Chapter 44. Curious Things

While resting in the chair away with Victoria, I had the opportunity to calmly observe the kind of training that the people in this world had. Again, I quickly noticed that most people didn’t carry any particular intention when using their magic, as most of them just did as instructed by Stormwind.

I was also somewhat surprised to see how well the elf had integrated into this world, something that could be seen from his speech and use of artifacts, which was no different than the people around us. The only thing that made him stand out was his elf features that nobody else shared in this place.

As I was inspecting the mages training, Stormwind called a swap of positions, in which the ones that were waiting outside and the ones that had been training inside the barriers, swapped places. Most of the people that came out were just as tired as I was after using that Holy Power spell that they called ‘Sacred Cut’, which meant that it was a good training session where the people managed to move a lot of their mana.

Among the mages that moved into the barriers was David. I focused my attention on him, since he seemed to be a strange one. And sure enough, his strangeness appeared in the way that he was practicing his magic.

Everyone else so far had been training by creating different kinds of fire torrents. Some larger than others, like Daniel’s, and others barely fire, like Steven’s. But David had instead taken a fighting stance, one that I had only seen beastkin take before.

Beastkin usually fought without weapons, as they believed that the most effective way to transfer magic power was with their hands alone, without any empowering artifact like the Holy Blade. Because of that, many hand-to-hand techniques were created. I didn’t know all of them, but from the one that David had taken, I knew that it was likely learned from a beastkin.

He had his fists raised to his front, while his shoulders were squared up. He had a lower stance, and his feet were spread apart slightly to give him a particularly strong foundation.

It was then that he began his training. Unlike the other people, he didn’t do any fire torrents, instead, he would punch the air, and whenever he did, a fiery fist would follow along with his movements—as if a giant’s fist suddenly appeared and helped him in battle. Each fist appeared from around his arm’s positions, and they would move even faster than David’s punches, flying in the air while leaving an orange trail before hitting the barrier and exploding in a loud mess of fire.

I watched him seriously practice those fiery punches for a while, after which he swapped movements, throwing uppercuts that summoned fiery fists from the ground that would do the same as the other ones, following the path of his fists to fly high into the air before exploding in the same way.

After a few minutes of going between the two movements, I could notice the sweat and the heavy breathing that had accumulated from the continued movements. I thought that perhaps he would be ending soon when he stopped moving for a while, but he didn’t drop his stance at all.

Suddenly, he took to the air with a powerful wind torrent. While in the air, he kicked and spun, and similar to the punches, each kick would create a fiery spell that would fly off with even more speed and strength than that of the fists.

I couldn’t call the spell a kick in the same way that the others were fists, since these were just wide fire waves that would fly off covering much more area and exploding even stronger.

When I thought that he would hit the floor, he would suddenly kick the air and another torrent of air would lift him back up into the air before throwing more wide kicks.

While he was doing that, I saw Stormwind hastily move over to his field.

“Excellent form, David, but please keep the air magic out of the training. Right now, we’re just working on fire,” he called out loudly to David as the explosions from the fire would drown out his voice.

David landed on the floor and frowned as he looked at Stormwind. “That’s not fair, teacher. You allowed Althea to do magic that broke the barrier. I should be allowed to practice stronger magic.”

Stormwind sighed and pressed the side of his temples. “I know, but I was just testing her skills. It had nothing to do with training.” He looked ahead at David once more. “Just keep it to using fire for now, okay?”

David clicked his tongue and nodded. “Fine.”

Stormwind stood on the side of the field for a while longer, watching as David kicked and launched fire from each wide kick, until after a while, the elf left to talk to other trainees.

I watched David training for a while longer, but he didn’t do anything more besides going from kicking to punching and mixing those moves in between each other.

“David’s strong,” Victoria said, her eyes fixed on the man.

“He appears to be stronger than everyone else here, yes,” I agreed with a nod. “However, Daniel also has some strength.”

“Oh yeah… that man seems to have become fixated on you…” Victoria said with a wry smile. “Aren’t you worried about it?”

I shook my head. “He’s just a fool. With time, he’ll see that the Holy Gods aren’t what he thinks they are.”

Victoria tilted her head slightly. “Hm? How do you know that?”

“Let's just say that I’ve dealt with this before,” I said, the image of the Holy Gods descending from the sky flashing in my mind for a moment.

