The New Guy II

"Right, the rules are simple. One at a time each of you will go into the arena and fight your opponent, you win if you knock them out or if they indicate a surrender. If you're fortunate enough to be on the winning side, you can choose to stay and fight the next opponent or leave it to another teammate. However, once you step out of the arena you may not re-enter. The first team to run out of members loses." The professor explained.

"Oh, and don't worry about hurting each other, we have Miss Alanna on standby for healing." He added.

Jacob nodded in thought, doing his best to figure out how to take advantage of this fact.

His strategic thinking so far was simple, the other team had 6 people.

Fredrick was a no-brainer since he was 14. Anyone he fought had a decent chance, but Jacob was inclined to use Shin, if the boy somehow managed to use his swap ability, then Shin's speed would give him an edge in reacting on time.

Other than that, there were two Vass clan dreamers, one Azan clan dreamer and the final Jin clan dreamer. That wasn't considering the new guy, Arthur.

Luckily with the lessons they had done so far and analysis giving him perfect recall, he had knowledge of all their abilities.

The Vass clan part of the team had one fire ability user and one wind ability user. Ideally, he would match up the fire user against Shin.

He wanted to do this because he had noticed that the fire user's long-range abilities weren't particularly accurate. He figured a fast-moving target like Shin would pose a problem for her.

The wind user however would be best paired against Victoria, since her ability seemed to function best as a sort of concussive blast, Victoria's endurance would prove helpful if she got thrown around.

The other spirit user wasn't much of a worry as he used a spirit geared for rejuvenation and healing, even Jacob reckoned he might be able to win.

That just left the Jin clan dreamer and Arthur.

For the Jin clan, he planned to leave it to Ressana. The man was a jack-of-all-trades type, getting a general buff to speed, power and endurance without focusing much on any one point.

Jacob figured this meant that Rossana's cutlass would allow her to win quickly.

As for Arthur, he honestly had no idea, he hoped that he would be weak enough for it not to matter but he doubted he would be that lucky.

Since he could choose the order, he decided to try and keep their best fighters in reserve for the moment.

So, he sent out Erwin, telling him to bail if it was one of the stronger ones and at most try to get a hit in before forfeiting.

Soon two fighters stood in the arena, sadly the other team had the same idea he had.

Erwin was faced with the healing student.

What followed was a spectacle that could only be called a fight in the loosest possible definition.

There were some poorly swung fits, slapping, and even some grappling.

Mercifully for the onlookers, it ended when Erwin finally made a smart decision, summoning his fog creature.

The fog dispersed quickly but the temporary lack of vision made Erwin's opponent's already low combat power plummet.

Since Erwin could see through the fog without trouble, a fact that he had forgotten to mention, he managed to clutch out a victory for group one.

A hesitant cheer came from their group as Erwin turned around to give them a hearty thumbs up. It was then that Jacob realised that since the British young man wasn't in a combat-related club, he had likely never seen a proper dreamer battle.

Otherwise, he wouldn't have looked so proud of himself.

Regardless the next person that Erwin was up against was the flame user.

To which he forfeited immediately.

A decision that the flame user actually seemed relieved by. Most likely because she would have felt like an adult beating up a kid if they had fought.

The next match went as expected, Shin went up against the fire user and using his speed managed to dodge the inaccurate bolts of flames by feinting left and right as he approached.

Once he closed the distance it wasn't long before she was knocked out.

This didn't stop group one from cheering much more heartily than after the first fight.

Although Erwin was busy trying to hide his face in shame after realising the disparity between his performance and Shin's.

The other group was obviously a little annoyed by this but kept a level head and responded by sending out their wind user.

Which made Jacob realise the actual lesson behind this class.

In the dreamer world, although no abilities were inherently inferior, there were certain weaknesses that each ability had as well as strengths. A major factor in deciding the winner of a dreamer duel was whether one ability inherently suppressed the other.

Ahh, an explanation may be in order.

Dreamer duels were something Jacob was taught about recently. As the name suggested they referred to when a dreamer challenged another to a duel.

It was used to solve certain disputes or just to prove superiority. Of course, the challenged had the right to refuse.

The one who was challenged also had the right to decide the nature of the duel, barring obvious victories. Such as a diving contest between someone like Ressana and someone like Erwin.

The one who proposed the duel had to put up a wager, ranging from straight-up money to something as bizarre as the marriage of a mutual love interest.

If the duel was accepted, then the prize naturally went to the winner, although in the case mentioned above the only prize would be the right to ask for the love interest's hand in marriage. Not that such a thing happened much in modern times anyway.

Back to the topic at hand, the class was meant to teach the students that picking their battles was a very important part of being a dreamer.

More subtly, it was teaching them to take advantage of what other people assume of their abilities.

With that being said, Shin lost the round to the wind user, as he was simply unable to get close before being blasted away by a powerful gust.

Cheers erupted from the other group this time, while Shin was taken to the side to be treated.

A little worried that one of their three actual fighters only got a single victory, Jacob sent out Victoria.

Thankfully she performed as well as Jacob had expected and managed to power through wind blasts. Even when she was knocked back, she only moved a little, allowing her to eventually close the distance and pummel the young man into surrendering.

Cheers were becoming slightly sparse on their side now, considering it was pretty much only him and Ressana, as Erwin was too embarrassed, and Stephanie hadn't cheered from the start.

The next person up was the Jin clan member, much to Jacobs's annoyance. He would rather get the new guy out of the way so that he could stop worrying about the unknown factor.

Surprisingly, Victoria won again.

It was a much closer fight this time. The Jin clan student used a variety of techniques and almost gained a significant advantage over Victoria a few times.

Regardless even Erwin got back into cheering after seeing one of their members beat two of the other team in a row.

Finally, it was Arthur's turn to come up.

And that's when it all went to shit.