The showers where pretty simple, surprisingly enough though there only were one person box showers and there were about 10 of them so they had to take turns with showering. Before they went to go take a shower however the instructor had an announcement for them. The chains where coming off! apparently the chains had been a ruse to get the kids to get used to one another quickly so they could start formulating plans together. Teamwork was your most important tool of survival the instructor. This was the one thing he made sure to pound in their heads. Teamwork is important for survival. One rule Grey was pretty sure he would never forget again.

After the chains were removed they each moved on to their individual showers. Since they where unsure in wat order to take the showers they decided to do so by status plate level since it was easier. No one really had any problem with this because there where advantages to both being the first and the last. They guys in the middle didn't seem to care either though. Once again he thought about how weird it was that everyone accepted things so easily. Not giving it any further thought he moved into the shower and took of his clothes.

The shower was warm and felt oh so soothing on his stressed body. The drips the rain made on the floor and the sound of all the individual showers started to paint a picture in wat he was gonna call his 'minds eye' at first he was relishing the beauty of the many ripples the drops of water made and the splashing sound reverberated throughout the entire room. He soon noticed however the form of the person showering next to him. Which happened to be Luniera the ripples allowed him to see the form of her body very and i mean very very clearly. Blood ran away from his head to his other parts but then quickly ran back to his head flushing his face. He closed his eyes and decided to not open them for the rest of the shower.

Showering besides that incident was rather uneventful. After he had finished his shower and felt refreshed he sat back down with he rest who was waiting for their shower. He sat himself with his back to the wall waiting for the rest of his group to join him. As soon as he saw Luniera he blushed a bit and she gave him a quick questioning look but didn't bother asking about it. He also remembered to tell Snowflake that the elder wanted him to come to the status plate room when others where practicing their weapons. Snowflake looked a bit confused by this but decided not to pay it any more mind.

After everyone had finished their shower they moved back to the training hall where once again the huge table had appeared. He really wondered how the table got here every time and who put it there. Probably the same person as who cooked their food he assumed. Speaking of food the meal that was prepared for them was once again delicious. After dinner the instructor told them to rest up because they would need their bodies to rest. He told them their was a library if u went through the third door on the left hand side of the training hall.

Grey decided to go to the library and Sansieri followed him. She did seem to be the type who liked books and any place where knowledge could be held. surprising to him though was that Tatt's came along as well he didn't seem like the type who would prefer a good book over training.

“Knowledge is one of the most important weapons a hunter wields.” He said to them while sounding strangely sagelike.

So much for being 'Barbarians' Grey thought to himself. His tribe is probably better schooled than most other races if they all where like him. The muscular scholar he thought to himself grinning. It would indeed be a good nickname for him. Maybe the wise berserker, The Sage of Blood? While he kept thinking up other absurd names for Tatt's they soon reached the end of the hallway that ended in an extremely impressive room.

The room gave the feeling of it being a tower that's how big it was. surprisingly the door did not open on the bottom floor as one would usually expect. No it was on the very top floor and a spiraling staircase took them to different floor 9 floors in total. On every floor there were these ladders with wheels on them that could be pushed along the bookshelves to reach the higher places. He picked some random books and read over their titles. The books had an insane variety of genre's topic's and title's there was a book here called how to tame a dragon another was called Sewing a web and its magical advantages. There was even a book on how to torture someone properly. Out of curiosity he picked up the book and looked at a few pages. Wat he saw however made him quickly return the book to the shelf. How people could do that to one another was a mystery to him.

After searching for a book for some time he came across a book about black smithing which interested him a bit and he started reading. Soon enough he was really interested in the blacksmithing techniques written here and he ran out of the library and asked the instructor if he could go to the forge room. The instructor told him to go right ahead. When Grey arrived at the forge room the forge was blazing just like the first time he had been here and the forge master was still hammering away on a glowing piece of iron that he had placed on the anvil. Now that he could take a proper look at the forge master he could see 2 thick black horns protrude from the top of his head.

He watched the forge master hammering away at the piece of iron in front of him. Once every so often he would take the blade out and then put it back in the fire where he would pump some kind of leather looking contraption that pumped air into the furnace causing the fire to blaze with even more intensity. This move was soon repeated and when the forge master moved to place the blade in the forge a third time Grey stepped up and started pumping the the leather contraption. The forge master eyed him for a moment but then just continued with his work and started hammering away again.

Grey continued to watch the huge man work and saw that the way he hit the piece of iron was entirely different from just hammering the iron he placed short quick strikes in rapid succession on the wat he could now make out to be the blade. He was making sure the middle was a bit thicker than the rest of the blade. A style grey had seen in many other short and longswords. Every time the forge master moved back to the furnace Grey would use the leather contraption. He decided to call it the blower since it blew air into the furnace. A simple name sure but simple was efficient and memorable so he kept it at that.

