Chapter 10 – Second Day

“Die Kriss!”

With these words Nela rush at me with her short sword and unleash a fast horizontal slash to the side of my head. I rise my own sword almost instinctively and manage to completely block it thanks to my superior strength but still stumble few steps back and wince in pain. That slash was just a feint, a real attack was a kick to my abdomen.

I want to massage it with my free hand to get rid of the pain but Nela won’t give me the chance. She rush at me again and release a flurry of slashes. I block most of them and the few that hit me are not enough to make me fall.

Damn it! If I don’t do anything she will just butcher me here. I have to wait for an opportunity to strike her. She can’t just swing that sword for an eternity after all.

Just as I’m thinking this she slow down for a moment to take a breath. I don’t miss the chance and still blocking her sword with my own I punch her face. She swiftly dodge my fist but take a step back and stops her attack. I use this to make a distance between us.

I never even held a sword up to this day and she clearly has been trained how to use one so there’s no arguing who have better skills.

We glare at each other trying to catch a breath after this short skirmish. Now I look at her I notice that she’s grinning. Damn battle freak. Ignoring the pain I rack my brain trying to figure out if I have any chance of defeating her. I may be way stronger and tougher than her but if I can’t hit her then it’s meaningless. And she knows that too. She probably thinks she won already but I still have an ace up my sleeve.

She charge at me again but this time I surprise her and also charge. A moment before we meet, I grab my sword with both hands and swing it widely. As expected she stops to avoid my sword but because her momentum was too great she still slide forward a bit. Like this she would avoid my sword entirely if it wasn’t for my tail coiled around her ankle. I kept it hidden in my pants all this time so she should be quite surprised now. I pull her leg hard in my direction to make her enter my reach.

I thought it will end like this but I had underestimated her. Instead of resisting the pull she advanced in the same direction and ducked under my sword so I lose my balance. Just how fast her reflexes are!? Now she’s too close to me and I can only look as she ram her fist into my stomach. I bend over from pain only to see her knee closing at my face. I guess that’s it for me.

Now you probably wonder how I got myself in a fight against Nela. To answer that question we have to go back in time a few hours.

It’s the second day of school. Today I go there alone because father left earlier. When I arrive I go immediately to my classroom. It’s still early so there’re only a few kids there. Few minutes after me, Nela and Kevin arrive and sit close to me.

“Hi Kriss, do you know what class is first today?”

“Hi Nela, no I don’t, but it’s probably one of the mandatory ones.”

“Why?”

“Because we don’t know where or when the ones we chosen are held.”

“Hmmm, I guess you are right.”

We chatter like this until teacher arrive although Kevin stay quiet almost all that time. I don’t know if he’s shy or just not good with people.

“Good morning class. Our first class today is Combat Arts. I will give every team their schedule for other classes later.

Alright, let’s start with a question. Who knows what’s the most important skill for a warrior?”

There’s a silence in the classroom but after few moments Nela answer him.

“Strengthening magic”

“Yes, that’s right. You may think that warrior only have to know how to swing his sword but that’s wrong. Strengthening magic is essential for every warrior. I will teach you theory behind it today.

The most basic form of strengthening magic is to circulate your personal mana through your body. By doing so you will increase your every aspect ability. Strength, speed, stamina, endurance, defense and many other. The more mana you have the more you can strengthen yourself. Even though you don’t release your mana, your body will slowly absorb it so it’s not like you can use it all the time.

More advanced forms of this magic require precise control and different kinds of elemental mana so that’s the reason why warriors in comparison to mages don’t need high affinities.

Any questions so far?”

So that’s why Reiran Academy principal said I could become as powerful as the strongest of mages. Given my mana capacity, there’s no way that anybody my age can be stronger than me. I wonder why this world try to force me into becoming a warrior. Or could it be that my talents from Earth somehow got carried over to this world like some kind of curse?

“How do we increase our mana capacity?” – random kid.

“There are few ways to do it. The most basic one is to simply use your mana. Personal mana can be described as an invisible muscle. The more you flex it the more you will increase its strength. Also the more mana you have the faster you can increase it. The same is with affinities but it’s not important for you now.

Another method is to absorb nature mana. Although it’s very hard, slow and you need to have a talent to do it. Personally I never met anyone that used this method.

Third method is to do precise operations with your mana. It’s hard at the beginning and require very fine control over your mana but you can kill two birds with one stone this way. Increase your control and mana capacity.

