After the class got done with their duels, Roland simply pointed out a few flaws with their forms. He would start their special training later, but for now helping them a bit like this was best. The most important thing right now was to fix the stances and postures they used when executing the battle techniques.

The battle techniques were each a bit different. Some required a stance which made you free and fluid like water, while some needed you to be as unmovable as a mountain.

Battle techniques were a bit different from using mana. They each had a stance which allowed their energy to flow smoothly throughout the user’s body, and when you used the wrong stance or it had flaws, the energy would be obstructed, which made the technique less efficient and harder to use.

It was just one of those pesky nuances that were often overlooked, despite the benefits they brought. Not many liked to dedicate the time it took to find the best stance for their technique.

To correct the flaws they had, he used his hands to reposition their bodies. The boys, noticing the change in the way the energy inside them flowed, showed grateful expressions. They could distinctly feel the way the energy within them flowed more freely, feeling like they had stepped into a cool breeze.

The girls, however, seemed a bit flustered at a man touching their bodies directly. They felt a small heat in their cheeks and found their movements momentarily turned a bit awkward, a slight twitching in their muscles.

Roland found it amusing because these girls, although their appearances were quite young, were actually older than himself. Long lived races tended to have their outer appearances mature slower. They were stuck with looking like teenagers for a while. Even though they looked young, they were actually older than they appeared.

Although sometimes the mind was stuck in a state where it didnt mature like it normally would. With long lived races who still held their youthful appearances after hundreds of years, you wouldnt act like old men and women because you wouldnt feel that old.

What's more, these woman probably didnt have much life experience. In all liklihood, they lived in a very sheltered environment. Obviously this would mean that they are not as mature as their age would suggest.

Still, though they were uncomfortable with it they were also grateful for my assistance. Roland, for his part, was both happy to help and annoyed he had to in the first place. These students, who are they?

The sons and daughters of people who have transcended the mortal realm and gained enough power to become gods!

They themselves were born with power that normal humans or other races could only dream of!

Their parents, grandparents, perhaps even their great-grandparents, were each most likely powerhouses, yet they had trouble with something like battle techniques? Exactly how could things have come to this?

As they are right now, even one who recently reached the rank of an Immortal at the first layer could easily beat them!

Watching them, Roland gave a mental sigh. Although… if they were taught by someone like me, he thought, how powerful could they become?

If he personally trained them and made them into killing machines, how much of a fight could they give him?

He was eager to find out. His hands twitched a bit, itching for a good battle.

Suddenly he let out a grin that, to anyone else, would probably be a bit frightening.

--------------------

An hour had gone by and currently every student had some type of bruise or injury, all of them passed out on the ground.

Roland clicked his tongue.

So weak, he thought in slight irritation.

As he stood there and let out a disappointed sigh, a concerned voice rang out.

“What happened here?!”

Roland, recognizing the voice, looked over and gave out a greeting.

“Mm, Abigail, huh. No, it’s nothing serious. I just made a little bet with my new students and somehow things ended up like this. Nothing to worry about.” He said easily.

The woman, Abigail, looked at the scene in front of her, appalled. Her eyebrows furrowed in worry. She let out a small sigh and whispered to herself in dismay.

“What should I do?” she murmured. She was left in charge of looking after Roland and making sure things were running smoothly. If it was found out that something like this happened. . . Well, knowing Loki he wouldnt mind. Still wasnt this a bit overboard?

She hoped it wouldnt be a regular occurance.

Roland remained oblivious to her concerns.

“Anyway, what kind of bet could have caused . . . this?” She gestured to the beat-up, unconscious students before her.

“Well, I told them if they could land a clean strike on me they could all receive passing marks for the entire year. They were real excited and attacked me immediately…But they’re too weak, you know? Though, to be fair they did last for quite a while. But that might be because I healed them over and over until they finally gave out. Which reminds me, I should probably heal the latest injuries now.” He mused.

Abigail nearly choked. Ah, these poor kids! She thought.

Her heart went out to the injured children.

Roland decided that since they were not serious wounds, he would leave most of them be. Although, he did heal the cuts and bruises for the girls and made it so they would only be sore for the next day or two. He hated harming women and children, but since this was necessary to make them stronger he decided this much was fine.

They awoke moments later. Though, a few who saw Roland standing over them immediately fainted again.

The others quickly gathered their friends and hurried to their next class. Abigail seemed to want to discuss something, but instead chose to help the remaining students who couldn’t stand themselves.

What surprised him was that her aura gave off the feeling of someone well-versed in a powerful body-refining technique. A body refining technique was considered a branch of the Martial Way, and, although more suitable for combat purposes, was capable of using one’s own spiritual energy to heal others, rather than using mana.

