The First Legendary Beast Master

Chapter 606  Acolytes

Karl motioned for the acolytes to come forward with his empty hand, and then offered each of them one of the many Giant Strength rings that he had acquired.

"Do I want to know where you got so many of those?" Doctor Xander, better known as Skittles, asked.

"Probably not. But if you're doing the psych evaluations tomorrow, it might come up anyhow. Oh boy, do we have fun stories for you."

The doctor sighed, and the kids took the rings from Karl, holding them curiously, as they had no idea what such a crude metal band was supposed to be for.

Four of them were nearly identical, to the point Karl thought that they might be siblings with the same straight black hair, but there was one blonde girl in the group, and she was clearly the feral child of the group.

The first thing that she did when she got the giant ring was to bite it and then slide it over her hand like a bracelet.

She gave her arm a happy shake, then her eyes went wide as the ring equipped, and it moved to her left ring finger.

She made an inarticulate squeaky happy noise, and Skittles turned around to see what was going on.

"Sybil, where did you come from, and where is John?" He demanded, while also signing along with his words.

"Is Sybil deaf?" Karl asked.

"Yes, and she definitely isn't supposed to be here. She's two years younger than the others, and she's supposed to be on security restrictions after stabbing another child at the orphanage." Skittles explained.

Rae stepped out of her space and stared at the small blonde child.

"I want this one. She's got potential." The spider announced.

"You're just saying that because her first instincts are to bite and stab." Karl retorted.

"Well, yes. But I think that she will make a pretty good rogue. See, she already picked her class, or got it assigned."

Karl checked her with the system interface, and realized that yes, her name was in the odd yellow that was assigned to Rogues.

Karl considered his options for a moment, and then realized he had the perfect skill for a deaf Rogue.

Echolocation.

If he gave her an additional sensory skill, she would be able to see in the dark, detect most hidden targets, and she wouldn't be distracted by noises, as she couldn't hear them anyhow.

"Alright, I have prepared a plan for the development path of the young Rogue Class Elite. The other four of you, please introduce yourselves and try to get the ring to fit and adapt to you, the way that Sybil did." Karl instructed.

"I am going to look for John. We're short one of the original students, and he was with us at the doors." Skittles whispered.

If she had attacked someone to steal his spot, the feral child might not be a good person, but from what Karl could tell, she was an incredible Rogue. Nobody had even noticed the switch.

If they had, they surely would have snitched on her to the doctor. It wasn't like she would hear them telling him.

The next to succeed was a boy standing near the door. His eyes went vague as the ring fell to the ground, and then he began to do a little happy dance.

His name had turned the light blue of a Mage in Karl's interface, so he couldn't actually equip the ring. But it had still worked to activate his system skills.

Karl picked up the ring and patted the boy on the back.

"I will introduce you to your new tutor. This is Princess Dana. She is a Murim Battlemage, and she will be helping you with your basic magical skills starting tomorrow."

"Thank you, Your Majesty. Princess, I will be in your care." The boy replied politely.

The next two advanced at the same time, and a new pair of warriors was born.

"I am Aaron, and this is my sister, Jaime. Thank you so much, we both get to be warriors like our dad was." The boy replied.

"Sorry for your loss." Karl replied.

"Oh, he's not dead. He was resurrected, or reincarnated? Reborn into a new body, and he lost his status as an Elite. But before that, he taught us all sorts of fighting skills, just in case we were successful with the injection." Aaron explained.

That would have made him one of the early test subjects that had been pulled from the army to beta test the injection. The kids were a couple of years too old for him to have been a regular injection student.

Well, unless he had kids in middle school, but that seemed even less likely.

"And I am Joan. I don't know if this thing works for me, but the red lady says that I need to be here to keep the children under control." The last student explained.

Tessa smiled. "I will be here as well. But we will get you all trained up. Here, why don't you try to wear this instead?"

The Red Dragon God wouldn't let the clerics wear strength items either, perhaps viewing it as unfair, or likely to distract them from other duties. But the simple necklace that Tessa gave Joan equipped immediately, and the girl's name appeared in white over her had in Karl's overlay.

"That's five out of five without having to do anything strange. Now we just need to know what happened to John and wait for Skittles." Karl announced, then pocketed the two rings that couldn't be used.

Sybil was watching him carefully, and made a series of hand gestures to answer, but Karl didn't speak sign language. Fortunately, Lotus did. "She knocked him out and stuffed him through the access door for the fire suppression system on our floor." Lotus translated.

"Please go get the lost student. We can take on a sixth if Skittles allows it."

Lotus ran out to the hallway, then right back in. "Skittles found him. There is a stretcher, and another cleric, and some guys with guns and uniforms."

Karl watched as Sybil ducked below the height of the sofa and then scurried across the living room to hide under a large reclining chair. If he didn't have thermal imaging, she would have seemed to simply vanish, and she was incredibly quiet.

Even Rae was impressed, though she did go to sit on the chair so that nobody tried to search under it. That was her new student, and she was keeping the crazy one.