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”You’re all immortals with enough magic ability to be assigned to the mage corps, so I won’t need to teach you how to cast a bloody fireball! Or at least I better damn well shouldn’t have to!” The instructor told them using a voice that was familiar to everyone who had served in some kind of army at one point or another. It was the voice used by every drill sergeant ever in every reality and universe. “What you’ll be learning during the lessons for the mage corps is to work as a team! Some of you fuckers are savants when it comes to dealing death as battle mages but know nothing when it comes to working together because you’ve never had to!”

The number of potential mages for the mage corps was surprisingly large at almost four hundred. Mages were always more rare than the various warrior types, and having almost four hundred mages in a group of ten thousand recruits was a good haul, especially since they were all mages with enough ability to become immortal on the power of their magic instead of just dabbling. These were also all mages of the offensive and defensive magic type, and not those that focused on support or more niche types of magical abilities like magical warriors or artisans.

“There are four main types of activities you’ll be involved in as mages of the Host. The first is solo missions, which for mages are much rarer than the warrior types. The Host usually likes to send at least a few warriors to watch every mage’s back when they go on the field. That said, these types of missions offer you the most freedom in how you go about accomplishing your magical objectives. However, even for solo missions, we expect every Host mage to be able to accomplish certain things in certain ways. Communication is the most obvious of these, but far from the only one. You will also be trained in certain types of tactics, so that if and when we have to send reinforcements to you, they will know what to expect from you.” The instructor continued.

“Second type of mission has you act in small squads. Squads vary in size a bit depending on the objective and the type of squad, but expect anything from five to twenty people operating in a squad. When in a squad, you need to learn how to act like a squad worthy of the Host, and we’ll be spending a lot of time drilling you pumpkins on small group tactics. When shit goes down, everyone in the squad needs to know how you will react without spending time communicating your plans. This will be essential in situations when you are caught off-guard. And as the squad’s mage, certain kinds of magic will be expected of you. Still, you will have a fair bit of freedom, assuming your squad knows your preferred spells and reactive magic.” It might have been a little difficult to take the instructor seriously as he was barely tall enough to reach the waist of most of the gathered people. Kobolds were not the most common race to reach immortality, but no one was willing to look down on this man.

“The third type is an extension of the second, where more than one squad joins together to tackle a larger enemy, or a situation too difficult for a single squad to handle. Similar to the fourth type, which is being part of an army, the spells you are expected to use and when are rather strictly defined because the leaders of armies and large groups can’t be expected to learn the peculiarities of every two-bit mage that thinks they know better. In both of these kinds of missions, you are going to use the spells we tell you to use, when we tell you to use them, and in the way we tell you."

The instructor looked firmly down at them from his podium. "This will be the hardest part for you as you are used to doing things the way you either want or have been taught. We can’t afford solo acts in battles between armies. Even if your individual power would allow you to do more, you will have to abide by the commands of your leaders, until and unless given the command to let loose. Usually, at that point, the battle has turned into a mess already anyway. I’m seeing a lot of confused looks, so let me give you an example. Some of you are much faster at casting spells than others. That’s all well and good until you realize that a bombardment from an army with a mage battalion is much more effective when it's simultaneous. That way the enemy won’t get the chance to counter your spells one at a time, and they have to deal with the entire barrage at the same time instead. That means, some of you fuckers will need to learn how to cast faster, and other will need to learn to hold your fire until the slower members of your unit can get to it. On the flip side, you will learn how to utilize your casting speed to keep up a constant barrage of spells as well, which will utilize that part of your strength, as these kinds of barrages are often used to keep the enemy on the defensive.”

The instructor glanced over them again, looking everyone in the front rank in the eye. Incidentally, the front rank held those that had gotten the best scores. “On the defensive, you will learn how to erect magical barriers in a way that you will be responsible for maintaining a particular section of the barrier. Here it is important for the strongest among you to learn to compensate for the times when your weaker allies are overwhelmed and can’t maintain their section anymore. In such cases, you will learn to quickly subsume their portion of the barrier into your own. Keep this in mind. You’re part of an army now. Not. Individual. Acts. You will learn to behave like a member of an army. This will take time and effort, and you will be frustrated. That is normal. What we will not tolerate is lashing out at your allies. You’re part of the Host. Everyone around you now will be your ally while in the Host. We will not tolerate politicking, bullying, backstabbing, or sabotage. Anyone caught in any such act will find themselves on the receiving end of a swift and brutal punishment.”

