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Chapter 6: Dropoff Site
"All new students, gather your preferred weapons, your school uniforms and wait for the notification to disembark. We are now five minutes from the Golden Divine Academy." The train's announcement declared just after breakfast on the morning of the second day after Karl woke up.
He packed the snacks he had obtained in advance from the train's kitchen into the provided backpack along with the spare uniforms and shoes, then put on the black metal clawed gauntlets and hung the short sword from a scabbard at his hip.
There was no rule saying you couldn't prefer more than one weapon, and the guards hadn't mentioned it when they saw him practising in the room that way, so it should be alright.
The cook and the guard had both mentioned the walk into the Academy on the first day after he woke up, so the train wouldn't be stopping at the gates. This was probably some sort of test, either to see how the students would solve a problem or get along or some nonsense, Karl decided, but whatever the reason, he was packing a lunch.
As expected, the train came to a stop about a kilometre from the Academy, at the far end of a grassy field with a few well-maintained hedgerows along the way.
"This is your stop. The last bit is up to you. I will see you all in the Academy tomorrow after the train is cleaned and repaired." A slender man in a guard uniform announced.
The students mostly stood by their open doors with looks of confusion, but Karl walked out into the hallway and stepped down from the train to take his first breath of the clean country air.
Without all the dust from the mines, it smelled strangely like trees and flowers here, and he could feel the power of the Academy in the distance, like a tingle in his bones, warning him that it was something abnormal, something magical.
The first student out was like a beacon to the others, and slowly the new students started to leave the train, mostly still exhausted from practising their new skills and a lack of sleep, but the sun was directly overhead in the sky, and sleeping under the scorching morning sun wasn't going to be easy.
The slender man in the guard uniform stepped in front of them again once everyone was off the train, and raised his voice to address the crowd.
"Welcome, everyone, to Golden Divine Academy. As a special welcoming gift to all of our new students, we have prepared the traditional walk across the grounds to the front gates for you. Every year, the new arrivals make this trip, entering the gates as Awakened elites to begin their new lives.
Now it is your turn. But be warned, the grasslands look empty, but that isn't always the truth."
He wasn't lying. Karl could see that the train tracks circled the Academy at a distance of roughly a kilometre, passing through these grasslands, a large portion of forest, and even through a swampy bog around a river.
They must drop every group off at a different point, so they could watch them come into the academy. It seemed like a strange tradition, but when he looked out over the field using [Super Vision] he could tell that there was a huge population of Earth Rats, a Common Grade magical beast with incredible digging skills, and the ability to throw small stones using magic.
They were mostly harmless, and Karl had dealt with them using a slingshot as a kid, but in large numbers, they could be a real menace.
In this case, it was likely to be a nuisance, just an 'amusing' prank by the seniors to watch the new kids get pelted with rocks as they ran to school.
[Mice, hungry.] A voice sounded in Karl's mind, coming from the space where his Windspeed Hawk was kept.
It was incredibly insistent, and eager to taste the mice, so Karl stepped forward into the field to see what they would do to the students who tried to pass. He might have hunted them before, but that was with a slingshot and in the house where they couldn't use the earth to escape.
Getting a clean kill shot here would be much more trouble, but he was fairly certain that he could do it with the speed of the [Rend] attacks. He just had to time them right.
Karl stepped forward into the grassland battlefield, against an unknown number of the weakest magical creatures, armed with a single untested combat skill and a baby bird as a pet. Not exactly the most glorious of first battles as an elite, but it would have to do.
The response to his invasion of their territory was immediate, and the ten centimetre long earth mice began to hurl small rocks at Karl, highlighting their position, and making the starving Hawk in his Beast Taming Space go insane with desire.
A flick of his fingers, and four sharp red energy arcs flew out into the battlefield, taking out one of the mice before it even knew there was a danger, and then the other hand took a second.
Super vision really was a remarkable skill for both eyesight and hand - eye coordination. His second attack hit a mouse as it was attempting to go underground to evade, and then his third reached its target as it tried to run.
Karl jogged forward and picked up the bodies, then moved them into the taming space for the Hawk to eat before continuing on toward the Academy under greatly reduced levels of attack from the earth mice, who had sensed the presence of a predator in their midst and began to target the other students.
Only a few brave ones would still throw rocks at Karl from a distance, all of which were easily swatted away with the armoured glove.
"That glove is such a cheat code here in the open field." A dark-haired girl with a wand in her hand complained from directly behind his back.
"You're a mage, a real magic user. Just blast them if they throw rocks at you." Karl reminded her after seeing the magical casting device.
"And pass out again in the middle of a field? I'm not sure if you're aware, but magic is hard. I can only cast like two or maybe three spells before I collapse from exhaustion." The girl complained.
That was what had happened to Karl the first day as well. But once he got a bit more used to it, the consumption seemed not to be as bad.
"Just stay behind me then, and undo your coat so you can hide your head. Earth Mice aren't smart, and they won't target your face if they can't see it."
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