“Really… then what would you do with them?”

“Hm…”

I considered for a moment the question. I could go out of my way to exterminate them, but that wouldn’t be too different from what I used to do with Salrak’s people, and I can’t say for sure if my current power would allow me to do so. I could also just leave them to do whatever they want, but it wouldn’t do any good to let them repeat the same mistakes that I did.

“For now… I think I’ll just be on the lookout. If they’re harmless, then I should just ignore them,” I replied after a moment.

“What if they aren’t?” Victoria asked with a hushed voice.

“Then… I guess I’ll deal with it if it comes to that,” I said with a grave expression on my face.

“I hope nothing happens…” Victoria whispered, and I couldn’t help but nod along.

* * *

The class finished after a while. I expected training sessions to last most of the day as they did for me in the past, but I guess that in such a peaceful world, such a thing is not necessary. Thankfully, Stormwind didn’t ask me to do anything else during that time, since I still hadn’t recovered enough mana to do anything else.

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There was, however, one thing that still bothered me. It was the lingering burning sensation that I had in my left hand. I didn’t think it’s anything to be worried about, as it wasn’t quite as strong as it was right after using the Holy Power when both hands burned, but I didn’t understand why it would feel like that.

As I was thinking about that and looking at my left hand, I was walking along with Victoria, Steven, Brian, and David.

They were all quietly walking along. Victoria seemed to be deep in thought, while Steven and Brian were looking down, and David was simply trying to recover from the training session he had.

Victoria was likely thinking about the moment of panic she suffered, so I understood why she wouldn’t want to talk. As for Steven and Brian, they had been dragged along by Stormwind from one place to another as the elf talked nonstop to them.

I stole a glance at the young men, and the two of them had furrowed eyebrows. I couldn’t really know what they were thinking, but I think that it’s dawning on them that they didn’t have the experience, power, or talent to be trying the things that Stormwind was pointing out to them.

Whether or not they manage to get to the point that the instructor wants them to get was up to them. However, I’m not sure that one week is enough. Still, rare talents do come up from time to time, like Victoria.

There was another rare talent walking on my right hand. David right now was airing himself by moving his shirt as there were still a few sweat drops on his face.

“Phew, good thing these uniforms don’t smell, ‘cause otherwise I’d have to be cleaning them everyday,” he said with a laid back attitude.

“Huh?” Victoria exclaimed as she looked down at her own uniform. “What do you mean?”

“Didn’t they tell you that when you picked these up? They’re not just any cloth, they have magic on them. Why do you think that nothing happens when we use fire and things like that?” David responded while showing off the wrists of the blazer. “See? These look just fine, even after two years of constant use.”

“Really? I thought that your uniform was just new,” Victoria said while looking up and down David’s clothes.

“These are still the same ones I picked up when I got here,” he said with a shake of his head. “You don’t even need to wash them.”

“Impressive,” I said while I also looked closer at the cloth. “How did they make them?”

“That, I don’t know. The only thing that I know is that a lot of clothing designers never left their original craft even when they awakened magic powers. They simply turned their magic to work on their passions with a new perspective, and these are the results of some of them,” David answered, pulling his phone out to quickly search for something on it. “Look, these are some of the best designs there are.”

I looked down at the drawing on his screen. Something that caught my attention was that his phone’s screen looked like it had a small spider web. “What’s wrong with your phone?”

“Oh…” he replied with an awkward tone. “My coach kicked me in the wrong place one time. Don’t mind it, it works just fine.”

I was yet again amazed by these artifacts. A lot of magic artifacts from my world would suffer terrible failures if something like this happened to them, but seeing something that didn’t even have magic still function made me wonder about the smiths responsible for these things.

Regardless, I looked past the cracked bits of the screen and into the drawing. It was a rather elegant black suit, the kind that some of the most powerful and wealthy nobles from my world would have made after spending hundreds of gold coins.

“It looks nice,” I said as I tried to see the details past the cracks.

“It does. Here’s some of the other… interesting ones,” David continued, swiping his finger on the phone.

“Is that… a jester…?” I asked as I looked at the strangely dressed man.

“Yes. Someone thought that a clown outfit would be a good sale, and you can believe that it actually sells?” David answered with a nod before swiping his finger to show me others.

