Another chapter!

Today, I just realized that Dusk's magic card is similar to the cards of a certain magician from the story of a certain Imagine Breaker. Is that idea stealing?

Still struggling to maintain the personalities of each person. Nobody and Kuro is especially hard for me, somehow.

Being a pervert is hard. I respect Rudeus (and the writer, of course) for that. I really need to write faster, I only have about 6 chapters left in reserve...

The PoV of the insignificant person

Our first class is the Combat class. Well, I’m not really interested on this subject, the only reason I took this is that I need a minimum of 2 subjects, and this seemed to be the most useful choice. Clint and, surprisingly, Ashley, on the other hand, seemed excited for this class.

I was quite surprised to see someone Ashley taking Combat, in fact. All her classes other were based on support, but there was a battle subject out of the blue.

But since combat supports all purpose combat, I suppose there are things that she could learn.

As for me, since engineering classes doesn’t start until this afternoon, I didn’t have a weapon. I would want to use one of the so-called drones. It is a weapon developed by a genius engineer some 10 years ago, and it can be controlled remotely to attack enemies. Of course, most high grade drones uses manasteel circuits and transmission, but manasteel is still quite expensive and rare.

I wonder how that genius enginer got so much manasteel to work with.

Personally, I have never made a drone yet. I have read through my holy book tons of times, but I didn’t have a workshop to use. In fact, that is the reason why I joined AAA.

We reached the dome, and started waiting. Clint was leaning against the walls with boredom lacing his body, while Ashley was standing beside him, taking small glances at him.

Clint, your harem has started. I’m proud of you. I gave him a thumbs up, but it seemed that he didn’t know what I was thinking.

Ashley, on the other hand, moved away from me.

WHY??!!! IT HURTS!!

While I cried over my failure while in a ‘orz’ position, the students slowly gathered. It was when the teachers entered the dome when I got up from the ground. There was a redhead female teacher, a dark elf teacher with black hair, and a muscleman. They walked to the front of a battlefield, and the muscleman clapped his hands to get everyone’s attention.

“Good morning, everyone.” The dark elf teacher said while pushing her glasses up. “This is the first class for the subject Combat.” She said while doing a silent headcount, “Since everyone’s here. We will start now. I am Professor Gwen, this is Mr., or Sir Knox,” She gestured at the muscleman, “And this is Mel.” She gestured to the smiling red head who was waving her hand towards Clint. He waved his hand back, confused.

I was confused as well, honestly. What was their relationship?

Prof. Gwen ignored them though, “Now, everyone, we will randomly assign everyone against someone random. Both of you will get a wooden weapon, come up, and fight. Don’t be nervous, it won’t affect your grade. It is just to gauge you all so that we can fix your problems.” She said, while holding out a sheet of paper. “I will call out your names when it is your turn.”

She then started called out 2 names. The called students chose their weapons and went up the stage, and took their stance. “3, 2, 1. Start!”

One of them had a sword while the other had a spear. The moment the battle started, they charged and wildly swung at each other with no actual technique. The battle ended when the second boy jabbed his blunt stick into the chest of the first boy. Mr. Knox quickly stopped the battle as the first boy got up angrily.

After he calmed down, Prof. Gwen called for 2 other students. I looked at the battles while noting those that were good. There was a boy who used a sword, but his arrogant pose and stance annoyed me. Another mage had also caught my attention, he was a noble, and with his strong lighting magic he quickly ended the battle.

It then reached Ashley’s turn. Ashley took a breath and she entered the field. Her opponent was another mage, who held her staff nervously. Ashley casted a barrier while waiting for the battle to start.

When it started, the enemy repeatedly fired fire bolts towards Ashley, but her barrier blocked all of it.

The girl fired more fire bolts, she blocked more of them.

And she blocked more of them.

…Is she planning to attack?

Prof. Gwen eventually ended the battle as the firebolt girl’s mana reached critical levels. During the whole battle, Ashley hadn’t attacked at all. I’m somewhat surprised by that, honestly. Although her subjects were all on support, she should have at least 1 or 2 attacks, right?

My turn came soon after. Well, I don’t have any weapons yet, so I went up bare fisted. The opponent had a battle axe, which he held unsteadily with both his hands.

“No weapons?” My enemy asked, and I smiled, “Sorry, I don’t do well with most weapons, you know.”

“Start!”

I started by doing 3 twisting steps forwards, changing my position with every step. He had prepared for a swing, but was confused by my movements, and I jabbed lightly into his stomach.

