"You're finally here rat."
Those words petrified Aiden.
His pupils turned into pinholes.
When Aiden assumed that they had forgotten they were just hiding quietly for him to lower his guard.
Unlike the talents here, he was just a normal 14 year old boy.
Awkward, horrible social skills, naive, and cringey.
There was no way he could have seen this coming considering this.
Many students that first come here are often like Aiden but end up like the lackeys around because there weren't really adults to check on them.
The only adults these kids ever interact with are the staff and teachers.
Not as kids but as training soldiers.
Aiden took a step back and his back bumped into one of Jake's minions that was blocking the path to escape.
Slowly turning his head to look at the man stopping the escape route, Jake still sat at the chair when he told them an order.
"I'm quite displeased with the performance at Olreon, you knew this would happen. Beat him up."
The guy behind Aiden took hold of his shoulders and the others were surrounding him like a pack of beasts.
A feeling of unbearable weakness fell over him.
'What do I do??'
His mind was trying to work as fast as it could but under the threatening situation, even if he made a plan, he doubt he would even act on it.
The first fist swung and hit him straight on the abdomen.
The pain stinged with his vision getting dizzy.
The next hit came to his side torso.
Then the next hit his chest.
Next came for his leg.
He was being tossed around from the tight circle the gangsters made.
He soon fell in his butt and the hits turned from punched to kicks.
The pain that came made him want to cry out but he chose to keep it in.
Black-blue bruises spread across his body and the dizziness he had gotten from before started to turn into a headache.
*****
….
….
….
Lucas looked around the dorm for his trusty water bottle he left behind.
He found it on his desk, sitting there like a forgotten child.
"Ah, how did I miss you this morning? Tsk."
He grabbed it and left the dorm.
Going on his ID, he texted Aiden that he was coming back to the arena.
'Hope I'm not too late,'
He had put the whole Jake thing away behind his head after 1 week and a half.
But once he got to the arena, he noticed that Aiden hadn't sent him a single message back.
Entering it, he looked around for a moment before noting something.
'Nowhere to be seen…'
He thought for a while about something that could keep Aiden from coming and remembered the Jake fiasco.
'Oh shoot.'
He turned to leave but was blocked by two people.
"Will you let me through?"
"We just what to spar you! Heard you where quite strong."
They weren't going to let him leave without sparring first and Lucas noticed that.
But the space affinity was simply to overpowered.
Lucas moved his gaze from the two to the space in between them.
A purple glow appeared beneath his feet and disappeared from where he was standing.
They were shocked and looked around, finding Lucas already leaving the training arena.
'Where would Jake drag someone he wanted to beat up?'
Before coming into the military, he had once met Jake.
Though Jake couldn't meet him, he wasn't aware of the existence of hidden great families.
'Replace Jake with a rich snobby kid.' He told his mind.
Some of the few places would be their own room or dorm, classroom where there was no one, or alleyways.
He decided to check the alleyways first.
*****
….
….
….
The beat down was insane.
Aiden had used a bit of the earth affinity to protect his skin but was broken through by the strong second years.
'Damn it..'
He hated his weakness.
The inability of having control over his body own life.
A small seed of unknown change was planted in his mind and Core at that moment.
A brown seed floated inside of the Magic Core, slowly taking in mana.
His earth abilities had gotten a bit strong and he was able to stop them from giving him more bruises.
But it wasn't until a while more that they stopped.
"Fail to follow my request again and this will happen together with something else as a… surprise."
One of the lackeys grabbed his shirt and dragged him out of the dorm.
He was thrown to the side and that gang left to the elevator.
It took a few seconds for Aiden to get back up and recover from the dizziness.
As he walked down the stairs, he thought about Lucas offer on sparring.
Though he didn't know how an earth affinity awaken would fight, but he can slowly figure that out.
He checked his ID and saw the message Lucas had sent.
Aiden messaged him that he was heading back to the dormitory.
He went back to the dorm and waited for Lucas for quite a bit of sometime.
Their roommate was there already and saw the state of Aiden, asking a few questions about it and then going on with his life.
Lucas came back and looked at him.
"Are you alright?"
"Yeah, about that sparring thing. I want to try it."
Lucas understood why and nodded at him, yawning.
"Sure thing bud."
Silence stayed for a while before Lucas commented.
"Looks like you got a bit stronger but your mana is half of what it was, how did that happen?"
"Really?"
"Hmmm, how about you check on your Magic Core."
Aiden went into his subconscious and looked at the Core.
Inside of it was the seed, it was absolutely unknown what could grow from it.
It was sucking up half of the mana in him at all times.
But even by doing that, the seed was barely growing.
Looks like it would take a few years for it to grow.
Aiden told Lucas that and Lucas had a thought in his mind.
'Can it be that? No… sounds too different."