In regards to the two energies, the two types were vastly different. Mana was all about quantity, while the spiritual energy was quality. You could increase your amount of mana through rigorous training, but the only way to influence spiritual energy was through your will. If your will wavered, you spiritual energy would waver as well. And spiritual energy was able to be “worn”. Meaning that experts at controlling it could sheathe their weapons or bodies in spiritual energy, granting them special properties. Someone whose will is resolute could increase their power dramatically once they learn to control their spiritual energy

Using spiritual energy was far harder than using mana and if one is careless, it could lead to bodily harm. It was because it was harder to sense spiritual energy, and so learning to control it required exceptional perception abilities. Yet Abigail seemed to control it effortlessly. Body refining techniques themselves were hard to come by, and even harder to cultivate. There were benefits to learning them though.

Roland once met a wandering Immortal who practiced a rather powerful body refining technique that could manipulate the spiritual energy in another person’s body and use it to extract nearly any disease or illness. In addition it forced out the impurities in the body, making the skin more lustrous, the hair more silken, and your general appearance more refined. He said all body-refining techniques were capable of such. And that was only the external changes.

Internally, the body became much stronger, including your bones, muscles and organs. He had also said that body-refining practiced to the level of true mastery, could provide even more untold amounts of benefits.

At that stage, you would really be hard to kill. Even if you were killed, your soul itself could generate another body. Unless the soul was cleansed of all its knowledge or destroyed completely, very few things would be capable of stopping you.

But, qell, such people who practiced body-refining techniques to that degree were very rare and Roland himself had never met someone like that so he could not verify whether such claims were true.

Sadly few achieved that feat because practicing a body refining technique was exceedingly difficult. Most opted to learn healing magic and strengthening magic to support themselves.

Body refining could strengthen the user, allow them to regenerate to the point of cheating death, heal others, and raise the control of your spiritual energy while also allow you manipulate another’s. In addition, once mastered, the level of immortality you possess would outstrip even a high ranked god.

Really, such abilities were too cheat-like.

Well, not like Roland was one to talk.

He wondered to what level Abigail practiced her own body refining technique.

After she revitalized the remaining students, she helped the remaining students to their next class, boosting their stamina so they wouldn’t pass out again.

Roland watched as she walked away. It was a nice view. He wasn’t one to have overly perverted thoughts towards women, but he did appreciate their beauty.

---------

He had another few hours of classes after that. He never heard the name Fenris, or Fenrir, He or she should have been in the first period class, but they didn’t show up.

Other than that things progressed similar to his first hour. The students showed a lot of potential, but it was being wasted.

There were a few troublemakers who showed up glaring at him and spounting curses but like the first batch they quickly changed their tune after another light beating

For each class, he did things a bit different to see if there was a specific area the students specialized in. It didn’t go well. As I said before, they had potential, but they were like uncut gems. There was some who actually were quite proficient in battle techniques while others had excellent control of either their mana or spiritual energy.

A few could even fuse their weapons or bodies with the energy. He was pleasantly surprised that one student even was able to perform a difficult to master technique. There was no true name for the technique because no one knew who created the technique, but some people had taken to call it Ignition.

Not exactly a great name for it, but it was called such mostly because it made it appear as if flames erupted from the body once activated, a manifestation of the user’s power overflowing and leaking out. In essence it could triple the user’s power for as long as you had enough strength to keep it sustained. There were side effects, but he wouldn’t get into them for now.

To understand how frightening an ability that was, perhaps it is best to explain what gods essentially are.

They are not almighty beings and nor are they the most powerful. They are immortal in the sense it is hard to injure them and their natural life span in nearly infinite, provided they aren’t killed.

But gods, at their core, are simply people who have long ago transcended the restraints of mortal bodies and have transformed into beings that lesser existences like humans could only view as gods.

And even gods have differences in strength.

It is a poor way to accurately judge their strength, but there has long since existed a scale with which to measure the approximate power of a god. A newly born god, whether birthed through either one or both parents being gods or a person transcending to godhood after countless hardships, they are considered a deity of the first layer.

Now obviously when you go the long way, your actual fighting ability far outstrips an infant, but the amount of raw power you possess would be about the same. The only real difference would be that the one who became a god would know what to do with that power, whereas an infant who was a born god would, for obvious reasons, not be able to use its power.

Since he thought that the system of measurement was too inaccurate, he would not explain it further.

The point is that when you are a being who has a certain level of power, a technique that lets you triple that power is truly terrifying. One times three is three, but ten times three is thirty. The higher your base power, the more significant the boost becomes.

As for that measurement of power. . .it was actually negligible. It was mainly used as an example anyway. It was best to not judge by things like that anyway, at least once someone reaches godhood.

