Chapter 21: Holiday of winter

It is now dead of winter and the snow covers everything outside. But even in this cold weather, people still train outside. Most teachers don't force their students to train outside and instead take them to an indoor arena that was built for this purpose.

Lucas is not part of the majority of teachers and makes students that attend his combat classes outside. The purpose for this is to make the students be able to do their things in any kind of weather.

During fall season, even if it rained heavily, Lucas would still make the combat classes be outside. Lucas got a few remarks from other teachers, who also complained to Lucy, but Lucy let Lucas continue doing this in the pretense that he makes sure that no students get sick from staying outside while it rained.

This practice did make Lucas somewhat infamous amongst the students, teachers and even researchers. But since it was not mandatory to attend those classes, most just let it slide.

Of course there were many comments that made Lucas look bad and rumor even has it that he was seeing a student outside of school. To the latter which Lucas strictly denied as he was happily married and would then turn to rant about it.

As for the former, the students that understood why Lucas kept having classes outside in those kinds of conditions, would defend his actions as they agreed on the part that "You never know in what kind of conditions you will fight your enemy."

The students that were passionately attending Lucas' classes even in harsh conditions included, but were not limited to: Drace, Sonya, Hannibal, Tora, Walter, Lois, Miranda, Marika, Hannah, Iris and Elliot. All of Lucas' students showed great improvement during Lucas' classes, both harsh and not. Drace would still not fight with Sonya and Walter and Tora would go by themselves.

Even the princess's Victoria and Annerose were outside, training in the snow. Lucressa was not too far behind them either.

Victoria's skill with a rapier was astonishing and her form was beautiful even if she didn't use any magic on top of it. Lucas graded Victoria to be around rank B but bordering rank A. She was training with Hannibal or Lucressa most of the time, but she switched to other students as well from time to time.

Lucressa was still around the rank A as she was given initially, but her skills have risen to the upper A rank during her training in Lucas' classes.

Annerose was most used to being a mage, but would not shy away using a sword either. Her overall rank would be around C, but her swordsmanship is E rank. She was the most suitable partner for Roland to train with using swords, since Roland was overall around rank E. Roland would train with the other students as well, but when it came to swordsmanship, he was equal to Annerose's skill.

Lucas would say some advice to the students he watched and most would heed his advice. Even when Lucas suggested some meditation techniques to the students, most listened to it and showed some improvements. The part of these meditation was to make the students control their aura more efficiently and/or introduce the benefits of Lost theorem in combat.

Students were overall in a festive spirit, since it was perhaps one of the most celebrated events around the world. Lucas didn't have this before he went to sleep, so this event was new to him.

The event is called the great gift giving day. Everyone would give gifts to their friends and loved ones during this time. There are also many festive foods that are made during the duration of the event.

The reason why this festival came to be appears to be because the demon king of solitude gave many gifts to people around the world out of her own pocket. The gifts that made the festival so popular were the gifts that the demon king of solitude gave to all of the leaders of the world. They were grand items stored in the demon territory's treasury that were never seen by non-demon. Two of these gifts were Philosopher's Stone and The Enigma's Tome.

Philosopher's Stone was a stone that was fused with powers of gods. It could make things out of nothing and it was said to be a limitless mana source.

The Enigma's Tome was a book created by a person only known as Enigma. It contained many things in a mysterious language that no one could read or decipher. It is said to have secrets of the gods and it is said that the one who can read it can become a god. Who or what this person who wrote the book was is unknown to all, but everyone seems to agree that they were a powerful person who had seen the secrets of the universe.

Lucas knew about the secrets that The Enigma's Tome held and he was not going to reveal it. Not because it would shake the very world to its core. It was because no one would believe it is a diary of a girl who visited the inverted world for a brief time and wrote it in a language that they used there. Undecipherable to a person in a mortal world, but possible to understand for a person who has also visited the inverted world.

Note that The Enigma's Tome wasn't written in the language used in Inertia theorem as the theorem speaks of the words of the inverted world itself. The Enigma's Tome was written in a language that is used there and is near incomprehensible to the people of the mortal world.

Lucas would never say what the tome actually says, even as a prank. And even if he wanted to, Sylvi prohibited him from telling any of the people that might know about the book. And now that many know of the book, Lucas can't help but smile as they obsess over a simple diary of a girl.

As powerful as she may have been, the girl now known as Enigma was for a lack of a better word, a "person". A "person" who had a big ego and a lot of unrivaled free spirit in her. A "person" who wrote a book in a language that is only spoken in the inverted world, just because she could. A genius right next to Sylvi.

Her race was soul fairy, but that is not important. Lucas just wishes that he never has to see that girl again, for he cannot deal with her antics.

Back to the topic. The great gift giving festival means that many people will be giving gifts as said earlier. This brings Lucas to a conundrum. Should he also give gifts to those close to him? There is the obvious choice to give Sylvi a present, but the problem is that she doesn't wish that two of them meet just yet. Perhaps Lucas can send a package to Sylvi, but he does not know about her address in the first place, it is kind of difficult.

There are also his students to consider, but he quickly stops that line of thought, as he sees it being weird to receive gifts from your teacher. At least that's what Lucas thinks.

Then there are Lucy and Roland. Lucas doesn't know what kind of gift would suit Lucy and Roland would be happy to receive any kind of gift from Lucas.

And what did Lucas decide to do for this problem? He went and asked them straight out. Lucy told him that she would like a pen specifically from a certain branch. Roland told Lucas that he is fine with anything Lucas buys him, but if he had to pick, it would be a tough sword.

So Lucas went searching. He looked around the city and found a sword that Roland could wield in a couple of years.

As for the pen for Lucy, Lucas searched left and right and couldn't find it. All he could find were some other branch pens and not the branch Lucy wanted. The information Lucas could find indicated that the pen was only made in a certain eastern country, so he went there as fast as he could.

It took him days going back and forth between attending his classes and finding the pen, but in the end he finally found it from a store owned by the Golden Barrel company. It cost Lucas most of his savings, but he had gone too far to quit now, so he didn't care much at that point.

The eve came and Lucy called Lucas and Roland to a private party. There Lucas gave the presents to Roland and Lucy. Roland was happy, but Lucy just said blankly "Wow, thanks." and not a single word more. Lucas was defeated at this point, so he decided to give the Amari a gift that he found during his search for the enigmatic pen.

The gift Lucas gave Amari was a necklace that had a one big red ruby on it. It looked ordinary, but it housed a protective spirit that would aid the wearer when in need, should the spirit inside take a liking to the wearer. Lucas explained this and Amari, though reluctantly, received the gift.

When the night was settling in, Lucas couldn't help but feel a bit sad that he couldn't give Sylvi a gift of some kind and neither did she give anything to him. As he was thinking that, he received a message to his klisi and when he looked at what was sent to him, he saw that it was a picture of Sylvi. And not just any kind of picture. In it, Sylvi was wearing nothing but her panties and a veil while covering her chest with her hand. She took a picture that looked downwards on her. Lucas was instantly aroused and when he read the following text "Soon my love, soon." He couldn't contain his excitement and took a lap around the academy.

There arose a rumor that on the eve of the great gift giving day, you could see a shadowy figure running around the academy when the sun had settled.