Since my first day at school, time has flown by, and now a whole year already passed. Over time, I absorbed a wealth of knowledge at school and earned a reputation as one of the smartest students in my class. Through this I became popular and have made many new friends, my parents began to think of me as a prodigy.
But I am not only known to be smart, I also became acknowledged as the strongest and got the title: “the unbeatable”. This title I got due to never losing a match against one of my schoolmates. I only lost against a few of the instructor, like the ones who is supervising the training Center.
One of them, to be exact—the strongest of all—I challenged often. After sparring with him daily for six months, I finally emerged victorious. His background as a former military lieutenant made the achievement even more rewarding. He told me that he loved his work but, at the end of the day, got too old to serve further in the military, and so he decided to train the younger generation. I personally like his attitude and his character.
After being defeated by me, he was quite surprised and wanted to be my personal teacher after school because he likes me and sees my potential. Thanks to him, I progressed fast in my weapon skills; I learned even some weapons I didn’t know existed but got the hang of them quickly.
But even now, with his training, I still do my daily work-outs and go to the training center in my free time, to use the gym. My friends joined me in training frequently, and we often sparred together. However, I was always the last to leave, dedicated to my practice. And sometimes while I was training, my friends were playing outside and skipped the training. But I, I never even considered skipping. There were hardly any days when I came home without my muscles aching and sore. But thanks to that, I am now much stronger, faster, stretchier, and more manoeuvrable than ever.
My parents think that all this training is quite dangerous for me because I am still young, but they still try their best to support me.
During my rare moments of free time, I would often get out of the pit and head to my secluded spot, where I engaged in one of two activities. I would either practice with my self-crafted knife or carve on my project. When I train, I normally just use wood as a target or sometimes go hunting in the forest for little animals, like rabbits, snails, and other edible animals. Until now, the biggest animal I killed was a fox, which I then dismantled at home for the flesh only to be eaten. Out of its teeth, I made three pocket knives for my siblings as a gift. The other things were plainly sold for a bit of money. Many of my early hunts ended in failure due to my noisy approach, but over time, I honed my skills and greatly improved my stealth.
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When I wanted to carve, I went to my favourite spot, where I held my carving of Aldorem hidden behind the ancient tree. Then I would take it out and begin to carve on the already-half-finished carving. Wven though it is already the third try, it looks really good and can already be considered a masterpiece.
That is all that happened, but today, November 11, 937 AV, was a special day. My first year in school is over, and I will hopefully become a second grader if I pass the test. In the aptitudes test, one needs to write a huge exam covering everything we learned this year and afterwards do a show fight, which is scheduled – which shouldn’t be a problem for me. The only thing I was worried about was the exam.
As I arrived today at school, I saw the new kids standing in the front yard of the school. It looked the same as last year, when I was in that position. But I went by fast and then into the training Center, where all the students were gathered and sorted by class level. In the middle of the room, on the fighting stage, stood the vice principal. There was also a huge crowd in one of the corners, and in it were the lists with the results of the exams.
I headed in great anticipation straight to the lists, I fought myself through the crowd until finally being near enough to see most of the results. Scanning through it I got more and more excited until finally finding my name. At first I didn’t want to look at the result, but then I did.
I luckily passed, relieved I went to my class, but judging by the faces some of the students made, many didn’t pass the written exams. For all those who didn’t pass the exam, they were also allowed to go to the next class if they were skilled enough in practical fighting, so there was still hope for them.
Arriving by my class I was happily greeted by all, they all spoke about their scores, who made it and who didn’t and so on. It was quite noisy in the gigantic hall until suddenly a sound louder than anyone could make rang all awake. Everyone went silent and looked where it came from, it was a bell, a little bell in the hands of the headmaster—everyone started wondering who such a little fellow could produce something so loud.
After the bell rang, the vice principal began his speech and then proceeded to begin with the matching of show fights. All students got three random matches where we could show our skills, and afterwards we could challenge each other if we wanted to. Then, at the end of every match, the three judges, who were all advanced instructors, would give us points from 1 to 10 based on the skill we showed. So the maximal points are 30, and in the exam, one could reach up to 100 points. Then they were added, and to pass the class, one needs at least 60 points.