"What?"
"I came down from the mountain..."
After saying that, I felt pain coming from my neck.
"Don't joke around!"
The black haired girl warned me.
"Hey, I'm telling the truth!"
The blonde girl just squinted her eyes at my statement.
I then make up a story of us three being raised by a hidden master in a mountain, and released into the world to experience life.
The blonde girl seemed doubtful at first, but when I convince her with the fact that I already know body strengthening, she started to believe me.
"Then how is your spearmanship so bad at first?"
"That's because I used to learn swordsmanship instead"
"I see..."
She then nodded her head.
"Okay, then I'll believe you for now..."
"Princess!"
"It's okay Cecil, he's too weak to cause trouble anyway..."
'Hey, that sentence kinds hurts you know?'
Keeping my thought to myself, the princess then offered me a handshake.
"Let me introduce myself again, my name is Reyna de Gracias, the first princess of the Empire. I'm on my third year here"
I accepted her handshake and introduce myself once again.
"My name's Alex Stone. Nice to meet you as well"
"Okay, and the girl behind you is Cecilia. She's my caretaker... you can't let go of him already..."
I just realised that I still have a sword around my neck after she said that.
"But princess! he could be making it up!"
"I told you he's too weak anyway"
'Ughh!'
"Okay..."
She then put her sword away, and I massaged my neck.
"Ouch, it's bleeding a little you know?"
"Hmpff!"
Cecilia then pouted before princess Reyna handed me a handkerchief, which I declined.
"Here, use this..."
"Ah don't worry about it... I'm going back to the dorm to wash up after this anyway..."
"Okay then"
After that, we dispersed and I went back to the dorm.
I washed up straight away and waited for Adrian and Kim Jaesuk to come back while checking my status.
'It doesn't change after all...'
I thought that getting beat up and sparring will increase my status, but now I'm not sure anymore.
As I was trying to figure it out, the door opened and Adrian came in carrying Kim Jaesuk who seems to be out of energy.
"What the... what happened?"
"We were training with the headmistress' summon..."
"And?"
"We got beaten up"
"Pfft..."
Hearing that, I laughed a little before continue asking.
"It doesn't look like he got beaten up though?"
"Bro, you know what... the nurse Lilian was there and she kept on healing us after headmistress' summon beat us up. It went for a couple of hours and her healing spell doesn't heal fatigue"
"Oh that's why..."
He then put Kim Jaesuk down at the sofa and washed himself up before cooking the meals I've been waiting for.
I went to bed straight after.
The next day, we went to the staff building again with other students staring at us.
It seems to be weird that we've been going in and out of the staff's building.
Training for the whole day, we didn't do anything else and the day passed just like that.
Monday arrived, and it's time for class.
Three of us have separate schedule today, so I went to the class first.
Because there's one thing that I haven't done in the past week I've been here.
'I haven't had a single friend from the academy!'
I've never tried to talk with others before, so today I'm planning to get to know other people.
I arrived at the class first and took a seat near the window.
Time passed slowly, and the other three finally showed up.
'What the heck?'
But then I realised that they're all scared of me.
They keep stealing glances my way and turning over whenever I tried to make eye contact.
It continues until the teacher finally arrived.
"Morning boys, looks like we have a troublemaker here..."
"???"
"Anyway, we'll start class"
He then continued to talk about the history of spearmanship and other stuff that I haven't learnt before about the spear.
He also told us a story of a legendary spear that's made from the body of a fallen dragon, and how it hasn't showed up for so long.
The class went for hours that I got bored because the three of them only answered subtly when I tried to talk with them.
The teacher doesn't seem interested with students' relationship either, so I gave up trying to talk with these people.
After the class is over, I went to the academy cafeteria trying to talk to other people, but everyone seems to already be acquittances already which makes it seems very awkward if I just suddenly joined in their conversation.
Since I'm too shy because there's too many people, I gave up for the day and decided to continue my training as usual.
I went to the training field and somehow, there's a lot of people training unlike the past week.
Even Cecilia, princess Reyna's caretaker is currently training here, so I called her out.
"Hey, Cecil!"
"!!"
I got shocked upon seeing how surprised everyone is after I called out Cecilia's name.
She's also staring dagger at me, clearly upset.
"Hey, who's that?"
"Whoa, he called out Cecilia's name like that!"
"Find out who he is!"
