39 Lesson in the Arena
Caxon continued to sit lazily waiting for his teacher to arrive.
After waiting for a few hours he realized that he had overestimated his teacher, it seemed even a lazy lesson was too good for the commoner students. Noon was just over an hour away and no sign of Alire could be seen.
It was safe to assume that they should have just meet first thing at the arena for weapons training instead of coming here at all. With this in mind under the curious eyes of the students still waiting for their teacher Caxon left.
"Hey where are you going shouldn't we wait for Sir Alire?"
"He isn't coming after what he said about being late to the arena yesterday, I doubt very highly he would want us to wait there while noon comes and goes and we miss the lesson in the arena."
William, who had immediately followed him as soon as he stood up, nodded in understanding as he continued to track behind, all the way to the arena.
As he walked in Caxon found that this arena was similar to the one in the common area of the Academy. This arena was more for training and not for shows so this arena had a larger open space in the center with only a few rows of seats beyond the wall of the open space.
In the center of the arena area there was a lone man who was currently closing his eyes, as soon as the two students walked onto the sand of the arena his eyes opened and before William or even Caxon could react he was standing directly behind them with a sword blade resting on Caxon's shoulder.
Caxon had to control Amon from coming out of his shadow as even if they both were significantly stronger, they couldn't beat this teacher right now.
"I am sorry to bother you sir we were told to come here by our teacher Alire Phihorn."
Caxon tried to remain calm as he slowly explained why they were in the arena and not anger this teacher since if he had as large of a superiority complex as some of the other teachers, he may actually kill two peasants without thinking about it.
"Hmm interesting, yes, I know why you are here I was simply testing to see what I was working with this year. Also, in front of the other teachers you will probably want to say 'Sir' in front of a teacher's name since they are all nobles in this school."
As the surprisingly kind teacher said this, he looked at Caxon strangely although the young man could not see him before he lowered his weapon as he stood in front of him and William once again.
Caxon was shocked that the one teacher who had directly attacked him was the one teacher who didn't seem to be a giant pain in the ass and was actually treating him like a human being and not some ant that didn't deserve to be in the school.
"Well welcome to the arena I am the weapons specialist instructor for the National Academy Alfyr Stormbreeze. We won't be able to begin until noon since we have to wait for the other students but please grab a wooden version of the weapon you would like to train in from one of those and take a few swings by yourself or simply wait for the others whichever you decide."
Caxon suppressed his surprise as he thought this man looked familiar and it was only now that he saw the resemblance between him and what seemed like the slightly older brother Alarat who had first invited him to this school.
After this interaction Alfyr went back to standing in the center of the arena and waited for more students to enter. As he was watching he noticed that it was not just his class that was walking in as other students from other classes also walked in. Caxon watched closely trying to watch him attack the other students so he could gauge how much more powerful this teacher was then himself.
However, the situation did not repeat itself as Alfyr seemed to simply ignore all the other students who came in, when a group of them would start to group up in a confused way he would simply tell them to select their desired weapon without even opening his eyes.
It was strange that the instructor would only pay attention to the very first students that came into the arena but Caxon really didn't want to think of what the alternative reason would be. He was starting to doubt if coming to an Academy was a mistake, it seemed as though he was attracting strange and suspicious characters to himself without even doing anything.
Right at noon Alfyr opened his eyes.
"Good afternoon class today we will begin learning the very basics of weapon handling. Now that you all have chosen your weapons, I will start to give you guidance to improve your skill at that weapon. Swords will be next to the weapon racks, bows near the range with the targets, spears next to that set of dummies there, the rest of you with the more specialized and uncommon weapons, like maces, staffs and daggers will stay here. I will start with the swords since they are the biggest group and make my way around. Until I get to you practice yourselves, you can watch other students who seem to know what they are doing but do not pick up any bad habits from them."
After this announcement was made the groups separated and went to their designated spaces. Caxon had already revealed to the academy his sword skills so he had to go to that group even though he would rather learn a different weapon. At some point he definitely wanted to learn the bow since it would give him a long-range attack that wouldn't take away a huge amount of his mana.
Standing next to the weapon racks Caxon simply held his wooden sword to his side as he waited for instruction. Alfyr soon walked up and tossed a book to each of the students holding a sword, which included William Caxon and the bully who he had learned was named Borm after listening to students talk.
"These are a normal grade combat technique for the sword; I wish I could give you more but thanks to some politics that are much higher than my power to affect this is all I have. For any of you who don't know sword techniques are simply a way to wield the sword and use it along with your mana to produce results. There are countless different sword techniques so they are graded the same way as weapons, armor, and most other types of armor. These are normal grade as I said, under that are ungraded or basic and then the grades go up from normal with Normal, Advanced, Earth, Sky, and Sun grade, there are more above that but if you ever find those then you are much luckier then I will ever be haha. Now start reading through these and practice while I help the others, I will be walking around fixing mistakes and guiding anyone who needs it."
After this Alfyr gave a book to each of the students even the one who picked very strange weapons like one girl who held a wooden fan.
It only took Caxon little more than one page to realize that this technique was not as good as the one Amon had been teaching him.
'The sword technique I know is only an Earth grade but whenever you have a little more mana, I can start teach you shadow techniques and spells all the way up to well above the sun grade, but for those you will need a lot of mana so they will have to wait. If you summon the King of Blades, who was one of the General's Great Lord Caxon had said would be revived in the future, he can teach you sword skills that this academy can't even fathom.'
'How many Generals did Caxon say would be brought back?'
'There were 21 of us, though we were called many names, Generals, Kings, Monarchs, Disciples, Harbingers, the list goes on. Each of us also had a name that signified us individually that other mages called us. Caxon was the only one who called me Amon, his followers called me the Shadow Monar*Cough Cough* The General of Shadow, but the people called me The Invisible Nightmare. I truly hope you get to meet the others as I am sure they will be delighted to meet the new Lord Caxon and follow you just as they had followed the last.'
After Amon finished talking Caxon got a headache as images of the 21 followers of Caxon resurfaced in his head. The destruction and power they were capable of was terrifying. What was more terrifying though was that none of them were humans, they were simply beasts that usually lived in a humanoid form out of respect to Caxon, and some of their true forms were truly things of nightmares.
After seeing the memories of Caxon he looked at his own shadow, as a vision of a creature with no face and only a large mouth with razor sharp teeth seemed to overlap with where he knew Amon was. However he shock his head as he tried to focus on something else.
It was safe to assume that by killing another participant and gaining more participants shard's like he had from the first participant he would be able to summon another one of these generals but killing 20 more people with incredible powers or possibly even systems that he had no idea about seemed like an incredibly difficult task.
Caxon was able to have this conversation while carrying out the sword technique since it was trivial to him. Even making his mistakes seemed natural was easier than Amon's teachings so he simply continued talking to Amon while thinking of the future.
