(Nov 15)

After waking up in the morning, Sven and I brushed our teeth and changed into our uniforms/armor before we left our room.

Elder Vindal was waiting outside.

“Good morning. I trust you had a good night?”

Sven and I nodded.

I was a bit curious if Vindal had been waiting for a long time since he was right outside the door when we left, but I didn’t bother asking.

He then led us through the village once more to another building.

Upon entering this building, I felt a few strong presences.

There were several people in the room, but three of them stood out.

A female beastkin with cat ears and whiskers.

A big bulky male beastkin with hair around his neck like a lion’s mane.

And another male beastkin with gray hair and wolf ears.

They were A rankers.

For a small beastkin village, having 3 A rankers is quite impressive (not including Elder Vindal who’s retired).

“Are these the two humans from the city?” The big bulky beastkin asked.

I don’t even know why they bothered asking that since the answer was pretty obvious. Probably a rhetorical question

Elder Vindal nodded.

“Yes, these two soldiers have come from the city upon our request of aid to subjugate Agora.”

The three A ranked beastkin stared at me and Sven for a moment before one of them spoke up again.

“You sure they’re here to help us?”

They seemed doubtful and suspicious of us.

I understand why they are, but it still sucks since we did come all the way here to help them and they don’t even trust us.

Why send a request to the city if you’re not even going to trust us?

Elder Vindal seemed like the only one in the room who wanted our help. He even spoke up for me and Sven and convinced the others to at least hear us out.

At the elder’s words, the others reluctantly agreed to trust us.

We introduced ourselves to them, and they introduced themselves to us.

The catgirl’s name was Mika, the large lion guy was Branden and the wolf dude was Connor.

With introductions aside, we began the meeting.

“Alright. So what’s the plan? What do you guys know about Agora?” Sven asked to start us off.

“As we said before, Agora is a massive snake. It’s quite strong, but in normal conditions it wouldn’t be too difficult to defeat with three A rankers. However, in this forest, Agora has a massive advantage. It can burrow underground and its ability to maneuver around trees makes it difficult to fight.” One of the beastkin reported.

“Do you have a rough estimate of how strong it might be? It’s rank perhaps?”

“Definitely A ranked.”

Sven raised his eyebrow.

“A ranked? Hold on a second. In the request, you clearly stated you required assistance of B ranked caliber. Dealing with an A ranked monster would’ve been extremely dangerous for a group of C - B ranked soldiers. You realize intentionally falsifying request difficulty is a crime, right?”

Sven immediately became serious.

If this accusation was true, then the beastkin could be in a lot of trouble.

I didn’t think of it at first, but why did they send a B ranked request if they had 3 A rankers?

“Let us explain,” Elder Vindal spoke up. “You see, we fought against Agora multiple times, and it fled every time leaving us damaged. We wish to launch an all-out attack on Agora, but it is too risky. We are few in number, and if we gathered fighters, it would leave the village unprotected. That is why we sent for a request. It was for support while our A rankers would fight Agora.”

Sven rubbed his chin.

“What you say makes sense, but it would’ve been safer to have marked it as an A ranked request since we are dealing with an A ranked beast...”

“If we had, then it would’ve been ignored. We know your human city doesn’t like sending out your valuable troops. At B ranked, it still took a whole month for any aid to arrive. If we had requested for A ranked support, we don’t even know if they would’ve bothered to send any help. That’s why we were quite surprised when an A ranked showed up…” Vindal said as he tilted his head at me.

Well, it’s true. Their request was ignored for quite a while until Sven found it.

With their reasoning, it would be justifiable to make it B ranked instead of A.

“I understand. I apologize for the questions. Please continue.”

“We appreciate your understanding. As we were saying, we intend on taking down Agora. Since we now have the aid of another A ranker (referring to me), we will no longer need as much of our manpower and we can finally pursue Agora.”

“I see. I’m assuming I’m going to be aiding the three A rankers against Agora. Will you fight as well Elder Vindal?”

Elder Vindal shook his head in response.

“I’m too old for this unfortunately. It’ll have to just be you younglings. I’m going to stay and defend the village if things go awry.”