The instructor then launched into a lesson about the various spells they were expected to master, and in which situations they would be called for. Since they were all immortal-level mages, they were expected to learn all the required spells quickly, and the idea was that these training situations would be about practicing their use in various situations, and not about learning the spells themselves. Situation after situation would be thrown at them, and they would be expected to handle each situation with the repertoire of spells given. This in turn would help them mentally condition themselves in the use of the spells, instead of reacting with whatever their current favored method was.

Tactics training was more advanced and would be something they would train later. Eventually though, the majority of their time would be spent running drills, so that they would know without thinking what to expect from their allies. Once they had the basic tactics down, the magic corps would combine with the other groups and run drills together, for similar reasons.

It was perhaps inevitable that someone finally crossed the line and allowed their mouth to run during the lessons of the first day. The mockery was mostly driven by politics, and Karna hadn’t even heard the details as she’d been busy running her own exercises, but she certainly got to see the response. She knew the practice area was covered by an observational spell that would allow the instructors to follow everything that was said and happened. That was proven when the diminutive instructor quite literally lashed out at the trainee that had made the infraction. Karna could sense a whip of pure magical power reaching across the entire training field and catching the offender in the face. The female trainee stumbled away and was thrown to the ground with her helmet rolling away. The bleeding wound on her face was glaringly obvious, as was the instructor who floated above all of them and towards the wounded trainee.

“I believe I already told you that harsh punishment awaited those that couldn’t leave their politics and bigotry behind. Every year we give the same rules, and every year there are trainees stupid enough to think we’re not serious.” The instructor now floated above the wounded trainee. “This is your last warning. Next time the punishment will be much worse. Let me make this crystal clear. The unity of the Host is much more important to us than your individual health or even lives. We know it is impossible to completely remove politics from the Host, but we’re damn well going to try.”

The wound on the trainee's face looked ugly and painful, but it would heal even without intervention from healers. Immortals were a lot hardier than beings of lower rank, and that didn’t just mean that they stopped aging. Any immortal would be naturally a lot sturdier and could both survive and recover from wounds that would easily kill lesser beings. The specific degree of survivability depended on the particular immortal and their abilities, but it wasn’t uncommon for immortals to survive being bisected and as long as they survived, a healer would be able to put them back together.

“As a lesson, you will be forbidden to seek healing for your wound for the period of five days. If another trainee takes pity on you, that’s their business, but you are not allowed to seek out for such help.” The instructor declared.

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“Welcome to the shock troops of the Host!” A man with obvious titan heritage greeted Karna and the other trainees as they arrived. Unlike during the magic corps training, Karna was the only one of her allies to participate, and there were very few others in general. There were less than fifty trainees, and even that was something that had surprised the trainers positively.

“You’ve all been brought to this group either because of your heritage, or because you’ve been lucky enough to cultivate a bloodline to an extent that allows for transformation. Do not be mistaken. There are a lot more magical beasts and beings among the new trainees, and our group will grow as these beings are discovered. Why do the proud dragons and phoenixes tuck their tails and hide their feathers, I hear you ask? Because being in the shock troops is dangerous. If there is a stalemate in a battle, it is often our duty to go in and break the enemy lines. That is what shock troops do. But that also makes us targets. And there’s only so much focused attention even a dragon can survive. At least that’s the image everyone outside the Host has. Are they correct? To an extent. It is true that the survivability of shock troops in large-scale battles is lower than average, and we tend to go out in a spectacular fashion. However, the Host is not in the habit of throwing away lives. Especially lives as important as ours. Make no mistake, we are the elites of the entire Host!" The instructor lifted his metallic fist in a rousing gesture, though didn’t get a response, mainly because the trainees weren’t entirely sure if they should be responding.

“Eh, you’ll get into the spirit eventually. Along with danger comes rewards. We usually get our pick when it comes to assignments and rewards. Oh yes, I see that caught your attention. Has no one explained the benefits yet? That’s the reason many of you joined, is it not? The Host is a source of resources and information. Stuck at a cultivation bottleneck because the lower planes didn’t teach you to purify your powers properly? We can help you with that. Need a particular pill to say, cure a loved one? Can be arranged. These and a thousand other wishes. But you have to earn them. And the shock troops are the quickest way to earn them. As I said, we are put at risk, and the Host wants to make sure we come out alive on the other side.” The difference in trainers was rather obvious. It was obvious that this trainer believed what he was saying, and his style was completely different from the previous one.

