Chapter 19 — Difference in Power

  William glanced between the stone projectile and the elite. Without a doubt, this asshole meant to do that.

  The snobby Trinity elite raised an eyebrow, as if saying what are you going to do about it? His uniform had the numeral IV on it. So he was rank four. William had seen him tagging along Luke Brightsteel’s inner circle, but distinctly remembered that he wasn’t entirely welcome with them.

  An instructor charged over to the elite. “What the hell was that for? You hit him!” she said, pointing at William.

  “It was just an accident,” the elite replied, shrugging. “And plus, my stone wasn’t going that fast. I’m sure it barely scratched him.” Although the elite looked haughty, he was continuously sneaking glances off to the left, as if searching for someone’s validation.

  Following his gaze to the left, outside of the designated training area and in the fields, a strong, tall blond man in a gold adorned VIII uniform traded unarmed blows against a bald old man with muscles so large for his age that they looked comical. The old man was shirtless, wearing only a fighting gi, his muscles rippling with every strike blocked. Each punch was followed by a shockwave, although both fighters seemed to be only half trying.

  The blond man was Luke Brightsteel, looking more regal than ever in his newly issued uniform, and William recognized the old man as a powerful general in Jormungandr, one of the big seven guilds.

  But the elite that shot the projectile at him didn’t seem to be looking at Luke. Instead, he appeared interested in one of the other elite girls who seemed preoccupied staring at Luke’s fight. Upon seeing that, the snobby elite looked frustrated.

  William squinted his eyes to see the three other uniformed students out in the special training fields, just about making out a familiar long black haired girl standing in the sidelines with a sword in her arms—Evelyn Moon, rank five. He was glad to see her unhurt. She appeared entirely concentrated on the fight in front of her, studying their movement like she was studying for a test.

  Standing several arms lengths next to her was a relaxed brunette male Trinity student wearing a black cloak over his uniform with the three inverted triangles of his family’s corporation. That was Jared Pain, rank six. William hated to admit it, but the young Pain heir did look the part of the male heir to a family fortune when he wasn’t busy acting like a clown, with his fine rank VI uniform and family coat of arms on his cloak.

  There was one other person to the side, a gangly haired male with dark circles under his eyes who appeared rather disheveled compared to the three Trinity Academy students. His uniform read rank five.

  So three out of four of the awakeners level five and above in this group all belonged to Trinity Academy. William was impressed but not surprised.

  “Where did you get scratched?” the female instructor in her late twenties asked, walking over to William with a bandage in her hand. “We have healers and nurses on hand, but still it’s best not to get hurt in the first place.”

  She then looked a bit more closely, confused as to why he appeared unhurt. “Can you turn?”

  William turned his face to show her the other side, which was equally unblemished.

  “That’s strange… I’m sure you were hit by the stone.”

  William shrugged. “I dodged it.”

  Now the instructor started to frown, apparently in disbelief. She reached into her pocket as if to grab her pen, when her hand abruptly shot forward.

  William leaned to the side, dodging the potential punch, although the instructor pulled back at the last moment. Her frown then broke into a smile of disbelief. “You have great reflexes for a rank one, kid. Have you gotten training? Combat training, or even martial arts?”

  “No.” He had always been quick on his feet, but now that she mentioned it he felt lighter than usual after the awakening. That did not translate to an impressive physical exam, however. “I did food delivery work though.”

  “That’s a possible explanation as to why your reflexes are so good. You look a bit pale though. Have you eaten?” She produced two protein bars from her pouch, which William eyed greedily.

  “Can I?”

  “Be my guest,” she said, handing him both bars.

  William tore open the wrappers and ate both bars in several large bites, wiping his mouth sloppily when he was done as his stomach grumbled. He needed that—all he ate this entire time was one hospital meal.

  “Feel better?”

  William nodded, wiping his mouth.

  “Give me your license,” she demanded.

  He obliged, handing it over.

  “Mage-type fire awakener, hm? What a shame. You should’ve been a close ranged type,” she said, before depositing the license into a large sorting contraption that was sitting on a table by itself to the side. A few students looked over nervously at it.

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  “What’s that for?” he asked, pointing at the contraption.

  “Randomized sparring pairings,” she said as if it was the most normal thing in the world. “Now do me a favor. Come with me, since you’re a natural I should use you as an example.” She grabbed his arm and pulled him towards the front near the demonstration area, in front of where all the students were performing stretching drills.

  Although not many people were paying attention to him before, now that he’d stepped onto the demonstration stage with the instructor, whispers started to come from the crowd.

  “Who’s he?”

  “I think he’s a Trinity student.”

  “He’s rank one, though. Why is he up there?”

  “Isn’t that the guy who hangs around with that loser Finn?”

  “Hope I get him as my sparring partner. He looks easy.”

