"Did you ever learn anything other than dodging?" Bert shouted.
Leon's magic instructor was pursuing him on the training grounds, he looked like a wild animal as he pounced and threw vicious blows at a high rate of speed.
He had been sparring with his magic instructor for only a few minutes at that point, however, his young body was already protesting and his muscles were already screaming at him to stop.
He needed to end this as quickly as he could, he couldn't handle an entire hour with this beastly man.
The only large difference between the beginning and now was that Wren had also joined along in the battle, so the battle was now a one versus two.
Bert hadn't said anything about it, so Leon just assumed it was okay, Wren was a piece of his arsenal in combat.
"Wren, now!" Leon yelled, soon after dodging a punch that was aimed straight for his temple and propelling himself away as quickly as he could manage.
Wren had mainly been avoiding direct bouts with Bert up until that point, the beast had been too eager originally and had been punished for it.
Now she leaped forward with a different goal in mind, to bind, the large beast closed the distance as quickly as she could and grabbed a hold of the sleeve on one of Bert's arms.
She pulled down with all her might, trying her best to subdue his arm for a moment; even as a terrible smell filled her nose, she hated the way Bert smelled.
Leon would not neglect this opportunity he got, he had been on the defensive the entire time but he wouldn't be able to manage a defensive battle for an hour in his young body.
So he quickly changed gears, he focused most of his mana into his legs and kicked up the earth with a mighty leap.
He himself looked like an animal in that moment, disappearing and reappearing next to his instructor's head; he had used his magic to conjure two small ice-like blades that protruded out from both of his hands.
Quickly he spun, putting all his weight into an attack on Bert's neck, on the side that was restrained by Wren.
It wouldn't seriously hurt his instructor, he was sure of that, the man standing before him was a beast; he had just hoped it would fulfill whatever requirement that his father had wanted to see with this test, prompting this whole fight to stop.
However, instead, he was suddenly hit by something heavy; which sent him flying across the training grounds.
He had been hit by Wren, who had also flown alongside her owner; they both came to a stop only a few feet next to each other.
'This is child abuse.' Leon internally thought, even though his body wasn't seriously injured, he was hurting quite badly.
Then, looking over at his companion, who looked like she was in a much better condition than he was.
However, he could tell her pride as a beast had suffered a blow.
He tried to get up but his body fought against him heavily, he thought that perhaps he did need to wait until later in life to go on a hunting trip with his brother; while internally in the family they were called hunting trips, the correct word for them was subjugation missions.
It was a military ordeal, so perhaps the idea of a six-year-old joining was completely out of the question, that was possibly what his father had tried to show him through this spar.
He was quite upset by the whole situation as he lay there on the ground, no longer struggling to get up, he had thought his endurance was much greater than it was; in a fight where he had to seriously expend energy, he still was limited greatly by his young body.
Even if Bert had been attacking like an animal, he still never attacked with the intent to kill; he would have killed Leon quickly if he wanted to.
Leon knew this.
While Leon could rely on magic, he still had a long way to go, as exhaustion ate away at his mental clarity and made it increasingly difficult to use throughout a fight.
"You've done great, you passed," Bert said, he had walked over above Leon, having a completely different aura than he had moments before.
"What do you mean?" Leon spoke back in confusion, still hurting from getting slapped by his own beast.
Leon couldn't imagine that he'd passed a test after getting so one-sidedly beat up.
"You have a great defense, great offense, and a great bond with your beast," Bert spoke again, completely back to his normal demeanor now.
"But I lost?" Leon retorted.
"If you go on a subjugation mission, you'd never fight like you have now, you'd most likely not need to attack anything," Bert said, dismissively waving his hand. "The king just wanted to know if you had the abilities needed to survive brief encounters if it came to that."
'That makes sense.' Leon thought, I mean it was silly thinking that he'd heroically fight a strong beast only by himself.
He'd be with a small army, he'd most likely only be there to view at his age, being positioned in a spot that avoided combat completely if possible.
"Now get up and conjure at least one spell of every element, you're still on the hook for training too!" Bert barked, sounding much like he did normally.
Leon tried to get up but he had a really hard time doing it, which caused Bert's eyes to open wide; he quickly got down beside Leon and cast a healing spell.
Leon felt better immediately.
"Why don't we keep this a secret and you skip the rest of our training for today?" Bert said, a large smile on his face that tried to hide his nervousness.
Leon suspected he wasn't meant to get injured during their sparring lesson, he hadn't the slightest notion to turn his instructor in but he would never pass on an opportunity to have a few hours of free time.
So he gave Bert a small, pitiful, looking thumbs up before getting to his feet and hobbling off towards the palace; he wasn't hurt anymore but he enjoyed the sight of his beastly instructor sweating bullets.
Wren followed behind him, giving Bert a sharp stare-down as she still felt humiliated after being used as an impromptu bat.
He understood his magic instructor less and less every single day.
Appearance aside, he was a strange existence, he'd never met him before the day he was introduced to him as his new magic instructor; his father had made it clear over time however that he had been living in the palace for a long time before that.
Not only that, he was the best magic user that Leon had met up until that point and he just now learned that he was also a monster physically as well.
He was one of the strongest existences within the palace, bar his father and some of the other beasts that roamed around, both human and monster; so he couldn't understand why he looked so pitiful outwardly, or how he managed to gain a job teaching a mere child, as Leon was sure there were other uses for a man with his prowess.
However, it was not time to sit idle with such thoughts, he had time to himself so he was going to use it well.
As soon as he got out of the peering eyes of Bert, he called for Wren and jumped on top of her back; grabbing a hold of her thick coat of fur and pointing forward, she knew exactly where he wanted to go.
It wasn't to train, it wasn't to learn, it wasn't to do anything that would cause him stress.
He was going to relax.