School (5)

After slowly following his instructions, Ivan saw a popup announcing a new Skill.

<< Congratulations, you have learned the skill Staff Mastery (Novice). >>

<< Skill Staff Mastery (Novice) (F) Lvl.1 : You now have rudimentary knowledge on how to use a staff.

Damage + 0.5% while using a staff to attack. >>

"Alright, everyone stop practicing. You should all have gained the skill Staff Mastery now. Did anyone didn't get it?"

Everybody signaled that they had gained it.

"Good. At least you are better than the last batch. There really were some in that who weren't able to learn it in the first class. As you may have noticed the skill gives you a small damage increase if you use a staff to attack. This will not apply to skills you use and the skill won't help you in the way to use your staff. So even if you level it up you will still have to train on how to use the staff."

"Since we still have half an hour left, it is time to get some experience, so find a partner for a training fight."

Serge asked Greg to be his partner, so Ivan had to find someone else, but he didn't have any contact with his other classmates. * I guess I should have at least checked them out. *, now he could only regret his lack of interest in his other classmates. Luckily the number of students was even and as such there was someone else who didn't have a partner. It was a girl who was lanky and had short blue hair.

Since there were more guys in the class Ivan really wouldn't have expected a girl to be left over, even though she was at least a head taller than anyone else with her more than 2 m height.

When she saw, that only Ivan was left she came over and said in a silky voice, "Hey, I'm Irena, please take care of me."

Now that he could take a closer look at her he understood, why the others avoided her. One of her eyes was glassy and dead, with the half of her face full of deep pockmark, which completely destroyed her look which wouldn't have been bad, seeing how the other half of her face looked.

Surprisingly Ivan didn't feel anything when he saw this face and he had the indistinct feeling, that he had seen much worse, but he couldn't pinpoint that feeling and as such choose to ignore it.

"Hey, I'm Ivan. Please take care of me too."

Seeing that Ivan didn't have any reaction towards her look a light flashed through her normal eye.

"Alright, now that everyone has found a partner I will give everyone a brooch which you have to pin on your chest. It will emit a magic shield, which will stop your partner from damaging you, but the pain will still be transmitted. If the hit was critical it will change it's color to red and the fight is over."

He went around, distributing the brooches and made sure that everyone had it pined to their chest.

"Each round has up to ten minutes. Start!"

As soon as he said start the lanky girl used her staff to stab towards Ivan's stomach and the fight started.

Ivan didn't have any problems with the moves, but he lacked power since his stats were low, so he could only try to defend by evading or redirecting the power of her attacks, but even so he wouldn't have lasted even a minute if the girl didn't take back her power and speed intentionally and only competed with him in techniques. Fully concentrating on each other the both of them failed to notice that Mr. Martin had stopped besides them and watched intently.

Ivan could feel that his control over the staff increased a lot while the attacks of his partner got more sophisticated too stopping him from ever gaining the advantage, but still managing to stop her from dealing a critical blow.

Soon they started to pant and their sweat dripped down but they were to focused to notice it and soon the ten minutes were over and while the others stopped their fight they continued theirs and the teacher didn't stop them either but signaled the others to be quiet and watch.

Finally Ivan was so exhausted that he couldn't even hold up his staff anymore and he got hit by the girl's staff at the head and the pain together with his exhaustion lead to him fainting.

Before he could fall the teacher did catch him and slowly lowered him to the ground. The girl too didn't have the energy to remain standing and slumped down on the ground.

"What's your name?", Mr. Martin asked her. "Irena ,Sir."

"You did a good job in restraining yourself. If you didn't you could have won easily but you wouldn't have learned anything."

"Thank you, Sir.", hearing the praise, she smiled happily but to the others it looked scary, since only half of her mouth could move like intended, which resulted in a weird smile.

Then the teacher looked towards Greg and Serge, "You three seem to know each other so could you tell me why this guy is so weak. It's abnormal."

The both of them looked at each other before Greg said, "I guess he wouldn't mind us telling.", then he took a breath and continued, "He had a hard reset and now all his stats are at 1."

The teacher looked surprised before nodding, "That makes sense, otherwise he couldn't be this weak, but he sure is lucky to have all stats at 1." He then asked Irena, "You too have all stats at least at 1, right?".

She looked at him in surprise, since she didn't expect him to have seen it from their fight. She nodded and he smiled a wide smile, which made her shudder.

"Haha, this is great, this is great.", he then pulled out a pill and put it into Ivan's mouth.