Hours later, when the sun hadn't even started to show its rays, a loud bang echoed in the dormitory's hallway.
Akihiko knew what it was since he could feel the familiar presence outside, so he finished drying his hair, put his mask and hood on, and opened the door.
Standing outside leaning against the wall was Evelyn, dressed in casual clothes that accentuated her curvaceous figure, and casually elbowing the wall, producing loud bangs that echoed through the whole corridor.
Seeing him awake, Evelyn took her eyes off her phone and smiled at him – "Good morning." – Her words were slightly sarcastic considering the situation but Akihiko answered with a nod before leaning on the wall beside his room's door.
A few seconds passed before the other doors opened and the rest of the group exited their rooms.
The group was composed of 10 individuals counting Akihiko.
3 men and 7 women, with the women in particular being unnaturally beautiful.
Most of the group was dressed neatly and had proper looks despite being so early in the morning, however, it was still possible to spot some dark circles under their eyes, a sign that yesterday's exhaustion hadn't faded away with a single night of sleep.
"You all look great." – Evelyn's comment earned some eyebrows twitches – "Alright, onto what matters, today you're going to have a spar and some other basic training from me and the other instructors to assess your ability and how we should approach your training routine. Now, let's go." – Without waiting for their answer, she started to walk away.
The group didn't idle around this time and swiftly followed suit.
After 10 minutes of walking through the underground base, they arrived at a huge metal door.
Evelyn's eyes lit up before dimming down to their normal brightness and the door opened.
When they entered the room, the group was stunned by the sight before them.
They were in what looked to be a kilometric grass plain with no end in sight. The sun was warm but not too hot and there was even a breeze too. They could even feel the grass as if it was real.
The ecosystem simulation was far higher than what they were used to.
"As you might have guessed, this is a costly high-level magitech and is only available in the bases on the frontlines." – Her words brought everyone's surprise down and a slight feeling of tension settled in. They were reminded once again they were now on the vanguard of a desperate fight – "For today's spar, we decided to take it easier and go with a grass plain, but in the future you will also train in other environments." – Evelyn noticed the tension but didn't comment on it, they would learn how to deal with that eventually.
A man with black hair and yellow eyes raised his hand.
"Yes, examinee Darlan?" – Evelyn could already guess what he was going to ask.
"Ms. Evelyn, how long do we have until we're deployed?" – His question was pretty much everyone's as well as the most common one.
"You'll be in the examination for around 6 months. After this, if you're seen as apt, you'll be assigned to a cleanse team and work on the field, however, if you aren't considered fit, or in other words, reproved, you can work as a regular staff here and take the exam again next year." – The explanation was short, concise, and without flowery words, breaking whatever little fantasy the examinees might have had – "Any other questions?"
No one raised their hand.
"Alright, we'll now do a spar. You 10 against me. There's no time limit and you win if you manage to break this mana construct." – A pale blue crystal appeared behind her, floating less than a meter from the ground.
Looking at each other, the group eventually scattered and got into positions while drawing their weapons and readying their magics.
"At least you aren't slow to uptake things." – Evelyn commented while the ground around her rose and deformed into 20 humanoid figures – "I will be mostly acting on defense, so take your time." – The golems took a standard combat instance and lunged at the group.
"Focus on the legs!" – A dwarf woman shouted and shot earth spikes at one golem's legs.
The others soon followed her instructions and aimed at the legs. Magic, arrows, bullets, and slashes flew at the golems, who were hit without any difficulty.
Meanwhile, Evelyn was observing the situation and taking notes of their moves and decisions.
'I can't see him.' – She scanned the battlefield with her vision but couldn't spot Akihiko. She thought about using her scan magic but decided not to, it was just a spar to see what they were able to do.
As the group finished destroying the golems, they turned to look at Evelyn just to see even more golems being made but this time, with simple weapons like swords and spears.
"Gather together!" – The same dwarf shouted again and they regrouped.
Evelyn noted that despite their awkwardness in coordinating themselves due to this being their first teamwork, they were doing well under the dwarf's leadership.