"As you are all experts in your own forms and know better what you can and can’t do, we will not be handling that during training. What we will be doing is figuring out how your forms can best be utilized, and some ideas for army battles when it comes to staying alive. We naturally have had almost every sort of being in the Host before, so we have a lot of experience in getting the best out of everyone’s abilities. Unlike many other groups, the shock troops are not about us telling you what to do, but a collaborative effort to come up with ideas and methods. We will also go over what we expect from you, when, and how that will be communicated.” The instructor started to move into further details, and the rest of the lesson was all about going over some of the most common examples of how the shock troops had been used in the past.

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“So, how was your first week?” Envy asked Hope and Valor.

“Mostly going over the basics. They’re covering all their bases and making sure everyone is up to speed. On the positive side, I’m surprised at the pace at which we’re moving forward. Of course, all the trainees are immortal, so you’d expect that they can absorb the basics quickly, assuming they don’t know already.” Valor summarized. He could appreciate the training methods that had been honed over countless years. “I suppose it’s good that they’re being thorough, even if it does make things a little boring for those like us. In slightly more exciting news, I ran into our old friend Saint.”

“Ah, the one who was part of the attack against us on the Higher Planes.” Envy nodded. “I take it she wasn’t too thrilled about us being here.”

“That’s putting it mildly. The ones we killed weren’t exactly friends of hers, but they were friendly and could be called acquaintances. She still thinks they were right in attacking us, although she’s perhaps less certain about it now. She did at least some research on her own, and while we weren’t shown in a very negative light, we weren’t exactly shown as saints either. Pun intended.” The holy warrior explained with a grimace. “Anyway, the fact that I’m Valor saves me from most of her ire, and she’s intelligent enough to not make trouble during the lessons as that would only wind up earning her a punishment, I’m pretty sure she’ll take any opportunity to create trouble for us in the future. As her Name implies, she’s not really the sort of person to spread malicious gossip, but we should keep her in mind just in case.”

“Well, the espionage training was a lot less dull in comparison. They started us off with the basics of infiltration, but we quickly moved on to more practical lessons. They had us infiltrate guarded positions yesterday, and the day before we had information gathering tests. Those were fun. We get to critique each other’s methods and exchange ideas. It’s a good environment.” Hope added her own response to the original question.

“The shock troopers are a similar case. A lot less regimented and a lot more interaction. Also helps that I got to smack around virtual enemies and even two smaller dragons.” Karna snickered a bit at the memory of showing two dragon brothers that had quickly submitted to her power.

“Ah yes, the monster den. A lot more interesting than the scout training, I’m sure.” Envy had been enrolled both in the standard forces of the Host in addition to her magic corps training. Specifically, she had been made a scout and a ranger, which suited her skills well.

“Seen anyone as interesting as Saint?” Karna probed. They had to be on the lookout for other reincarnators.

“Not yet. I’m sure there are plenty, but the warriors are split into smaller groups due to the sheer number of trainees. The scouts are trained separately. I’ve heard rumors though. It appears there’s a Kensei among the newcomers. I wonder who that could be?” Envy asked in a slightly sing-song voice.

Karna grimaced a bit. “I heard the same. What are the odds of another female Kensei appearing at the same time?”

“Not very high.” Valor stated bluntly.

"Between slim and none," Hope added.

“Just give it up. You’re scheduled for a rematch. Better get cracking on that new weapon you spoke of.” Envy teased.

“The materials I requested should arrive tomorrow. Perfect timing as we’ll get two days off for independent training anyway.” Karna said while making plans already. Two days would be cutting it close when it came to crafting something worthy, but luckily her plan consisted of multiple steps that didn’t all need to be completed at once.

She also had an advantage when it came to materials. Celestium, scales of a very powerful dragon, and the blood of various beasts were all among the best crafting materials imaginable, and she just so happened to have access to all of those naturally. Dragons shed scales naturally, so she didn’t need to go plucking any for her use. She’d been storing the required materials ever since she had gained immortality, and the quality of all of them had naturally reached a new level. She also had some materials stored from their exploration during the Expansion. That didn’t mean she had all the materials she needed, but at least she didn’t need to order the core materials from the Host, just the supporting ones. She would need all of them and more eventually, however, she could take the first steps now.