Chapter 67

"Will you be coming back?" The seer asked as she looked towards Alex with unwillingness.

"You already know the answer to that." Alex said after climbing onto Ger.

'After a full month of training, I only saw a little progress. Michael and Daniel gave it their all in teaching, but my affinities didn't react in the way that they expected, In fact, they didn't react at all.'

He looked down as he saw the village fading and disappear by its own secret methods.

'When I was little, some days I thought that I could go out into the wilderness to escape everything, but after spending a few days and helping them fend of waves of beasts, I think that is good that I never did.'

Alex looked over to his instructors who had sullen expressions riddling there faces. 'They'll be fine, I hope.'

——————

Weeks flew by and Alex soon found himself in front of one of his new instructors.

"A bow?"

"All captains need to have all of their basics up to speed, think of your newfound profession as a curse for now." A wiry old man said in front of Alex.

"Do I just shoot the target Mica?"

"Yes, but only as I say so." Mica said before stepping to the side.

Alex watched as the wind within the room picked up and looked to the man as if questioning his sanity.

He spread out a light layer of spacial energy and let the natural wind carry it. After a second an arrow was nocked and coated in a layer of darkness fired before the instructor could stop him.

The arrow flew and the darkness ate away at the wind energy that came into contact with it. It's course was still changed, but it was negligible as the arrow embedded itself into the wooden target.

"Okay."

"Okay what?" Mica asked looking to Alex.

"Is that all?" Alex asked.

Mica was stunned for a moment but soon pulled a switch next to himself before smiling. "Of course not. Shoot all of the remaining targets before this timer empties." He said while flipping over a sand timer.

"You have one minute."

The wind in the room became erratic and several hanging targets swung loosely throughout the room.

After firing several arrows Alex sat his bow down and fixed his hair before heading to the exit.

"Wait! Ahem, you see, while your shots may have not been very accurate and have just barely hit the targets, with the right training you would be a good fit for the archery club. I could even put in a good word and have you join the competitions early."

"No thanks, I'll just keep that for next year. I'm not that suited for archery any way."

After a while of convincing, Alex left the room and walked through the empty halls. The feeling of nostalgia overbearing as he expected James or Tom to round a corner at any moment. He slapped himself on the head as he began go over the conversations they had in between training sessions.

'That time is over. I'll have to thank the seer if we ever meet again, she was the one who suggested that I learn how to shoot a bow.'

After the day had passed, he entered his own secret training spot.

Alex put down the book he had in his hand and released his control over the halo in front of himself. He wiped the sweat from his brow and sighed.

'I don't think I can awaken a fire affinity. Not naturally at least.'

He sighed as he sat down and held his head in his hands. 'Time seems to be flying by now. I guess it's better this way.'

He pulled out a detailed sketch that Jim and Dan had given him and began to make a few changes to it. After several hours he put down the notes and strolled around his eyes settles on the old phone within the car.

'No signal?' He muttered as he remembered what was displayed on it.

He sighed and shook his head, any bit of infrastructure has been lost by this point.

Thousands of choices played through in his head. 'Get the phone cracked by an expert, risk doing it myself, search the entire world for more artifacts…'

But as he thought he also had a gut feeling to just wait. The same feeling that held him back from doing whatever he wanted.

Frustrated Alex stopped thinking about doing anything at all, and began applying runes to the walls. He knocked on the wall and a barely audible knock was heard. Swinging his arm back, Alex then punched the wall as hard as he dared to, and yet only a light thud was heard.

Satisfied he began adding more runes.

The walls fluttered as he added an energy source, from the rocky and earthy walls they were before, they looked like painted metal walls now. The lighting took more conventional forms and the floor "became tiled".

"They have me training in every form of combat possible."

"I don't see why. I doubt a piece of metal or wood or even bone, will not be of any help in higher levels of combat."

Alex looked up as he felt Taylor approaching. He opened a portal and Taylor stepped into the newly renovated hideout.

"Woah, you really went ham since the last time I visited!" Taylor exclaimed.

Alex pulled a chair over and grabbed a few drinks out for the two of them.

"Purely cosmetic, but I was able to fortify the place. Oh! Give me a second, I almost forgot the best part."

A piece of wood appeared in Alex's hands, parts of it fell of as he sculpted it with his spacial energy. After Alex was done messing with it he took out a beast core and embedded it into a slot he had readied within the piece of wood. Several pigments appeared and gave the makeshift creation a sense of completion.

Alex pressed on the runes he had labeled and the color of the walls changed from gray to blue, then from blue to green.