He growled at me as I stepped back, and swung wildly, but I simply back stepped, and lunged at his face with my palm. I stopped just as I touched him, and jabbed again at his stomach.

“Stop!” Knox shouted, and my enemy sighed while laying down his weapon. From just the 4 attacks, he knew who was superior in the battle. I turned towards the girls and waved my hand, but they ignored me.

Ugh, but I won’t give up!

“Nobody, right? Very well done, although you still can make your movements sharper and smoother.” True, he was right, but I have no plans on doing much actual fighting after the first practical engineering lesson, you know. After he was done with me, he went to advise the other boy.

“Woohoo!” I shouted as I ran back towards Clint, “I was awesome, right?”

Clint nodded, “You’re really good, seriously. That’s some really good blows there.” Ashley ignored me.

“I know right~” I laughed as he was called up.

Even so, I knew he was far better than me. The way he had both his weapons as if he was used to it said much. And his enemy...

Almost everyone gasped in surprise as Mr.Knox went up to the stage as Clint’s enemy himself. Clint didn’t seem nervous though, and he readied his weapons, a wooden sword, and a pistol.

When both of them are ready, Prof. Gwen swung her hand down, “Start!”

Clint instantly started by shooting thrice. Following that, he crouched and dashed forwards. Knox, with a sword and shield, blocked 2 of the shots with the shield while lunging at Clint under the cover of this shield. As Clint was about to be impaled, he suddenly slid down, and through his enemy while shooting twice, almost at point blank range, but Mr. Knox had already jumped out of the way, while dodging the attacks.

“” Clint said, while shooting multiple shots. Some of the shots flew straight ahead, but a few curved unnaturally and flew towards Knox. He charged forwards, blocking the frontal shots while the curved ones simply flew past where he stood. simply forces the shots to fly towards a fixed location defined by the enemy’s location when the shots are fired, but it doesn’t turn the shots into homing shots, so it was still possible to dodge them.

Clint shot directly at the shield for a few times, but suddenly aimed his pistol down, and shot the leg. Knox, who was behind the shield, couldn’t expect the shot, and took it.

But his sword suddenly flew from behind the shield and its blunted edge smashed into Clint, sending him flying back.

“Stop!” Prof. Gwen shouted as both of them were on the ground, nursing their light wounds. Although they were light, they probably still hurt. “Good job, Clint.”

“Thanks.” He said, while Mel healed him using a holy fire spell. And then he casually walked back.

“Damn! That was good!” I told him honestly while giving him a thumbs up, and he smiled.

“I still lost though.”

“Dude, you were facing a teacher! We were fighting people who doesn’t know one end of the sword to the other.” I said while Ashley nodded, “But that is to be expected from an expert that caught even Kuro-sama’s attention.”

“Kuro…-sama?”

“The girl who beat you up badly yesterday and thrown u into the dorm using her goon yesterday. Of course, you were sleeping at that time.”

“Oh.” He nodded, finally realizing who I was talking about. “But how did you know if she never entered the males’ dorm?”

Crap. I can’t tell him that I was tailing Kuro-sama the whole day after registering. “That’s not important! The important thing is that you’re strong, right, Ashley?”

She nodded. Oh my god, she finally responded to me, I’m so happy.

She moved away.

WHY?

Clint was laughing as he looked between us, “Come on, Ashley, he isn’t that bad!”

“…He is…”

“Gwahahahahahaha.” He burst out laughing, finally failing to stop himself. He managed to stop himself after coughing a bit, “Sorry, Nobody. I didn’t mean to.”

I waved my hand, “No worries. I’m used to being brutally murdered by woman.” I said while crying blood. “This happens a lot, so I’m okay with it, really.”

(From the sides, Gwen, Mel, and Knox were thinking the same thing, ‘This boy isn’t cute at all.’)

“Ok, since everyone is done, you all are dismissed. Remember to come again this Thursday!” Prof. Gwen announced, and we all left for lunch.

Clint’s PoV

I sighed, tired from the battle, as we walked out of the dome. Mr.Knox was far better than what he shown to everyone, in fact, he was holding back quite a lot. If he was serious, I doubt I could get that single shot in.

“It’s lunch time now, right?”

“Yep~ Time to eat what we call gruel. Be prepared to taste the awesome food of the academy!” Nobody announced. From his words just now, it seemed that he knew that I was with Kuro-senpai yesterday.

Suspicious.

