Ms. Rias’ class ended soon after.
After such an amazing first lesson, everyone seemed motivated to continue their day. The 10th grade was different from all of their previous school years in that most classes would be focused on combat instead of theory.
Accordingly, Spade and his peers went to their next class, Physical Combat 101.
In this class, unlike in Miss Rias’ Mana Arts, students would be divided into three groups according to their ability. The 15 best students formed the ‘Advanced Class’, 25 students formed the ‘Intermediate Class’, and the weakest 15 students in combat formed the ‘Core Class’.
Spade was, unsurprisingly, in the core class.
Not that he cared too much. In the past, the less work he had to do the better. Still, this time around he couldn’t resist feeling a bit of regret when he saw himself in the weakest group. As students started heading to different areas of the training grounds, Spade easily identified the students that had been allocated to each class. He was not surprised by the faces following Laurel to the advanced grounds. Most of them had been good students in the past.
Of the new kids, only the Julius guy had been selected to join the advanced class.
The intermediate group was a bit more interesting, as there were both very good and ver bad students who Spade thought should be ranked either higher or lower. As for the weakest group, if Spade had been asked to guess who would be the 15 faces in this disappointing gathering, he would have gotten most of them right.
After they reached the small and dirty training ground assigned to the core class, the first fifteen minutes were spent in the usual greetings and self-introductions.
This time Spade knew the teacher.
Ms. Sylvia had been a teacher at ACSIL for longer than he had been alive. She was around her early sixties and her warm smile, grizzly hair, chubby body and high-pitched voice challenged her status as a physical combat teacher.
After the formalities were over, Ms. Sylvia said in her usual kind manner “okay class, let’s try to gauge everyone’s abilities in actual combat against some beasts.”
Some students were immediately dismayed.
She noticed this saying “now now, no need to be scared I will be here and if you do well, you might even go up to the intermediate class 6 months from now”.
That was all Spade needed to hear.
‘Forget the other scared weaklings, he was going to make it to the advanced class in a week!’ he thought to himself.
Since ACSIL was located on top of a hill, the training grounds were made on the bottom of the hill on the opposite side to the main stairs to enter the academy. Miss Sylvia walked about 100 meters to the hillside where there was a small cave with its entrance blocked by a gate made of iron bars. After saying some weird words and touching it, the gate opened and fifteen goat-like creatures rushed out of it.
They were not very tall, about one meter or so, each had big white curved horns and a very dense gray wool which made their width comparable to their height. As the beasts charged unannounced out of the gate, they ran directly past a weird post, charging towards the students like bulls aiming for a red cape.
Seeing this, everyone jumped to their feet in panic.
Before anyone could do anything, the beasts were already less than ten meters away from them. As the students closed their eyes imagining the pain of being bashed by the heads of these weird-looking beasts, the party of the first five goats dispersed with two goats running towards left and the others moving rightwards in a semicircular way.
No one had any idea of what was going on.
With half of the students on their knees and the other half with legs trembling as if they were trying to perform a funny dance routine, Ms. Sylvia made her way back and once again intervened saying “sorry for that, there is no need to worry. As you can see, there is a mana barrier which prevents summoned beasts from leaving the circle in front of you—so long as you do not step within thirty meters of that post in the middle of the arena, they can do no harm to you.”
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Spade, who was trying to not give the wrong first impression to his new teacher, immediately stopped trembling. While looking to where the beast herd once again gathered his courage.
'Get a hold, why did I get so scared of such weak looking things? I bet Lucius is laughing at me right now; ahhhhh, I mean… they are kinda fast.' His thoughts raced.
To stop anyones’ thoughts from taking them any further, his teacher explained that what they were seeing were E grade beasts called White Horns. According to her, the darker the color of their horns, the stronger they would be.
Annoyed at himself for looking like a scared little kid because of the feeble charge of a mere E grade sheeps, Spade got up and said in a casual and disdainful tone “all we have to do is defeat one and we will be done right?”
His teacher corrected him.
“Wrong, for today all you need to do is stay in the barrier for 15 minutes, if you can do that, you have passed this exercise. Now begin!”
As if devising a plan, everyone got up and looked at the middle of the arena where the white horns were.
As they did so, someone suddenly jumped into the barrier.
It was Spade.
Annoyed at himself for looking afraid, he had to prove to everyone, himself included, that he was better than all of the other green-horn-weaklings of his classmates standing afraid in the side lines.
Five minutes later:
“Ahhhh!”
Yelled Spade as he flew out of the barrier for the second time in a row.
Not knowing where to begin, Spade looked towards his teacher and peers. Of the other 14 students only two had mustered enough courage to enter the barrier—sadly, no one did better than Spade.
Seeing such a pitiful display, their teacher must have had compassion as she slowly made her way into the barrier.
Interested in what these horned demons could do to their kind but plump teacher, every student kept their eyes wide open.
The fifteen beasts charged at her.
“Here they come!” some student unnecessarily cried out.
The white horns sped up craving to get as clean a hit as they could. The distance between them and Ms. Sylvia shrunk at a speed of several meters per second.
Yet, everyone braced for impact that never came.
Like a seasoned gymnast, the old lady jumped over the first five beasts, perfectly landing on her feet. Without stopping she readily performed some kind of cart-wheel before flying through the air once more and landing on top of another White Horn.
Spade's disbelief did not stop there.
Miss Sylvia quickly dismounted the beast and, holding both of its horns, tossed it towards the first attackers as if that 250kg beast were a ragged doll.
The white horn must have thought that it was a bird as it flew twenty meters until taking out two of its comrades.
The faces of the students displayed mixed emotions.
Spade, flabbergasted, could just ask “h-h-ho-how?! W-wh-why?”
Other students had more fundamental problems with the exercise which were voiced in a melodramatic tone by a girl called Alsia Rey.
“Hh! If my parents knew—they would never approve of this! I’m certainly not doing this.” Other students, even if not that vocal, seemed to share her reservations.
Hearing Alsia’s words, Spade, who had had the most turbulent first day of school of his life, could not help getting livid.
“Spoiled brat!” he sneered, “you think the world revolves around you and your wishes, don’t you?!” he replied.
It wasn't her behavior that bothered him. It was the word parents.
Being an orphan ever since he was born, Spade’s loneliness was his deepest wound.
Tensions were beginning to rise and being perspicacious, the adult in command said disregarding the feud between students “now, now children, who knows how I just did that?”
There was no Laurel here to answer her question.
Following an awkward pause of silence Ms. Sylvia answered her own question.
“Right now you have no weapons, and even if you were to have them they would not be allowed in this class, but that does not mean you cannot use mana. What I just did was channeling my mana towards my legs and arms to strengthen them—with a bit of practice you can do it too!”
Being naturally kind-hearted she was about to say more when a bell went off.
It was the school bell.
After that the tensions died down, the students said goodbye to the teacher who they would see on Wednesday again for the same class, and moved onwards toward the next class.
Following Miss Sylvia’s class, 10th graders would have a small recess before resuming their classes. All in all there were two other classes for the day: Lt. Rolls class, Celestial Forging 101, and Ms. Farkz class, The Classics of Combat (which students called TCC). These classes would be taught on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. In parallel, on Tuesdays and Thursdays students had a practice period, only having two electives classes and one period for questions, when they could talk to their teachers and request extra training in the areas they found themselves lacking.