“Alright class, you’ve lasted a week, welcome to Friday, combat training day.” Jonathan’s words had their intended effect as the seven students in his class all seemed excited to some extent, even the quieter ones like Tony, Leah and Jade.

“So we’re finally going to be fighting huh?” Edward smirked as he glanced to Kazuya who returned the smirk with one of his own.

“I wonder what kind of training we’re going to get...” Kazuya returned as he and Edward bumped fists while walking out of the classroom… Liza followed, one hand stretched out to clench Kazuya’s sleeve much to his confusion.

While walking, behind Jonathan who was leading them to their training grounds, the class as a whole relaxed while having small conversations with each other about things they had learnt in class in the past four days.

In the few days that they had been in the S-class, the classmates had already determined the personalities the others had.

Jade was authoritarian, but seemed stumped when the others in her class didn’t seem to respect Jonathan as much as she did.

Jonathan himself didn’t care; he didn’t give an aura of authority in the first place, though that was mostly because he always seemed tired… and his clothes were unkempt.

It was hilarious watching Jade’s reactions to such things though, stuttering as if her brain had short circuited or something making Vince, Edward and Kazuya laugh.

Vince was loud, and a good mood-setter for the group, if ever something seemed to be making someone in the group uncomfortable, he’d be there instantly with a funny face or joke to try and lighten their day, usually by playing the fool.

It didn’t always work, given that everyone was still getting to know one another, but he tried and that had everyone endeared to him at this point.

Leah and Tony were both shy, but in different directions in that Tony seemed to be embarrassed for existing while Leah was shy due to wanting to try hard but not having confidence…

Unfortunately for both of them, they got dragged into class discussions by the more outgoing people, namely Vince, Jade and Edward.

As for Edward, he had gained a friendship with just about everyone in the class as a sort of ‘big brother’ figure with how reliable he was.

He was smart, strong, and kind, not to mention outgoing, and he found Kazuya to be the person he spoke to the most, which only made the trio of Liza, Kazuya and Edward more iconic, given that they were the three strongest in their class.

As for Kazuya, he was an oddity in the group, as he was quiet and subdued, but clearly confident in himself. He was willing to talk to people when conversation was started but he rarely initiated the talks.

Not to mention that Liza was never far from his side, causing questions of whether they knew each other before now, to which Kazuya was quite sure they had never met before.

To make it stranger, Liza agreed with him, Kazuya and Liza had never met before Monday when classes started, and yet she treated Kazuya like a bodyguard or something with how attached she was to him.

Their ‘relationship’ was weird and only Liza knew how it worked as far as anyone there was concerned.

“Alright, we’re here at our training ground.” Jonathan pointed to the building behind him as he looked to his students, who looked at the building with awe.

It looked… expensive, to say the least, given that the place seemed to be gilded with gold and was quite huge, it looked inspired by Greek architecture given the stone pillars outside the building.

“Your training ground is the one exclusive to the first year S-class, and no one else is allowed in here… at current.” Jonathan hinted, confusing the seven students before they heard footsteps approaching, causing the seven to turn.

In their sights, they say saw twenty five other students and a nervous looking female teacher standing behind them shaking his head as one of them walked forward.

“Hey, so you’re the rumoured S-class?” Kazuya internally decided that anyone who has to confront people like this was not worth remembering, unfortunately Edward was a prince, and therefore trained in diplomatic relationships.

“Yes, we are, and who are all of you, another class?” Edward asked with a calm smile on his face as the boy scoffed.

“We’re class D, and I’m the rank one of our class, Kevin Brown.” Once more, Kazuya considered the need to introduce ones self so righteously when Kazuya did not recognize the guy’s name…

There was introducing yourself to someone new, and there was introducing yourself to someone who knew you or your reputation, clearly this guy was trying the latter.

“Nice to meet you Kevin… so, what is this about?” Edward asked as Kevin pointed at their training centre.

“It’s something we only found out now, but we’d like to use your training centre… permanently.” Kevin said as Edward raised an eyebrow, looking to Jonathan for an explanation.

