Plans

Elijah lay in a hall with one other person, panting, while they looked as if they had done nothing all day.

"I... know you're... strong, but how... are you still standing?" He asked between pants.

"Eh, the battlefield is worse." The man replied, taking a swig from a bottle of water.

"You always... say that." Elijah huffed.

The man in front of him had decided that he would take Elijah as a pupil at the start of school, and since then, Elijah had spent most days a week training with the man for several hours, before and after lessons.

Now that The Island had gone on break, it was the perfect time to train like a madman, as the man had said.

"Listen. If you want to get strong like me, you've got to put in the effort. I've trained every year's top ranker since I worked here, and all of them were worse than you. However, they all put in the effort and got stronger than you. You need to follow their example." The man lectured.

'He's kidding, right? Put effort in? I put in more than 10 hours of effort a day!' Elijah wanted to retort but knew that it wasn't a good idea.

The last time, he had spoken back and earned himself chore duty for the entire school. He had been made to clean the entire school, by himself, and was told to do it in a single day.

Thinking about that made Elijah shudder, so he put it behind him and instead asked something else.

"But, I'm not the top ranker, Grey is. Why don't you train him?" Elijah knew he was much weaker than Grey, and it made no sense why he was being trained instead.

"That boy doesn't require my tutelage." The man replied, being reminded of the 2 monsters who he knew had trained or were training the boy.

He may have been stronger than them, but there was no telling what they could accomplish when paired together. 

"Oh, I see."

"Besides, you've got plenty of potential yourself. Be proud lad. I'll make you stronger than me."

---

Elijah sat down at the lunch table and began eating his food. The morning training had taken its toll on him, and he needed to be prepared for the training in the afternoon.

After the second bite of food, a group of 6 people all sat around him at the same time, beginning to chat with one another.

"Hey, Elijah. How was your morning?" Var asked.

"Pretty good. Tiring." He replied monotonely, stuffing his mouth between words. He wanted to finish his food quickly so that he could spend time talking with them.

"I see," Var said, nodding. "It must suck to train under the Jay Alv if you're here like this."

There was mock envy in his voice, but Elijah knew that it wasn't all fake. Var was envious that Elijah got to train with Jay Alv, in fact, every student was, but Var was a friend, and he knew better than to be jealous of a friend.

Besides, Elijah would pass along the knowledge he gained to them, so it didn't matter.

"No, I'm just tired. He keeps comparing me to the other students he's trained, and instead of motivating me, it's now annoying me. It worked in the beginning, but I haven't received a word of praise. Just promises, though I'm sure he'll keep them." 

"Wow, I'm so jealous of you! To train with the Jay Alv. He's my hero, you know!" Penelope said, acting like a fan girl whenever she heard Jay's name.

Elijah nodded and chuckled at his friend's antics, before feeling a gaze on him. The hairs on his neck stood up, so he quickly put up a guard, looking around the room for the culprit.

There weren't many students in the hall, for lunch had just started, so it was much easier for Elijah.

'No, no, no, no, no, ah, you!' Elijah thought as he scanned the room from left to right, his vision landing on a boy with black hair and black eyes.

The boy waved at him, so Elijah dropped his guard, but he gave the boy a good scowl.

'Kim Jaehyun, I think. He was at the bottom, but he climbed the ranks quickly. Oh well, as long as it doesn't happen a second time.'

Elijah sat back down and resumed eating his food, only to stop when he realized that he was the only one eating.

He looked up to see his friends looking at him, slightly worried, with confusion over their faces.

'Oh, right.' He thought. "Don't worry guys, I was seeing things."

He scanned their faces to make sure they understood that everything was alright, and then realized that someone was missing.

"Wait a minute, where's Aurora?"

"Did you just realize? She's gone home, her parents needed her." Hannah said, casting a glare at her seemingly blind friend.

"Uh, I was busy eating?" Was his excuse.

"Sure, just eat." She said, slightly annoyed at him.

The rest of the group laughed at the exchange and continued to eat. 

Darren was, well, Darren.

---

The boy with black hair and matching eyes walked through the corridor, contemplating.

'If we're going according to the story, Elijah is training with Jay Alv, and Aurora has gone home. Eventually, the group learns of a problem Aurora has and takes a month off school to help her, slowing their growth. 

Other than closer bonds, they gain nothing from this arc, and I can't solve it as I need to train too. There's a week and a bit left of the break, and I'm going to use it to the fullest.

I need someone to solve it for me.' 

He racked his brain thinking of someone who was strong enough to take care of the problem alone, and who could do it fast, so Aurora could come back as soon as possible.

'Got it! I'll ask Grey. Now, how do I do that? I've never spoken to him.' Kim Jaehyun had much more to think about, and as such, headed to his room early, instead of training.

---

In a dark room, filled with smoke, a boy with silver hair sneezed.

'Is someone talking about me?' He thought, earning a tut from an annoyed entity.

- Superstition. You don't sneeze because someone is thinking or talking about you. That's not possible. -

'Okay, sure.' Grey thought, refocusing on the task at hand.

He stared at the Mana conductor before him, one that was as large as a cauldron, and prayed. He had decided that it was a good idea to finish learning Alchemy before continuing as a Hunter, and at the moment, he was creating a large batch of 1st Rank potions.

'Since all ranks require different ingredients, it should be possible to mass produce any rank of them.' He thought, waiting for the machine to finish infusing the paste with Mana.

He remembered the lesson where the teacher had shown them how to make a simple potion, and then thought about what she had said.

'She never mentioned using our own Mana. However, I am aware of why it doesn't work.' He thought, sighing at the fact that one couldn't inject their Mana into the essence of something, only infuse and amplify the object.

He had a hypothesis that could work, but no human could pull it off. It was why the machinery was used in the first place.

- Hmm, maybe I could help. - Fallen Star said, much to Grey's delight.

'Really, how?' He asked, very eager to hear his partner's idea.

- Well, if I change the properties of your Mana to match the machine's it should be possible. However, there may be unintended side effects. Are you sure? - Fallen Star inquired. Knowing Grey's drive to discover, It was worried that something might happen. It hadn't done that before, after all.

Also, whenever Grey was extremely interested in something, he became single-minded, relentlessly charging toward the goalpost with no regard for anything else.

When he became like that, Fallen Star, Samantha, and Lucas, neither of them could awaken him from that state. It was great sometimes but could be extremely dangerous other times.

Fallen Star and Grey hypothesized that it had something to do with his nature as a demon in a human body amplifying some aspect of himself, causing that tunnel vision.

'I'm sure. Besides, I doubt I'll go into the zone.'

'Going into the zone' was what they had dubbed Grey's moments of hyper-focus, so hearing Grey use that term cleared up Fallen Star's worries. If Grey knew that he might potentially do that, but said he wouldn't, It had no reason to worry.

Demons were extremely dull beings, and humans were overly indulgent in their desires and emotions, so when they combined, you got a human that had perfect self-discipline and wouldn't spiral unless traumatized. So Grey had half of that.

- Okay then, I'm going to change your Mana. Set up the experiment. -

Fallen Star dove back into Grey's soul, exiting the blue blob immediately. It sent a mental command to the blob, causing it to shapeshift.

This time, instead of becoming a circle, it became a perfect replica of Grey's body, but see-through.

With a thought, Fallen Star changed the properties of Grey's Mana, shifting it from a soft malleable form to a rigid, sharp structure.