The first-years shuddered. That was insane. More than half of them cursed within them. What kind of broken-ass power was that?
"Don't worry too much about it. Only one of each have ever been discovered. And even if others should appear, it is none of your business right now."
The words Officer Grim said gave them bad feelings for different reasons. It simply meant they were too weak to do anything. Even though Officer Grim hadn't said it with his own mouth, it wasn't difficult to understand what he was indirectly saying. Didn't that mean that they were totally helpless in the case that someone of that category came to attack them?
Officer grim could read it from their expressions. His face turned serious as he slowly looked around him.
"Forget about someone in that category. Any regular human can kill each and any one of you if they had to."
It hit them the wrong way. Bronze was among those that frowned at the Officer's comment, completely forgetting they were not supposed to do that at a Superior. Especially if he was their instructor. Expressions like that, easily put their dinner at risk. But that was the least on their minds right now. They felt insulted and felt the need to show off their anger.
Officer Grim merely laughed and stroked his chin. He looked at them calmly.
"Why are you peeved? How about this. All of you attack me together. If you all, functioning as a group can take me down, I will apologize to you and teach you a special skill that none of you should be taught until earliest, the end of your second year." He said.
Bronze and his colleagues hesitated for a little while. Wood suddenly moved. As he rapidly closed the very short distance between him and Officer Grim, his clenched fists transformed into two claw hammers. Literally.
He attacked from behind the Officer, swinging the hammers from both sides of the Officer's head.
Officer Grim, just as the hammers were about to hit his head and Wood panicked from the fear of hitting his instructor, suddenly grabbed his attacker's hands and threw him over his shoulder.
Bang!
Wood's back hit the soft mat with a bang.
"Uhhhh!" He groaned.
Officer Grim placed a foot on Wood's chest and sighed.
"You were off to a good start. Why did you hesitate? Do you think your enemy will be nice to you because you hesitated? No, you will die so horribly and take your last breath filled with regrets and self-hate." He said to him. He then looked around.
"You are seriously not thinking of attacking me one after the other, are you? I said collectively. As a group. You can't possibly be thinking you can take me out individually, do you?" He asked.
Bronze was riled up. He roared;
"Let's go!"
And dashed towards the Officer.
Officer Grim looked at the fast approaching Bronze thoughtfully. Bronze swung his fist without reluctance. Grim chuckled and took a step forward.
That small step moved him away from Bronze's effective strike range. The physically enhanced student's fist whooshed past the officer's head.
The officer went ahead to poke bronze's throat. That was all he did. Bronze immediately choked on his barely-existent saliva. He went down on his knees as he grabbed his neck from the pain and coughed violently from the saliva choking.
Just then, Eyepatch attacked the Officer from behind. Officer Grim did not even have to look to determine where Eyepatch's head was. He spun around and gave him a headbutt in one swift move.
Eyepatch grabbed his head and staggered to the side. The others arrived at that moment, attacking their combat instructor in twos and threes.
Officer Grim made short work of them, barely having to move two steps and rarely using his hands. He kicked, tripped, head-butted, and at a point, laughingly grabbed Brady's long hair and swung him around with one hand.
As if he were a light piece of rag.
Brady screamed and begged for his life. He even began to cry.
It was at that point, they all realized that it seemed there was no hope and it would be pointless attacking their instructor with their non-existent skills. And so, they all did the smart thing and retreated.
That realization did not stop some people being
Wood looked at Officer Grim angrily. His fingers twitching. Bronze was still rubbing his neck and cleared his throat again and again. Brady was lying on the floor. He had fallen unconscious.
Bea was breathing heavily on the floor by Officer Grim's feet. Her eyes watered. She had never been this toyed with. Neither had she ever felt so humiliated. A simple sidestep and an extended foot. So, that is all that was needed by a non-speedster to take her down? And she even pulled two others down with her. One of them currently had a nosebleed from when she accidentally hit his face with her head.
He was now on a knee beside her, checking on his unconscious friend. That was the other person Bea had taken down. He was out cold.
The dude with the bleeding nose turned towards her.
"Hey! Are you awake? You alright?"
He checked her pulse and even though Bea did not respond, he gently raised her arm and pulled it over his shoulder.
"I am fine! Take care of your bleeding nose." Bea snapped at him and pulled her hand back. She rubbed her face and pushed her body off the mat with her hands, rose to her feet and walked back to the circle.
Gene, the guy with the bleeding nose, rubbed the blood off his nose as he watched Bea walk away.
"Alright! That is enough romance. Pick up your friend." Officer Grim said.