As for the levels, or stages before godhood . . . there were Mortal, Earth, Sky, Immortal, Celestial, Heaven and finally, Deity. Or god, whichever you prefer. Up until the realm of Deity, the realms where divided into 9 layers.

Not only that, but as you go on into the higher stages, the disparity between the layers become more significant. To fight somone an entire stage above you would be almost impossible once you hit Sky stage.

But there were still other systems of measurement that existed for different species, such as demons or other races. This one was mainly used by humans but it was still the most common . And for some, like Roland himself, the systems of measurements didn’t even apply.

Roland was surprised at the student who achieved the so-called Ignition ability. It wasnt something one could simply learn. It was an almost inherent ability, something one needed an affinity for. He made a note to carefully cultivate that one. In the future, he could definitely become a good opponent.

Since the training field was outside, many other students, mainly seniors who had few classes to attend, came around midday and observed the spectacle and there were even some who started betting. After the first few classes, the ones who came stopped betting on who would land a strike on me and instead on how long they would last without collapsing in exhaustion.

Abigail, for her part, had an army of nurses come to pick up the unconscious students. Roland did heal their injuries, but their bodies and minds were too exhausted to move. For the rest of the day after that, all other classes were cancelled. Not that there were many to begin with.

Loki, who came once everything was over, was upset because he missed the show.

-----------------

It was around 12:00, lunchtime, and Roland went to the Academy’s cafeteria to eat. Some students from his first class saw him. They looked at him with mixed feelings. They believed he was a good guy, and his teachings did indeed help them greatly, even after only one session… but his methods were too extreme.

Even when they were riddled with injuries, he simply waved a hand and they were gone in an instant, and so they were pretty much forced to continue. It was a very hellish experience for them.

They felt weak after, too tired to get up. Their muscles were on fire and the blood pounded their heads until they thought that their head would explode. Not only that, but they had also run out of sweat to keep them cool and instead their skin was like a furnace, hot to the touch. The dirt from the ground had also still not entirely washed off annd they were left feeling very uncomfortable.

They felt shivers remembering the dreadful experience. Even the demon-kin in the class felt the devil hid behind that pretty face of his. Yet still, they were grateful because after that hellish experience they all felt a definite increase in their strength. However, they truly wished to never repeat the experience.

Towards the new teacher himself, a majority of his students had had complicated feelings. They were inherently arrogant people, and when they first saw the man they didnt think much of him. They expected more. Other than his face, what was so good about him? They had such thoughts.

But now they were thoroughly cowed. They, if nothing else, respected strength. But it was still too early to say wether they liked him or not. For now, they would reserve judgement.

Roland, either oblivious or indifferent towards their gazes, simply walked on without a care.

The food was top-notch. Being in a different world always had its benefits. Roland had been to a few other planets and universes for a short time, and he found that the best part of it was the different foods that they had. He liked to explore different cultures and cuisines the most.

His home planet had some advances in technology and such, but the planet was hundreds of millions of years old and the empires it had lasted for thousands upon thousands of years. Even still, unlike most of the younger planets, his own didn’t pursue scientific knowledge much and instead was more driven towards gaining strength. There, strength was everything. If you didnt have it, everything you loved could be taken away in an instant.

He quickly grew bored of many things there and since his only real desire at the time was to become the strongest in order to protect himself and his loved ones, once he attained it he began to appreciate the smaller things in life.

Sometime after he met Loki, the two journeyed to many different universes and had a bit of fun exploring. Sometimes it got a bit dangerous too, even for them.

The food today was meat from a beast that had reached a high level of power before its death. To explain, beasts of many worlds had beasts that could absorb the energy their world leaked out. The energy changes them, giving them the ability to grown stronger and possess certain powers. It also, at the later stages, gave them intelligence.

At the Heaven stage they were no longer considered simple beasts, and could even assume humanoid form, though most never reach that stage. Most beast-kin from any universe are considered the descendants of beasts who had reached the heaven stage or above. It was similar to the power system used by humans. But it’s not like all beast can absorb their world’s energy. Many lack the ability

Yet Mother Nature is a cruel mistress. The stronger that the beast becomes, the more precious their fur, bones, teeth and other body parts become. And their meat as well. Only after they can assume human form are they really safe, at that stage most are too weak to kill them, and others wouldn’t even want to, for various reason.

That said the meat from a powerful beast was simply drool-worthy. Tender and fragrant, the meat was even prepared by chefs specializing in their field.

The meat came with a side of a thick soup and freshly made bread still warm from the oven that was no less appetizing.

After he ate he still had time before his next class so he decided to walk and wander around.