“I was just about to tell them myself, so this is as good a time as any… now brats, you are in the illustrious Elem High, one of four top ranking high schools across the world that provide the best Sages in the world. What is our school motto?” Jonathan asked as Jade was quick to raise her hand…

“To the victor go the spoils!” shouted Vince excitedly, simultaneously causing Jade to suddenly look depressed while Leah and Tony fidgeted, apparently also wanting to answer.

“Correct, and this is the epitome of Sage lifestyle.” Jonathan said, gesturing to the D-class.

“Might, makes right. It’s considered barbaric by normal humans, but to a Sage this is a fundamental truth of reality. A weak Sage dies within two years of being sent on missions against Mystic Beasts or against the Fae races. A strong Sage survives.” Jonathan turned back to his students as he said that final line.

“What Elem High does is quite different from other schools… at Elem High, we enforce this early. If you are weak, you get next to nothing in terms of support from the school, and if you are strong, you are given luxuries beyond all others.” Jonathan said as Kevin cut in.

“Exactly… but see, we’re placed into classes based on strength, and so the entire class is given similar treatment! And Class D is the weakest Class apparently, so guess what that means for us?” Kevin asked as Kazuya piped in.

“Let me guess, you have a barely existent training ground, it’s in shambles, your classroom has old school wooden desks with graffiti on them, etcetera, etcetera.” Kazuya’s ability to be blasé about their woes was near contagious given that Liza immediately looked at them with non-existent pity.

“That’s exactly it! Well, minus the graffiti, no punks would last long in this school… and Elem High is prestigious, our stuff isn’t really all that bad, nothing’s even broken… but compared to your stuff it sucks!” Kevin shouted as Edward cut in, hoping to defuse the situation.

“Okay, so your things are… average? I don’t see why you are coming to us about it then?” Edward asked as Kevin smirked while Jonathan sighed.

“We’re coming here because we want your training centre, and we challenge you for it.” Edward’s eyes widened as Jonathan spoke out to the other teacher.

“Hey Julie, you did tell them how the challenges work right? And how suicidal they’re being?” Jonathan asked as the teacher nodded quickly…

Honestly, with how nervous she looked, she looked like Leah grown up or something…

“Y-y-yes I did senior Jonathan sir! B-b-but they didn’t…” The woman looked to her students with worry as Jonathan shook his head, looking to them.

They clearly did not think much of Jonathan given that unlike the other teacher that wore formal wear, Jonathan wore whatever he felt like wearing at the time.

During their test on Monday, they had seen him wearing cargo pants and a long sleeved jersey with a low v neck collar which stretched to almost directly over his heart, a plain white shirt under that.

That still looked alright to an extent, though clearly not professional…

Unfortunately, today Jonathan was wearing a bright pink jumpsuit.

And not one of his students dared to comment lest he hurt them very badly…

Apparently his outfits were chosen by his wife who knew how lazy he was and so she forced him to wear what she picked… of course, this just brought up the question of who his wife was that she could force him so easily into a pink jumpsuit, but he just shook his head and shivered.

“Fine Julie, I’ll let it go this time around because it’s the first combat day, we knew this would happen to my class, just not which class would attack…” Jonathan said, looking over at D-class with a raised eyebrow.

“Brats! Listen up, the way conflicts between classes work is as follows, both classes ante up something for the bet.” Jonathan turned to his students as he raised a finger.

“Following the setting of the bet, the challenged party has the right to determine general rules, these rules are then given to the nearest teacher, who will approve or disapprove them.” Jonathan said as he raised his second finger, moving onto the third.

“Following this the fight begins with the teacher just mentioned officiating the fights. Today we’ll be going with the most standard of fight rules between two classes which is Survival.” Jonathan said as he pointed to Kevin.

“Kid, listen up, since you and your class clearly didn’t listen to Julie’s explanation until the end so I’m going to warn you. Your class is the D-class… quite honestly the only thing you could possibly bet at this point is your expulsion if you lose.” The eyes of many D-class students widened as Kevin complained.