Until you are adult your mana will increase on its own faster than with any training method, that’s why most warriors don’t train in that aspect until then.”

After this teacher explain a bit more about strengthening magic and other related things. Then he tell us a bit about elemental strengthening. Many different elements can be used to achieve the same result apparently. For example earth mana can be used to increase your defense but you can also use fire, life or water mana and end up with the same result.

Looks like we will only have theoretical lessons in this class this year. Well, I’m not surprised. We are just five years old children after all.

After an hour lesson end and we are given our schedules. Like yesterday I, Nela and Kevin sit at the same table and check what classes we have next.

The moment we see what class is next, Kevin face turn ugly and Nela beam a bright smile. Damn it. I check the name and location of our next class again hoping that I misread it but unfortunately the words are still the same. Advanced Combat Arts, second training ground.

Sigh. If it’s at the training grounds then I guess those won’t be just theoretical lessons. We leave the classroom and head there. There are only two training grounds at this school, both located beyond the main building so we find it easily. Quite a few kids, forty or fifty, are there already. Few minutes later teacher arrive.

As you would expect it’s a tall, muscular middle aged man with lots of scars. He looks like some kind of warrior character from games.

“Hello children. My name is Kroren and I’m your teacher for Advanced Combat Arts. We will have lessons here because in this class you will put into practice what you learned during the Combat Arts lessons.

Today you learned how to do a basic strengthening. I want you all to be able to use until the end of this week.”

So it’s like this after all. We will learn theory in Combat Arts class and then immediately put it into practice. I had a feeling that things will be like this. I may not aim to be a warrior but having enough skills to protect myself won’t hurt me I guess.

“Today every team is supposed to choose a team leader. He will chose your team assignments and have a final word in every decision concerning your team. As an experienced warrior I know that the shortest road to mastery is practice so we will have duels to decide who will become a team leader. This way we will kill two birds with one stone, choose team leaders and train strengthening magic.”

Wait, what? Duels? Is this dude nuts? We are five for god sake! Most of kids here probably never been in a brawl much less duel. And you stop grinning Nela! It’s creeping me out.

Most of the kids just stood there dumbfounded not knowing what’s going on, when the teacher tell us to decide the order we will duel. Damn it. Looks like this idiot teacher is serious. I want to ask Nela and Kevin what do they think about this situation so I turn to them.

“I forfeit.”

I didn’t even managed to open my mouth when Kevin announced that he forfeit. Well, it’s not strange, given his affinity he’s the weakest of all the kids here. But damn it, I also want to forfeit. All this team leader shit sounds like a pain but if I think about troubles that Nela might get us in, I decide to give it a shot.

“Hehehe. So, Kriss. You forfeit or do we duel? I prefer to duel but if you are scared then I won’t force you.”

“Laugh when you still can, I’m stronger than you think.”

She doesn’t respond and only laugh quietly and go to the teacher to tell him that we will duel. Seriously, I wasn’t joking when I told her I’m stronger than she think. I mean, I have like eight to ten times mana amount she have. Circulating my mana through my body shouldn’t be harder than releasing it and forming a fireball so I should be able to use strengthening magic immediately.

Teacher gave us some kind of rubber swords and said that the first that fall to ground lose.

And how it ended you know yourselves.

After that last knee to the face I fell unconscious. Apparently teacher healed me so I woke up after only five minutes. Damn it, I lost to a girl.

“You are really strong Nela, I underestimated you.”

“Ha ha ha, of course I’m strong, I’ve been training since I was three after all. You are not half bad too Kris, I thought I will bring you down in one hit but you turned out to be ridiculously strong. And what’s the deal with that tail of yours, that seriously surprised me.”

“I’m a quarter demon so it’s not that strange. More importantly, what was that ‘Die Kriss!’ supposed to mean!?”

She scratch her head and try to avoid my gaze.

“Hahha -ha… sorry. When I have a sword in hand I kind of get too heated up.”

“Well, don’t worry, I’m not angry team leader.”

“That’s right! I’m team leader from now on so you have to listen to me obediently Kriss.”

“Only when it concern something we have to do as a team!”

“Tsk, you are no fun.”

“Ugh, I have a feeling you will bring us a lot of headaches team leader. Kevin, help me out here or we will get terrorized by her.”

“Umm ... I don’t really like conflicts so … I will stay silent … sorry Kriss.”

“Damn you traitor!”

The rest of the day went by without anything interesting happen if you don’t count Nela being surprisingly good at math.