He went to that pond he saw outside Loki’s office. It was there that he found a black cat with soft-looking fur nestling adorably on the grass by the water, its body stretching out and exposing its stomach.

Roland did the first thing that came to mind: he walked right up to it and, with a smile, started to pet the animal, causing it’s eyes—a light blue—opening to look at him with that cool, prideful gaze that was inherent in cats. Other than that, it made no move to run away or stop him.

Roland loved cats. He didn’t really know why, but he had always felt a certain fondness for them.

He stayed like that for a while, enjoying the softness or its fur. It had began liking his fingers at one point, biting them lightly.

He wondered who it belonged to. Certainly it didn’t seem like a stray. It didn’t seem like it was malnourished, and its coat well-taken care of, so at least someone must be watching over it.

No, wait, before that, how did it even get here? The barrier Loki set up also keeps out animals. It couldn’t get here through the outside. Unless it was already here to begin with? Somehow he thought that was wrong.

Huh.

Whatever, it wasn’t really important anyway.

------------------------------------------------

A few hours later, he came back and found the cat still lazing around. It was getting dark and no one seemed coming to get it. He didn’t want to leave it here, so he picked it up—with some mild protests and light scratching—and headed home.

He stopped at the cafeteria for some food for the cat before going.

When I showed up the four other residents immediately took a liking to the animal. Even Saren. It was decided that if no one asked around for it in the next few day, they would keep it here.

After the decision was made, I looked more closely at the curses they bore.

Saren had some curse relating to fire. It was inactive for now, but Roland speculated that once it did activate, it would cause Saren’s body to endure torture by Soul Flames, a type of flame that burned your soul from the inside out, causing unspeakable agony. Some people liked to try capturing this type of flames and make it part of their own power. Such attempts usually met with failure. This curse was a nasty piece of work. The younger boy was the exact opposite, with a flame that would cause coldness to spread throughout the body as if you were walking through a blizzard naked. Neither was merciful.

In any other situation, the effects would last a few seconds and then you would die. The curse didn’t seem to allow that. You had to suffer through it each day once activated and not once would you lose consciousness. It forced you to endure everything while being completely aware. He told them as such and their faces paled immediately.

The two boys had a feeling of dread creep up on them, a cold sweat at their backs. The vivid description Roland gave them made the boys wonder if it would be better to simply end things themselves. At least they they wouldnt suffer.

Such were their first thoughts on the matter.

But, he told them, the curses was still inactive, which didn’t help much. So, he told them not to worry since at the time it did activate he would either direct the curses’ effect upon himself, therefore shielding them while he endured them himself, or he could try binding the curses to each other in an attempt to cancel them out or weaken the effects. The method he would use depended on a few variables, but he wouldn’t know which one would work best until the actual time of activation.

It was the girls he worried more about. Their curses were a lot more… profound.

He couldn’t see through them much at all. Lilith’s remained a mystery, while Reina’s was still not fully understood. He and Loki was right that it sealed her potential and limited he abilities greatly, making her unable to learn or perform either magic or martial arts, but that was more of a passive effect and not the true ability of the curse itself.

He wanted to try breaking through with some hellish training, but this area was not suitable. It was too peaceful. He also wanted to help the students sharpen their combat experience and battle techniques… maybe he should see if there are any places that could provide the right conditions.

He should ask Loki about it. He didn’t want them to just continue battling him because the gap of their powers was just too wide. They might gleam a few insights from it, but when your opponents is immeasurably stronger than you, it wasn’t very helpful in the long run. No, it was best to have them fight enemies closer to their own levels.

He said that he would teach the two boys a few thing, and he would do just that. Eventually. Lilith seemed interested too, but she made no move to ask him. Not to mention she was against was teaching Reina in the first place. She doesn’t believe Reina can become strong and would rather not let her sister get her hopes up and needlessly get hurt.

In any case, tomorrow I'll tell Loki what he learned about the curses and ask him if there were some dangerous places around here that suited my purposes.

After everything was said and done, they retired to their rooms. He took the cat and gave it some of the meat he took from the cafeteria, placint it in a bowl he found in the kitchen area.

It looked at him, almost seeming offended. It pushed the bowl around several times before finally decding to eat.

Once it finished it followed him to his room and sat itself on one of his pillows. He took off his clothes for a shower before laying down.

He wasn’t sure he liked being a teacher, or instructor, or whatever he was supposed to be called.

He decided that at some point he would go out and explore the world a bit once his business here was done, when he broke the curses on Reina and the others and found out who placed them.

When that was done, he would probably just do whatever he felt like doing. The Olympian pantheon and the Solomon 72 Pillars were here. He could definitely find some old friends. Who knows, maybe even Solomon himself, that eccentric bastard, would be on the planet too.