Another one was what I thought would be full body armor, but it was extremely intricate and the material appeared to be matte black. It also had a lot of small lights everywhere and the helmet had glass, for some reason.

“I like this one. It makes people look like futuristic soldiers. Although…” David trailed off as he swiped to the price.

“It’s extremely expensive,” I said as I saw a number that was far beyond my meager means.

“Yes…” he said and swiped to show me another one. “This one looks cool. Somehow, I can imagine you wearing it.”

The drawing depicted a woman in a silver armor that shined under the light. It was full of intricate designs with a pair of wings engraved on the chest and the shoulder pieces. Under it, the woman was wearing white cloth, and as for the lower part, it appeared to be an open front long skirt that allowed one to see the shiny metal greaves she was wearing.

It appeared to be a fantastic armor, similar to the Holy Golden Armor, even if it didn’t have as many metal pieces on it. “It does look fine.”

“Yeah, but like everything else here, it is just as expensive, even these ones”—he swiped his finger a few times to show other armors, stopping on a few colorful dresses—“these are based on idols, and they’re just as good as the other ones, but I can’t see anyone seriously wearing this; even if they’re really good.”

I could agree with him, since they looked like one would wear it to a gala or a noble party.

“Anyway,” he said, putting away his phone, “for now, we’re going to have to settle with the uniforms.”

“Wait,” Victoria softly said, “don’t you have an armor as well, Althea?”

“Yes, but it is not as comfortable as these clothes. As long as I don’t have to do anything dangerous, then I’ll use these,” I replied.

“Oh! Wouldn’t you be able to get any of those armors easily, Victoria?” Steven asked, suddenly lifting his head to look expectantly at Victoria.

“E-eh… well… if I ask my daddy I’m sure that he’ll buy it for me…”

“You should do it! It’ll be even easier to do whatever you want, and you won’t even have to be scared of magic or anyone!” Steven continued with a joyous expression.

“W-well, I don’t think that’s necessary… but I’ll think about it,” Victoria replied with an awkward expression.

“Absolutely! You have to—”

“Okay, that’s enough,” David interrupted Steven, “I think you should be more worried about you.”

“Me?” Steven asked and Brian followed up with a raised eyebrow.

“Don’t think I didn’t listen to what the teacher was saying. You guys are so far behind this class rank, that if you want to get even close, you can’t skip a single day of training, which is why…” David trailed off as he made his way to be between the two young men, who looked warily at him. “We’re going to see our dear coach.”

“N-no, I don’t think that we need to—”

“No buts. I’ve heard all the nonsense you two have been spouting,” David interrupted as he looked down at Steven with a smirk, “you in particular. Which is why, if you want to compete, then you can’t slack a single moment.”

“W-wait! We’ve not even healed from—”

“Those little scratches aren’t enough to avoid training. So let's go,” David said, hooking his arms around the two young men and dragging them off in the same direction as last time, stopping momentarily only to look back at both me and Victoria. “I’ll see you girls tomorrow. Don’t forget to train either.”

“We won’t. See ya…” Victoria replied with a wry smile and a slow wave of her hand.

“If you want to train, then we could join them,” I said while we were watching Steven and Brian struggle.

“E-eh… no, it’s fine… I think I’ll go home for now. What about you?” she asked.

I thought about it for a while, but I didn’t really have any particular plan besides training with the phone, which I could do at home as well. “I think I’ll go home too.”

“Then I guess I’ll see you tomorrow too,” Victoria said with a smile. “And… Thank you for today.”

I shook my head. “It was no problem.”

Victoria softly smiled for a moment before turning to leave—likely to where her car was parked, like last time.

And just when I thought I would have a quiet time at home, a couple of vibrations from the phone I carried startled me. I had two messages.

One was from Bo’guth, however… it didn’t say anything. It was just a… small colorful drawing of a smiling demon doing a thumbs-up. It was quite strange, just like the idea that it looked somewhat cute, but remembering the loud laughing voice and smiling demonic face of the being that sent it caused me to try to shake away the thought.

The second message was from Nicole. Similarly to how Bo’guth had done, she sent me a… cute drawing of a smiling and waving cat. Under it, she wrote that she was coming by my place later.

I didn’t have a reason to refuse her, so I accepted and quickly made my way back to the room to make sure she didn’t get there before me.