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Of Arms and Arcane: Chapter 73
🕑 Added 2024-03-23 14:34:53 +0000 UTCOn my second day of school, I wake up, do my morning routine, and check my timetable to see what today's classes will be. Besides the mandatory subjects, from today onwards, the elective courses will not happen every day, but they will be twice as long, which is good, there are only so many different things I can learn in one day before I feel burned out.
Let's see… today’s electives are… Enchanting and Advanced Combat & Tactics
The day went on as normal, one lecture after another, the only downside was Oswald and his group of idiots giving me dirty looks and shit-talking me from across the room loud enough that I could hear them. To this, I decided to ignore his ass and act as if he did not exist, for some reason this made him angrier and when the teacher left the class, he shouted dumbass stuff like “How dare you ignore me!”
Well, you know what? I am just going to ignore you even harder now!
Eventually, the time came for the last mandatory lesson of the day, 2nd Language class, which is kind of the only class I am interested in, of all the mandatory classes, the Elven Language is the only thing I truly do not know anything about and I want to learn.
As I took my seat and waited for the Elven Language teacher, Lirelle Starflower, to arrive, my Elven Language classmate, Finrod Felagund sat next to me, looked around conspiratorially, and leaned in to whisper to me, “Hey Luke… are you the same Luke Ironcrest that got into trouble with Oswald Berkeley?”
I raised a questioning eyebrow at Finrod and replied, “Unless my father has a second family and named that son Luke, otherwise I would say that is indeed me… Why? What is that idiot Oswald doing?”
Finrod took another conspiratorial look around before whispering, “I heard from a friend of a friend of a friend, that Oswald is planning to pull something today at that class you fighting types like to take up.”
“You mean Advanced Combat & Tactics?”
“That's the one. Word is, Oswald was chewed out by this older brother who is in Year 8. Something about you staining the honor of his house.”
I huffed at that statement, “With the way he behaves, I do not know if they even have any honor to stain.”
Finrod sucks air thru his teeth at my statement, “Be that as it may, I think it would be prudent to keep statements like that to yourself. Don’t want to start any feuds between noble houses now do we?”
I studied his face for a moment, then released a sigh, “Noted. And thanks for the heads up. Though I can’t promise the no feuds thing, if Oswald keeps things up and acts on his threats, I do not intend to just lie there and take it.”
Finrod nods and tells me to take care, as the teacher enters the class.
So it is going to be like that, Oswald? Let's see what bullshit you pull later.
***
At the start of Enchanting class today, we were greeted with another spectacle.
A grumpy-looking Professor Bixby Goldensprocket was marched into class ahead of the armored Brunhilde who was holding a rolled-up parchment threateningly over a lit candle. All the way to the podium, Bixby was loudly complaining about his research being interrupted, then proceeded to point at Brunhilde and accuse her of taking his research hostage.
“The research is innocent, take me instead… back to my lab.” Bixby shouted in a last-ditch attempt at hostage negotiation.
The only response he got was Brunhilde inching the rolled-up parchment closer to the candle.
“Stop!... stop… you win… I will teach the class.” Bixby said defeatedly as he marched up the podium to start the lesson.
It was a lot of dry theory, but I was enjoying it while jotting down questions to ask during the end of the lesson’s Q&A season.
***
Once the bell rang for the end of the Enchanting lesson, I went back to my dorm to get changed and made my way to the training grounds.
Let's see what Oswald has installed for me.
When the instructors arrived and the call to fall in went out, I could not help but notice that Oswald and his posse just so happened to fall in around me.
After some warmup exercises and demonstrating the forms, Instructor Matthias Greyham shouted from atop his stage, “Now that we are all nice and warmed up, we shall have our first sparring session of the year! Let us start with an exhibition match to get the blood pumping. Any volunteers?”
Upon hearing this, one of the bigger kids near me whom I recognized from Oswald’s posse raised his hand, “Sir! I volunteer! But I also want to see what the new guy is made of!” he said while pointing at me.
At this declaration, I could see many eyes locking on me, the instructors’ included.
Sensing that some bullshittery was afoot, Instructor Greyham gave me a questioning look that asked ‘Do you want to do this?’, to which I replied with a bored shrug, might as well see what level of fighting skills these kids have.
After giving the OK, we were waved over to the stage Instructor Greyham was on.
There we stood, me, an unknown dipshit I did not bother asking the name of, and Instructor Greyham who was standing between us.
“Are you ready?” Instructor Grewham, asked the both of us, once we both nodded, he shouted “Fight!” and backed away.
As I stood there ready to take on whatever attack was coming, instead the dipshit started talking while swinging his sword around to show off his “Skillz”. “I am Arnold Baskshield, and today I will put you in your place, Ironcrest!”
Having just about enough of this crap, I rush forward, smack his wooden sword to the side, opening him up for an attack, and performed a simple front kick to his stomach, sending him to the floor, “A fight is no place to be posturing, take this seriously before I break this sword off in your ass.”
While my descriptive threat gets a few chuckles, Arnold seemed to be fuming as he got back to his feet and charged me while shouting.
His first blow was an overhead strike, which I easily sidestepped, the missed strike was followed up with a diagonal upward strike which was easily dodged by taking a simple step back.
Arnold then jumped forward while performing a diagonal downward strike, seeing that there was no easy way to dodge without exaggerated movement, I caught his blade with the guard of my sword and parried the sword to the side, this caused me to be close enough to “lightly” boop Arnold on the jaw with the pommel of my sword.
This made the boy stagger back while holding his mouth. When his hand came away, it revealed a busted lower lip… oops… I missed the jaw.
Seeing his own blood, Arnold gets angrier and charges at me swinging, all technique out the window.
After some blocking and dodging, I saw all I needed to see from him and decided to end this. I waited for Arnold to perform a vertical slash, and after a few strikes, one finally came towards me.
As the strike was about to hit me, I turned my body to the side, barely an inch away from the path of the strike, and jabbed my sword directly into Arnold’s solar plexus. This strike crumpled Arnold to the floor into a heaving and retching mess.
And while he was incapacitated, I put the tip of my wooden sword to Arnold’s neck and looked at Instructor Greyham.
The instructor raised his hand in my direction and shouted “Winner!” as medical staff made their way to Arnold.