"Give me that." Taylor said before grabbing the control and mashing the buttons.

Alex chuckled and waited for him to grow tired of watching the scenery change.

"So anyways, you have got to help me." Taylor said after putting down the remote.

"With what?"

"The racing club, it gets weirder and weirder every day. I had a guy ask me how to make his legs move faster, and the only thing I could say to him was more training, I mean I don't teach biology."

"And how am I going to do any better. I had a kid asking me why all the runes weren't just circular. I mean, I didn't make them."

"Listen Alex at this point anything you could've said would've been better than patting him on the back looking him in the face and saying 'a better training regiment'."

Alex grinned. "And anything you said would've been better than, 'because geometry'."

Taylor bursted out laughing, nearly dropping his drink in the process.

"It may have been a mistake, he has been drawing random shapes ever since then." Alex added, only making Taylor and himself laugh even more.

"So, how has your training come along?"

"For all of my affinities minus my dark affinity terrible." Alex said while balancing his drink atop his knee.

"What's wrong with your dark affinity?"

"Nothing it's perfectly good. It's just that, it too good."

"The Emperor class is something that I could easily achieve before the competitions next year. And the overlord class before graduation."

"No matter how I rationalize it, it's not natural. I've seen how rapid growth kills people, the scandal that the temple was caught in, where thousands of people died, the same thing happened to them." Alex said while picking up the bottle that had fallen.

"The company which was funded by the temple never managed to make it out this far, and even if they did, what you're going through is nothing like the rumors." Taylor said consoling his friend.

"Yeah."

'But even still, I can feel that there is some sort of connection.'

"It's good though, from what I've seen somehow the temple is still getting everyone on its side. I guess we won't know for certain until the voting begins next month. If they can begin forming their own militia and gaining power, then this kingdom won't be a safe place for a lot of people much longer."

"When it all cools down, we need to have a bunch of parties to celebrate and get rid of all this stress." Taylor said while checking his phone.

"You really sure that you want me to win this year?"

"It'll be better for the both of us. Captains need to participate in the main event, and it's not in my best interest to draw too much attention to myself at this point. You will get some juicy rewards at the end too, as long as no underdog shows up and whips your butt."

"That would make it more interesting. You know, if it didn't take me so long to complete my school work, I could probably make it to the master class before the competitions."

Alex felt like he was going to say more but he was cut off as his phone started ringing.

"That's my mom, I'll see you tomorrow Alex."

"See you." He replied while opening a portal.

'Both of them tripled. I was expecting something bigger than increasing by a third, but tripling is quite a big jump.'

Alex closed his eyes for a moment.

'Somewhere around twelve hundred feet of range. I guess that this is what comes from the Noble class.'

He sat down and after pressing a few runes the room darkened leaving him to absorb mana in peace.

——————

"Heads up Dylan." Alex warned as the lizard they fought leapt towards Dylan.

The lizard was yanked towards the earth as the soil covered roots of the surrounding trees reached up and latched onto it.

Ana froze the beast in place while Dylan swung his axe downwards and finished it off.

He turned to check on Janet and Derek who were fighting their own lizard while Taylor watched over the fight.

'Well I guess that destructive affinities do come with the cost of… well destruction.' Alex thought as he looked at the charred corpse.

"Good, it won't be long before you can each handle an expert class beast on your own."

Alex felt a buzzing within his pocket.

"You all go to the meeting spot. I have to go help out elsewhere." Alex said before pulling out a map and moving in a certain direction.

After a while Alex came to a stop as he saw a group of six students.

"What is it?" He asked.

"Take a look for yourself." One of the seniors present said while handing Alex a scanning device.

Alex held the device and looked at the screen, he watched as it detected himself and his peers. But off in the distance there were several more strong life forms detected.

"That's quite a few more than the scouts reported seeing last weekend." Alex said with a frown.

He pulled out a sheet of paper and wrote on it for a while. "Take this and deliver it back to Tim. For now we will steer clear of this area, go ahead and head back I will catch up in a bit." Alex told the two seniors after handing them the paper and the scanning device back.

They nodded and headed back after gathering their belongings.

After opening several sets of portals and sending his energy through he scanned ahead more thoroughly. 'This is, this is an open rift!' Alex thought to himself as he watched beast appear from thin air every few moments.

Alex drew closer as he got a clearer look at the situation. 'Two Noble class beasts. The rift isn't even showing any signs of closing.'

"At the very least I can use this moment to do a little research while thinning the crowds." He muttered before unpacking his weapons and silently approaching the beast infested area.