The Third Party

Ken’s POV (12 yrs. and 3 months old)

Okay, so now I only need to apply this effect on my seedlings, *sighs internally* now conserving mana or energy will be possible in the future, okay back to work now.

“Great! Now that everyone’s here, we shall now proceed to the next class, Performance Task.” said master Klein, a magic circle appeared below our feat encasing all of us in white light and my vision blur, after the light subsided we are now here at the field again, mass teleportation, nice.

“For today’s Performance Task, Allen, Ken, Celine, and Lila, shall focus on swords, shields, daggers, and hammers, Glen, Wilbert, and Saber, shall focus on Bows, short and long range Magic, and healing.” said master Klein, to which we all nodded with a yes and proceeded to get the equipments needed and ready ourselves, I’m getting meself some shield and hammer, onward barbarians!!!

“Masters, to your positions.” said master Klein, then turned himself to look at the other four.

“Now, I’ll explain to you four this class, performance task, basically we assign each one of you in different tactics in battles, be it physical or magical battles, we also indulge in mental battles but so far those with far superior magic control are able to at least withstand the brunt of mental magic, other types of tactics are also being developed but for now these three are what we would like for you our students to indulge yourself first.

Now I’ll assign you to what suits you best, Princess Lang and Riyah, go to short and long-range battles, Flin and Icarus, take up swords and shields, now, go and join the others.” said master Klein. “Yes.” said the four and immediately proceeded to the equipments and prepared themselves.

Along with myself, who basically just took a shield, others each took other weapons as well, Allen took a sword and shield, Celine took daggers -ooh spicy, go girl!-, Lila took a hammer -wait aren’t I supposed to take a hammer too? Nah, must have slipped my mind-,

Glen took up a bow and arrows, while Wilbert and Saber are doing rock-paper-scissor to decide who would do short or long range magic, ahhh they’ve finished, with Wilbert’s head hanging down because he will be doing long range magic, haha, he’s still not used to using such type of magic.

“Shall we now start?” I look at Master Ulysses and Master Lana and nod, and in an instant, two clones each from the masters with other weapons, positioned themselves with the ones of the same weapons, I’m facing master Lana -or her clone?-

“Ken, where’s your weapon?” said Master Lana as she prepared herself, clutching a medium sized shield and a sword.

“I won’t be using one Master Lana, I’ll try defending this time.” while I’m clutching a large sized shield that is rectangular in shape. All our personal weapons are put away at the side near the table, has it been there since this noon? Yes it has been there.

“Light Moon Magic: Light Moon Form!” power welled within me as it turned my clothes white interlaced with black lines here and there, my hair turning white in color. “I’m ready!” with a kick I bashed my shield towards master Lana, pushing her quite a few feet back.

“Again” Sure! With another kick, I rammed headfirst towards master Lana- huh? She disappeared, wait, up! The sword thrusted to my head.

“Blink!” appearing behind Master Lana I held in both hands the shield and slammed downwards.

“Enchantk Magic: Strengthened Pummel!” a spell specifically made for enhancing my arms with strength, and with the buff of the Light Moon Form, I’m sure I’ll be able to do some decent damage.

*BOOM*

(Smoke rose from the blast)

*fwip*

“Good strength output Ken.” said master Lana as she jumped out of the smoke, oh another crater.

“Thank you Master.” I said smilingly towards her.

“But that won’t be enough to defeat an opponent!” She lunges forward, but I’m ready to take on her attacks, with my shield placed in front.

-after another hour, near five thirty-

All of us fought in different styles today, and safe to say, that my friends are getting along well with these swapping of weapons system, it’s not that difficult to hold against’ our masters when battling them.

‘Agreed, you guys have shown remarkable growth since eight years ago, especially you.’ -White-

‘Awwwww, shocks, you’re flattering me White, but nonetheless, thank you.” I said in my head telepathically communicating with him.

I have sat down at the bottom of a shade of a tree a few moments ago when Master Lana had approved of me fighting with her, turns out it was her clone all along, saying that the clone could not bear anymore brunt from my constant ramming and mischievous way of fighting -sometimes I fight dirty, but not in a sense that it’s humiliating, but more fun in a way-, so here I am observing them continue with their training.

I must say, everyone has good form, it’s like they’re very comfortable in their way of fighting, everyone’s strong too, I’m happy about that, Celine has gotten more flexible in being an assassin archer, she wields the daggers as if she is dancing on the battlefield and is an absolute menace when it comes to wielding the bow.

She’s got herself well acquainted with light, shadow, enchantment magic, and a little bit of elemental magic, okay, maybe a lot more of it.

