It’s been a couple of days since Alex’s team came back dragging the adolescent yeti corpse. Since then, the students have been kept in the camp and trained mercilessly. During one of these sessions Alex walks up to one of the instructors, I think this one is left foot… because he runs fast but can’t dance or something stupid like that … sheesh. “Sir, I have a question. I would like to practice something with my team but would like to not cause a ruckus. Is there a place like that here, or maybe a one of the instructors is a mage and could put up some wind walls for us? Maybe dig out a cave to dampen the sound?”

The instructor takes his eyes off of the rest of the trainees and studies him for a little while. Alex is just about to start fidgeting when he gets a reply, “There is such a place, you are not supposed to go there until much later in your training though. I have to talk to Head but we may be able to arrange something for you.” he continues to pierce Alex with those gold flecked black eyes, “Does this have something to do with those stones your team has been collecting recently?”

Wow! He got it in one! Well its wasn’t that we kept it a secret but I guess this guy is more than he appears. “After our last fight I realised that there was more I could do to help my team. We have our skills but they waste Stamina, my team makes hardly use any mana unless they have a trinket or a weapon that needs to be bound.”

“I see, that incident was a surprise. That Yeti tribe normally leave to the other side of the forest during this period specially to avoid us. That youngster was an exile, you could tell by his longer clays and lack of adornments.” He continued to stare through Alexander, what does he see when he looks at me? Does he have a way to appraise me maybe? “I will talk to Head, I want to see what you do come up with.” He finishes as he turns away and looks out over the yellowing plains. Soon this area will be under snow this far north.

“Thank you, Sir.” Alex salutes and turns away from the instructor

“Do not worry, I will find you when all is ready, now your chatting is making you lag behind. I so hope you can catch up to everyone else before we have to give extra punishment sets” Left Foot finishes.

Alex is startled by that final warning and runs back to his position at the back of his team. He is 2 sets of timed hand stands behind… This is not going to be fun.

“Watch your footing, trainees, this is our sparring arena. Until you are all much more used to your new stats and skills you wouldn’t be seeing this area at all.” Leg Foot explains.

Andra is the first to walk through the archway, “Dear Chaos! This place is huge! We are under the training grounds, right? This. Is. Amazing!”

The area Alex’s team entered is huge, it towers over 50 meters to the ceiling, the ground has a bowl shape like an amphitheatre with rising steps getting taller and taller as they get closer to the walls. The centre is divided into 8 sparring areas with different terrain, there is sand in one, and water and islands in another; there is one with ice even! They are arranged in a circle around a centre arena which is four times the size of the others.

This centre one is divided into 4 parts, seems that each section is related to one of the four basic elements. Must be a Mage training area here as none of the current trainees had a way to take advantage of those terrains.

“Please follow, you don’t need to gawk, if you don’t get yourself killed before joining the Academies place? Amazing!!!then you will see this place again. The final battle mage exam takes place here you

know.” Left foot continues past the arena area and through another set of arches. There is more to this place? Amazing!!!

As the group walks further through the winding tunnels they see areas for training, barracks, mess halls, fully functional toilets and more, “You are not to tell anyone above about this place. You have been given special dispensation due to your current achievements but don’t think that the merits from them will last long.”

Stefan turns to the instructor after passing the class rooms and asks “Sir, why do we sleep in tents and hunt animals for food when all this is down here and ready to be used?”

“Hmmm, how to answer that best for you…” the instructor strokes his chin thoughtfully, “Well what do you think the purpose of this training trip is?” he asks Stefan then turns to the rest of the group as if they are welcome to answer too.

Vale is the first to respond, “It is to teach us to respect the wild. That even herbivores can kill us at any moment if we are not careful.” Left foot considers this answer and shakes his head, “That is a part of it but it is not the main reason. There is a more obvious and simple reason.”

Reiva decides to pipe up now while Stefan, Andra and Alex remain quiet, listening. “Sir, it is to show us trainees what the real world is like. Not everyone can have a loving family, a roof over their heads, servants or cooks to prepare meals and a fire to curl up in front of. This training trip is to show the children of the mighty families and those of normal citizens that they will be treated equally no matter whose children they are.”

Left foot nods, “Yes that is correct, you had almost all of it but not quite there. Yes, it is to show that sons of royalty and street urchins will be treated equally and be rewarded for what they achieved and not what they bought. There is another side to it though, can any of you figure it out? Alex how about you try this time.”

Alex looks pensive as he considers all the possible options and angles, if it has something to do with the way the children of different social classes are treated then there must be something else too. As a son of Talina, I have seen how people try to pamper me but have to be harsh instead. Vale is from a prominent military family too and Andra, she travelled with her single mother scouting for monster nests. She is not exactly a rich noble but not a street rat either… Ah!

