Wren was sat in his first lesson of the day. As he’d had martial arts training and elemental ability training the day before that meant that over the course of the day he would be doing monster studies and armament training. He was currently in his monster studies class. It fed on directly after his homeroom class as they didn’t need to be split up for that lesson and Lops was their teacher. He made no mention of Wren’s fight with Chadwick the day before, which he found quite strange. He was half expecting to be pulled out of class and taken directly to the Director’s office. That was what happened whenever he got in a fight on Earth. But no, homeroom went ahead as normal and was swiftly transitioned to monster studies. Lops didn’t even make any funny looks at Wren as if he needed to watch the troublemaker.

What Anastasia said must have been true. Everything really was swept under the rug and neither Wren nor Chadwick would suffer any backlash for fighting. He was a little peeved that Chadwick wouldn’t get in trouble for trying to use his abilities on him, but the fact that Wren was able to go about his day without any hinderance was a bit of a consolation.

“For the first few weeks we will be studying the local monsters. Their physical attributes, their abilities, their habits and most importantly their weaknesses.” Lops said beginning the lesson.

The lesson actually reminded Wren a lot of his time on Earth, attending a regular school. If he didn’t think too hard, and forgot that they were talking about alien creatures that could kill you in an instant if you weren’t careful, he could almost believe he was sat in a random science lesson. It was a stark difference to his previous lessons. There were no intensive drills that strained his body to breaking point, there were no incredible abilities flying about his head, it was just a simple lesson with a teacher standing in front of a whiteboard going through the class plan.

Lops said that he would ease them in slowly. So in their first lesson they only studied three of the creatures inhabiting Ventus. Wren had already heard of two of them. There were the Cloud Buffalo which were largely harmless, almost friendly. Some Wind Elementals even farmed these, which explained the Academy’s supply of food. However although they were mostly harmless, they were hard to keep a hold of due to their ability to jump from cloud to cloud, and if you were faced with a stampede of them, you were unlikely to get out alive.

Then there was the Dusk Vulture’s. Wren had actually seen one on his first day at the academy. True to Anastasia’s word, he found out that they tended to hunt in packs, but were pretty easy to handle singularly. They had incredible vision and the ability to detach their feathers and use them as projectiles. Lops remarked how they also tasted great with a sweet and sticky sauce which earnt him a good round of laughter from the class. It was actually making him hungry, he’d only had eggs and toast for breakfast and he could already feel his mouth watering at the idea of Dusk Vulture wings.

The final monster the class learnt about was one that Wren had never come across before. It was the Wyvern. Not to be confused with the Dragon, yes Dragon’s existed, the Wyvern was the apex predator of Ventus’ skies. Unlike a Dragon, they only had two wings and lacked the ability to breath fire, but that didn’t make them any less dangerous. They were incredibly large, some had even been reported to be the size of two story buildings, they had razor sharp claws on both their feet and on the end of their wings that could rip a man in two and not even break a sweat. Most notably of all though, at least to Wren anyway, was that some Wyverns had been reported to have the ability to control wind currents.

They truly sounded fearsome.

It was recommended to never take one on alone. And if you found yourself in that wildly unfortunate situation, it was best to run as far and as fast as you could. Not many had lived to tell the tale of a fight with a wyvern, even less had told the tale of defeating one.

It was only after his explanation of the Wyverns physiology and abilities that Lops handed out worksheets for the recruits to take a look at. Presented before him was a diagram of a Wyvern with lots of dotted lines coming off of it.

“The aim of this exercise is to not only check if you have been paying attention to my oh so interesting letter. But also if you can use those brains of yours.” Lops said to the class. “I want you to label each part of the Wyvern’s physiology, with its strengths and weaknesses. For an extra task, I want you to see if you can find the Wyvern’s weak point.”

“But Instructor, you haven’t told us the Wyvern’s weak point.” Said Britney Stein from the front of the class. She seemed to have adopted herself as a bit of a teachers pet, raising her hand every five minutes and asking an innumerable amount of questions throughout the lecture.

“Exactly. As an elemental you are bound to come across a creature you’ve never seen before, finding it’s weak point could mean the difference between life and death. I’m simply giving you guys the opportunity to do that in class, where it’s safe, and a humongous creature isn’t trying to eat you.”

Wren found the exercise pretty easy. He had been paying attention throughout the lecture, but even if he hadn’t he wouldn’t have found the task particularly taxing. It was pretty self-explanatory. The wings allowed for manoeuvrability but were a big target, the claws were sharp and shout be stayed away from at all times, the head was large but its eyes allowed for blind spots. The only thing he was struggling with was the infamous weak spot. Apparently his classmates were having similar problems, tutting at themselves for not finding it and throwing the exercise sheets away in frustration.

“Good job anyone. Now was anyone able to work out the weak spot?” Lops asked the class after time was up.

“The eyes?” Xiao said uncertain.

“They’re definitely vulnerable but not what we’re after. Anyone else?”

There was only one hand left in the air after Xiao was shot down. It was Liam’s.

“The underbelly, there’s a spot in which the scales don’t fully cover it.” He said.

“Correct Mister Cacas, how’d you know that?” Lops asked.

“My dad told me a story once about his hunting party and a Wyvern.”

Just then Lops checked his watch and noticed the time.

“Looks like that’s all we’ve got time for today. Before you go to lunch. I SAID BEFORE YOU GO TO LUNCH.” The recruits had all started getting up out of their seats and hustling into groups but quickly quietened down as soon as Lops raised his voice. “In a few weeks time we will be making a trip to a neighbouring island to study and maybe hunt a few monsters, so please please study the material, I don’t want you guys to be lacking.”

The class was a hubbub of excited chatter as they left for lunch. A trip to hunt monsters. That sounded exciting.