My name is Jo Pearson, a simple well-handed student who follows and assist the student counsel president in her needs and ambitions…I gained this position because of my dream to someday follow a person of good quality, a person well deserved to be served upon. And for a time, I have seen such a quality in the president…a quality well deserved.
With her righteous attitude and honorable manner, I am quite lucky to stand by her side; for as the time passes, a day will come where her name will be heard across the kingdom and I will be there to stand by here side.
During my time here in the Royal academy, I've seen a few student who invoke the same quality as the president, people whose actions were very memorable to my eyes…but still, not a lot of them could ever compare to the president. Only a few were strong at times…people like Arthur Rhodenfield who the president seems to be quite fond of, but he doesn't impose a certain quality that she holds…a quality that brought me forward to her in the first place.
But then suddenly a person came into the office with a presence that seemed so calm at first became overwhelming the next. His nature was unpredictable, as by their simple conversation with one another, I couldn't help but think deep of what his intentions were.
He said he came here to join the counsel, to have a great future, but it sounded unbelievable from his words. His smile felt unnerving and his presence was something to watch out for. Still, I couldn't anything in this situation, not unless the president tells me so.
The next thing I knew after their conversation, the president wanted to test his abilities, to find his personality on the job, and she wanted to find it out through me…so stood with a calm expression and accepted my role to test him. And by the hours that came, it was finally time to see how much of a person this boy really was.
Right now, we were located in an arena used by the academy to display shows like tournaments and activities known in their tradition. And here, I could most of the student counsel members sitting in their seats, waiting for the fight to come. And the president was also there but with an unexpected guess. She was with Arthur Rhodenfield, the person I who thought of to be quite a strong person.
It was a curious thing to think why she pulled him here to watch the fight, but that wasn't the aspect that I should focus on. It didn't take long but finally Hamil came into the arena with a spear on hand.
I've read his profile…
It was written there that he was a D-rank registered hunter whose elements were both Dark and Earth, a combination that was quite rare to find in people these days. The weapon of his choice was a spear and a shield, so for him to carry only spear in this match would likely mean that he would go all out on the offense.
Even though he was registered to be a D-rank hunter, it's hard to believe it one bit. His presence alone was something to take note of, as it wasn't the presence of a simple D-rank person, it was more than that. So I could only assume that he was hiding his strength…a lot of students do that nowadays, it's really weird how many I can come across who hide their potential.
So with him and his spear on hand, I could only ever stand in front of him with my sword ready to take him down.
When I came to approach him in the center stage, he raised his spear at me, taunting me to attack first, but before we could move forward with the duel, the president had a few words to say before we could begin.
"Ahem, now that the contender is here, I would like to inform you Hamil that this won't be your typical duel. With how things work in the student counsel, we usually handle with a lot of bullying from high class nobles who pick on commoners and it usually becomes physically violent pretty fast for some students. So with that said, I want to test your ability to handle a fight by protecting a hand picked sample victim." as she said this, one student from the counsel members drops from the seats above and walk up to Hamil's side.
Hamil had to simply protect the 'sample victim' from getting hit by the 'bully' and doing so will give him the recognition needed to be able to join the counsel.
The one who choose to volunteer as a victim was a girl who was of noble birth. With her pink hair, soft blue eyes and slim body, she was known to be the secretary of the counsel, handling most of the paperwork, taking notes at the student council meetings and will type/write minutes for the student council. This person is also in charge of replaying information, taking attendance at meetings and maintaining student council files. With this kind of job placed on her, one would think that she was a pretty calm, aloof, reserved character but the moment she came to face Hamil, a glare of unbelievable hatred was meet.
"!?" Hamil could only react so shocked by this, that he simply took a step back from how threatened he was.
"...Oy, newbie!"
"...Yes?"
"Don't mess up, you hear me!?" she said as her rough yankee like voice came rushing down at him.
"Y-yes ma'am!" Hamil quickly reacted to her rash attitude bowed respectfully to her way.
Jo could only ever look reasonably admitted of how rough the secretary was in the counsel, as he could only pray that the secretary doesn't beat up Hamil in the end.
The secretary simply walked pass Hamil and stood behind him with her arms crossed. And with her in position to be the target for Jo, Hamil readied himself to defend her from the attacks that would come.
"As a student counsel member, you have the position to protect the student at all cost. Sometimes the dangers that are brought upon by the recklessness of bully tends to lead up to life threatening situations where if you were late for even one second in coming to help a fellow student, you won't be able to fix what would happen after the damage is done. So with that in mind, If my assistant is able to even 'hit' her just once, then that would indicate your failure Hamil." said the President as she looked to Hamil, telling him that sometimes in situations that are not of their control, it is a must to never let a chance step by where the student is pushed to a limit where their lives are at stake. As all it'll take for one kid to kick the bucket is a simple blade to the chest. so one chance equals one death is what they would say.
Having heard her explanation, Hamil simply nodded his way to her and looked back to Jo with an intent so focused that it somehow puts Jo in a weird spot.
So with the simple rules set, the duel was on way.