“Hey, how does that work! We don’t have much to bet because you didn’t give us anything!” He complained as Jonathan calmed his expression, wisps of Darkness roiling off his body as he stared at the uppity freshman that had just tried to shout at him.

Kevin quickly shut up and gulped, breaking out into a sweat as the Darkness settled down and vanished from Jonathan’s frame.

“Now listen here, how these fights normally work, is that A-class challenges S-class, B-class challenges A-class, and so on. That is considered fair. However, you are fighting above your weight class, and that has consequences.” Jonathan said easily.

“Like in boxing for normal people, they don’t let people fight across weight classes because the chance of injury for the smaller person is greater.” Jonathan said, causing Kevin to clench his fists.

“That isn’t to say that the smaller person is not as worthy as the bigger person of becoming great, the smaller person could be the world champion and the bigger one could be someone new to the sport.” Jonathan said while shrugging.

“The smaller one is the champion, he’s obviously more skilled and will win a fight… but the bigger one, with proper training, can eventually hit much harder than the champion.” Jonathan’s analogy was beginning to make Kazuya yawn, even if Edward’s eyes gleamed at the mention of boxing.

“What, so you’re just saying in a roundabout way that they have more talent than us? And who decided that!” Kevin complained as Jonathan raised an eyebrow, pointing up.

“God decided that.” Kazuya blinked in surprise at the mention of the creator, not having expected Jonathan to bring religion into the matter.

No one caught Tony’s twitch at the mention of God.

“Or to be more precise, your birth decided that.” Jonathan said while pointing at Kevin who blinked at the slightly sad look Jonathan had.

“Brat, what Element do you have?” Jonathan asked, and Kevin held out his hand, showing a small burst of Fire in his hands as Jonathan nodded.

Then Jonathan pointed at Edward, who immediately looked awkward as he figured out what was about to happen.

“And you, muscle brat, what Elements do you have?” Edward looked to Kevin, chuckling nervously even as he raised his hand and allowed Fire to appear, making Kevin turn to Jonathan.

“Muscle brat… show all of your Elements.” Edward sighed as he showed his other hand, allowing the ground beneath him to move slowly as a ball of dirt floated in his off-hand, followed by Edward extinguishing his fire and creating a crystal of ice.

“What… three Elements? That’s impossible! He’s just using ones outside of his base!” Kevin argued as Jonathan sighed.

“Well, you are right, before we found muscle brat we thought it was impossible, but those are his Elements. Each student in S-class has something unique which separates them from common students, whether that is having more than one Element…” Jonathan spared a glance to Kazuya, and Liza who was looking around ignoring the incident.

“Or having something new we’ve never seen before. Basically, their starting point and your starting point are two different things.” Kevin looked at the seven with anger in his eyes as Jonathan walked closer, looking the teen in the eyes.

“Kid, take it from me, it’s possible to fight against higher powers, but winning is an impossibility unless God is on your side.” Kevin glared as Jonathan walked back to his class.

“Okay brats, I’ve explained things. If he agrees to the fight, you bet your gym, they bet their expulsion. They might back off, they might not.” Kevin was quick to voice out that they would be going through with it…

Some looked reluctant though, and said they would sit out on the fight… Jonathan and Julie allowed it though, with the addendum that the entire class would be expelled anyway.

That was what got all twenty five students to agree to the match instantly.

“Alright then, with that settled, here are the rules for a Survival battle… basically, each team sends out one combatant each. The winner of the fight is then allowed to return to their class while the loser is out of the running.” Jonathan said, then making a circular motion with his hands, one Kazuya recognized as the sign language for the word circle.

“This is then repeated until one team can no longer send out fighters. Also, sending out more than one fighter is possible, but this allows the other team to send out an equal amount of fighters.” Jonathan said as both classes nodded.

“Good. That being said, Julie and I will be the watchers. Julie, would you mind setting up the arena?” Jonathan asked looking to the smaller, timid teacher who nodded while raising her hands…

Her hands were shaking nervously due to being stared at though…

Despite her nervousness, a large circle rose from the ground nearly instantly, possessing a diameter of around fifty metres.

