The class was in terrible shape. The average skin colour in the class this morning is blue, multiple students have bandages wrapped around their limbs, and Matilda had her right arm in a sling. The worst injured was Gunter, whose head was wrapped in bloody swathes of cloth. As I entered, I was impaled by looks of hatred from multiple directions.

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'Today, we're going to talk about animals.' (Gwyn)

'Are we not going to talk about what happened yesterday?' (Scar)

'Each of you have somewhat different points to work on, so we'll do that during practical drills separately. Theory is important if you're going to continue with being an adventurer though.' (Gwyn)

'I think maybe you can give us an explanation of the idea behind telling us it's a teamwork drill before wiping us out repeatedly.' (Scar)

The class was now glaring in two directions. The majority at Gwyn, and some at me.

'Fine, just a bit then. Part of being an adventurer is knowing when to fight, and when to run. We covered the cases where you should run earlier in the course, but we also needed to know who can be counted on to fight when you're pushed to the mental limit. One way is what Elaina did to Robert, but she's the only one that can do that, it's unnecessarily traumatic, and that's literally all you get out of it. This way you also learn how people don't necessarily fight fairly, get some experience in trying to form counter-plans, and get some experience in what can go wrong on top of that.

Four people in this class were assessed to have aced the test. Matilda, who broke her arm parrying Glenn's strike. Rachel -' (Gwyn)

'Vomit girl.' (Dorothy)

'Who fought to the end, passing out standing with her weapon facing the enemy when everyone else gave up, Joshua, who willingly took what would have been a fatal blow for an ally, and Alicia, who managed to fight without a sense of balance from sheer willpower alone. The rest of you who didn't request to quit, passed. All things told, the result was surprising for us, since usually only one student in each class does well every year.' (Gwyn)

'She just manipulated him into doing that.' (Dorothy)

'I can't tell you the details, but you can stop those rumours now. Elaina has confirmed that Rachel has no affinity with death magic either, through an extreme method.' (Gwyn)

Huh?

'Is that even possible? And if that's true, why is someone who can't use any magic at all still in this school?' (Alicia)

'We've never seen this before, but there's no requirement that Adventurers must be able to use magic to do their job. Now back to the topic of today, we'll talk about animals. We've already covered that wolves should not be fought without superior numbers, and the reason for this is because they instinctively know how to attack from blind spots, and go for vital spots, particularly the throat. Aside from Michael, does anyone else know what other animals you should expect to fight on a regular basis?' (Gwyn)

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

'Bears.' (Johann)

'Hawks.' (Silas)

'Snakes.' (Adelheid)

'Wild boars.' (Dennis)

'Humans.' (Alicia)

A laugh starts somewhere before awkwardly stopping.

'Yes, humans are animals too. Often of the worst kind. But that's a topic by itself. Any other takers?' (Gwyn)

'Rabbits?' (Kurt)

'A one sided slaughter doesn't count as a fight unless you're telling me you expect to be killed by a rabbit. Okay, Michael, you can speak now.' (Gwyn)

'Panthers and leopards are some of the most dangerous animals hunters can expect to face, but if you end up fighting one you've already screwed up. Aside from that the other things are mostly covered.' (Michael)

'Very good. The reason you don't generally fight cats is that they don't command a large amount of territory, and they're not known to encroach on human lands as well. But if you encroach on its territory, that's a different story, and you'll fight them if you either don't back off when warned, or are too inattentive to your surroundings to even notice the warnings. When are animals at their most dangerous?' (Gwyn)

'When you corner them?' (Johann)

'That's a bad situation but not the worst.' (Gwyn)

'When they're really hungry?' (Matilda)

'That makes them aggressive but hunger also makes them less dangerous. Go ahead, Michael.' (Gwyn)

'When you threaten their young.' (Michael)

'Correct. Most animals only fight when hunting, especially if hungry, to defend their territory, to assert dominance over other members of their species or for mating rights. Usually, they do not desire to fight to the death, and so by injuring or intimidating them enough, they'll back off. A lot of cases when farms are attacked can be resolved by simply driving the animals away without having to necessarily kill that many of them. If you corner them, they will fight with everything they have to find a way to escape, so that can be dangerous, but still resolvable to some degree. But if you threaten their young, especially their females... they will claw their way back from the jaws of death to make sure you die, so watch out for that. Always give animals a path to flee when attacking them, always attack with superior numbers, try to gain a superior position with terrain, and stay the hell away from their nests. And if you see females heavy with young, sometimes it's worth waiting for a few weeks for them to regain some mobility before you drive them away instead of challenging them when they have no option but to fight. Remember that.'

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'So I've gone from death mage to vomit girl to waste of space.'

'Are you going to care about what your classmates say more than what the instructors say?' (Joshua)

'You'd care too if you were born an abomination never before seen in the history of the school. And it's not just the classmates, it's what it means.'

'We all have a limited amount of stamina anyway, all this means is that you have one less option to use what we already have problems conserving.' (Joshua)

'IT MEANS THAT THE GODS HATE ME. ALL OF THE GODS HATE ME!'

'It could mean that all of the Gods love you and nobody was willing to give in so you got stuck pulled eight ways.' (Dennis)

'It's easy for you to say that when you're the most talented mage in our group short of The Goddess in human form!'

'Okay, okay, I'll shut up now.' (Dennis)

'I won't shut up though. He has a point, all that you know is that the Gods feel the same way about you, not about what that way is.' (Joshua)

'You don't understand. I know that at least one of them hates my guts, so if they're all the same, all of them hate me and I should just kill myself right now.'

'If all of the Gods hated you you wouldn't have a chance to kill yourself, they'd already have killed you before you were born.' (Michael)

'This is related to why you can't give up being an adventurer, right?' (Joshua)

'Yes.'

'I won't ask more. But if you can't give up, you can't give up even if you have to fight the Gods themselves.' (Joshua)

'Are you going to stand against the Gods with me?'

'You realise that if the church overhears this conversation you're going to be executed as a follower of the Evil Gods right? Cut it out.' (Michael)