One week later (14/01/519th year of the 4th era):

“This time I will get it!” said Spade while standing in the exact same Combat 101 training grounds where he stood a week ago.

He had just been knocked out of the arena for the 87th time or so. Not that anyone besides him was counting. This time he was determined to succeed.

Ms. Sylvia, who had slowly made the task significantly harder by now requiring that students throw a white horn at least 5 meters, looked at him with a trace of excitement in her eyes.

Turning towards the arena, where three students had just been sent flying the same way he was, Spade closed his eyes, focusing all of his attention and mana on the relevant limbs to complete what he hoped would be his final attempt at this task.

As finished visualizing his attack, he slowly opened his eyes and shot forward.

With a speed not much inferior to that of his teacher’s he took only five seconds to close the gap between himself and his horned opponents. While the others were occupied with students, ten of the beasts advanced unafraid to meet his charge head on.

With his legs overflowing with mana, Spade jumped over the first opponent landing in front of the next three.

Overwhelmed by numbers, he concentrated his mana on his arms.

This time around, instead of dodging Spade stretched his arms forward and stopped the charge of the white horn in the middle with sheer strength, holding each of its horns.

The other students could not believe what their eyes were seeing.

Pressed by the other two enemies, Spade did something he had not done in his more-than-80-prior-attempts. He pushed the goat-like creature up and slid underneath it.

Confronted with the last half a dozen White Horns, Spade used a series of acrobatic movements to get past another handful of them. He was going to pass this exercise—and he was going to do it in style by dodging nine foes and beating the last one.

There were less than five meters between him and the last beast. However, unlike before, this time it did not go according to plan.

To everyone’s surprise it took the initiative, and before Spade could react, his abdomen was struck by two big horns, making him fly ten meters backwards.

“Ah!” The students reacted as soon as they realized what was about to happen. Spade was about to land right behind another White Horn.

And it knew.

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The creature readied its leg muscles as if it were about to give the most fabulous and skull-crushing kick of its life.

Granted, the medical facilities at the school were world-class, but so was this kick going to be.

Death wasn’t an issue, but a concussion might very well be.

Yet, in the split second Spade was flying through the air towards an inevitable kick in the forehead, something weird happened to him. Acting out of its own accord, his mana started flowing to his eyes. He wasn’t doing it on purpose.

He did not know what was happening, but all of a sudden he felt reality pass by slower. It was as if everything was in slow motion. Not much slower, but slower nevertheless.

This was all he needed.

As he was about to land, Spade rotated his body with the help of both arms.

To everyone’s disbelief, the white horn’s left hoof grazed his shoulder as he quickly landed one meter to its side with both hands and feet trying to prevent him from hitting the floor face first.

Without wavering, Spade divided his nearly exhausted mana between his legs and eyes and made one final run towards that 10th last horned enemy.

Passing two of his former victims with a fraction of the effort he had previously exerted—after all, they were now moving in at a speed at which he could read their movements—Spade found himself facing the 10th.

…

Following a sequence of movements between man and goat too surreal to be described, the other students found themselves looking incredulous at a white horn flying about 10 meters above the ground.

Since everything that goes up must come down.

So did that 10th white horn.

Spade, on the other hand, found himself lying down in the ground due to mana exhaustion.

Not that any of the other white horns had the courage, or lack of self-preservation instinct, to approach him after what they had just witnessed. Luckily, hist teacher did not share their fear.

Before long, they were both sitting down in the sideline of the arena talking and chuckling.

“Oh my, who would have thought that we had such a talent growing up here in the academy” she said pleasantly surprised. Completing the praise with “it was still your fault, since you had never tried hard before.”

“Give me a break” Spade replied, finding it hard to contain his smile in between the heavy breaths; “better late than never right?”

“I’ve got an idea,” said Ms. Sylvia.

“why do you not use the last five minutes of class to go check out the intermediate training grounds for Combat 101? Think of it as extra motivation” she smiled.

That was music to his ears. Inspired by the proposal, Spade dashed out of those small training grounds intending to use all the five minutes that had been given to him.

…

Spade was not someone who lied, he was not particularly dedicated to school and although he thought that “honor” was nothing more than an empty word, when he said he would do something he did it—

Unless a greater force acted upon him of course. And in this case, that force was called curiosity.

Confronted with the bifurcation of roads leading to the intermediate and the advanced training grounds, Spade decided to take the road less traveled by.

And it made all the difference.

Though he was not quite sure whether he liked what he saw.