“Sir, I believe I know. It is to show us that children of the nobility or the prominent military familes may not be the best choice to lead teams. Often yes, they will be trained from a younger age with tactics and strategy but other times we get naturally born leaders like Andra who end up leading the teams. This training is to show that you are not only not treated the same but that a quality commander can come from anywhere!” Alex finishes his thoughts by turning to Andra and bowing slight, which caused her to blush a little. The rest of the team followed suit until Andra was deep red from embarrassment.

Those eyes bore into Alexander again, looking for something but not finding anything special, “Yes you are completely correct. Leaders come from ability, sometimes a farmer will gain the rank of general in the army while a child from a noble military family will never get past Sargent. Sergeants are not bad, they have their own skills and uses but you can see my point right?” Left foot finishes.

The rest of the group exchange glances and finish by all, meeting Andra’s eyes and bowing their heads. She is now the official leader, none of that jockeying by Vale will happen again.

Just then they walked up to a dead end, the tunnel was still tall and roomy but the group was blocked by a massive door. The instructor walks up to the door and places his insignia on the door. Lights shoot into the insignia and then out again. They go in a red colour and come out blue… That insignia must be enchanted. And that door? Two elements intermixing, wait is that a 3rd element opening a whole in the solid stone? The number of elements, and the conversion in the insignia is amazing! So this is my future! I love it!

As the door to pass through the dead-end swings open, everyone can see that it’s at least a meter thick, some of the girls could use the thickness of the door as a bed without having their head or feet falling over the side.

Once they pass through the door and it shuts behind them, the instructor turns to the team and announces: “This is the Magic experimentation section of this facility. Its designed to hold some of the most massive magic attacks known to the kingdom, one of them could destroy the university entirely. A single room can stop 3 of them occurring at the same time!”, he looks at Alex again and looks excited. “Now please show me what you needed this area for and why you couldn’t continue to train in the open.”

Alex looks at his team and then they all look to Andra, she considers the situation and nods her head at Alex. No one complained, or tried to wrestle control of the group away from her. This raining camp really did fulfil its goal, at least with this team.

Alex takes the backpack he has been carrying off of his back and pulls out 3 sacks with different markings. Its actually written in English and luckily no one can read it. This also acts as a flag for other people from earth that have made their way here.

“Can we please go over to a table, I don’t want to just pour all this on the floor.” As Alex asks this, he sees the instructor beckon them to a side room.

“This is a planning room for the main laboratory. Put your bags on your table in the middle.” Left Foot instructs.

As Alex walks over to the table, he starts to untie the backs in his hands. Maybe I should have pulled them out one at a time, this is getting awkward… Ahh there, got one of them, now for the rest.

Once Alex in front of the table he starts to pour out the stones from one of the bags while untying the others. What comes out of the first bad is a normal river pebble, smooth, rounded with no corners at all, there are marks all over the stone too done in ink.

“Sir if you would like to inspect one of the stones while I finish unpacking these, please be aware that chipping the wax off the stone will make it unsafe, please be careful.” Alex continues to open the other two bags while Left Foot picks up one of the stones.

He looks to be inspecting the stones but is only getting question marks about the item. I surmise that’s because they either don’t work, the Admins can’t see them properly or they have never been used in the past.

“Done, here are the others, let’s keep them separate for now too.” Alex starts his explanation, “What you have there is a self-accumulating rune enchantment. Once you chip away the wax, a piece of metal that acts as a loop between the storage of the mana and the blocked income rune is released so that too much energy cannot be stored.”

Left Foot looks intrigued by the design of the visible areas but refrains from chipping away at the wax. Alex continues his explanation, “Each of the different stones is colour coded as you can see, the one in your hand will create a big explosion with the stone as the centre, the stone will shatter when that occurs unfortunately but with better materials it may become reusable.”

Left foot and the rest of my team mates stop playing with the stones, Left foot was throwing one up with one hand to feel the weight but Stefan was juggling 7 of a combination with Reiva, they were very good but once they heard the words shatter and explosion they suddenly put them down. I sure have no idea why they would do that.

Left Foot picks up one of the stones gingerly, “And this green one? What does it do?” Alex looks at everyone suddenly paying much more attention to his waste of time and smiles at the rest of the team. “Sir that creates a high-pressure wave from the centre of the stone that can cause people to go deaf from the noise generated if too close. In this enclosed area, it would probably stun all of us for a few seconds. Sir, your stats may be too high for it to affect you too much.”

