Chapter 3 - The first missions

The lessons pass slowly, as Akio increasingly becomes more worried about this magic energy outside of the school. During the lessons, though, Akio goes through a loop of some sorts, falling unconscious and waking up again, but his unease never left.

Finally, the final period ended, marking the end of the school day. Akio swiftly tries to leave, so as to not allow this ominous energy to remain any further, possibly endangering others. Just a few steps after he exits the classroom, however, someone grabs his right shoulder.

"You told me that you'd explain everything, Akio."

Akio turns around to look at Harumi, who obviously wants to find out what happened in the battle between her father and Akio.

"I'm sorry, Harumi. Please wait here."

"..Alright, but you better return!"

"Don't worry, I will."

After giving her a smile, Akio leaves Hanami, as he rushes to finally discover who is the one behind this ominous energy. After a few minutes, Akio tracks the source behind a few bushes, and when he comes closer, he sees that the source.. was a few soldiers?

Akio's confused, but he does not let his guard down. One of the soldiers, panicking, shoots a blast of magic at Akio, who charges in, shooting his own blast to counter the soldier's. Akio charges in even further, with the soldiers now preparing to engage in battle.

The soldiers each fire their own blast at Akio, who dodges all of them, though he does receive some damage, for he neither was fast enough to dodge them perfectly nor did he have enough space to dodge.

After dodging their blasts and being met with mostly success, Akio punches all of the soldiers, as he then continues to focus on one of them. The other soldiers attempt to attack Akio all at once, but they fail, as Akio elegantly dodges their hits, making them hit each other.

It didn't take long for Akio to kill the first soldier, and he continued to the others, which were relatively easy, as they wore themselves down. Akio, slowly but surely, killed the other four soldiers, and to keep this private, he burned the corpses, though he made sure to not allow the fire to burn anything other than the corpses.

"You scum. Burn in the depths of Hell."

Akio turns around, cauterizing any wounds that he had received from the soldiers as a temporary measure, as he goes back to the school, where Harumi was slowly losing her patience.

"Oh, Akio. You're back."

"Yeah.."

"What happened to you?"

"Let's say.. I got into an intense argument with a group of people. Nevermind that, you asked to know what happened with Griffin and I, correct?"

"Yes. Stop leaving me in the dark!"

Harumi pouts, and Akio becomes a bit worried, trying to assure her that he'll tell her everything, as he begins recounting the events that led to the fight with Griffin.

"Let's see… For starters, I managed to summon Durandal, which is an achievement in and of itself. Afterwards, I finished off the training robots, but my injuries were too much for me to bear."

"What happened then?"

"Griffin opened the door, you see, and he gave me a healing injection, allowing me to completely recover, and he offered to spar with me, so as to test out my new strength, so I accepted."

"And because of that, you fought?"

"What can I say? We, the Generals and the Successors, are simple-minded creatures."

"You idiots.."

Harumi sighs, but Akio laughs, going on to say that the fight was still fun. Afterwards, since Harumi's request was satisfied, she heads back home, waving Akio goodbye, and the latter also takes his leave.

On the road, he starts contemplating his life from here on, not knowing what he wants to do, but thanks to his luck, Akio does not have to begin thinking about that yet, since he and the other Successors will start going on their missions.

Breathing out a sigh of relief, Akio slightly smiles, knowing that the next days should be fun (note: they will not). As he reaches his house, he opens the door, and somehow, the only person that he wanted to see at said moment was there.

As Akio opens the door further, Theos turns to look at him, also greeting him.

"Hey, Akio! Where have you been? As far as I'm aware, you should've finished your classes around an hour ago, right?"

"Yeah, but let's say that something happened and I had to stay for a little bit longer."

"Did you get in trouble because of your grades? I swear…"

"No! Not at all. Instead, I fought some of The Dark Wizard's underlings."

"Hm?"

