Hawk went straight for the Wind Stones again, once nobody was paying attention, and grabbed another. But this time, it didn't integrate into his body in the same sudden rush. Instead, there was a steady flow of Wind Magic from the stone to the bird, and its body seemed to be adapting to the excess energy at a much slower rate.
"Does it only work that well once? That was a pretty high-level resource, compared to Hawk, so perhaps it damages the body when it is used in such an abrupt manner." Rita suggested, while flipping her short black hair out of her eyes.
"That's possible, I can't really tell and Hawk doesn't understand either, he just wants the stones. I will ration them out for him, so he gets a new one when the old one is absorbed." Karl agreed.
That would be a while, as after he ate the second stone, Hawk was begging to be let back into the mental space to sleep off its overindulgence.
"Food Coma." Karl explained, when Rita gave the disappearing bird a confused look.
She sighed and shook her head. "That's not part of a proper training regimen. But today, we can forgive it, since he had such a large breakthrough. I approve of your diet plan, and the infused blood will be brought to you regularly, along with a new strength stone, in a few weeks. Hopefully, this one lasts because that's as fast as we can get another.
It looks like your abilities are very fast-growing, but equally resource intensive. Perhaps if you grew naturally at the rate of the contracted beast, you could do it with only food resources, but from what we know of the wild magical beasts, they also need to eat some rare objects, or absorb strange energies to reach the higher ranks naturally."
What Karl really needed was a way to improve the Hawk so it could beat other monsters at its level, and not just keep growing. They were likely to have to face beast packs and invasions in the future, and one monster on their side against ten on the other would mean very little to their chances of winning.
Being able to work together was a nice start, but not enough to be considered a truly powerful sort of existence on his own.
Hawk snorted in amusement in his mind. [What other Hawk of my level is so good with its magic or so majestic in flight?]
[I know you're the best, but I'm trying to think of ways to make us even better.] Karl countered.
Hawk went quiet as he thought about it. Hawks only needed one skill, the ability to kill their prey, but he supposed that more ways to kill his food wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Maybe if he watched other birds do it, he could find ways to do it better?
The Windspeed Hawk wasn't sure that was even possible, but it wanted to make Karl happy, so it was willing to try to use [Rend] in new ways.
"Can we go down to the training areas? I think that the more we see actual combat while we're training, the easier it will be to come up with ways to make ourselves better." Karl suggested.
Hawk wasn't going to be coming out for a while, so he might as well train himself while he had the chance.
Rita led him out of the dorms and out into the field on the opposite side from his balcony. There was a large training area there, with stone squares in the open field, and a large group of students were training unarmed combat techniques there.
They were all second year students, and very good at what they were doing, but just watching them gave Karl ideas on how he and Hawk could work together to overcome them.
"We're going to try something different today. Since you have a ranged skill of sorts, I want to start you on defensive basics. If you're fighting from a distance without magical armour skills like the mages learn, then you need to have a way to block.
Today, we will practice blocking incoming attacks with your claws. The more you practice, the better you will get. Think of it like learning to play catch. Just hit the incoming attack with your own."
Somehow, that friendly description sounded extremely sinister to Karl, especially when she led him away from the unarmed combat field and toward a huge bunker.
"There are mages at your level training here, stronger Common Class students that are close to breaking through to Awakened. They might have a bit more stamina than you do, since they've been practising longer, but it takes less to deflect the attacks than to form them.
Now, at first, they will be firing down the training hall above your head. Don't worry, they shouldn't miss the target entirely at their level. Just do your best to deflect them off target."
The mages nearby glared at Sergeant Rita as she said those words. Who was she to come in here and interfere with their training? They were already at the bottom of their class, but now she was bringing in some newbie hotshot just to mess with them?
"Alright. Seniors, I apologize for the inconvenience." Karl apologized as he felt the glares directed his way.
"It is training for the mages as well. It's one thing to just hit a target, but in the real world, targets will defend themselves. Being able to work around the defence to land a solid hit is also a necessary skill." Rita added.
In the end, she was a teacher, and they didn't have any say about her intentions for their training, but the thought that this was a real-world exercise, while they had been mostly abandoned to their own devices as the weakest of the elites, was somewhat reassuring.
Rita led Karl to the other end of the training grounds, where a dozen targets were lined up.
"Alright everyone, here is the goal. You just need to land hits on the targets, the same as always, but this time, Karl here will be doing his best to deflect those shots and keep them from landing. With a dozen of you and one of him, it shouldn't be hard, but he needs the stamina training to help stabilize his foundation.
Have fun, and don't be afraid to push yourselves to find new ways to get to the target."
They started casting as soon as she finished speaking, and Karl frantically began to cast rending blades at low output, letting them crash into the various spells. Some were deflected, some were only slowed, and some pushed through on their own with only a slight loss of power.
It all depended on the element and the power of the spell as to what happened. Fire and water were the hardest to deflect, they just passed over with a loss of power, where ice, earth and other solid objects could be easily knocked off course.
The next time, he only used one rending claw per attack to save mana, but increased the power of each as he swatted aside and nullified the attacks.
Karl panted with exertion and sighed. That was a mistake, the power needed was an exponential increase compared to the increased output. It was better to hit a target with multiple small attacks than one big attack.
The Mages were actually beginning to enjoy themselves, as they realized that he wasn't some wonder genius sent here to humiliate him, and that he was a newbie working on his mana control, just like they had been all last year.