Alex looks back down at the stones and picks up the final stone type, its wax is blue like the colour of the sea “This final one is less deadly but can still be dangerous. When it has enough stored mana it will turn release fountains of water, the water pressure is not very high but with enough and with the right planning you an create a bog around your enemy while keeping your own land solid. This is most useful to run away from something stronger or to kill it from range before it can get to you.”

Left Foot and the rest of the team are starting at this 6-year-old child that has come up with these deadly weapons and is even starting to think tactically about their uses. “I see you have put a lot of thought into this, care to show us a demonstration now?” Left Foot looks eager to see how well this turns out, Alex’s team is drooling to get a turn with the stones, if they can master their use, then they might be able to accelerate past their entire year and be at the top of the whole country! What luck that they joined his team!

Alex sees all those hungry looks aimed at him and at the stones and chuckles to himself, I hope I have enough to “play” with now and use later… can I get supplies from the training camp, all my metal wire is gone from just making these.

“With the materials I had on hand and borrowing coloured candles, I was able to make just over 60, almost 70 actually all together. There are 26 of both red and green. The blue I only came up with later and ran out of materials and time…” Alex starts to divide the stones evenly. “You will get 4 each of the red and green stones, I will keep the left overs in case Instructor Left Foot wants to show them to Head later…” Alex looks at Left Foot and nods.

“You will each get 1 of the water stones as I have fewer samples of those and would like to keep them for any future emergencies, with these we may not have needed to almost die dragging that corpse like last time.” He hands 9 stones to each of the people there and sets aside set for himself while placing the rest of the stones into the sacks they came from.

“Sir, this will get dangerous in such a small area, please could we go back to the experimental area.” Alex asks politely. Left Foot, looks sceptically between the stones and Alex but then shrugs and starts walking towards the door.

The rest of Alex’s team is looking at the stones and then back at Alex with questioning expressions then at Andra. “Alex, are you sure about this? If this doesn’t work… well we may have to do clapping press ups all the way out of here. All I want to know is that you are certain about this.”

Well I am not certain 100% of course but I tested the fire stone outside by throwing it in the river and it seemed to work…

“I am as certain as I can be without testing them, there wasn’t anywhere to test them outside either.” Alex explains to Andra. She keeps eye contact with Alex for a few seconds but he doesn’t cringe or break contact either. Eventually she nods and turns towards the door Left Foot walked out of. “Let’s Go!”

Once they are all outside in the experimental area, under Alex’s suggestions they find an area with a neck high blocking all on the kids, for the instructor it was hardly a wall.

Left Foot starts the conversation again, “You said that you came up with the red and green stones first and then the blue. Why red and green though? Wouldn’t just the fireball be enough?”

“Well, Sir, I was aiming for a specific effect. I had actually initially wanted to use light runes but I do not know any yet. Master said that they will come later as they are not as useful as one would think.” Alex gets back to explaining, “First let me show you the 2 way of using the stones, there is the, what I call, passive and active setup.” He pulls out a red stone and shows it to everyone.

“First you need to chip off the wax to make the enchantments potentially destructive. Now the passive setting is to not touch the mana siphoning rune under the wax and just throw the stone where you want the effect to occur.” He gives the stone to the instructor to inspect, “Sir could you look at the markings, it will take about 2 minutes for enough mana to be absorbed before the enchantment will go out of control and explode. Can you please throw it as far away from us as you can one you are done looking?”

Left Foot takes the stone gingerly from Alex and inspects the new runes previously hidden by the wax. “Does it matter how far away it goes?” he finally asks before starting to throw.

“Well 30 meters should be enough time for us to get behind cover but 50 would be better.” Alex replies and watches as the stone goes sailing in an arc even further than that. “Now the second way to activate the stone, and I call this way as, “Active Detonation”. You chip the wax and the wire away as before but this time you pour mana into the stone. To start a safe amount shout be around 30 mana. Once it’s in there you have about 5 seconds to throw the stone at the target you want to burn.” Alex presses his finger on the centre rune or a red stone he was displaying the actions on and throws it with all his might. The stone lands close to 20 meters away, a respectable distance for my age.

Stefan looks in the direction of the stone and then back at the stones in his hands. “And what happens if you enter more or less mana than 30 into the stone?” he asks wondering if his guess was correct. Wha6 has Alex come up with, this could change so much!

Alex been waiting for that question. “Well if you add more mana then you have less time to throw, and if you add less mana then there is a greater delay. Now we need to crouch down in case there is shrapnel from the fireball.”