Wilbert has gotten himself relatively comfortable with using his magic, although he uses enchant and sword style, he doesn’t lack on using other magical abilities, but fire is what seems to be suitable for him,

I gotta help him in improving his fire capabilities, but how about I let others help him instead, hmmmm, hehehehehe. Nope wait, Ken you must not have yourself get carried away again. Surprisingly he has an affinity to light magic, and it’s very strong.

The twin panthers are a force to be reckoned with especially when they are together, they’re shadow blade assault is really scary once confronted, you wouldn’t know whom and who you are fighting, and they even used one of my tactics in the past when we had a tag team battle, that is by using every other opportunity your partner throws at you.

Whether you use them as a spring board, or as shield at times -that one’s my idea-, brrrr, it still gives me the chills how accurate they are when using such method, at most I wouldn’t even be able to land a hit on them if I don’t use my weapons.

Individually, Lila is much stronger on accurate executions of attack she’s also good at chasing, while Saber is much stronger in using sneak attacks and traps like me -magic traps-. They still focus on shadow magic, but with wind magic thrown into the mix.

Glen’s steadily becoming our tank together with Wilbert, and he seems to become very dedicated to the role too, I wonder what him and Master Lana talked about last year that made him be that dedicated.

I would go so far as to say that he was inspired to do such a job, everyone knows that being the one who soaks up all the damage is awful, but since then, his engages has become more aggressive and efficient in combat.

Sure he does soak up most of the damage, but he returns decent damage as well, and he’s very nimble despite his size. He’s also got himself used to wielding earth magic.

Allen, is by far the one whom I can say that is on par with me in terms of magic, but same with Celine’s combat prowess in terms of weapon, like swords and stuff, and just like Celine, he’s also good using a bow, both are almost similar in their accuracy and output,

Celine is slightly ahead, since she’s picked up the bow one year earlier than Allen, but he’s showing steady and remarkable improvement.

As for his magical capabilities, I would say that he’s gone on a path of experimenting with magic, not like me who focuses on using the capabilities of each spells to their outmost, he’s doing combinations and skillful set-ups when it comes to him executing spells, hmmmm…

He must have noticed it on one of my battles with the masters when I sneakily placed spell traps on the battlefield, unnoticeable when set but noticeable when an opponent scans the field once the spell is placed, maybe this is the reason why he’s always able to find my traps every time we battle one another, hmmmmm. He’s proficient in the four elements along with ice, and lightning.

As for the others, I know that Princess Lang is good at using fire magic, she had mentioned she also uses time and space magic, but I have yet to witness it for myself, and apparently, she’s good with a sword.

On one of her battles with master Klein, she used her fire to enhance her sword, coating it in flames as she swung here and there landing a couple of hits -only on the shield thought-, but it was also good of her, since she used that diversity in magic combat to her advantage as she also flung fire spells from her sword.

Her royal magic is like an enhanced version of fire magic, must be a magic distinct to the dragon race but more prominent on the royal family, it felt stronger than fire magic I guarantee that and the destructive power, I must say is disastrous, why didn’t she used that when we battled?

Icarus wouldn’t also back down from this display of powers, as he also showed that he was also capable in using fire magic, but he used it as a coating on his fists, as he went on brawler mode on his opponent -which was master Lana’s other clone-.

He’s a very athletic kid I must say, for every flip and jumps he would always land gracefully, and sometimes every other time he lands he would fling spells at the opponent at a distance, he’s good at wind and fire magic.

His sister Riyah, also showed prowess when it comes to brawling with her opponent -which is master Ulysses’s clone-, apparently both are taught the same fighting style, but she uses gloves -probably to negate the cold energies coming out- with spikes.

But on the start of her battle she used long ranged spells of ice and water, her ice magic focusing on single targets, while her water magic focusing on area of effects, I recall having slipped on one of the puddles she made, but I was okay, haha.

Spirit magic though, I was utterly mesmerized at the way Flin fought with that kind of magic he could manifest other elements but with a slight touch of spiritual effects on the spell, so far he’s only able to use spirit fire and spirit air magic, is that how it’s named?

Hmmm, now that I think about it, there’s something mysterious when it comes to that power, it’s like it hold life itself, for sometimes when I accidentally stumble upon one of his spells, it feels like my life force is getting sucked out of me, or maybe he’s still just not that good at wielding his powers.

“KEN!” OH!

“Wah! Wah?” I look at the assailant and see that it’s Wilbert and beside him was Celine.

“What are you daydreaming about? Come on it’s time to go home.” said Wilbert again as he helped me stand up.

“Oh okay, the training’s done for the day?” I asked, as I dusted myself.

“Yup, and we’re going home directly.” He said, as we started walking towards the direction of the village, wait screw that, I’m gonna call it a town starting from today.

“But the sun’s still up, are we not gonna take extra hours of training?” I ask, what don’t look at me like that, I love extra hours of training especially at night.

