The first mask to go up on stage was a male wielding a big and flashy hero longsword. With long golden hair flowing out from behind the mask like a lion's mane, his entire persona just screamed 'hero with the holy sword'.
"This guy is called 'Zero'. Nobody knows which group he came from, which is surprising considering how flashy he looks."
I gave the fellow a look-over once again.
Just from looking at his aura which was full of flashiness and zero substance I knew that we would never get along.
"He has also managed to amass a lot of followers from among the non-masks. I tried chatting with him yesterday, but that guy just felt way too fake to me."
That settles it. I could immediately tell what type of person he was.
An inferior version of me.
If I was as inexperienced, I might have tried the same thing yesterday.
Use my wit and charm to win over a posse of non-masked followers.
An alliance based on them following me and being hired goons for me to use.
Fortunately, I am better than that.
Having incompetent followers only slows you down.
These people only serve as cannon fodder.
Had he not understood what was going on behind the scenes?
While there might be 100 members within our class, the only real students were the ones wearing masks.
Everyone else was just there to serve as fodder for us masks.
This would be evident once we go to our first mission world.
Our identity as masks was kept private while we all know what these people looked like.
Weren't they just bonus hero points waiting to be harvested in the mission world?
Most of them weren't going to make it out alive.
That was the reason the instructor was especially disappointed when the number of masks wasn't as much as that of other classes in our branch.
Number one probably has 33 masks. 34, if they also have someone extra.
Of course, there might be exceptional cases in which a non-mask counter kills one of the masks.
But that just means that the mask was incompetent.
I mentally scratched 'Zero' out as a possible threat but didn't forget to add the words 'annoying' and 'avoid contact at all costs' next to it.
I shifted my attention back to the display and noticed him defeating the dummy using well-practiced and honed swordsmanship.
I turned to Flame. "He seems experienced."
"Meh, It's nothing to be worried about. His cronies will be the real pain in the ass."
After Zero, the next to go up on stage was a buff and tanned female with spiked gauntlets and twin axes. Her hair seemed to be tied up in a bun, with a few lingering strands decorating the sides of her bronze face hidden under the mask. She seemed to be one of those female wrestling athletes.
Flame leaned forward as he took in a sharp breath. "Now this one's trouble."
"Really now? Is she different from what she looks like?"
''No, she is exactly what she looks like. That's why she's trouble."
"What do you mean?"
"For starters, she is a lone wolf who refuses to talk to anybody."
I quickly sneaked a glance at Raven sitting behind me before turning back to Flame.
"I only managed to find out her nickname via the system. She calls herself Asura."
"So… you are just mad that someone has a better nickname than AbyssalFlameMaster?"
Flame immediately flared up.
"IT'S ABYSSAL-FLAME-LORD! I am not a master; I am a LORD! And I am not mad."
"..."
"Just wait for the demonstration."
Sure...
He may or may not be the AbyssalFlameLord, but he was surely an EdgeLord.
Is it just me, or was his delusional syndrome getting worse?
Isn't this going a bit too far for a fake persona?
Don't tell me he was this insufferable in reality too.
I turned to look at Miss Asura's combat drill on stage.
Just what could be so special about her?
I didn't expect anything great.
I was wrong.
All I could catch was an afterimage of her speeding towards the bot before stabbing both of her axes into its body, sparks flying.
She then let go of the axes and began to pummel the rest of the bot with her gauntlets into smithereens.
"While I didn't manage to contact her, I did have a chat with those who were in the same test as her."
I gulped silently.
"What did they say?"
"They were too traumatized to say anything coherently."
"Reasonable.."
"What I did manage to gather is that she is being extremely gentle to the drill bot right now."
Looking at the bot which had been broken into thousands of little pieces that she still hadn't stopped pummelling, a shiver involuntarily ran down my spine.
"I see… this is her being gentle."
Flame just nodded solemnly before falling silent again.
It was not just us who were paying attention to her.
The entire classroom seemed to fall into stunned silence.
She finally came to a stop and picked up her axes, raising them above her head while giving out a war cry.
"AAAAAAAAAAARGHHHH!"
Despite her long hair that had been released from the bun covering her face, the rage filled within her eyes couldn't be concealed at all.
Bits and pieces of what used to be the combat bot were littered all around her, sparks flashing every now and then.
It was like an asura had indeed descended upon Earth or had crawled its way out of hell.