In the near distance a fireball suddenly takes shape from the centre of the stone, the sudden change in temperature causes a shallow bang to be heard by everyone and a scorch mark that swiftly disappears is the only evidence there was something there.

“Those floors will self-repair against anything below magus rank. Having it need to regenerate even a little is already a sign of great potential.” Left Foot explains to the glum Alex, that was a little anti-climactic, well there is the wind stone still charging.

“I see, well those are the basic runes and the material couldn’t hold much of them without self-destructing anyway.” Alex sighs in relief, so there was that in this room too?

“Did you notice how the stone started to glow brightly just before exploding?” Alex looks at the people around him, “Well that is one of that is a weakness of my knowledge. There should be a way to convert the full mana of the stone into final output instead of being wasted on light just before exploding but I don’t know it yet.”

Vale points into the distance and exclaims, “That green stone looks like its starting to glow brighter now! Is it about to explode?”

Alex and everyone else turn towards the direction Vale pointed in and saw that there was indeed a brightly glowing stone in the distance.

BOOM! A wave of wind pressure passes the kids and their instructor. Left Foot looks nonplussed by the sound or the wind and looks sceptically at Alex as if asking “Is that it? Why did you waste my time?”

Alex quickly attempts to reassure the instructor, “Sir both of those effects were pretty far way and we still felt the pressure from all the way here. Optimally the green stone has to be used within 5 meters of the target and the red stone has to hit the target. However, …” Alex stops talking and turns his head away, “No, nothing Sir, that’s too dangerous to be playing with, I don’t recommend doing that.”

“Trainee Alexander, you will let me be the judge of that, now what is so dangerous to do that will make this a valid weapon that needs to be trained with?” Left Foot starts to question Alex.

“Sir I really should not be telling you, you will need to directly order me to tell you as it will pout your very life in danger. I do not wish to have the blood of my instructors on my hands, I am too young for such responsibility” Alex replies innocently.

“Too dangerous? I am level 18 you know? I have fought might beasts and even duelled with some of the royal guards and they were never too dangerous! You will tell me what I wish to know…” Left foot looks at Alex as he keeps hesitating. “Sir, please order me to tell you how to do it or Head might have my …. Um… head …”

“Fine, I order you to tell me how to do the other method and you know what happens to people who disobey orders form instructors!” There I got my get out of jail free card, just in case something goes really wrong. Alex looks like he hesitates for a second or two longer and finally answers. “Sir, the optimal range to use both the stones is 5 or so meters as I mentioned before but the best way would be to use both stones at the same time. If you remove the wax on both the stones and place them back to back, then channel the same amount of mana into both stones and throw them within 5 meters of your enemy. The then best thing would be to look away and get behind something for protection.”

The instructor scoffs at Alexander for telling him that he will need to be protected from such a low tier enchantment, even if there are two of them. Instead he stepped over the wall and walked a little bit away from the rest of the group. Alex looks on with trepidation, I needed to test the combined effect on a live target but I was thinking a stuffed target not one of the instructors. Oh well I hope his Vitality is high enough to tank this.

Alex hears a voice coming from a little distance away and looks in the direction of the instructor “So, all I need to do is to chip away at the wax and put in 30 mana and throw them 5 meters away from me? Is that it?”

“And hide sir, if not then cover your eyes and ears and shout as loud as you can so the pressure doesn’t kill you.” Alex calls back.

The instructor looks back at Alex for a little while and then shrugs to himself as if saying “Kids, what do they know about the adult world” He chips the wax off of both stones and places them back to back between his pointer finger and thumb. The stones start to glow faintly then he drops them just 5 meters away from himself expecting little to no effect.

Oh this is going to suck! “EVERYONE, GET BEHIND THE WALL WITH YOUR EARS COVERED AND YOUR MOTH OPEN!!!” Alex has time to shout as he assumes that exact position. The rest of the team look at him for a fraction of a second and follows suit. What they have learnt out hunting is that sometimes someone has expertise that the rest of the team doesn’t have.

Just as they finish getting into position and placing their hands over their ears and opening their mouth the world suddenly explodes!

BBBBBOOOOOOOOMMMMMMM!!!!!! WHHHOOOOOOOOSSSSSSHHHHHHH!!! Patter….

Damn I hope the instructor survived, and that patter is rock chip and not human chip.

The rest of the team exchanges horrified glances then inspect their stones for problems and accidental activation, just in case. Once they confirm no one has active stones then stand up again and look over at the instructor.

He is was flung back and skidded all the way to the wall, all that’s left of his cloths are burnt patches, the rest is shredded. He even has stone shrapnel all over his front, luckily nothing in the eyes or that would have been bad. And he is completely out cold … now how are they going to get out?