply lingered on me for a moment—something that he’d been doing since the second day that we met—before turning away.

He’d never say anything special to me, and I noticed that he’s been actively avoiding me for a while now, and just like that, he once again ignored me and kept going with the session.

* * *

Once we were done with the class, me and the usual group left together. Both Steven and Brian were walking while dragging their feet, but nobody tried to lift their spirits as we all knew they were likely not going to be with us in this rank anymore.

Stormwind himself told them that while their efforts were commendable, they weren’t enough to let them stay, and so they shall stay with every other E rank.

“Don’t be so down. I’m sure that with hard training you’ll be on the same level as us in no time,” David said while walking between the two young men. “We’ll even have Althea and Victoria with us today. Good motivation to have a couple of beauties cheer you on, right?”

I didn’t respond to that statement, and Victoria simply returned a wry smile.

Brian shook his head. “I don’t think I’ll go today.”

“What? Are you sure? The coach won’t be happy about that,” David said with raised eyebrows.

“Yeah, I think I’m better off doing something else. So I’m leaving now,” Brian said and turned in the direction of the campus entrance.

“Oh well…” David said with a regretful smile before turning to Steven. “What about you?”

“I’ll still go with you. Can’t be a great mage if I skip training, after all…” he responded before taking a large breath and forcing a smile. “This is just one small setback! I’ll catch up to you guys soon!”

“That’s the spirit,” David said with a smirk and a nod. “Let's put it to the test with the coach.”

The smile on the young man’s face froze momentarily and his steps went from being dragged to being unstable. “Y-yes…”

The way these young men always appeared to be wounded in some way caused me to be worried that perhaps they needed some special medical attention, or that I should just heal them, but David always assured me that the coach already did so, which made me more curious about what kind of being this coach was.

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“This coach of yours seems rather… eccentric,” I said as I followed behind them.

David half-turned his face to me. “You’ll see. And you’ll see soon enough, since we’re already here.”

The building we were standing in front of was not too different from the one where people trained inside the fields and the barriers. However, the inside was full of all kinds of… artifacts.

There were what appeared to be hammers with thick disks at both ends, which would range from small enough to only be grabbed with one hand to be as long as a staff, which people were lifting up and down in a rhythmic motion. Not a long distance away from those, were platforms where people appeared to be running in place. And at a similar distance to those, there were other artifacts where people were pulling on strings attached to bricks in all sorts of contraptions.

The most eye-catching thing, however, was a large square arena in the middle of it all. Not because it was strange, but rather for the person that was standing on it; a Beastkin.

She was a very tall woman, about as tall as Bo’guth’s wife—Igladith. She had light bronze colored skin that seemed to glisten as the sweat from the exercise rolled down her exposed skin. She was an extremely muscular woman, as I could clearly see every detail of every muscle that she moved; more so because the clothes that she was wearing were small and tightly pressing on her skin.

“Hello, coach!” David exclaimed as he made his way to the arena, to the woman’s back.

“Hm?” she replied and turned to look at David before looking at me and Victoria. “Good, you’ve brought more friends.”

Now that she was looking this way, I noticed that she had very human-like facial features, save for her almost completely yellow and unnaturally big eyes, a slightly longer nose, and a pair of what appeared to be wolf ears on top of her head, full of long brown hair that was tied up in a ponytail that reached to about half-way of her torso’s length.

I took the opportunity to look her up and down. She was a rather voluptuous woman, with long legs, wide hips, and a fluffy brown tail that swayed from side to side as she looked down at us.

She looked between Victoria and me for a moment, stopping on me as she also looked me up and down before a wide grin appeared on her face. “Now that’s someone special!”

Without warning, this wolf Beastkin moved, blurring from out of sight. She was fast—extremely fast. So much so that I hardly had the time to react before she was standing in front of me, a foot raised high up and ready to slam on me.

But I wasn’t one to be taken down by surprise, so I reacted as fast as I could—which was hardly as fast as she was—and lifted my arms up to block the incoming attack. I braced myself for the impact that came right after, pressing down on me like a boulder that fell from a mountaintop.

“Hoho,” she chuckled with an impressed voice. “That’s a first.”

I struggled to lift the foot away from me, but no matter how much I struggled, I couldn’t move her in the slightest. Being left without a choice, I empowered my body with as much mana as it could currently handle, and I was finally able to push her away.

With a quick skip, she jumped away a short distance, but I didn’t want to let her get away with this kind of attack. I moved as fast as I could to go after her, and saw her expression change from a confident smirk to surprise.

Hand-to-hand combat wasn’t my forte, but I still knew how to punch and use my body’s movement to deliver a devastating attack, which I tried on this wolf-woman. I moved with as much speed as I could, but I quickly realized that it wouldn’t be enough as in that short amount of time, her expression went back to a smirk.