“Oi! Clint!” A girl shouted in front of us in the main corridor while waving her hands. Beside her was a boy, perhaps around 14 years old like Kuro-senpai. He had blond hair, with a green beret and a full set of green leather armor, as well as a longbow behind him. The emblem of the academy was shown on his chest, and there was a familiar red stripe around one of the leather gauntlets. “Going for lunch?”

I nodded, “With my friends, Nobody and Ashley.” She smiled at Ashley, but glared at Nobody. Nobody sweated for a bit as they looked at each other. None of them spoke anything, but I felt that there was invisible words being thrown around. The boy that was with Senpai simply shook his head while smiling.

“Can’t be help, Kuro-sama~ You are just that enticing.” He said jokingly.

And then Kuro-senpai stomped him down as he begged for forgiveness.

“Anyways, come with us, we’ll bring you to the A grade cafeteria.” Kuro-senpai said curtly as she walked off angrily. The corpse got up while laughing as her figure disappeared through the corridor.

“Ahahahaha… She’s too serious… can’t she take a joke…” He staggered towards the cafeteria, while we followed him.

After getting the free high grade good, we sat down with Senpai and the boy, who introduced himself as Rigel. Senpai was mainly talking to Ashley, while Rigel squinted his eyes as he looked at us.

He leaned forwards, towards Nobody, “So, how was she?”

Nobody smiled at the words, “Really satisfying. The only thing she need is to let the bandages go just a little loose…”

I don’t understand? I looked at them with confused gazes, but they simply laughed. Lunch break soon ended, with both Senpai and Rigel going off to do a mission. Ashley didn’t have class at the moment, so she went back to her dorm, while Nobody and I had to prepare for the engineering class.

After getting my toolbox from our room in the male’s dorm, we rushed towards the class. It was a theory lesson, but since all my notes are in my toolbox, I decided to bring the whole thing. There were 3 other students there already, as well as the teacher, when we entered the lab. The first person is a boy with a short purple ponytail. He snorted as us when we entered, and then looked away. The other 2 students seemed to be twins, and both of them had short blonde hair. They were discussing something when we entered, and neither of them noticed us coming in.

I took the seat beside the purple haired boy, while Nobody took the seat beside me. The boy clicked his tongue when I sat down, but simply ignored me.

Nobody laughed, “Come on, Rex Thunderclaw!”

“Says the person who is so poor that he couldn’t even afford a name.” He looked at Nobody with a scowl, “Why are we even in the same class?”

“Well, it seems that because, even if I have no name, I have the exact same rights as you!” He laughed after speaking in a mocking tone.

“Both of you, shut up. Class is starting.” The teacher, Mr. Atler curtly said, putting an end to the short conflict.

I was surprised to see this side of Nobody. He was always nice to everyone we spoke to, but to Rex, he simply mocked him from the beginning to the end.

“Well, it seems that half of you are familiar with each other already, so, the two girls at the side are Emi and Amy, the boy with a pitiful face is called Rex. The totally normal boy at my left is a Nobody, and this middleman is called Clint. Good, let’s start the class.” He said quickly, “First, does any one of you not know any engineering?”

No one put up their hands, and Mr. Atler nodded, as if he expected the answer. “Good, I suppose all of you know the basics. So here, I’ll give all of you a blueprint. There are a few basic errors in this, discuss among yourselves, or yourself alone, on how to fix and improve the design.

The product artifact from the blueprint was a ball, which can roll when being controlled by a remote control. The moment I scanned through it, I realized the major problem.

The most important stuff are missing. There are no weapons on the ball.

With a sigh, I took out my mechanical pencil, and started drawing.

The PoV of a certain nobody

Clint never fails to surprise me. The moment he got his blueprint, he instantly took out an artifact writing tool thingy and started writing. I held my pencil nervously, as I looked at the blueprint of a popular noble’s child’s toy.

It was in fact, quite obvious that there were some parts inside that prevented it from rolling perfectly. Also, the ball isn’t balanced, so when you stop its roll, it will roll a little more until it is balanced, since the center of balance isn’t well placed.

I removed the useless parts and rearranged the parts inside to make them balanced. I added a few parts to allow it to roll faster, as well as giving it the ability to jump using springs, and a few absorbers so that it can land without breaking.

As I looked at my finished product proudly, I looked at Clint’s.

Remember when I said that he never failed to surprise me? He did it again.