Gene bowed and carried his friend on his shoulder with a grunt. He walked with a steady gait and dropped him beside Silver, before sitting beside him on the other side.
Silver had not left that position that he was in since the beginning of class. He hadn't even laughed when the others were laughing and did not join them in trying to prove their Instructor Officer wrong when they felt offended. In his opinion, they were merely emotional fools. They were looking for an outlet to vent their pent up anger, chose the wrongest person to fight and now had more pent up baggage with still no outlet.
Fools.
Officer Grim looked around once again. The students were seated again. None with serious injuries, save for the unconscious ones. He shook his head.
"You are weak"! All of you. Very weak. If you think you have the advantage just because you are awakened, you are in for a rude awakening. Until you learn to use your abilities wisely, resourcefully efficiently and in the best circumstances, you are nothing in front of unawakened assassins, thugs, gangsters, terrorists, enemy soldiers, basically anyone with a little combat knowledge, intelligence and aptitude.
"There is a need to inform you that every power, no matter how invincible it seems, always has at least two weaknesses. One from the nature of the power itself. Like for example, fire and ice, light and shadows, lightning and earth, speed against strength. The second is the human itself. Most elementals inherently have weaker bodies. They get physically stronger much slower than regular powerless humans. Physically strong people tend to have higher endurance but slower movements and require a lot of training to be able to cover that deficit. Speedsters have lighter bodies to increase their speed but at the cost of body mass and weight that could have helped with their strength. That is why she is suffering so much." The knowledgeable Officer said, pointing at Bea.
"Elementals' personalities are very easily influenced by their elements. Fire elementals have shorter tempers like active volcanoes, ice elementals have colder personalities that make them very unfriendly. Water elementals, for some odd, unknown reason, are very emotional, gullible and easily swayed. Earth and Wood manipulators are friendly. Sometimes too friendly for their own good. Plant elementals tend to feel innately superior, Light elementals hate dark spaces and love to be the center of focus. They also find it hard to share that spotlight with someone else. They are basically narcissists. And it doesn't help that they all are very good-looking too. I mean very good-looking. As for the shadowers, well, they dislike bright places. Although it rarely hurts them, the shadows don't show in bright places. Dark or dimly lit places are the ideal places. And they usually dislike Light elementals. After all, they are almost direct opposites. Then, as for the ultra-rare ones, I'm talking about summoners, blood manipulators and power mirror, no one knows. The only summoner ever discovered died at the age of thirty. He simply dissipated into the air. Nothing was left of him to experiment on. As for the blood manipulator and power mirror, their powers disappeared slowly until they became mere humans and then, they also became ashes. The speculation is possessing such unfair level of power eats the possessor up from the inside.
"So, you see? Every power user has at least two weaknesses. Which means regular, unawakened humans can still murder you if you are not careful. And also, no matter how powerful you think you are, there is always someone hidden somewhere more powerful than you. So, don't you ever get cocky."
Officer Grim finished and calmly watched them for a few minutes as many of them digested his words and some of the more upset, angry or unnecessarily prideful ones struggled to accept their deficiencies.
"I hope you have come to terms with the reality of things as they concern each and every one of you. Remember that, you are only as powerful as you really are, not as how powerful you think you are. Your powers gifted to you have limitations and if you rely too much on them, they develop severe limitations. You have to constantly challenge yourselves. Be unafraid to fail, to lose your fight. You have to be able to accept defeats before Success accepts you. And as long as you are willing to admit to yourself that you are weak, the pathway to getting stronger will become clearer to you in way less time than if you remain stronghead. Or is it headstrong? Class dismissed. See you tomorrow. Take your robes with you. Make sure they are cleaned and dry and proper before each and every class."
The class of fifty-two students slowly walked out. They were dispirited. Their self-confidence, arrogance and egos had taken a big blow. It had been taken down a couple notches.
They slowly walked towards the cafeteria, uncaring for their wounds. They waited for the time when the cafeteria would reopen.
They stood outside the door; bloody, smelly and tattered like zombies.
The moment the cafeteria finally opened, an orderly chaos ensued. The speed at which the first-years ran towards the counter frightened everyone else. The receptionist had almost pushed the emergency button, afraid they were under an attack of some sort.
To say the least, she was very displeased when she realized there were two people she recognized and they were first years. The newbies of the Academy.
"These spoilt brats." She muttered in well-concealed anger. Outwardly, she smiled and took their orders as quickly as she could, which, as it turned out, was quite slow and very confusing to put down in the right order all because they spoke over one another.