At first nothing happened between the two, they only stood in front waiting for the other person to first make a move. With Hamil on defense against Jo, he didn't really planned to take any action to attack. And Jo on the other hand seemed uneasy about his situation.
'...this guy, I was right all along. He was strong. He doesn't have a single blind spot at all. Every small movement I make to try to even attempt at an attack, In return, he's guard grows to perfectly block my intent…I don't have a chance in perfectly hitting him.' thought Jo as he sweat began to drip from his face.
".…" Hamil on the other hand was simply standing on guard against Jo and his movement.
With that said, five minutes had already passed and not one of them were able to make a move. Yet the tension in the room was growing. Everyone in the room knew of what was happening here, they know all to well of how capable Jo was and they were surprised to see that Hamil was also quite keen with his form and intent.
From the audience, Arthur Rhodenfield was a bit taken aback by how the two were at odds with one another. He couldn't help but praise Hamil to be such a foe for one of the student counsel members. He knew Jo to be a person of such strength that sometimes Jo could even Rival Arthur in a fight, so for Jo not to make a move at Hamil could only mean that the boy was this skilled.
It was unbelievable to think that someone from the first year was able to be this sensitive in the aspects of knowing one's intentions.
But the waiting didn't last long as thy could see that instead of Jo making the first move to attack, Hamil unexpectedly made his move instead.
By dashing at an impressive speed, Jo was instantly meet with the tip of a spear in less than a moment. The spear was moving to him with the intent to stab a non-vital organ, but Jo simply used his sword to the parry the spear to the side.
As he parried Hamil's thrust, he proceeded to attack back.
".…" Jo could feel the power behind that thrust…and for some reason Jo felt a bit disappointed when he came into touch with Hamil's strength. It felt less than he would have thought of it to be, but his speed on the other hand was something to commend on. It was comparable to that of a C-rank hunter but it was nowhere near as fast as what Jo could do. Thinking of what Hamil was showing in the first steps of the fight, Jo must have thought that Hamil was holding back.
As he attacked Hamil, he tried his best to push him back with his swordsmanship. While swinging his sword, Hamil tried his best to dodge and block the attacks with his spear. And during this, Jo was able to find one thing that Hamil was lacking in his arsenal.
He couldn't believe how simple Hamil was with his dodges and blocks, he didn't have an sense of footwork in them or even a technique to follow by. This was a problem for Hamil. Simple attacks won't ever do in during battles. If he doesn't have a sense of technique, it won't take long for even the weaker ranked kids to overpower Hamil, because most of the students in the academy all have a sense of swordsmanship that follows technique or even with spearmanship. Although, with Hamil's power and battle sense, he can still go through the first year without having much issue, the problem lies in the second year for the academy. This is when the students starts to learn their mastery for their technique.
Seeing as how Hamil doesn't have an ounce of technique in his attacks, Jo wanted to test out if Hamil could even handle one of Jo's attacks that have a sense of technique.
"..." so he stops on his continuous attacks and stared at Hamil with a sense of intent.
"?" Hamil was a bit curious as to why Jo stopped in his attacks, but the moment he lets his guard down, that was when Jo formed one of his sword techniques known by the student counsel.
Holding his sword in a peculiar way, he faced Hamil with the tip of his sword facing the at his back.
And then he jumped.
~Water Art Dispute - 1st form: Fallen Kraken~
By his form, a mana began to erupt from his body and it formed into an image of a falling strike of a tentacled water demon from the depths of the sea.
As it struck down at Hamil, Hamil was quite shocked by the form it took when it went his way, but Hamil didn't get flustered by this at all. He knew the attack was also reaching it's way to the secretary's direction, so having no choice but to defend himself. He quickly conjured his mana and tried to manipulate the ground from below and raising it up to be used as a shield. Using his mana, he reinforced the rocks that he was manipulating and forcing them to counter the falling strike of Jo.
"!!"
When the two strikes clashed with one another, it caused nothing but a dust explosion and a small quake in the sparring arena.
As the dust cleared, it was shown to the student counsel members that Hamil's rise of rocks was unable to defend against Jo's sword technique. But the battle didn't end there.
When all of the dust cleared off, Hamil still was dashing his way to Jo in an effort to take him down.
Using his magic, he conjured five balls of spherical rocks and it he made them circulate behind his back while he was running. He tried to find Jo from the debris around the arena, but to his dismay, he wasn't able to sense Jo inside the arena.
He looked to the secretary and found her only to be standing with her arms crossed. Knowing this, he thought that Jo hasn't decided to end the duel just yet.
Meanwhile, Jo was hiding from Hamil around some debris that was far from Hamil. Looking at the size of the rocks Hamil was able to conjure at the last minute, Jo was surprised by this. The control and speed towards manipulating these rocks was beyond anything that a normal student could do in the school. And the despite it being just simple rocks, Jo was amazed to find them to be more durable than ordinary. If it was any normal stone in the road, Jo could have obliterated it into dust using his 1st form, but that wasn't the case with these rocks that Hamil used. He was amazed to see Hamil give out such potential in using the earth element.
So with that mind, he had to be careful of Hamil, as Hamil fully controls the terrain of the arena itself.