'Good leadership skills and battlefield awareness. Her fight skills are lacking but she is responding well in the current situation.' – Evelyn took out her phone and wrote down some points to consider when making up her training regime.
*Clang*
Glancing in the direction of the noise, she saw two metallic shurikens on the ground, deflected by the barrier around the crystal.
'On the other hand…' – She then turned her gaze back to the group and saw a golem about to attack Darlan suddenly fall, as if tripping over something – 'He's good.' – Going undetected by her and playing both offensive and defensive, so far Akihiko has shown an amazing level of skills in both fight and battle awareness. The only thing she could find fault at was that he wasn't being as cooperative as he should, but she chalked it up to this being the first time that this group was working as a team.
'I see…' – Meanwhile, Akihiko slashed a golem's leg with his tanto and made it lose balance, allowing the magic from an elven woman to hit it – 'We aren't supposed to destroy the crystal.' – From what he noticed in such little time, the chances of the group breaking the barrier were low but when added with Evelyn defending it, it was borderline impossible for them.
This meant that they probably needed to hang on for as long as they could or until the instructor decided that it was enough. The goal of destroying the crystal was just an illusion.
'Change of plans.' – Akihiko changed his tactic and started to help more by supporting his team and occasionally throwing some shurikens at Evelyn or the crystal.
The shurikens thrown at Evelyn didn't even touch her before they were crushed to dust by the barrier enveloping her body.
'Seems he noticed.' – She observed more golems falling, stumbling, or directly being destroyed out of nowhere, and the occasional shurikens being thrown at her in irregular intervals.
She wrote some points on her phone and continued to raise more golems as the group defeated the previous ones.
Wave after wave, the golems were still the same in number but they were getting better weapons, becoming more organized and methodic, and they even started to use basic earth magic.
The group wasn't in their best state since they were still tired from the day before, and it took five minutes after the beginning of the battle for them to start being pressured.
They initially were able to get less than 10 meters away from the crystal while dealing with the golems, but now they were more than twice as far away.
"Don't take the attack head-on! Barrier!" – The dwarf yelled while slashing a golem with her giant axe.
The few mages in the group created shields and stacked them on top of each other.
Right on time, a rain of sharp stones hit the barriers and pushed the mages back, making the whole group unable to hold their position unless they wanted to get hit by the rain of rocks.
'I guess this is what we're able to do, for now.' – Akihiko decapitated five golems in a slash before moving away from his previous spot, avoiding an earth spike that suddenly spurted from the ground.
"Alright, that's enough of fighting against dummies." – Evelyn's voice made the golems crumble into dust and the crystal behind her faded away.
The training was short and there wasn't much to it when looking from an objective perspective but that was enough for Evelyn to understand what she needed to work on them for the time being.
Seeing that the training was over, the group took down the barriers and lowered their weapons, their faces were drenched with sweat, and they were having some difficulty to breath.
Observing the group's state, Evelyn smiled slightly – 'You're still green…' – She raised one hand.
*Tremble*
An earth spike shot up from the ground below the group at an incredible speed toward the dwarf woman who was acting as the leader.
*Clang*
Despite the surprise factor and the speed, however, the spike was swiftly intercepted and destroyed.
"I guess not all of you." – Evelyn commented while lowering her hand and looking at Akihiko who was beside the dwarf and sheathing one of his ninja-to – "You all are surprisingly good at teamwork, even though there were several mistakes, all things considered, I think you all did a good job for your first time." – She evaluated while the group was still processing what had just happened.
The dwarf turned her gaze to Akihiko beside her and silently stared at him, surprised and perplexed at what just happened.
The latter, however, ignored her gaze and remained facing Evelyn's direction.
"Ok, I think this is good enough for the first session." – Her words brought an ominous feeling to the group, which was quickly confirmed by her next words – "You all have 30 minutes to have your breakfast before we start with the lessons." – She flashed them a mischievous smile – "And after that we have another sparring session, followed by another pause, lessons, spar, self-study, and finally, your free time that consists of 2 hours before going to bed."
Any student from the Academy knew that when they were sent to Pandora, their world, they would have it rough as the races were desperately struggling to get their planet back, however, hearing Evelyn's words, they were stunned by the training regime of this place.