  The instructor either didn’t seem to hear the conversations, or simply didn’t care, as she bent over to take out some training items from the bin. William couldn’t tell either way. He was getting slightly irritated by some of the comments from the crowd, though. The elite girl that the snobby guy was gawking at earlier was now looking at William and whispering to her friend, as the snobby elite shot a look of pure resentment at him, presumably for stealing the spotlight. William almost found it surprising that the snobby elite had friends near him—even annoying people like him had a bunch of friends, huh?

  The female instructor cleared her throat, as the other instructor moved to her side. “Ahem. As we were saying earlier, the first principle to combat against monsters is to avoid getting hit if you can. That applies to tanks as well, mind you. The secret to not getting hit all comes down to movement, including footwork.”

  She hoisted a safety vest over William’s shoulder, and then moved him a few feet back. “Now the volunteer here has shown some incredible natural skills, due to his work in food delivery—”

  Several Trinity Academy looked thoroughly amused at that, although the students from other universities didn’t share that sentiment. Some of the recruits that did not belong to Trinity looked at Trinity students with awe, others with envy. It wasn’t every day that they got to stand side by side with the future heirs of massive, famous companies.

  “—so I decided to use the volunteer here to show that even a level one mage can use excellent movement to avoid a monster’s attacks.”

  She raised her fists in a fighting stance.

  “I’ll hold back. Try to dodge as much as you can,” she said.

  None of the instructors had standardized uniforms on, so William couldn’t tell how strong she was. As all eyes were now on him, he stepped into his own unique fighting stance—one step back, ready to run at a moment’s notice. He suddenly felt quite silly. Since when did he ever have combat or martial art training? All he ever did was run.

  The protein bars sitting in his stomach churned, as the dryness of his throat that he had overlooked due to his hunger now came back to distract him. He backed up, circling the female instructor as she approached him.

  Her first punch was barely a punch at all, more like a slow motion forward reach. William simply sidestepped it, moving to the center of the stage.

  “Dodging all starts with your base, from your feet up. If you maintain a solid core and control over your center of gravity, you can stand your ground and dodge even when a monster attacks, without falling backwards.”

  She moved forward again, and this time threw a normal punch. William took one step back, evading the blow. The movement came naturally to him—after all, wasn’t this just running away backwards, while looking forwards? He’d avoided so many random hanging cables, fallen brooms, and other sorts of crap while running through the alleyways all these years that this came naturally to him.

  Suddenly, her movements quickened. The female instructor darted forward quickly, throwing several punches towards the padding of the safety vest on his chest. William backed up until he was on the edge of the platform, and an uppercut came swiftly towards him. He leaned to the left, sidestepping, when another punch came from the right.

  Although he twisted his body in another attempt to avoid it, this punch grazed his safety vest. But before he could even recover, he saw a leg traveling towards him as she performed a spinning kick like he’d seen in martial arts videos. Even taking out of account the obvious rank disparity, how was this a fair fight? Someone with extensive martial arts training against him, who had no training whatsoever?

  He barely managed to block the kick with his arm, although it wasn’t really a block since he took the full brunt of the kick. The hit sent him reeling to the side, and all he could think was that he was glad he didn’t get knocked off the platform entirely. His already good instincts and movements had improved due to his awakening, but it still wasn’t nearly enough to face off against seasoned veterans.

  “Ow,” he groaned, rubbing his arm.

  “I’m surprised you were fast enough to block my kick,” the instructor said, before turning to the crowd. “However, in a real combat situation, the last thing that a ranged-type fighter wants to do is block attacks with their body. Many common monster types have claws, so you better not get into the habit of blocking.”

  The lesson continued for a while, with the instructor effectively using him as a punching bag to describe all the various different types of do’s and don’ts to monster fighting, although the general premise still lay around the fact that dodging produced the best results, although blocking could be used to a certain extent if a raid party had enough healers or healing items to go around.

  In between bouts with the professor, William looked around the crowd for Vanessa Lullaby, but he couldn’t see her anywhere.

  They then moved into more physical training, and then combat awareness training. Nearly an hour had passed before the two instructors finally waved for them to stop. The sorting contraption had been wheeled onto the demonstration desk by a soldier.

  “And now for the sparring session of today’s training,” the instructor said, scanning across the area. “As you all know, in a real world situation, you will not be constantly fighting monsters that are exactly the power level that you can handle. Learning how to survive against a stronger enemy is one of the core lessons that we must teach you all, the next generation.”

  “Because of that, we will be introducing completely randomized sparring partners.” The machine closed with a click, before being opened up once again as the instructor pulled out the first two cards from the list.

  After ten sparring pairs were announced, William finally heard his name called.

  “William Blackwood. You will be sparring against—” the instructor said, reaching into the pool of laminated licenses again, “—Evon Mudd,” she finished.

  Evon Mudd, the earth mage elite who directed the projectile towards him earlier, looked very pleased with the drawing.