He had finished as well, but unlike mine, he added a few different types of modifications, in addition to a general improvement of all the traits, from movement to control. The first he added was a manasteel circuit along the outer and inner edge, as well as an improvement on the remote. The next thing was a rotor function, where a rotor would appear on the top, and could start spinning to make the ball fly. Also, he added 7 blades to the side of the ball, which can spring out and start spinning rapidly, while the ball moves using the rotor, or if he activates another function to make a wheel pop out at the bottom, so it could move on the ground while using the blades. The last thing is a small gun on the bottom, which can be activated if it’s flying.

He finally noticed me starting at his blueprint.

“Is something wrong?” He asked and checked his blueprint again. I slowly shook my head, and told him my true thoughts, “No, but the thing is, I didn’t expect you to make a death machine out of a child’s toy.”

“EH? It’s a child’s toy???”

“You didn’t know?”

Our exclamations attracted everyone’s attention, and Mr. Atler walked towards us with his trademark bored expression. He looked at my blueprint, and nodded. “Good enough.” He said, and then turned towards Clint’s blueprint.

He stared at it blankly for a few seconds, while I prayed for my friend’s safety.

After a few more moments, he raised the blueprint. “GENIUS! It is decided! We will make this during the practical lesson! Clint, sign here, yes, good.” After Clint signed his name on the blueprint, it was taken away and kept by Mr.Atler, whose excited expression was once again replaced by the bored expression.

“Ha?” Clint’s eyes turned into small dots as he failed to comprehend what happened. I laughed, giving him a pat on the shoulder, “Good lord, are you not aware of how crazy of an artifact you have planned?”

“Really?”

I had guessed as much, he doesn’t know how brutally broken that machine is, “Like I said, it was supposed to be a noble’s toy. And you turned a simple toy into a death machine that can be controlled by mana.” Truthfully I don’t know if he drew the manasteel lines correctly, but I doubt that he did it wrongly. “That’s crazy… I really need to do better…”

“I see…”

He’s awesome, as expected. I tapped on my bible as I thought that. It seems that I need to spend some time alone in the workshops to improve. His mindset is correct, we are going to be adventurers, creating death machines should be normal. I mentally punched myself for thinking like a kid.

On a side note, Rex, Amy and Emi had been watching us with dropped jaws for a while. It seemed that Rex had simply fixed the ball and improved its controls.

As the class ended, I started to ponder on a question that had suddenly appeared out of nowhere.

How did I understand the blueprint with only one glance?

Swordsmanship. It was a boring first class, to sum it up. We were told to swing our swords over and over on a dummy, while the instructor corrected our techniques. After the class, I accidently complained to Kuro-senpai about how boring swordsmanship classes were, and she agreed.

It was until the second class when something interesting happened.

The instructor moved us to the dummies as usual, and told us to swing our swords, and someone kicked open the entrance to the dome.

It was Kuro-senpai, and she had a proud, yet devilish smile on her face.

She walked forwards, pulling out her sword, and swung at the instructor.

With the sharp edge.

Luckily, the instructor dodged, and pulled out his own sword, and they started fighting seriously. Their movements are faster than what a normal student could perceive, and most of the students watched them in awe.

The battle ended in a flash when Kuro-senpai dropped all her defense and lunged forwards. The instructor skillfully disarmed her, but took a punch from Kuro-senpai. After that, they looked at each other, grinning at each other.

And then she walked towards me, and pulled me away.

“Kuro-senpai!?” I asked as I staggered along. “What’s wrong?”

“Hm? Nothing. I got permission to train you during swordsmanship classes. That’s all.”

And with that, my swordsmanship lessons were taken by Senpai as she trained me at the side. Occasionally Rigel would come to watch, sometimes with a robed person and an armored person. The sword instructor ignored all of us from that point on though, and would let Kuro-senpai take me... I mean, train me.

That was quite dangerous there.

Battle tactics was a fully theory lesson, where we would come up of solutions to the scenarios which the teacher provides us. In fact, it is a complicated and hard to get subject.

Most of the times, we would play tactic games against each other (imagine something like FFTA/FE), but it was timed really well, and we would have to make an action every 5 seconds, and both sides get a turn at the same time. Not completing an action in 5 seconds would cause you to miss your turn.

The game was moderated by the teacher, who could calculate everything in a blink of an eye.

There was only 6 other students in the class, by the way, and we would play against each other in a rotation. The teacher also revealed to us a 3d version, which the whole ‘board’ is a miniature castle.

It was really fun, although hard to win. Sadly, the teacher would usually end the battle early before either side is wiped to allow everyone to have a chance every lesson.

We continued attending classes, until finally, it was the end of the 3rd month.