Did she really come from the same planet as the rest of us?
I was sure that I wasn't the only one asking that question.
It took the instructor's comments on her lack of proper form and waste of energy to snap everyone out of it.
Yes, it was indeed a waste of energy to destroy the already defeated bot into smithereens.
What she had achieved, however, was carving her existence into all of our hearts.
If we were to ever meet on the battlefield, there would be a moment of hesitation that would come up after remembering her brutality.
This moment could might as well be the difference between life and death.
It wasn't because her actions had managed to cast a shadow on my heart that I was shocked by this development.
No, what shocked me were the implications behind this.
What she displayed was raw, primal aggression and bloodlust.
Something like this could only be built up through war and constant life-and-death battles.
But there were no wars fought using cold weapons on modern-day earth at all!
At least nothing large enough in scale to produce a monster like her.
So did that mean she wasn't from Earth after all?
There was a 100th extra person in the class anyway.
That could be her.
But what if she really was from Earth?
Where on Earth did she come from?
It wasn't because I had absolutely no clue that I was feeling so shocked.
It was precisely because I had an idea of where she might have come from that I felt so unsettled.
There had been rumours but... If she came from that place, then...
I took a deep breath and pushed away that thought.
I wasn't on earth anymore
It was no longer my problem.
There was nothing that I could do from here anyway.
.
.
.
The rest of the drill after that was quite lacklustre.
While there were some interesting characters nothing could match the sheer shock Asura had managed to create
There were some unique characters worth mentioning though.
There was, Slenderman who solely used his body and a combination of various martial arts. He moved like a spider, sticking to the bot and dodging all the attacks while slowly wearing it down.
There was Fox, who Flame described as a sultry seductress with many men wrapped around her finger despite her heroic and steadfast look that didn't seem interested in seducing others at all.
Finally, there was Asmodeus. While he was using a unique weapon set of two urumis (whip swords), the real point of interest however, was that according to Flame, he had teamed up with the candidates he was in the test with, somehow managing to win them over with his charisma.
As for the masks in my group Raven, Flame and Mad Wolf had managed to defeat the bot in just a few moves, no one came even close to the one-sided beatdown that Asura had displayed.
As for me?
It was nothing special.
I took my time fighting against the bot.
I strictly stuck to using the longsword.
I fought back and forth for a while before finally defeating the bot with a stab to its throat.
Showing off my dagger and pistol would just be a dead giveaway of my identity to Jake and Mary.
Moreover, the point of the exercise was to build up combat experience.
There was nothing to gain for me by showing off some amazing flashy skills.
Not that I had any such skills in the first place.
My real fighting style didn't require any 'fighting' at all.
I would rather lull my target into a false sense of security before slowly thrusting my dagger into their chest, watching as the blood seeped out and the light went out of their eyes.
After the combat practice, were more theory lessons before we were finally freed for the rest of the day.
Not that there was much left of it.
There was barely time to get dinner before sleeping if one planned on getting a full night's sleep before tomorrow's schedule.
Dinnertime was silent as everyone ate their meals quickly before heading back to bed.
Everyone was way too exhausted to try anything else.
I sighed to myself as I lay down in bed.
While I had the psychological advantage and a lot of experience in scheming and crawling my way up from the bottom compared to the others in the class, I had to admit my lack of ability in direct combat as compared to the rest of the masks.
While it might not have mattered to clear the test, things will only get harder the longer I stayed in the academy.
Having any obvious disadvantages in this place was like walking around with a giant target on my back.
I know I would attack myself using a direct head-on fight without giving myself a chance to use any of my schemes if I was someone else.
There was no need to let anyone have that opportunity.
I would make the most out of the following three months to catch up with the rest.
The instructor had said that basic training would last for a month before we could go on to our specialized class training sessions.
The Hero points store would also be closed to us until just before entering the first mission world.
There also wouldn't be any minor ranking events and competitions until after completing the first mission world three months later.
For the time being, all I could do was train to the best of my abilities and absorb all the information taught to us like a sponge.
The last time I had lived in such a busy yet simple manner was my parents were still alive.
There was no scheming, no blackmailing, and no constant pressure to take back the company and take revenge.
It was just burying myself in hours of extra lessons, advanced classes, piano and violin practice, and from time to time going on a vacation with mom and dad.
I sighed to myself once again.
It was going to be a long month.