Preparations (1)

Days passed by, and Eric raised the training level little by little for each day. By Friday they were supposed to do a ten-kilometer run as a warm-up instead of the five-kilometer run they had before. The daily training became twice as though in the span of a few days.

They finished the training for today and everyone was drenched in sweat. Heavy breaths filled the courtyard and most of the children were on the ground, while barely any of them were left standing on their two feet. Only a good sleep would attenuate their suffering but now they were scared as every time they woke up more training would await for them.

"All of you! .." Eric raised his voice to get their attention, which he succeeded in doing".. for the next two days you will be tasked with relaxing your bodies. I will also ask at the gates for you and if I hear that any of you went hunting or even attempted to... Let's just say I'll give you something to keep you at bay." Eric said with a smirk on his face.

Sounds of happiness combined with a tint of pain were heard around as Eric finished his little announcement.

"Finally! I thought that tomorrow we would have to do even more exercises!" A student happily said, voicing out the thoughts of all nineteen children. Not a lot would be able to take another increase in the difficulty of the exercises.

As soon as Eric turned around to leave the children that were standing up too got down on the ground, sitting on their bottom.

"Finally! I was wondering when he was going to give us a break." Ken said as he laid down with the others.

"You should be grateful he gave us two days instead of one." Ashley commented to Ken. She had an impressive amount of growth during the past few days. Her body became stronger as well as her will was more refined. She was now more used to being restrained while using her bow and other weapons, something she doesn't experience much of on the battlefield. It made her more efficient and helped her have better control over her own body.

"Why do you never like me? You are always so rude to me!" Ken looked a bit mad but was clearly faking it. He had progressed in his battle prowess as well. Even though quite mischievous, he wasn't a slacker so he was working hard as well. His body got tougher while his senses got sharper. He was able to find weak points on surfaces more easily while he moved more fluently with his parangs. All these advancements could be translated over to Magic Beasts and animals after experiencing a bit on moving targets once again.

"Can you please get a room?" Max teased them. He wanted a bit of a laugh after the hellish training so he stirred them up a bit. Max became much more efficient with his spear. His understanding of the spear and his aim became deadly accurate on a still target so it would at least help him against a moving one. He could examine where he would deal more damage to his enemies and his familiarity with the spear grew by a huge extent. Eric helped him quite a lot during these past few days.

Rya, seeing what Max was trying to do continued: "Wasn't there some saying telling that 'People who fight against each other repeatedly love each other' or something along the way?" A long, beautiful smile could be seen on her red face, the result of exhaustion.

Rya upgraded her swordsmanship, and even though she didn't have that much time because of how motivated she was, she began getting the feeling of 'being one with the sword' which many Swordsman Masters and any Weapon Masters talk about. Her body was more sturdy than before, she had more stamina and could use her sword more efficiently, all due to the increased intensity of the training.

Anna blushed when she heard Rya and looked at Ken, then at Ashley, looking back and forth while her face could be seen getting even redder somehow. Her magic capacity upgraded during the last few days of training. She didn't do lots of exercises and wasn't asked to do any as magicians centered around their magic power more than body strength. Her magic manipulation and control got better while she could use the skills at a lower magic cost. These were all really hard tasks for a magician to attain but she slowly got better during the last five days, showing her potential as well as her motivation. Once again, Eric became more centered around her as well as he became towards Max, it only worked in his favor that these two were close to one another.

"Guys c-can you please stop? Let's not talk stuff like that, we need to focus on training! Yes! Training..." Anna's blushed face moved toward a certain person. She made eye contact with Max for a second, getting startled she immediately lowered her eyes and slowly looked in another direction.

"Pfft.. as if!" Ken said, now actually a bit annoyed. "What if I said the same thing about Rya and you, or Anna and you? See you don't match either, so it's not so funny!" Ken said while looking at Max.

"Alright I am sorry, didn't knew you still had energy in you to argue." Max apologized while showing his hands in the air. "Let's leave, you guys can get up and walk by now right?"

Everyone nodded at Max one after the other, slowly starting to get up. As they began to leave Max realized they were only four of them. Looking behind him was Ashley still standing on the ground.

"Hey you alright Ashley?" Hearing her name she looked at Max and quickly stood up, getting in line with the others.

They left and gone to their respective dorms.

"What was that?" Ken asked still annoyed. "You know I favor Ashley so why do you say stuff like that? You should help me not lower my chances!" Ken had a small interest in Ashley, 16-year-old boys couldn't 100% dedicate their time to training after all.

"Do not worry, she might actually like you back..." Max said. 'Damn I didn't think it through' "As I said I am sorry, so please give me some slack, I'll not do it again." Max knew that if he didn't do something Ken will be a big headache for a long time.

"Alright, but you owe me one if you want me to also shut up!" Ken said, now with a huge grin on his face.

"I've come to regret it so much now... deal.." Max accepted. Being exhausted all he wanted to do was sleep at the moment. He got onto his bed while Ken climbed to the bed above him. Max went into the dream world right as he hit the pillow, as Ken moved a bit in bed to find a comfortable position, and went to sleep soon after.