Meeting the Students

"I see. Vice-Principal, you have it all prepared didn't you?" Kael gave a feeble smile. For some strange reason, he felt a slight bit of pressure weighing down on him ever since he received the assignment. A task of this simplicity shouldn't be a problem for the Invoker at all, however now he's tied down by his cultivation level, hence the difficulty of this task was enough to pose a threat to him.

Wallie Dawson gave a slight grin and nodded slightly.

"City Lord, have you prepared the Heaven and Earth treasures that I have asked for to lay down the Spirit Convergence Array?"

"I had to spend quite a fortune on those items, but luckily my men managed to obtain it all. I have already assigned a Spirit Array room for you to complete the formation for it."

"Okay that is good. However we are not in a hurry, as long as we have the hybrid core we successfully infused last time. We can always kickstart the mass production after this round of beast horde tide. I'll make my move first to meet the students."

After bading the duo farewell, Kael proceeded to look for the students in the City Lord residence. Though he wasn't told about the location of these students, he was able to find them using the spiritual tracing method. A 100 of them have left a strong enough spiritual traces for him to locate them easily.

Kael stepped into the banquet hall and a sight of all the students waiting in the spacious room welcomed him. When the door opened, all of them turned their heads to look at Kael.

"So that's the legendary Kael! I finally get to see him today!"

"He's not as handsome as what I thought he will look like though."

"Who cares? In this world, strength is the most important thing. And he's darned strong!"

There were a flurry of discussions amongst the student cultivators when they saw Kael. Some revered him, some were jealous of his achievements, while others chose to take a neutral stance, wanting to wait for Kael to prove himself to them.

Kael scanned his eyes across the crowd of student cultivators. Then he saw people that he wanted to see; Mirana and Thrump were visible as well. When Kael's eyes came into contact with Mirana's, her heart skipped a beat. Blood rushed to her ears and she felt a sweet feeling germinating inside of her that she had never felt before.

Kael nodded in Mirana and Thrump's direction before proceeding to address the crowd.

"Hi everyone, my name is Kael. I'm sure everyone knows why we are here for - the impending demonic beast horde invasion happening in two days time. I've been entrusted by your Vice-Principal, Wallie Dawson, with the task of leading all of you in repelling the beast horde this time around."

The student cultivators all exchanged looks with each other. That was something that all of them already knew. However, they really wanted to know what Kael was going to say next.

"I'm sure some of you have heard of the recent expedition to the Whitemoon Mines. Cultivators that were grouped together with a certain strategy were able to defeat the Whitemoon Goblins with ease and efficiency. We will adopt a similar strategy; to group all of you into different groups. The main purpose is to complement each other's strengths in order to bring out the maximum potential of your fighting capacities."

One student cultivator raised his hand up. "Bu.. But, we are not dealing with just one kind of monster here! There is a great variety of them! How do we go about dealing with them in groups?"

"Yup, that's why I won't be teaching any of my Spirit Arts to you all. Instead, we will spend one full day here trying to group you guys into groups of five so that you can discuss amongst your peers how to effectively combat and cover for each other. With this, you won't be restricted by a particular type of strategy but instead adapt to the situation accordingly."

Another student cultivator raised his hand. "We don't have the superiority in numbers. Isn't it more efficient if we combat individually to resist as many monsters as possible?"

"Not true. We are adopting a defensive measure here. In groups of five, you can advance and retreat accordingly to keep as many demonic beasts occupied and slay them accordingly. If you are scattered, there is no focus area where we can keep the demonic beasts at bay. Our purpose is to fend off the beast horde invasion till they realise that they can't break through the defenses, and not to kill all of them in the shortest amount of time possible. Besides, it's easy to get attacked from multiple beasts by fighting alone, hence the casualty rate will be higher."

The student cultivators murmured amongst themselves. Kael did convey the logic to them, and they understood it. However, some of them weren't still exactly clear of how they could proceed with this.

Kael beckoned his hand to quieten the crowd. "All of you are students of the Fledgling Myriad Institute, so I'm sure all of you have practiced similar Spirit Arts according to the type of cultivator you are. By type, I refer to it as two broad categories; melee and ranged. All those who are Commoner Rank Lower Phase shall be grouped together, while those who are Commoner Rank Middle Phase shall be grouped together. Find your groups in this ratio: three melee and two ranged. If you can't find a group in this ratio, there must at least be one ranged cultivator in the group."

The student cultivators immediately acted on Kael's instructions and began grouping themselves.

After 15 minutes, they were all standing in groups of five. There were three groups of Commoner Rank Middle Phase cultivators, while the other 17 groups were of Commoner Rank Lower Phase.

Kael nodded his head in approval. These student cultivators were trained to be disciplined, not like the rag-tag bunch of cultivators he met for the Whitemoon expedition. They were able to receive instructions and act promptly on it. That was a good start.