Meanwhile on the audience's side, Ethea couldn't help but look to the fight with a smile on her face. To see Hamil take on the first form of Jo's attack and still be alive to fight him, she had already knew that Hamil was a good addition to the counsel. When she looked to how the other members reacted of this, she could see some of them be amazed and some still not content with it. She could also see Arthur stand with his gaze that were fully focused on Hamil.
It seemed as though Arthur was looking at another potential genius. A person capable of going against a student counsel was an amazing thing to be proud of, and seeing as how Hamil was just a first year, Arthur couldn't help but admire how strong this boy was going to be in the future.
Going back to the fight, Hamil couldn't help but stand and wait for Jo to come out, but it has already been three minutes since Jo showed himself, so he didn't want him to take this chance to plan an attack. So with that, he controlled the debris of rocks in the area and tried gathered them into one spot. One by one, the rocks were starting to gather at the other end of the arena, and before they could completely gather into one spot, Hamil was able to find Jo hiding in one of the rocks. Seeing him there, Hamil used his ability to bend the rock that Jo was hiding in to his direction. But before the rock could reach Hamil, Jo jumped off of the rock and pulled out his sword yet again. This time, he brought another form of sword technique
~Water Art Dispute - 2nd form: Crashing Water Drop~
With his falling stance and stiff form, he began to manipulate his mana into the image of an falling water drop that was coming to Hamil's way. This time the attack had less killing intent than usual as it comprises of both defense of offense. So as Jo continues to fall, he is constantly protected by the shell of the water and if it falls, it well ultimately come with a hue array of strikes moving in almost each and every direction. Almost like how a water drop splashes in every direction . Hamil tried to fire the spherical rocks at Jo but each one would simply pass by the outer shell of the water before it could hit Jo. Hamil knew that simply blocking the attack wouldn't help with just a reinforced clump of rocks.
So he had to approach it differently.
Despite the attack coming his way, Hamil had to try to fight back the attack with his own attack.
~Impossible Accuracy~
Calculating how the attack was coming his way, he needed to find a small blind spot that the technique wasn't able to cover with its form. But looking at it's shell, it seemed as though it was impossible to find a weak spot.
Still he had to try.
Locking down at the center of Jo's form with his impossible accuracy, Hamil quickly enveloped his whole body with the Shadow skin skill all up from his head to his toe.
From how he looked like from the student counsel members, it seemed as though he became a shadow-like monster that was wearing the school uniform, so they were pretty shocked by this.
And they were even more shocked to see that Hamil decided to go up against Jo's second form instead of running away.
"!!" Ethea was surprised by Hamil's decision and thought that maybe it was a last attempt. If the water drop does crash down at Hamil, not only will dozens of swords slashes will come out from this, it will leave Hamil with a few holes in the end. So it was pretty reckless to say the least and crazy to say the most.
As Hamil jumped to face the second form head on with his spear, Jo on the other hand was having second thoughts with finishing his skill. He could see that Hamil was very desperate and thought that maybe this was enough to let him be part of the counsel but he also knew that if Hamil can't surpass this, it would mean that he was just not that strong.
'Look's like I was wrong to think that he was different from the rest…' Thought Jo as he continued on with his attack.
As their attacks collided with one another, the moment the spear tip touched the water shell, Jo's attack bursted into a variation of sword slashes from all directions…and Hamil's spear was caught by those slashes. Before it could even reach Jo, it was teared away by the slashes.
In that moment, Jo could see the spear break off like a shredded piece of paper and the attack was making its way to Hamil…there, he thought that this battle as over.
But before he could close his eyes in contempt of winning, something flashed right before his eyes.
Almost as if for a quick second, he saw something.
'A mark?'
Questioned by the appearance of a mark, he thought it was simply nothing.
But before he could finish that thought, a sharp pain was suddenly digging right down at his shoulder.
'!?' when he looked down, he could see a black spear appear out of nowhere and was piercing through his arm like butter.
Before he could know it, his arm was torn off and the spear was simply gone like a ghost. And while in midair, He was yet again caught off guard by a sudden grab to the throat.
"!!" He could see Hamil's arm stretch out and grabbing him tight at the neck.
*Boom!*
As they fell, Jo couldn't believe to what he just experienced.
When he came to look to the eyes of Hamil, he could see a whole different gaze than ever before from any man he had meet.
It was a gaze so desperate but so full of power.
It was like he was looking at an authority way beyond his own.
Hamil was filled with swords slashes from all over his body. Even though he used the shadow skin skill, it wasn't enough to stop the attack from Jo. He could be seen bleeding, as if it rained blood right down at him.
Still, his grip didn't let go and it was starting to go tighter and tighter, until finally Hamil decided to let Jo go.
"...Do you admit defeat?" asked Hamil in a rather cold tone.
"..." and all Jo could do was stare at him in disbelief.
'What happened to him?' he asked himself as he saw a man who was engulfed in a black shadow from neck to toe.
When he turned to look at the loss of his arm, he could only look back at Hamil and say…
"...I admit."
And there, the battle ended and Hamil gained a win against a member of the student counsel.