"Follow me, front on now we will train outside because it will not be only us." We followed Jade outside, and stopped in one of the many stadiums. Five other groups joined us. There were 6 instructors and, from what I could count, 37 students.

"Everyday. Everyday for the rest of the year we will be training here, with them" Jade pointed at the direction other teams were. "Every 3 weeks one of the instructors will take main charge of the training, and we will rotate like this to give you better expertise in multiple fields. It's going to be hard, but important. Give it your all for this training." She murmured something with a serious worried face at the end, but I could not really understand what.

She explained that we will always have a main instructor. One person that will be actually teaching the class, the others will oversee each group. The exercise is set by the instructor of the week, everyone follows. It is done like this because each instructor has one type of specialty, even if they are all capable of teaching the basics of everything, there is always that one field you are better at. For example, Jade is a close range melee specialist. Her preferable weapons were short range, like a dagger.

"Well, that's it for the basic explanation. You will get the hang of it with time. Don't worry! Now, make a line over there besides them" She instructed us where to go and how to stay. There were already 2 teams in place, waiting for the other groups to end whatever they were doing.

They were probably listening to a basic explanation of what is going to happen. Once everyone was in place all the instructors went up the small platform that we were standing in front of, all could see them. All could hear them. It was not a omnipresent voice like the one present in the big rituals, but it reverberated nicely and everyone could hear them perfectly, even without them shouting.

"Hello all, My name is Leah di Aja, generation 854. I'm going to be your first instructor. I'm a support specialist." Tall, green hair and green-ish skin, the instructor for the first week introduced herself, the others followed in order.

"Danna di Cota, 854. Defense" A bulky woman with short hair that did not have a very friendly face, and apparently did not talk much.

"Hi hi! I'm Jade di Liz, 854. Short weapons specialist. Third instructor. Let's have a good time!" The very short Jade introduced herself in an incredibly direct manner. I would have guessed she was going to talk more, given my experience with her.

"Hello young ones, welcome to your first real combat training. I'm Emma di Mao, 854. I'm better with the bow and and I'll be teaching you how to use one. Some of you may have never created a bow before, be sure to learn how to make one by the fourth week of training. You have plenty of spare time to learn it outside the training hours. I'll not waste my time teaching this basic stuff, if you do not know how to create your own weapon by them I'll NOT teach you. Which is dangerous, we don't want you suffering an accident in training without instructions." She was smiling, a beautiful smile. But didn't she just threaten our very lives if we fail to construct a bow for her class?

"Oh, do learn how to create a shield too, for your class with Danna here" She added. What a difference in introductions, Danna and Emma were the complete opposite. One talks almost too much and the other too little.

"Ah, hi. I'm Dora di Bree, 854. I'm a melee specialist, my main weapon is a scythe" Wow, a scythe. I like that. She had long blue hair tied up in a ponytail, red-ish skin, tall and a bit more skinny than most instructors.

"Temy di Azza, 854. I'm a melee specialist too, but I'll be in charge of your magical training. Everyone, despite specialities, needs to be able to complement your weapon of choice with mana. That's what I'll teach you." A red haired beautiful woman.

That completed our six teachers. Leah, Jade, Danna, Emma, Dora and Temy. It's going to be hard but I'll do my best to remember each of them.

"Despite our specialties we are all capable of helping you in every aspect you need. Ask for help if you are falling behind." Leah, the support added. "That's it for introductions, let's not waste more time." She started the class with a demonstration of what 'support' was supposed to do. I was not prepared for this.

Leah transformed one of her hands in a short blade and sliced off her other hand. OUT OF NOWHERE. She did not warn anyone before taking this extreme action. The audience was a bit startled but not so much as to cause a commotion.

A single drop of blood from her wound stained the floor. Her severed hand never dropped into the platform, it was floating with a ring of light covering the wound place, no blood could be seen.

Melvin was very close to the platform, which made me able to analyze every detail. Her open wound in her arm also shined with the same ring of light staking the blood. The cut was clean, straight from one side to the other. The bone cut like it was butter. It was so clean and straight cut that I found myself admiring the beauty of that. Weird I know.

I'm not the only one that was interested by the sudden act. I could see the awe and curiosity in the eyes of the others near me. Melvin was amazed with the deed, her interest in 'support' skyrocketed and she finally started to pay close attention to Leah.