“Master says that we’ll be doing extra hours by next week, saying that we’ll be letting our new companions adjust to the training.” Celine explained.

“Awwww, I was looking forward to scaring you guys.” I said with a pout, to which they chuckled and shook their head. It’s not the first time I scared them when in night training.

“Right, anyway, we still have to report to each our respected masters to ask for permission to end the day and return home.” exclaimed Wilbert. I nod along and continued walking to where everyone is walking towards with our masters at the front leading.

We look like battered up children when we always pass by this way to the town square, in the past, it was quite embarrassing walking down this path, for on each side of the road, are houses, with onlookers being curious at our state, would stare at us as we passed by.

But we got used to it along the way, sometimes flaunting our battle scars whenever we got one -I got some on my face a couple years ago, but it went away when I used healing magic on it-, and the people who looked at us would join in on the fun and conversation, laughing along, some are just smiling on the sidelines.

While the children would race around us, we’ve really got ourselves close to the people here haven’t we, but will it change with these four new individuals here? Nah, guess not, for here come the kids.

They stopped to look at us -the ones they recognize-, but just stared, especially on our other four companions, I gave them a gesture indicating for them to be silent and carry on with what they are doing, good thing they did, don’t want them swarming on and I don’t know, scaring the other four?

Or something else, but I’d most clearly bet on the fact that their reaction would be unpleasant, I mean not all, but maybe, just maybe…

-A few moments later, after the three had gain permission to return home-

“We’re home.” I said stretching my arms upwards to lighten out the knots, it’s always so relaxing and refreshing having to come home after a full day of hard work.

“Right, I’ll be going on this direction.” said Celine pointing to the direction of her home, which is slightly ahead of our past training ground, hmmm, I think I might have not introduced the map of this place, but I’ll be introducing to you the map of my home, our past training ground and others too.

I’m currently facing my house on its west side, Wilbert lives just one block south of our house, at the main village that is, me and my family are on the outskirts of it, if I turn around the direction would be to the northern forest, so that means if I turn west, which is the direction our house is facing would be the direction to Celine’s home and our past training ground.

So far, this is all I can map out since I still haven’t explored this south-western part of the kingdom, but apparently, we have to go southeast to leave this mountainous province but this is not all, I’ll be sure to update this in the future -wow peaking like some author-.

“I’ll be going home now too.” said Wilbert, Celine and I nodded along, wait, there’s something I need to ask first.

“Before you guys go, I have a question to ask.” they both looked at me and nodded.

“What do you two think about our new companions?” I asked bending my head a little.

“Their fine, competent… *nods*yeah, that’s all I can think about.” said Wilbert in a thinking posture. This very subtle guy, sometimes I wonder how he can always settle with few words to at least compliment others.

“Well I think they’re nice, and pleasant, they have a wide variety to them, which makes them unique.” said Celine while smiling. I kind of feel like Celine’s the more intelligent one when it comes to words and vocabulary, haha, or is it just me.

I nodded to their answers, they nodded back as well and telling me that they really were going to go now, so we bid our goodbyes and went back to our own home.

Princess Lang’s POV (she’s 14 yrs. old)

Today was our first day in training, at first I thought it would be a waste of time to train under them, but that was quite a surprise since I never expected them to really train a whole day, my body’s aching all over!

I didn’t want them to think I’m such a wimp, but I never expected to undergo that much physical training even! Who needs those when we magical beasts are already powerful, apparently I do.

Look at me, I feel very weak, as if a breeze could make me fall, luckily I got back to my room in time before I start passing out, but something’s very strange with that human, especially when he used a very strange magic, it was weird at first it even made me thought that he was using otherworldy powers, but the magic is very much familiar to the surroundings.

I can’t believe I’ve been bested by a human on my first day! I need to exert more effort than what I did in the past, and surpass him, and he would be my rival.

‘Attendant, send me the gears for training from the kingdom, make sure they are in their best condition when arriving here.’ I telepathically sent to my attendant who is at the other house besides this one.

‘As you wish your highness.’ He replied, guess I’ll just have to wait for tomorrow to come and since it’s already night, might as well go to sleep.

3rd Person’s POV (12 yrs. and 3 months old)

As the three friends arrive at the entrance of the village early in the morning, looking quite refreshed and ready to tackle the day, what they expect to be a cozy breeze of the wind, they were greeted with the rushing of both people and soldiers, and other soldiers they think to be from the dragon kingdom.

They immediately rushed towards where everyone is gathered with them being informed that their masters were waiting for them at the training field.

Once they arrive at the said location, they saw that not everyone have arrived yet, and the three masters are the only ones present, one of them blinked and wiped their eyes (Ken) while the other had their eyes wide(Wilbert), while the other had their mouth wide open (Celine), they could not believe what they’re seeing with their very eyes.

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