With his golden blonde hair blowing in the wind, Spade sprinted to the advanced class’ training grounds.
The facilities were incomparable to his own. The monster gate was three times the size of the core one and the arena was about twice the area of his class’.
As Spade got closer to it, a tall, strong man with short gray hair and a white beard approached him. It was Mr. Blackwood.
He was another one of ACSIL’s veteran teachers. Having taught combat for more than 50 years, he was around his mid 70s. Rumor had it that he was so invaluable that the academy offered him twice a teacher’s regular salary and he only had to teach three classes a week. He only taught advanced combat to 10th, 11th, and 12th graders. His build and aura matched such a description.
“Good morning young man. What brings you here?”
“I am a student from one of the other classes and since I already finished today’s exercise, Ms. Sylvia suggested that I come here to see your class and learn some more.” Spade replied. He did not think that his teacher would mind anyway.
“Good for you”, Mr. Blackwood kindly smiled.
“Feel free to look around, they are currently fighting two D ranked gray horns each and the exercise is to beat them both without getting directly hit. Whoever gets hit has to go again.”
Spade turned his attention to the arena where his peers were fighting.
In the middle of the chaos a loud noise erupted.
Looking to the far end of the ground Spade saw Martin holding two gray horns, one with each hand. The beasts pushed their bodies forward with their legs, but he did not move an inch. In fact, it looked like he was pushing the beasts back with each of his hands placed between their horns.
As Spade admired this magnanimous display of strength, another performance called his attention. A slightly chubby boy with curly light brown hair was sort of riding a gray horn. It was Enzo.
Spade saw it as “kind of riding” because Enzo was holding the horn of the beast while hanging on its right side. As another one charged at him, surely enough he swung his arm throwing one goat towards the other.
The gray horns hit one another before becoming gray light and flying back to the gate. Seeing this Spade realized that these grounds did not have a protective barrier like his.
Liz, Rena, and Joyce were also displaying terrifying combat proficiency.
Despite gray horns being about twice as fast and strong as the white horns Spade faced, these people looked like they could take ten of them without a drop of sweat.
‘And here I was celebrating beating a white horn…’ Spade could not help feeling pathetic.
This said, not everyone seemed to excel.
Closer to him, Spade saw two boys, Simon and AC, grouping together to try to defeat two gray horns. However, as they did so, they lost track of a pair of beasts that decided to attack them from behind. This miscalculation resulted in a sore display and his classmates being hit many times.
Not far from them Julius also seemed to be struggling. Something was off.
Spade’s new classmate was having trouble dodging without getting grazed. In parallel, even when the opportunity to land a clear clean hit arose, he would not take them, as if he were afraid of something. Thankfully for him, Liz was fighting in her usually destructive way and wiped out one of his enemies.
Spade was unimpressed by the latter group’s performance.
In order to enjoy his short recess, he thanked Mr. Blackwood and left.
…
Despite greatly valuing recess, meters after leaving the advanced class’ training grounds, Spade’s curiosity struck again and he decided to keep exploring this area of the school. As students below 10th grade did not have combat classes, this part of the school was previously off bounds for him.
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After walking five minutes to a rocky area on a different part of the mountain, Spade found fifteen cages or so. That was not natural. He went closer.
“Wow!” he said amazed.
Inside of every cave he saw many students fighting different beasts in different landscapes and in different amounts. Some fought in the desert, others in a jungle-like biome, and others near the sea. There was a weird, gel-like, transparent barrier in every cave.
‘Must be the 12th grade training caves’, Spade pondered. He had heard about it, but never imagined that it would be so ‘cool’.
Having decided to spend his recess seeing others fight, he kept peeking at the caves one by one and watching the students practice.
As he got to the penultimate cave, Spade could vaguely distinguish the figure of a young woman sitting with her back completely straight on top of a large boulder. It was Laurel.
She was about 50 meters or so from the entrance. Though her eyes were closed, Spade saw 5 Snow Wolves appear near her, together with 3 Frost Vultures and 1 Snow Ogre.