"Most of you will learn about how to maintain yourselves with a severe wound and how to speed the natural healing process. If you can truly master this art you will be able to apply it to others. I'll cover the theory about this but we will not practice third party healing since it does require you to be a master of self-healing first. You are not and will not be by the end of merely 3 weeks of training."

"Advanced enhancement techniques follow the same logic, once you are a master in self-enhancement you will be able to apply it for someone else. Yet external buffs and healings will never be as strong, good or compatible with you than you own. Remember that." She transformed her bladed hand back.

"While I can re-attach any limb to my own body, I can not do the same to someone else." She grabbed the floated part and placed it back where it should have never separated from. Both lights joined together making it a bit brighter, a minute later she showed the audience her hand completely healed and reattached to her body.

That WAS amazing. Unnecessarily so. She could have just made a small cut and healed it so that I would be impressed. Reattaching a hand is beyond what I had imagined.

"Do not underestimate the help a support can give you. Even if we cannot fully heal you, we will keep you alive. Remember that as well." I would never underestimate the help of a healer.

She gave us an overview of what to expect in her classes, which I loved. Usually people here do not explain what we should expect of something, she is the first one to do that like this.

"It is a lot for the little time we have, but I do not expect you to actually master everything that we will teach you here. You only need to learn the basics and the path for improvement. You will have enough time in the following years to train the techniques learned here, enough time for you to master every and each one that you choose to do so"

After her impressive speech she began with the actual class. First day was focused mainly on the theory behind the healing process with very little practical exercise. However, from day two until the end of her teaching period we did not hear a single extra theory, only mana exercises.

She would answer questions if anyone asked, but that was it. All the explanations were given on the first day. The training was mainly focused on self-healing, she said we would desperately need it for the other classes, the 'helping others with healing' was just mentioned in theory, she did explain how it worked.

We would need to be good, extremely good at self healing first before attempting to heal others, which is why we would not do it here. As long as everyone knew it was possible to heal, we could train to do that later, or even choose to become a Healer, which they called a support specialist.

Everything about healing could be summarized with 'mana manipulation'. The techniques were a very specific and hard to learn variation of the enhancement we already knew. Everything was about how good you could command the tiniest particles of your mana. And if you did something wrong it could have an adverse effect. The nuances between the skills were so hard that I keep wondering who discovered them.

During the classes the students were required to hurt themselves so they could heal it, obviously. They did very shallow cuts in the first few days, but we were asked to increase the gravity of the cut every time we successfully healed one. That was expected, we did need an injury to learn how to heal it after all. The increase in difficulty was also predictable.

This training… IT HURT.

This week was by far the most painful week ever. We suffered some serious pain in the Nest, but nothing like this. Everyday of self-mutilation with increased seriousness. This was the closest to hell that I have ever been. Especially the first week and a half. After that we received a tip from the sub-teachers about how to block the pain, it was a fairly simple mana manipulation on the nerves. This technique was by far my favorite. It hurt so much, but Melvin was almost getting used to the pain, almost enjoying it since it meant she succeeded in curing the previous injury.

I'm not sure, but maybe they are creating a society full of masochistic women? Because how else would one explain all these painful training? Everyone here seems ok with the pain. The older don't even flinch with any injury. The young are getting better and better at supporting such pain. They are being conditioned to see pain as progress.

Maybe I'm wrong and the older people can actually block ALL the pain and feel nothing of these injuries? Maybe I'm just judging without knowing better…. Or maybe not? Who knows…

It was extremely predictable in my point of view, but it is worth mentioned anyways: Maya was again at the top of this class. Just because she is good at everything it does not diminish her accomplishment. With only three weeks she was able to sever and heal one finger. She also did not seem to mind the pain. Only Maya, out of every single student here, was able to go as far as cut off one entire piece of herself by the end of the training.

Bria was not quite there, but as the second best, she could already heal pretty serious injuries that included 'cut' bones. She seemed satisfied with her progress.

By the end of the 3 weeks support training, all the 37 students had succeeded in healing at least a deep cut with a small bone damage. Everyone could stop the bleeding in these small cuts, and that would, presumably, be the same for bigger injuries that could kill you. It was supposed to be the same thing but on a bigger scale, we did not train this because it would require us to have such serious wounds and maybe the external healing would not be sufficient to completely restore the body to its original state, and we did not have enough experience to self-heal said damage.

Support training finally came to an end, I was happy that it did, since it was a bit too painful for my liking.

I was happy because I did not know what was to come.