Mock Battle

As I ran into what seemed like an arena building, I followed the sounds of metal clashing till I found Kara fighting someone. I also found Scarlet watching the sideline, so I walked up beside her.

"Have you already gone?" I ask.

"Yep." She responded simply.

"How did it go?" I continued to prod.

"It went well, I won without too much of a problem." Scarlet elaborates.

"Nice!" I said giving her a light pat. "How has Kara been doing?" I turn my attention towards her fight.

"It's going well. It just started pretty much." Scarlet says.

"Just started? I was in the writing exam for more than 30 minutes, to say the least!" I question.

"Yes, there was some delay in finding suitable fighters," Scarlet explains.

I decided to put more of my focus on Kara's fight. She is fighting a swordsman who seems to be having difficulty keeping up with her. I watch as she keeps up her assaults forcing her opponent to stay on the defensive. 'The guy she's facing seems to be rather worried about his situation.' I laugh to myself.

The fight continues for a bit, with Kara on the offensive and the other guy on the defensive. Eventually, Kara started to slow down, allowing her opponent some breathing room. I watched as a bit of a wicked smile came across the guy's face. Kara then charged at him much slower than before, this time her opponent didn't even try to block as he raised his sword and swung down towards her.

In almost a blink of an eye, she used his force to move his sword out of the way and landed a solid kick right to the stomach sending him flying. Once he hits the floor he stays there for a moment in pain as Kara comes up to him and holds one of her daggers to his neck.

"Enough! Kara wins." I look over to see Nurse Rumi judging the fight.

Kara then backs off and holds out her hand to help the guy up but he just angrily slaps her hand out of the way and walks away. 'A bit of a sore loser, I suppose.' I make a mental note of the guy.

"Ah, Adrian, you are here." I turn to Nurse Remi as she addresses me.

"Hello, Nurse Remi." I smile. "Is it my turn?"

"Yes it is, please step into the arena." Nurse Remi instructs.

I do as I am told and walk to the center of the arena.

"Okay, please come on to the center as well!" Nurse Remi says.

I turn around to see a boy maybe a few years older than me, start walking towards me. Though I know I haven't met him before he looks very familiar. Pale blue hair, with very sharp blue eyes. 'Why does he seem familiar...' I think.

"Is there something on my face?" the boy laughed. "You are staring quite intently."

"Oh sorry, you just look familiar," I said a little embarrassed.

"Maybe it's because my sister and I look a little familiar?" He remarked. "I believe she is in your class."

"Your sister is in my class...?" I ponder for a bit. "Wait! Are you Frostworth?" I asked surprised.

"Yes, my name is Aaron Frostworth." He took a slight bow. "I am a third year. The pleasure is all mine."

"I see, my name is Adrian Silver!" I do a slight bow in return. "A pleasure."

"Alright, enough chit-chat." Nurse Remi interrupts. "Ready? Set. Go!"

At a crazy speed, he pulls out a spear-looking staff and closes the distance between us. I just barely managed to bend backward to dodge his attack. I quickly summon my Katana with just enough time to block the next attack. The sad thing is, Katanas aren't really known for blocking! I get sent flying almost immediately. Not giving me a second to rest, he catches up to me before I even hit the ground and takes another swing.

I held up my sword just barely in time to redirect his hit, but the force still caused me to fall when my feet hit the ground. I use the momentum to roll back to my feet. I look up after getting up and see his face right in mine. I managed to get into a strong enough stance that I could redirect the next hit, but that didn't stop him. Aaron kept swinging with a strong force. If I try to block one of the hits I would be flying, and it takes all I have to use my blade to redirect his hits.

"You're slow" Aaron comments. "Not prepared, therefore you are reckless."

He continues that as he berates me with different attacks. If this keeps up, then I am going to lose balance and fall! Since there was a chance I was going to lose anyway, I did the next best thing I could think of. As I redirected one of his swings, I stepped forward and got more into his personal space forcing him to switch stances. With each swing, I step closer getting in his face. Finally, I managed to use a bit of force and shoulder-bashed him, knocking him off balance and to the floor. I then hold my blade in his face.

"Enough! Adrian wins." Nurse Remi announces.

I hear Kara and Scarlet cheer in the background. 'That was too easy...' I think to myself.

"Why did you let me win?" I asked as I held out a hand to help him up.

"I saw what I wanted." He smiled. "I want to see how far you can go from here."

I take a deep breath and sigh. "Next time, I will make sure you won't have to go easy on me."

"Actually, I want you to meet me after school." He patted me on the shoulder. "Meet me here, alone."

Before I could say anything else he walked away and Kara grabbed onto me cheering.

"That was amazing! Even when pinned you kept your cool!" Kara Cheers.

"You did well Adrian." Scarlet smiles.

"Oh come on, you can do better than that!" Kara said as she turned to Scarlet. "Some something like 'That was impressive, you are fantastic!'"

"I think what I said is fine." Scarlet holds up her hand as a gesture to decline.

"Alright, you three, enough bickering." Nurse Remi chimes in.

'How did I get dragged into that?' I wondered to myself.

"Go back to the teacher's lounge and you should find Mrs. Sugio still there." Nurse Remi continued. "You should be able to get your rank-up acknowledgment from her."

'Should be...?' I worried.

"Thanks, Remi!" Kara responds as she starts to drag me away.

Scarlet then follows us as I am dragged by an excited Kara to the teacher's lounge. Kara finally lets go of my arm as she opens the door to announce her presence to Mrs. Sugio.

"We are back!" Kara sang as she threw up her arms.

"Ah, how did it go?" Mrs. Sugio smiled.

"We won!" Kara exclaims.

"I see, is Nurse Remi coming to confirm that?" Mrs. Sugio's facial expression didn't change at all.

"Yep, they successfully won each battle." Nurse Remi appeared behind us.

We all kind of jumped a bit from her sudden appearance. 'I should just keep Hunter on constantly' I joke to myself.

"I see, well then, here you go." Mrs. Sugio says as she hands me a piece of paper.

Kara, Scarlet, and I look over the paper. It is a congratulations paper stating that we are an E-Rank guild now! I continue to look through the paper, we are supposed to hang this up in the guild, yadda yadda, ah, and we can now have things like a quest officer desk and one quest officer.

"Quest officer?" I asked looking up to Mrs. Sugio.

"Someone who works with the quests. Makes sure they are up to date and is in charge of assigning them to those who request but they can also deny anyone that they don't think is up for the quest, to a degree anyway." Mrs. Sugio explains. "Later you could get an intelligence Chief. Which is someone in charge of all the information your guild has, taking a load off of the guild master."

"I see," I said as I looked over the sheet. "How do we get these?"

"You have to complete quests, ask someone to be one, and then pay for the desk here." Mrs. Sugio explains.

"That makes sense," I said as I nodded and smiled. "Thank you for your time!"

"Yeah, yeah. Get to class." Mrs. Sugio tells us.

We thank them for their time and make our way out of the room. We had a conversation about possibilities now that we are ranked E. Including a little bit about the tournament Mrs. Sugio mentioned. Looks like we are going to be busy for a while! Once we reached the main lobby we bid farewell to Kara as Scarlet and I then make our way to class.