Before announcing the results, Jayden waited for the knocked out teenagers to wake it. This didn’t take long since there was already a specialised medical team on standby. Usually, they only needed to take care of wounds caused by beasts, so treating the two teams who had been only lightly been injured by the AFC fighter was a welcome change for them.
“No need to make a fuss, if those guys weren’t strong Altered they’ve never would have made it into the special lesson classes. Besides, I made sure to hold back, so most of those are surface wounds.” Jayden shrugged as he waited for the medics to do their job.
In a matter of minutes, both teams were lined up, all of them sharing unsatisfied looks on their faces. One of them being Apollo who cursed himself for not lasting longer. There had been so many more things he had wanted to try out, yet before he could, time had run out. Gary knew exactly how he felt because it was the same for him as well.
“Man, we suck so much!” Snow complained. “We were one of the first ones to get knocked out.”
Wu was also feeling down. When they had faced off against the debut students, it hadn’t seemed like there was such a big gap, but fighting against a top ranker, it was clear to him that outside the AFA a whole new world awaited them. Even scarier was the fact that until the end the White Tiger hadn’t taken them seriously.
“Now, now, don't get your knickers in a knot. You guys didn’t do that bad, and your bravery is commendable. Still, I hope that one of the lessons you take with you today is that there will be times where being brave could get you killed.” Jayden lectured. “You need to be prepared that you might another Altered with special abilities, as well as beasts that have special abilities. In fact, you yourself as Altered might have yet to unlock your true talent and powers.”
Hearing these words was quite encouraging to the six teenagers. For a while some of them had felt that they had hit a plateau in their training. They felt that they weren’t improving as quickly or as much as they used to, but hearing this, and seeing what was possible allowed them to push themselves even harder.
“Now here comes the hard part for me as your stand-in teacher, I need to decide which of your teams which sucked le- *ahem* performed better than the eather.” Jayden quickly cleared his throat to distract from his verbal blunder and placed his finger on his chin, as he thought back to the events.
“Gary, let’s start with my critic towards you. I get that you’re more of a lone wolf, but you have been assigned your teammates for a reason, but what did you do? Rather than make use of their strength, you stood back twice waiting for a chance, even going so far as to sacrifice them to get a chance to hit me. The same, though to a lesser degree, applies to you, Apollo. Nevertheless, at the end of the day, I give you equal points for having managed to circumvent my wind wall and get to me, in Gary’s case even scratching me.
“Snow, Wu, Sty Numba, the four of you might have been knocked out by me, but you still showed at least a semblance of teamwork. If you had focused on it, you might have done far better. Snow, I’m sorry to say but your performance was the worst of you six. While it was a good idea to attack me at the position I would appear at, after seeing how I could use wind, you should have been prepared to be hit by the acid attack.
“Wu, your mentality to attack me when I was going to dispose of Snow isn’t that much better than Gary or Apollo, yet I noticed a slight hesitation when you attacked me, since you made sure Snow was okay. As passionate as that is, in those situations you should focus on doing your job, and should have attacked me with all you got, rather than allow yourself to get distracted.
“Sty, I think you already know that while your wings give you the advantage over many enemies, they’re not almighty, and your attack capabilites aren’t the best against those who are either tough enough to brace your acid attack, or those who dodge or evade it.
“Numba, while your charge attack might certainly pack a punch, you need to work on it, especially on not making it that obvious. Still, good usage of the opportunity that came from me not knowing about Sty’s attack. That was the closest thing to teamwork that came out this lesson today, and for that reason I have to give it to your team.”
Numba lifted his arms up cheering, and went to high five the person next to him, only to realise that it was Sty, he put it back down who kept his arms folded and turned his head away. There was then Apollo on the other side, but he didn’t look to be in the mood to high five either.
“You guys will get to ask the academy for a reward. Ask for a day off, some nice food or something. Anyway, the real reward will be what you take away from today’s lesson.”
With that said it was time for Jayden to leave, but as he did, he walked past Gary putting his hand on his shoulder and whispering in his ear.
“Meet me on the roof of your dormitory, we need to have a little catch up chat before I go.”
Gary gulped not knowing whether this was a good thing or bad thing. In the past Gary wasn’t bothered about Jayden too much, but now after seeing his display of skills, it made him worry. What would happen if he and Xin got in an argument one day. Would he have Jayden come knocking on his door the next day?
‘Why am I worrying about that now when me and Xin aren’t even together? Besides, as an Altered, she could probably fight me herself if I ever pissed her off. Jayden never seemed to mind the two of us in the first place, unlike her father…’ Gary thought.
Once again the Werewolf found everyone's eyes on him. With the lesson over, Crowley sent them on their way back to rest at the dormitory, but not before he explained that the regular special lesson would still be on Friday, and reminded everyone to take to heart that they had been told, especially since Jayden had been a part of these same special lessons.
It was no surprise otherwise they would have never let him in there, but did this mean NIRV had control of many of the big shots in the AFA? If that was the case, they were a far bigger and powerful organisation than the outside world was aware of.
As they were walking back to the dormitory, Numba couldn’t help but smile.
“I can’t believe you know Jayden, so what is the deal between you two?” Numba asked the question that had been plaguing him ever since the White Tiger had shown himself. He wanted to ask before but didn’t want the others to find out, even though he knew they must be just as curious interested.
“I wouldn’t really call it knowing him. Not a lot of people know this because they don’t really advertise it, but he has folks living in my hometown. In the past, I did something… ‘stupid’ and he was the one to help me in that situation.”
All of what Gary said was technically true, but he wouldn’t mention the reason behind his embarrassing name.
“I see, it's still cool to know someone like that. He seemed to like you at least.” Numba then started to rub his hands. “I can’t wait though, I don’t even know what to ask as a reward. Maybe I can ask to get a personal coach that can help push me to the next level. After all I don’t want to fall behind in the special lesson…Oh sorry, I forgot, you didn’t get a special reward.” ,
Numba was just too excited and since Gary was his only friend in the special lesson, he sometimes forgot that they weren’t on the same tim. Now he felt a little bad about the bargaining he had just done.
“It's okay, seriously I'm not that upset about it.” Gary replied with a smile. He didn’t lie, after all, he did get something out of it.
[Quest completed]
[You managed to survive against one of the best, though next time he might take you seriously!
Hopefully, you’ve learned a valuable lesson.
The system wishes to help you by unlocking part of your strength!]
[Please choose one of the following skills]
[Lethal Pounce]
[Berserker Mode]
[LOCKED] (Failed to achieve the optional part)
‘You really know how to motivate me, System. Still, getting choose one out of two skills is better than nothing. Now, if you only could at least provide me with a bit of description in the future…’
There was a skill that Gary perhaps could have used against Jayden and that was Magnetic Howl. However, it was a trump card which he didn’t want to reveal too soon, but looking at the skill there was one that had interested Gary that kept coming up.
‘I think this skill could work well with what I have at the moment.’
******
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