Akio and Theos sit down, as Akio begins to recount the events of his fight with the wizard's soldiers. Theos is a bit surprised to hear everything, but he asks Akio about his fight with Griffin, something that he had heard from Hanami on the phone.

"Ah, yes. I also talked with Harumi about it at school, but allow me to enlighten you, dad."

Afterwards, Akio begins telling Theos everything about his training, the summoning of Durandal and his fight with Griffin, with Theos starting to become a little bit amazed at how many things his son went through in a mere few hours.

"So, dad, do you have any idea why the soldiers could have been sent?"

"I can only guess that they're just reusable corpses for The Dark Wizard. To camp outside of a school, however, that I cannot understand."

"I see."

"Well, I should get going. I got summoned to headquarters to start preparing for your missions."

"Alright. I'll see you soon, dad!"

Akio waves Theos goodbye, as afterwards, he goes up to his room, grabbing a comic book of sorts, which due to another, old culture, is referred to as 'manga'. This one, being Akio's favorite series, is about a little boy, who hunted down some 'wish orbs'? Akio, after around two years of being a fan, continues not to know, but he doesn't question it. 

After all, the boy has now become a man, and he's simply fighting strong opponents. There are times, however, where the series becomes serious, and the main character unlocks new powers through sheer need.

"Hm, nice."

After a few hours of reading this manga, Akio decides to go grab a small snack from the kitchen and sleep, since it doesn't look like Ichika will be coming back from her outing anytime soon, and Theos with Hisako are quite busy.

Within one minute, Akio rushes to the kitchen, grabbing a banana, as he goes back up swiftly, preparing to go to bed. Akio eats his banana within seconds, and without even taking notice of it, as he scrolls through his phone, watching funny videos.

Around thirty minutes later, and having tried to delude himself that he will go to sleep 'after the next video', Akio actually starts feeling sleepy, as he closes the phone, falling asleep. However, fate did not allow him to calm himself.

Instead of a normal dream, Akio sees.. a precognition, of sorts. Akio watches on, as in his sight is a burning village, filled with corpses. Akio's kneeling down, being unable to believe what he is seeing, but before he can even shed a tear, feeling terrible for the natives, he gets up, and for a split second, his eyes and hair turn cyan, as he instantly disappears.

Within a few seconds, he's within the village, as if blocking something, but Akio can't see what. At that moment, however, Akio wakes up, his eyes wide open. As he picks up his phone, opening the screen, he sees that it's almost 8AM, and that his alarms didn't go off today.

Worried that he'll be late for today's event, Akio instantly puts on something that had been gathering dust in his room: his battle suit. It was meant to be used for missions, and now, the time had come. Akio equips his suit, which is just a simple suit with a cloak, since he doesn't care about anything fancy, as long as it gets the job done.

He heads to the headquarters, calling the two blades of Durandal to him. When he reaches it, the other five successors are there, and they laugh a little bit with Akio's simple suit.

"Hey, Genkei's suit is even simpler than mine!"

"Nope."

Within a second, Genkei's suit, which resembles a fighting gi, turns into armor made of magic-infused titanium, shocking Akio. Afterwards, he takes a look at the others' suits. Jack's outfit is made of non-conductive material, since he hasn't learned to master his lightning magic yet.

Aoi's suit is covered by nanomachines that allow her to use water magic more efficiently, and give her advanced mobility when swimming. Harumi's suit is modular, for some reason, but it also empowers her artificially, giving her brute strength.

Now, for Alexa's suit, it's similar to Jack's, in the sense that it's made of material that protects her from her magma magic, since her body hasn't built up enough durability to withstand the scorching heat, but the design's obviously quite different.

After talking a little bit, goofing around while they do so, the six students are given their respective first missions, and they all head out. Akio, however, has the hardest one: save a village.

Not remembering the dream that he had earlier, Akio tries to head to said village as fast as possible, but the process takes a few days, since it's a bit remote. When he finally reaches it, Akio is initially excited to have come to his first mission, but that excited face turns into one of sorrow when he watches on…