Rielen felt the rush of battle fill up her spirit. A fist came flying at her. She teleported away, annoyed that the vanguard had let someone through. They were learning combat techniques and how to work with units. This meant they got to form teams with military members, and learn to apply the tactics they had been learning in class.
Unfortunately, she had been teamed up with completely new recruits, who had obviously not paid any attention to the instructions of the General when he explained the purpose of the exercise. She blasted the front line with a fire spell. Shifting to the defensive, she managed to block another direct attack.
'What were they even doing up there?' Using a maneuver back from at the Academy, she managed to kick the legs from under the recruit. He fell to the ground and fell prey to her air spell, Air Blade. "Recruit James disqualified." He was teleported outside the ring.
Getting tired of the endless attacks, she cast a short range ground quake to break up the ground underneath the enemies' feet. The vanguard somehow managed to get their act together as they took out the remaining forces.
What remained of her team raised their hand in victory, as if she didn't singlehandedly win the match for them. She frowned. Leaving the barrier that served as the boundary of the match, she sat down in the stands surrounding the ring. 'How was this even training?'
All of the recruits had apparently been enrolled in a Military Academy somewhere else in the Capital. They consisted of mostly Nobles who did not have mana, but still wanted to serve the country. The Nobles would send their sons to live there, hoping that they would earn achievements worthy of their Noble name.
Rielen couldn't care less. They wasted their time and money if this is all they amounted to after four years of training. All of the good resources must be invested in the Mage Academy. Still, how could they hope to fight against our enemies if they are this useless?
Whispers of war had been finding their ways into the Palace, as pressure from our northern neighbor had been felt at the border. As much as she hated to admit it, a war would interrupt her life. Not just counting her abilities as a healer, she had many combat abilities that would make her very useful as a shock troop.
The Kingdom would have no choice but to use the Elite Academy students if the troops were as unreliable as this. She watched Eon enter onto the battlefield with a platoon of recruits. It was obvious that none of them had trained with the idea of a mage being in their formation. Other than the specialized classes, like archers, there was practically no formation at all to their tactics.
Normally, mages would be in the back row, but Eon's magic was Reinforcement Magic, meaning he could by and large just plow through the recruits as if they were training dummies on the practice field. It was over quickly. She didn't even think that they learned anything from the fight.
The General looked annoyed. 'Yeah, he is not happy with their training,' Rielen thought, just as he began to yell at the recruits. "Have you been sitting on your thumbs the last four years?!" Phrases like this had been shouted countless times as the exercises went on. The recruits looked frustrated. It wasn't fair, really.
Mages required physical training to increase their mana capacity. Who are you going to invest in? Powerful beings who can take out full units, or the powerless who must struggle to achieve? The answer was simple. You would invest in powerful beings. She could see how the King would think that way.
She had been reading heavily into Military Tactics in the library lately. Not training these recruits correctly made their military weaker, in her opinion. If you are going to train something, you should at least make it worth the time. Not that she felt bad for the recruits.
Several mages had been sent out to the battlefield as soon as they stopped showing significant progress. That is simply how they chose to run the Kingdom. In fact, several of the Elite Academy students had only made it that far due to help from their own families. If Rielen and Eon didn't have significant abilities, they would not have made it this far.
'That is why I am going to beat them all in the end.' Rielen had never stopped increasing her mana, and learning as much as possible to become strong. She knew what her fate would be the moment she stopped improving. She wouldn't let that happen. She couldn't let that happen. She wasn't some animal to breed and birth children.
The General called up each of the candidates one by one. He separated them into units and ordered them to "train" the recruits. Of course, he purposely left out one. Rielen was annoyed. The only one to be left out. 'Seriously? Not even the teachers respect me.'
Eon gritted his teeth at this blatant action to not include Rielen. Admittedly, at first he had thought that these "dumb recruits" wouldn't listen to her anyway. He watched as she walked away, having been dismissed by the General.