They were still examinees and not fully-fledged combatants, they technically had it easier, and this is what scared most of them. This was the "easy".
Akihiko nodded at her words, already used to such extreme training. The others, however, weren't used to it and were still dumbfounded.
Clapping her hands to get their attention, Evelyn smiled as the surroundings started to change – "Now, what are you waiting for?" – The surroundings shifted from an open glass plain to a luxurious canteen – "Go ahead and eat, we're going to start our lessons soon." – The smile on her face looked more and more malicious to the students, and this was just their first day.
Going ahead, Akihiko took a tray and a plate before starting to pick his food. The place surprisingly had pretty much anything one could imagine, even food that was only found in traditional festivals.
Akihiko picked a rather small amount of food and took a seat on one of the tables.
As his mask opened in the mouth area, the others belatedly noticed him already eating and woke up from their daze before hastily going to grab their food.
After getting their food, they sat at the same table that Akihiko was and started to eat while having a casual conversation.
"Good work back there, everyone." – The dwarf woman said with a smile.
"We did pretty well, in my opinion. And that's thanks to…" – Darlan said but paused – "Wait, I don't think we introduced ourselves yet." – They got so caught up in the rhythm of things that they forgot something as basic as this.
The dwarf turned to Evelyn and saw her smiling at them – "It was a test…." – She muttered but soon shook her head – "I'm Lathz, knight class, and a striker." – She presented herself while fixing her medium brown hair and looking at the others with her amethyst eyes.
"Darlan, also knight class, and a striker." – Darlan spoke next with an enthusiastic tone, one clearly different from his reserved one from earlier.
"Eric, mage and striker." – A human man with brown hair and eyes followed.
"Olivia, brawler and vanguard, a pleasure." – A wolf-kin woman with golden hair and blue eyes almost yelled as her tail wagged behind her. She looked the overly hyped type.
"Melissa, mage and striker." – The elf woman with platinum hair and blue eyes introduced herself with a reserved tone.
Then, a brief moment of silence befell the table as they waited for the next one.
After a few seconds, a blue-haired, blue-skinned woman spoke in a shy voice – "Be-Beatrix, mage and a-an all-rounder…" – Her voice died at the end but everyone was close enough to hear.
"An all-rounder mage? That's incredible." – Lathz exclaimed with widened eyes and the others also shared her surprise.
"…" – Beatrix turned her gaze away and avoided looking at them, too shy to face their intense stares.
Seeing her like this, a woman with black hair and black eyes stepped in – "I'm Roxanne, a marksman and also a striker." – The few black feathers visible on her body gave away her race as a crow-kin.
A mature-looking woman went next – "Nyza, assassin and finisher." – The purple-haired woman did a short bow, making her bountiful chest drop and showing more of the dark purple tentacles on her back.
Following suit, the last woman of the group, a half-elf with green hair and eyes chimed in – "Diana, archer and striker."
Then, everyone's eyes turned to Akihiko.
They were curious about him since he was still wearing his mask and hadn't spoken a single word until now.
Noticing the stares on him, Akihiko put his cutlery down and did some hand signals.
"Huh?" – The others were surprised by his actions, they didn't understand anything.
"What did he say?" – Darlan asked but the others were as clueless as him.
Surprisingly, it was Beatrix the one who spoke up – "H-Hum…" – Her whisper got the others' attention as they turned to look at her – "H-He said… Akihiko, shinobi, finisher." – She translated.
"A shinobi? That's rare." – Darlan was surprised by this but less than Beatrix's type.
After that, they eventually chatted about casual things over their food.
And when their 30 minutes were up, their training began again.
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A/N: Hello there, I hope you're having a wonderful day!
So, I wanted to ask what are your thoughts about this chapter. I know that it might be a bit rushed but I'm not the best with beginnings but I do reckon I'm still lacking.
This is why I wanted to ask what you all think about the POV shifts in particular. Were they smooth or did you find them too forced or abrupt?
Drop a comment and a review if you want and let me know your thoughts.
See ya, peace out~ 🍷😎