I can also hear whisper around me while slowly walking toward Cecilia's direction.
"Why are you glaring at me like that?"
"Why do you think?"
"?"
I'm confused, but decided not to think about it.
"Wanna train together?"
"Huh? with you?"
"Yeah..."
She looked surprised and said in annoyance.
"No way, I can't go all out because you're too weak"
"Hey, that's mean!"
"It's the truth! I don't want princess getting mad at me for beating you up, and why are you talking to me like we're friend??"
"Hey, we're acquaintance right?"
"..."
As we're bickering, our surrounding still whispering and it's starting to get annoying.
"What are you all looking at!?"
Cecilia suddenly shouted at them, which makes them continue doing their activities.
What surprises me is that they all seems to be scared of her.
"Why are they so scared of you?"
I asked her in confusion.
"You don't need to know... now go away I need to train"
After saying that, she continued her training, but I can't let this chance pass by.
Training with someone stronger than you is always better for growth.
Therefore, I decided to continue bothering her until she finally agreed to train with me.
"Fine! but I won't hold back... at all!"
She said while gritting her teeth, clearly upset.
I then smiled brightly.
"Okay, deal!"
After that, we both get into position and other people who were training are now paying attention to us.
"Hey, he's gonna spar with Cecil.."
"He's asking for a beating hahaha"
"Doesn't he know how merciless Cecilia is??"
After hearing all of that, now I'm finally starting to feel it.
'They're afraid of her because she's strong...'
Just as how my classmates are afraid of me since I'm stronger than them.
"Come whenever you're ready"
She said while holding her sword.
I then picked up my spear as well before answering,
"Okay, here I come!"
I dashed forward while spinning my spear around and swung it towards her, which she avoid with ease.
After avoiding several blows, she finally started to attack me, which I avoided as well.
It keeps on going like that until she suddenly pushed me back when I tried to block her sword with my spear.
"Okay, that enough warm up... let's get serious"
After saying that, she finally used her body strengthening, prompting me to do the same.
"Come!"
Then we started to move faster.
"Hey, he's keeping up with Cecil!"
"Who is that guy?"
"He's one of the people who recently enrolled!"
"The one with dual S-ranked aptitudes??"
"No no... that one uses sword while this guy is using spear..."
While exchanging blows, I can still hear my surrounding saying that I'm keeping up with Cecilia, but that's not true.
It's taking me all it takes just to keep up with her speed, but she hasn't even broke a sweat.
It's different from when she was sparring with the princess.
'Even though she said she won't be holding back...'
Getting irritated because she's holding back against me, I decided to make her serious.
I step back to create some distance and gathered mana on my spear, preparing to launch an attack.
This is an attack I learned while practicing to control my mana at night.
'What if I gathered a dense amount of mana and throw it without dispersing it?'
At that, I reached this conclusion.
Using the shape of my spear, I gathered mana at the sharp edge of it.
Sensing my attack, Cecilia also squinted her eyes and shouted at me.
"Hey, that's dangerous!"
After saying that, she immediately poured mana into her sword.
The dense amount of mana which is way thicker than me surprised me.
'This much difference?!'
I then pushed my spear forward and released my attack.
Thrust Edge.
A solid wave of energy in the form of a spear fly toward Cecilia.
What comes next shocked me more.
She slashed her sword that's densely covered in mana upward.
And my attack got split into two and dispersed just like that.
"What the f..."
I got speechless at how easily she did that.
She walked towards me before hitting me in the head.
"What was that for?!"
"Ouch!!"
"That's a dangerous attack to use!"
"But you canceled it easily!"
"That's not the point..."
She then sighed, before explaining.
"Listen here, that attack of yours has a strong penetration capabilities, but it's easily canceled because all the power is gathered at the edge.
That makes it easy for your enemy to cancel it from the side, just like how I split it by slashing my sword upward"
"I- I see... then what would happen if you take it head on?"
"You wanna know?"
"..."
"It won't even pierce the mana covering my body"
After feeling delighted that she said it has strong penetration, it feels like I'm being thrown of a cliff now.
"Sigh, then it's still pointless..."
"Listen now, it's-"
After saying that, she then realised that there's a lot of spectator right now, which I just realised as well.
"Let's not talk here... come with me"
She then walked away.
I looked around and everyone has surprised expression plastered on their face, then I followed Cecilia.