Any Earth attributed Sage could do so easily, but the issue here was how silently the arena formed… Kazuya was impressed while Edward was looking at the timid teacher with stars in his eyes.

Figures the fight junky would want a teacher capable of such finesse.

“Alright, both classes discuss who will fight, and send your fighter up.” Jonathan said as D-class huddled up, though that didn’t stop Leah from frowning.

“They’re arguing… twelve were against the fight, but thirteen were for it, so now those twelve are rebelling.” Leah informed her classmates as she protected their discussion from being eavesdropped while simultaneously reading vibrations in the air near that group.

“That’s some impressive Wind manipulation there Leah, is that you auditioning for the fight?” Kazuya joked with a small smile as Leah was quick to blush and deny, almost losing control over her Wind.

“Kazuya, stop messing with Leah… okay, so, given that there are seven of us, we should cycle fighters after every fight so we remain well rested. Granted, we are all peak two-star Sages and the D-class has a few Sages who just barely got past the two Star requirement to enter Elem… but let’s not underestimate them.” Jade was quick to try and take charge as Vince piped in.

“Ooh, I want to fight all of them!” Vince said as Edward chuckled at Jade’s annoyed look… quickly the class was getting used to Jade getting angry at Vince’s laid back nature.

“I… can I stay out?” Tony asked as he began to get ribbed by Kazuya who knew the guy was shy, but actually quite skilled.

“Suggestion.” The quiet voice stopped all discussion as the other six looked to Liza, who was usually silent until spoken to, and even then she might not answer.

“D-class… is weak. S-class… is strong. D-class uses many fighters, we’ll use few.” Liza said, and immediately some were confused until Kazuya sighed.

After squeezing his temples and taking a deep breath, Kazuya looked at Liza with his blue eyes glinting purple in the light.

“What you’re saying is that we should use this as a show of force, send out only one or two people and destroy their class with as little people as possible, scare off future enemies?” Kazuya asked as Liza nodded, raising a thumb in agreement.

“Good job.” Kazuya glared at the little girl who was patting his head while everyone else just chuckled at Kazuya being treated like a translator/child.

“Okay, that is a viable plan given that we’re all supposed to be stronger than them… but who would we send out? No offence Tony, but sending out our lowest ranked person in such a situation wouldn’t be right.” Jade asked as Tony nodded in acceptance.

He wasn’t weak, no one in their class was, but Tony was a bit too shy to be the guy to destroy another class.

“At the very least we need two fighters. I vote Liza and Kazuya, given that they are our rank one and two.” Vince said, his jolliness still in his voice, but slightly subdued given the ‘seriousness’ of the situation.

“I agree with Vince…” Leah said softly as Tony nodded, but then Liza spoke up once more.

“Not fighting. Don’t want to.” Liza complained making them look to her as she pointed at Kazuya and Edward.

“These two are strong. Let them fight.” Liza said as Jade was about to complain, only for Edward and Kazuya to share a look.

“You in?” Kazuya asked as Edward punched his own fists together to hype himself up as he nodded with a smirk.

“Of course I am… and besides, we want to challenge Liza. As if we’d let some kids from another class fight her before we do.” Edward said as he and Kazuya nodded at each other.

It was something the two of them had discussed before. Kazuya was quiet to an extent, but he had a good work ethic in that he felt that if one did not put his all into something, then he shouldn’t even be doing it.

He was to be a Sage, so he would try his best to be as strong as possible, and pitting himself against others was a good way of seeing how powerful he was.

And Edward just liked fighting strong people, pretty simple in that sense. He was a fight-junky.

“Well then, we’ll send out Edward and Kazuya, and rotate after every fight. Who is going first?” Jade asked as Kazuya and Edward looked at each other and nodded.

Then with that strange understanding most friends have, they immediately got into position.

“Rock, paper, scissors!” they let out their choices… Kazuya lost, given that he picked scissors while Edward chose rock.

