After the explosion at the beginning of class, they had learned about a few basic rune shapes, and had all been tasked to draw one of the runes for themselves.
"That was rough." Kaos sighed, "what was it? Two hours and I never got anything to work?"
"I got somethin working once," Vasai shrugged, "I don't know what I did to make it change colors, but at least it did something!"
Vasai took a look at the students walking out of the classroom in different directions, "I think the class is supposed to weed out the lazy kids from the Kin class so they don't waste anybody's time in the later classes, so it's bound to be a rough start."
"Fair enough," Kaos replied, "The fact that a couple of the students actually got it half-working was the most demoralizing part though. If everybody got sucked it would be fine, but that kid next to us made a rock float for a few seconds."
"Oh yeah!" Vasai said his face lighting up as if he was meeting someone new, "Mallyjax is from way down under, and he's evidently on a pretty sweet scholarship here for the Kin class, so I wouldn't compare yourself with him."
"Right…" Kaos said thinking to himself, "I forgot that Imps don't do the whole 'short name, then title' thing like we do, but then why did Yan'Sen have such a normal name?"
"I mean, I guess she's from up here?" Vasai replied, with another shrug. "Reminds me though, he gave me this paper that had all the dates for arena games you could participate in. There's gonna be two main ones you can get points from. The first one is halfway through the semester, and it's only for non-Dek students which makes it easier to get points, but the second one is at the very end and it is all the first years including the Dek class, which is going to make it harder to get points."
"Can I see that for a second?" Kaos asked, taking the paper from Vasai. "I'm definitely going to want to hit both of those big ones, but it looks like there are quite a few practice games that I might need to go to."
"Wonder why they don't have them in the arenas though?" Vasai questioned, not really expecting a response.
"I wouldn't be surprised if the school had no control over the arenas at all." Kaos replied, "I mean nobody really knows how they work after all, we just started finding them thousands of years ago, and I find it hard to believe that even Professors at Wondant could do magic like the arena did."
After walking down a few more hallways, they arrived at the combat class. It was a rather large empty room, with large hexagonal tiles making up the floor, and racks of various weapons lining the walls.
Kaos recognized the professor as Dren'Dek from his previous meeting with Dael'Jun. Dren'Dek wore the same large green coat, the main difference between his appearance now, and then, was his shirt underneath had been unbuttoned a bit, showing the edges of a few large scars.
At the time they spoke last, Dren'Dek hadn't seemed like the battle-hardened type to Kaos, but now that he was in combat class, things seemed different somehow, like there was a different side of him now that he was teaching combat class.
"I am Dren'Dek." He said loudly, hushing the excited students, "I know almost all of you are here to get into the Dek class. I also know that most of you won't."
After he said this, the hush fell to a complete silence. He took a large wooden battleax from the rack of weapons behind him and continued speaking, "I don't care if you are a Dek student wannabe, or if you are actually in the Dek class. The only thing that matters for this class is if you can or can't learn to fight. Now get your weapons off the racks."
A few students walked over to the racks and picked up weapons, but most remained idle due to confusion over the phrasing. A more muscular student raised his hand, and the professor pointed at him.
"You have a question?"
"Yes Sir," the student answered, "What did you mean by 'getting our weapons', are they pre-assigned?"
"They are pre-assigned, but not by me or anyone else. Today is going to be about finding your weapon." He gestured to the few students that had chosen their weapons already.
"As you can see from the few that have already picked theirs out, once you know a type of weapon is yours, you have gotten to the basics of combat. If you still don't understand what I am saying after trying each type of weapon in this room, then come see me and I'll pick one for you."
There were a few students that, eager to impress the instructor, immediately selected weapons they obviously knew nothing about, but most of the students picked up a random weapon and began swinging it at the test dummies.
Vasai almost instantly put down every weapon he picked up until he found a very thin wooden sword that looked to be a sturdier version of a rapier. Kaos, on the other hand, spent a lot more time messing around with each weapon, but was never overly satisfied with a specific weapon to commit to it.
"I'm sticking with this one." Vasai said to Kaos, assuming an overly dramatic fencing stance and smirking, "have you still not decided yet?"
"I just don't feel super confident about any of them, they all just feel fine I guess though." he replied, going back to the rack where he started.
Vasai looked towards the professor who was currently talking to a student in the same predicament as Kaos, "I think you should just go talk to Dren'Dek about it, just to make sure you don't get stuck with something sucky."
"Probably better than going back over all the weapons again." Kaos sighed, and then walked over to the professor who had just sent the previous student towards a rack of mid-sized swords.
"No luck?" Dren'Dek asked, raising an eyebrow.
"Everything either felt a little cumbersome, or just way too small to do much damage." Kaos replied.
"The small weapons will do enough damage if you wield them right." Dren'Dek responded, looking at all the racks. "Is there a weapon that isn't here that you would have an interest in using?"
Kaos thought for a moment, there were all the weapons he had seen, plus some he had no idea existed before today. He thought back to the arena, the spear was nice, but caused him to lose out on a lot of dexterity, and the short sword… he never really would have gotten far with that anyway. The scimitar was a bit difficult to face, but he had tried a wooden version a moment ago, and it just felt wrong to hold.
Then he remembered his final moments in the arena and spoke.
"What about a crossbow?"
Dren'Dek smiled a little bit and nodded, "Crossbows are certainly an option, ranged weapons just require a lot more tactics than battle skills so we don't put them out here because a lot of students choose them, thinking they could win every fight without taking a hit. Pick a short sword to go with it for now, and I'll get you one later."
Kaos walked back to one of the racks and grabbed a small short sword before hearing Dren'Dek's voice loudly call from the other side of the room.
"Everybody get in groups of four, we are going to have a few scrimmages."