My fist connected, but I didn’t hit anywhere that I wanted as a large hand easily blocked and held my fist, creating a shockwave behind the woman. It wasn’t a weak attack on my part—not at all—but for this woman, it was as if I was just a child, playing with her mother.

I tried to quickly move away from her, but she clutched my hand with hers, and her claw-like nails dug into my skin when I tried to pull my hand away. I frowned, not from the pain but for the fact that I was so easily caught.

Still, that didn’t mean that I should just give up. I filled my left hand with lightning and quickly fired it at the Beastkin. She was surprised for a moment as her body was filled with electricity, shaking violently as the current traveled her body, and yet, she didn’t let go of my hand at all.

She even reacted right after the shock on her body passed, throwing a punch of her own with her other hand. I blocked it just like she had done to me, and like her, I gripped her hand with as much strength as I could muster.

Even when I did that, her smirk didn’t fade, and I saw her foot moving for a kick. This time, it was far too fast for me to block, even when I tried to lift one of my legs to at least deflect it, her long leg easily bypassed it, landing a kick fully on my chin.

My head violently jerked back and my body lifted as if I was going to be launched back. I was forced to let go of her hand, but she didn’t let go of mine, which allowed her to pull me down before throwing a punch with her free hand, straight at my face again. And just like her foot, her fist moved faster than I could, hitting me in the middle of the face.

On this one, she finally let go of my hand and I was launched into the air. But defeat wasn’t something I was willing to have; not against Salrak, and not against anyone. I created a barrier behind me in the air, using it as a platform to launch myself down at the wolf-woman.

This wasn’t a woman I could take lightly, so I had to use as much as I could if I wanted to defeat her. I summoned a mana blade to my hand, and at the same time, I summoned as many large rock stakes that I could, surrounding me as I closed in on her from the air. I even tried to infuse everything with Holy Power, however, there was no reaction, and I couldn’t recreate it right now. There was only the Darkness and Hellfire Power, but the idea of using it seemed extreme and there was still some repulsion within me to touch it, so I didn’t reach for it. In exchange, I coated everything with lightning.

The wolf-woman’s smirk didn’t fade, even when faced with as many spells as I could conjure at the moment. I knew then that I didn’t have the power to beat her in any way, but that didn’t mean that I would just surrender and die.

Surprisingly, she didn’t stay in the spot as she blurred from sight, doing a quick flip in the air to land in the middle of the square arena. Almost instantly, I crashed at the spot where she had been standing before, creating a few bright thunders and lifting rocks off the hard ground, which left a crater where I now stood.

I quickly turned my attention back to the wolf-woman and prepared myself to attack, but she lifted her hand, signaling me to stop. “Okay, that’s enough. We’re not trying to kill each other here.”

I glared and pointed my mana sword at her. “You were the one that attacked me first.”

She chucked with a mocking tone and shook her head. “I’ve seen enough. If I wanted to kill you, it would’ve been done in the first move.” She smirked as she looked down on me. “I think you noticed that too, right?”

I held the mana sword up for a moment, but I had to tightly close my eyes and turn my face away as I lowered my hand and the mana sword disappeared. She was right. Even on the first kick, she intentionally slowed down right when she lifted her foot, which is what allowed me to block the attack.

“Don’t look so disheartened,” the wolf-woman continued with the same wide smirk, displaying a couple of large fang-like teeth. “You’re the first one to ever block me like that, and you don’t even have a scratch despite being hit so hard.”

I scoffed and shook my head. This wasn’t praise for me, especially so when this amount of power wasn’t enough to beat a Beastkin, much less any God. “It is not good enough.”

“Hmm… is that so…?” the wolf-woman said, tilting her head slightly to the side.

She leaned her torso forward as if she was trying to have a better look at me, which also caused the men to embarrassedly shift their eyes between her large chest and somewhere else, but she either didn’t notice or simply didn’t care.

“Yes… I can tell that there’s something different about you. Even when I was moving as fast as a bullet, you were easily able to track me and my every movement. Only your body seemed to be unable to keep up…” she said, softly pinching her chin as she looked me up and down for a moment before lifting her torso back up to stand straight with a wide smirk. “But we’ll fix that! I’ll turn you into a proper fighter!”

I didn’t feel like training with her, mostly because she reminded me of one of my blade masters, but it is true that my body couldn’t keep up. I had been wasting too much time already training with the phone and computer, and I couldn’t just sit idle until the Holy Gods reached this place.

I nodded and looked with determination at the wolf-woman who was flexing her strong arms. “I shall work hard to become stronger.”