“Okay then, Edward gets to fight thirteen of them while I fight the other twelve, Edward, you go first and last.” Kazuya didn’t like that he was not given the chance to fight some more, he wasn’t as much of a fight junkie as Edward, but he did enjoy challenges after all.

“Fine then, our rank two and three will take out all twenty five of them. Good luck you two.” Despite her annoyance with Liza for not fighting, Jade didn’t bring that into her acknowledgement of her classmates.

“Got it.” Edward smirked as he walked forward, the opponent from the D-class walking forward at the same time.

“Alright, a seven on twenty five class battle, begin.” Jonathan did not shout out his words, but they had enough authority for everyone to listen.

Edward’s opponent, a skinny boy, flexed his arms as he pointed both palms forward, sending a blast of fire at Edward...

Unfortunately, Edward just extended a hand and grabbed the fire ball, surprising many in the D-class as Edward ran forward, actually carrying the flame before he punched his opponent off the stage with a fiery fist.

Edward moved fast enough the boy couldn’t even react until he was laying on the floor outside the arena curled up into a foetal position from the pain in his stomach.

“Next!” Jonathan didn’t even blink as Edward walked out of the ring, giving Kazuya a high five as he walked into the ring, waiting for his opponent.

“What just happened?” one of the D-class students asked, even as the next student walked onto the stage to fight, only to get an explanation from their teacher.

“Well, I was supposed to tell you later, but that phenomenon is known as Authority. It is what happens when two people use the same Element against each other, but one is weaker.”

Jonathan nodded while glad to hear that the other teacher could at least teach correctly when the moment came to it.

“The Stars of Sages allow one to know when Authority would occur, people in the same Star can fight it off, but if the enemy has one Star more, then Authority will happen without fail. In this case, Edward was strong enough that it worked despite being on the same Star.” Julie explained as Jonathan began the match.

This time the opponent was a female Earth user, who also fought up close, as he ran towards Kazuya while trying to shift the dirt from beneath Kazuya to bring him closer.

Kazuya took advantage of this and actually moved forward as well, surprising his opponent as he swung his still sheathed katana.

The girl tried to block the downward slash, only to find a pain on the side of her head due to Kazuya hitting her with a blast of Wind, knocking her out instantly as Kazuya gently caught her and laid her down near Julie.

“Authority is the right to control an Element, when two Sages of the same Element try to control the same Element, the stronger one can actually control the opponents’ power.” Jonathan added, and that caused the D-class students to all pale.

“Wait, the entry admission for Elem High requires one to be an entry level two Star Sage at minimum… so that means that they have at least two Stars right?” someone asked as Vince laughed loud enough to be heard clearly.

“That’s the minimum for the school, not the minimum for A or even S-class you know? All of us are top ranked two Stars.”

Vince bragged, but it was actually an intimidation tactic to further drive fear into the opposing students, knowing that the S-class only had people almost at three Stars.

Jonathan would approve, but he found that hiding strength, while tedious, was a better option in the long run… only when you were so powerful that no one could challenge you, at that point revealing your strength was perfectly acceptable.

The following fights continued much in the same vein, with Edward and Kazuya destroying their opponents in different and varying ways, at one point Kazuya even went into a fight without his katana when someone called him out on fighting with it all the time.

Kazuya then proved that while Edward was clearly the better hand to hand fighter, Kazuya was a close second in that regard.

The power of the two were overwhelming to the D-class and so it went until finally Kevin stood up, glaring with anger at Edward as their match was the final one.

“Begin!” Kevin held his hand out to his side, creating a stream of Fire that almost seemed to be a sword, Edward nodding in approval as he charged forward, as did Kevin.

It was the biggest confusion of Sages to scientists, who believed that creating something from nothing was impossible. Technically Sages didn’t make their Element from nothing, but the energy inside them, but scientists did not know about the energy or what it was.

Well, normal human scientists anyway.

But creating a weapon out of your Element was not an uncommon idea, as it allowed one to have a literal shape-shifting weapon at hand.