I nodded.

“Alright. But if we’re going to fight together, we need to know how strong the humans are.” The catgirl, Mika, said as she cracked her knuckles and grinned.

It seemed like they wanted a spar to test our strength.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I won’t refuse a spar if someone offers it. I enjoy having friendly matches with strong people.

When I was younger, I used to wonder why strong people tend to enjoy fighting and combat, but now I understand.

People who are good at something, tend to enjoy it more.

Like when I was a kid, I noticed that the athletic kid like to play sports because they were good at it, but weaker kids didn’t like sports since they were bad.

Same applies to fighting.

When you’re strong, you can truly enjoy the full thrill of battle.

Especially now since I have dragon blood in me.

Since it was decided, we changed locations to an arena nearby.

“This is just a spar so don’t take it too seriously. We must confront Agora later so we need to be at our best condition. Show off all your abilities so everyone can get familiarized with what kind of fighting style you wield but don’t be too excessive.” Elder Vindal instructed.

Since the purpose to do this was to demonstrate what we can do, Sven who isn’t a warrior, didn’t have to fight.

He’s a supportive illusion magic user, so he’d be useful in a battle even if he didn’t fight.

I, on the other hand, needed to prove my worth in the sparring match.

I stepped up onto the arena, as did Mika. She seemed the most eager to fight me while the other beastkin were just watching.

She raised her cat paws revealing sharp claws.

I activated my dragon claws and summoned a few missiles around me.

Elder Vindal counted down to zero and blew a whistle.

I intended on taking this spar slowly, but Mika instantly lunged at me like an angry cat.

She was quick, but I’ve dealt with speed before and I easily moved out of the way.

Mika instantly turned around and threw a kick at me which I blocked.

As she pulled away, she noticed the web essence that was sticking to her leg.

It’s become a bit of a habit to cover my body in web essence when I fight so that attackers will get covered in my sticky substances.

She naively grabbed at my web essence, trying to rip it off only for it to get tangled in her hands as well.

Tsk tsk.

Rookie mistake.

It’s common knowledge to stay calm and access the situation instead of frantically grabbing at an unknown magic stuck to your body.

My web essence is not something that can be pulled off with physically, it’d require strong magic to remove it, which Mika didn’t realize.

She’s an A ranker, but she was quite inexperienced. Even I, who recently became an A ranker, had better battle senses then her. She must’ve been quite sheltered and been in very few actual fights.

I even heard a disappointing sigh from the one of the other beastkins.

While she was busy, I threw a couple dragon missiles at her.

She noticed them instantly and actually evaded them all.

She got down low on all fours like a cornered cat and bolted around the arena.

She jumped from the ground onto the wall, onto the ceiling, and all over the place.

Despite her small frame, the force from her legs were able to cause cracks and dented the area where she jumped from.

Not only that, but each of her attacks cut apart the ground like it was paper. She was indeed quite powerful. She just wasn’t able to land any hits.

Using my web essence, I was able to pinpoint her location at all times.

Mika bounced off of a wall and flew towards me like a dart, but I yanked on my web essence, resulting in her being jerked off to the side and smashing into the ground instead of me.

She immediately got up and started bouncing around again, not giving up.

This was supposed to be a spar and yet she seemed to be quite serious (reminds me of my spar with Briggs).

I don’t think she’s going all out, but she definitely was fighting with the intent of defeating me.

To be fair, all A ranked spars are like this since A rankers are much stronger compared to lower ranks and fights must be fought with intentions to win.

She continued attacking me to no avail.

I applaud her determination, however, we didn’t all day.

With the intent to end this spar, I slanted my shoulder backwards and raising my opened palm slightly upwards, planted my feet steady into the ground and gathered my magic into my arm.

As Mika once again flew at me, I swung my arm forward.

My open palm flew through the air like a whip and finally, it made contact with Mika’s face.

KA-SNAPP!!

I had landed a devastating slap straight to her face.

And the slap hit harder then I expected since it unleashed the sharpest and most crisp slap sound I have ever heard as she was sent flying away.