Facing 5 D-rank creatures, 3 C-rank and one B-rank, is something that most students would not dare to attempt. In fact, what he was seeing had just confirmed what he heard some weeks ago about the principal having granted permission for some of the 10th graders to use 12th graders’ training grounds. In spite of being impossible to die in these simulators, it was still very much possible to get heavily injured.
Students were well aware of this fact. The academy’s infirmary was always full of students who had overestimated their strength. That and those who found excuses to ditch classes.
As the foes dashed at her, Laurel slowly opened her pink-pupiled eyes, her expression unchanging. With a simple gesture, multiple roots pierced through the ground snow and hit 3 of the 5 wolves. Without stopping for a single breath, two sharp green short-knives appeared in her hand, and she jumped from the rock, killing the remaining two Snow Wolves with two clean cuts.
As she threw the killing-sharp pieces of root away, she stretched her right arm forwards towards where the flying monsters were coming from, this time slowing her movements and focusing as a mana appeared to gather around the palm of her stretched hand. Almost immediately, a pair of the Vultures were pierced with 2 flying green javelins, as the remaining one flew towards her.
She however, unfazed, jumped up and conjuring a vine-like rope she mounted on top of the last vulture.
Spade couldn’t believe his eyes.
Laurel directed the vulture towards the strongest beasts, jumping off her mount’s back and flying over the Snow Ogre while sending the Vulture at an extreme velocity towards the B-ranked beast.
Unsurprisingly, it only took a single wooden-club strike from the Ogre to kill the flying creature. Even so, during that time, Laurel had already landed behind the monster and had now conjured what seemed to be a staff, the weapon used by mages and healers. As the Ogre turned around, she was still completing the longest preparation so far. This time, as the club was flung in her direction, Spade was able to hear something, “My name is Alf!!” it seemed to travel across the air and then…Boom!
The snow surrounding the battle was dispersed in all directions, not allowing him to see what had happened next. Some seconds later, as the snow in the air finally seemed to settle, he witnessed a miracle.
He didn’t know whether he was amazed or horrified, the 4 meters tall and 500 Kg heavy Ogre had been impaled.
Around the beast, a small forest with trees, thousands of roots and flowers of the kind that should not exist in such a frozen desert. At the center, the Ogre was bound, pierced, and very surely not able to pose any threat.
Comparing what Spade had done to this was just a joke. The difference between him and Laurel truly was…
An unbridgeable gap.
At this moment a voice sounded in Spade’s head.
“It’s as I thought, she is just like myself. Hey child, I think that it is best for us to get going.”
“Why?” Spade replied. “I want to see what else she will do.”
“Do that later, I will tell you why on the way back to the classroom area” said Lucius ever so dignifiedly.
As he walked back to where he usually stayed, Lucius explained:
“You humans bond with us as mere infants, but the same is not true for beasts. By the time we chose you as our partners and become celestial beasts, we may have already lived for tens or even maybe hundreds of years. So that by the time you guys are still learning how to walk, we can help you by channeling mana to your eyes to improve your combat sense for example.”
“So it was you!” Spade exclaimed, surprised.
“Yes, it was me. And let me tell you that your mana control is terrible, of the mana I was directing towards your optic nerves, more than half left your body or got lost on the way. The same with the mana in your legs. You seriously need to practice controlling mana more efficiently.” the celestial beast scolded.
“Yeah yeah, what did you mean when you said that Laurel was the same as you?” the boy replied in an attempt to change topics.
“Her Celestial Beast also seems to be older and more knowledgeable. Even though the girl was fighting, it sensed us peeking and told me to stop spying and leave because we were bothering them. At any rate, not everyone has the advantage of beast wisdom. The noble boy with the Winter Wyvern, for instance, I would say that they met when it was still a hatchling, or maybe even an egg.”
“Wait, you can sense other people’s Celestial Beasts and their powers?!” Spade asked, amazed.
“Yes. Although there are many ways of concealing one’s powers, there is nothing that a bunch of mere students can hide from these Fox’s eyes” Lucius answered with a tint of pride.
Knowing this, Spade spent the rest of his way back to class asking his partner about everyone’s Celestial Beasts and their powers. Lucius, for some reason, was very talkative and answered most of his questions.