Soon enough his muscles started to burn again whenever he used the blower but he refused to stop and just kept using the blower for the rest of his spare time. Eventually the forge master looked at him and moved his head to the door that led to the training hall. Grey understood the gesture and returned to the training hall where he discovered most of the others had already gone to sleep. He decided to join them and as soon as he hit the bed he was sound asleep. A day of hard work and a lot of stress would do that to anyone.

The next day started the same way as the one before. First running naturally people still collapsed this time although snowflake didn't seem to have any problems this time it must be because he had better control of whatever magic he used. Afterwards was the muscle training and then the mobility center. Which had surprisingly changed it's setup. Another mystery to add to the list he supposed and quickly gave it no more thought.

When weapons training started he once again sparred with Pebble and took his advice on the stances. His weapon felt slightly more familiar than yesterday but it would take him a lot more time to be able to use it properly. After dinner he went back to the forge and started pumping the blower as he had done before.

About 3 months passed with this pattern and improvement was now clearly visible in the group. No one passed out or couldn't run the morning laps anymore. The instructor had even added a lap after the second month and people where still able to run it. The breaks in between had become shorter as well although no one really noticed. Weapons training had changed as well they now started to trade sparring partners with each other so every one of them would have experience fighting the many different kind of weapons that were wielded.

Snowflake still disappeared to the Elder each time weapons training started. He told Grey that the elder was an Aeltling like himself and that he was teaching him how to use his magic together with his weapon. Grey himself still went to the forge after every training. It hadn't taken him long to get used to the huge and intimidating forge master. He never spoke and never wavered from his steady process of making steel. Somewhere halfway the third month the Forge master had shown him how to make ingots from the raw iron they somehow never seemed to run out from.

Slowly but surely the Forge master would teach him some new things by beckoning him to come closer with his head then showing him something and then making him repeat whatever had been done. Another 3 months passed and the training had intensified. The Instructor told them that from tomorrow forward they would run group fighting simulations. everyone's levels and physical abilities had really risen in the last 6 months. The status plates had changed accordingly. The lowest ranking of the group was now mahogany 6.

The highest where Grey and Luniera at Iron 2 they had breached the barrier to iron in their 5th month. They expected something fancy to happen but they just woke up one morning to find that the material of their plates had changed. Second highest where Sansieri, Pebble, Tatt's, Snowflake and Six. They had become mahogany 9 and had yet to breach into the iron. Oak had somehow stayed at mahogany and there was now a tree growing on his status plate.

The material of the wood might have changed as well but no one could tell for certain but Oak assured them that the wood was no longer mahogany but aged plorain wood. They all took him t his word for it because none of the other could really see any difference. Apon asking the elder how come his plate had stayed wooden they where answered that every species had their own highest ranking of material. Entmen where the biggest exception since all their materials would stay a type of wood.

The groups had also drawn closer to each other but there was a definite rift between Grey's group and all the others. They others didn't quite avoid them but they never really talked to them. The instructor told them this was simple jealousy of the strong. They wanted to be as strong as Grey and his group but they had trouble reaching the same height. He told them not to worry about it because it would only give the group motivation to train harder.

After the weapons training Grey headed to the forge as usual. His arms had grown noticeably in the last 6 months his shoulders had grown broader aswell. The growth he was going through as a person as well as the exercises he was doing was really changing his body into a much larger version of wat he used to be. He and the forge master now where working together in harmony and could make 2 weapons each at the same time not getting in each others way by timing wat they did to the rhythm of the others smithing. The smithing rhythm the forge master had never changed so it was easy to fall into the same rhythm. At first he thought the forge master worked extremely fast but it did not take long for him to get used to this kind of speed.

Another thing of note was that his eyes had adapted a bit more and his vision had improved a lot over the months. He could see details in faraway stones easily and it also helped with smithing now that he could see the minute details in the metal. It did not take long for him to smith his own decently made weapons. The sound ripples had become something he was used to by now the sound of the hammer hitting the iron and the ripples it produced might aswell have been mental therapy for him that is how soothing it felt to him. Another thing the ripples had done for him was that he changed the way he walked and the way he moved. It took him at least a month of trying different ways to walk to find out how he should place his feet so he made the least amount of ripples.

Also other little things in the way he had moved before he only noticed now that he could see the ripples. The way his shirt sometimes scratched the side when he moved his arm. Or how the cloth would rub against each other creating some small ripples. He was soon moving around while creating only miniscule ripples. He made so little sound while walking and doing things that other people sometimes got startled when he walked up to them. He even managed to make Tatt's choke in his food by surprise one day when he walked up to him during dinner and tapped him on the shoulder. The face he made was hilarious and had driven Grey to laugh out loud for the first time since he had gotten here.

Tatt's was a little grumpy after the incident mumbling things like he was going soft and his hunter instincts where rusting in the cold confines of the stone. The instructor assured Tatt's that he was not going soft but it was Grey who was the freak with the way he moved. Speaking of the instructor he had changed a lot over the months. It was now clear to all of them that the instructor was drilling them so hard because he was trying his best to make sure that as many of them would survive the arena as possible.

But eventually the day ended and Grey went to sleep he was really looking forward in testing his skills in battle against the other tomorrow however.