Jonathan just shook his head at the scene though… Kevin wasn’t strong enough to take that ability to its extreme.

Edward and Kevin finally stopped edging towards each other as Edward punched forward, Kevin barely dodging the first hit, the first of his class to do so as he swung his Fire blade in response, causing Edward to block.

Something that would normally hurt a lot due to the burns, but Edward was a Fire Sage himself, and so had his own arm covered in flames as Edward’s arm was raised above his head.

Edward’s arm blocked the blade and he used that moment to twist that same arm around, so that Kevin’s arm was now trapped in Edwards armpit, giving Edward ample time to turn and toss Kevin into the ground, twisting his arm.

With a gasp of pain, Kevin had his arm twisted to the point of ‘nearly’ breaking it.

“Surrender.” Edward warned, knowing that Kevin was stronger than the rest of his classmates, and that unlike them Kevin might not be thrown out of the ring so easily.

“I won’t!” Kevin screamed in return as his Fire blade was released, turned into a spear of flames trying to hit Edward in the stomach with the concentrated flames… it would have worked on anyone who was Kevin’s equal.

Edward was above his level though.

“I won’t say it again, surrender or I knock you out.” Edward said with his offhand encased in ice as he batted the spear of flames into steam, leaving Kevin twisting his face in anger.

“I surrender.” Kevin said, his voice soft and at odds with his expression leaving Edward to release Kevin’s arm and stand, holding out a hand to help Kevin up.

“With that, the D-class has lost… guess all twenty five of you are expelled.” Jonathan said, leaving Julie on the verge of tears as she saw her students finally realize the consequences of trying to take a kilometre when they were only given a metre.

“Damn it.” Kevin grunted to himself as the rest of his class looked angry and a bit lost with themselves… seeing this, Kazuya stepped up.

“Sir, can we ignore their expulsion? It’s only the first week and they did not understand what would happen to them.” Kazuya’s words got a glare from Jonathan.

“Kid, in the real world you don’t get to know all the rules, and if you break one you’re treated as if you knew it. They should have known what they were doing, if they had just listened to Julie here.” Julie looked a bit conflicted but nodded in agreement.

“Sir, I don’t think that’s right. The fight was S-class against D-class, so if they had won, they would have gained something, if we won, we should have gained something…” Kazuya stated, turning to Kevin and his class who were looking at Kazuya with confusion.

“I believe that, as the winners, we deserve the right to decide whether they are expelled or not, and I vote no.” Kazuya said as Jonathan sighed and turned around, walking to the S-class training centre.

“Fine, have your vote, see if I care.” No one noticed the smile on Jonathan’s face except for Julie who was waiting on the side.

“Ah, let them stay, we can fight as much as we want later on, so long as they’re friendly matches next.” Vince said, stretching his arms into the air in excitement.

“They are members of our school, and it would be a shame to let them leave before we could properly get to know one another.” That was Jade’s argument, though the rest of her classmates had already pegged her as someone who hid their true meaning often.

“I vote we let them stay.” Edward’s words tipped the scale, allowing D-class to stay as a four out of seven vote. Not that the other three would have said no anyway.

“That’s great!” Julie shouted in joy as she turned to her class, who were still confused on what had just happened.

“Why?” Kevin asked with Edward and Kazuya sharing a look.

“We are the S-class, the strongest of our year.” Kazuya stated, leaving it to Edward to explain the rest.

“You know there’s that saying from that one comic, about power and responsibility? Well…” Edward looked over to Liza, who tilted her head as she saw the two looking at her.

“The strongest have the most responsibility. If we expelled you, it wouldn’t prove that we are strong, but that we fear the potential you possess.” Edward finished with a smirk.

“So basically… get as strong as you want, and challenge us as much as you want. We’ll crush you every time, so that you may grow beyond what you are.” Kazuya ended the interaction.

Kevin’s class couldn’t help but feel happy, even as they were sent back to their own training area, they now knew.

The strong would always be there, a wall to smash against in an attempt to grow stronger.

The S-class… maybe they didn’t belong there, but at least those two did.