Half an hour later and a number of interruptions later, Karl had finished catching everyone up on what had happened, without mentioning the Holy Relic, or going into details about the attack by the Drake Riders.
He hadn’t known that part was supposed to be secret, but Colonel Valerie had warned him, and then sent a message for her team to make sure that the other students didn’t go spreading the story around campus.
Tales of foreign invasion teams would just cause tensions, and discourage missions at a crucial time for everyone’s growth. The Colonel had a bit of insight into what they were up to, enough to assure her that they weren’t going to attack at random all over the nation anyhow. But she didn’t seem happy about all the extra work.
Colonel Valerie finished taking notes and nodded in satisfaction. “Alright, with all that you two have gained, we are going to have to work on your new skills and test your growth before we do too much more. I will go with Dana’s team, and Sergeant Rita can do the report for Karl’s growth. I have paged Jodi to come get the scales and have them processed for use. If Karl has some extras, you lot can have them processed for yourselves as well.”
Karl smiled and passed over another handful, as well as a small vial of Drake blood.
He didn’t want to give too much of it away, as Rae really liked the Drake blood, but the scales weren’t really useful to anyone as they were.
“Is that all of them?” Rita asked as Karl finished piling up the loot.
“No, is it not enough?” Karl replied.
The Sergeant just shook her head. “Never mind. That’s enough for today. We will process more of them for you later if you still need them.”
Dana and the others split off to go test her abilities, and Sergeant Rita gestured for Karl to follow her to the training area.
“I’m not quite sure how we are going to do this, but first I should ask if your pets have learned any new skills yet.” She asked as they reached the field.
“Nothing yet. I didn’t have an opportunity to help them as they observed new skills yet. But we had an opportunity to grow our strength and understanding, so we’re all a bit better than we were when we left. With the resources that we gained, and the extra growth time, everyone is coming along fairly well.” Karl replied.
“That’s fine. I don’t think that your new skill is one that can be easily shown off, unlike the new shield spell. So, we will start with a strength test. Rae was still growing fast when you left, so why don’t we start with her?
Just the simple test of how long it takes to remove the shield spells is enough to give us an idea where you’re at.” Rita suggested.
Alice set up the barriers, and Rae came out to examine them. Over the next few seconds, she went from shiny and black to a dull green that matched the grass, but her curious black eyes were fixed on the barriers.
Alice nodded when she had them set up, and Rae launched herself forward, shattering the first three in the first second, then tearing apart the fourth and starting on the fifth.
That one took some time to get down, so the spider backed away to consider how best to destroy the sixth barrier.
The three elites stared in shock at the Bloodbath Spider. The level of absolute violence from her mandibles and armoured front legs was outstanding among Awakened Rank beasts, but it clearly wasn’t her limit. The great ability of her species was to adapt their attacks, and once she had thought of a way, she might be able to take down the sixth barrier as well.
Karl activated Skill Master, and let the magic flow into Rae as she worked on a way to adapt to the barrier. Curiously, she didn’t seem to be trying to learn a whole new skill, she was just improving the one she already knew. But when she attacked, the sixth barrier fell in a matter of seconds, and the proud spider did a little spinning victory dance in celebration.
“Good job, Rae. You got that barrier down in record time.” Karl congratulated her.
Of course, that might only be because she went first, but he doubted that even Hawk would be able to take down the sixth barrier today, and Thor wasn’t really offensive focused.
“Well, we can say that given time, Rae can build up to the borderline of Ascended Rank attack power. Her body isn’t quite there yet, but with her adaptation skills, her offensive power is far ahead of the average.” Sergeant Rita noted.
Thor nudged at Karl’s mind, asking to be let out to play with the barriers.
“Who’s next?” Rita asked.
“Definitely Thor. He will drive everyone insane if we make him wait for last to play the barrier game.” Karl laughed.
Hawk also came out of his space to glide around the field.
[You know, the outside is better. There is so much more room to fly. I could go for a whole hour, just flying around.] Hawk sighed wistfully.
[Don’t worry, buddy. We will be back outside soon. We just need to work on our skills and power so that we’re ready for what we might find out there.] Karl replied.
The Hawk waited until Thor was about to hit the first barrier, then shattered it with a Rend attack and laughed as he flew overhead.
[Stupid bird, those are my smashing barriers.] Thor pouted as he charged for another.
He wasn’t going through them in order, but Hawk took them out in an orderly manner, shattering the first four and leaving Thor to smash into the last two until he wore himself out a little.
“They make quite the team.” Daniel remarked with amusement clear in his tone.
“Thor gets a bit too excited when there are barriers involved. When he’s actually in the field, he’s much more serious and professional.” Karl replied quietly, so he didn’t distract the happy beast from his play time.
Rita smiled. “It’s easy to forget that they’re all still very young. They’re not adult monsters, they’re still children, and they need to play and grow.”
“You should have seen him pulling the bus along through the grasslands. He was right on top of things, pulling the chain tight when the ground was soft so that the bus didn’t spin out. We managed to make it all morning without getting stuck thanks to Thor’s help.
But now that he’s had a nice long nap, he’s ready to play again.” Karl agreed.
Thor pranced around the open field, catching the attention of the students practising nearby. Everyone had heard about the Lightning Cerro’s love of smashing into barriers, but none of the classes who were out here right now were working on that, so they just watched as he ran around and charged at the two remaining barriers Alice had set up.
Hawk could easily break the weaker of the two remaining barriers, but if he did, then Thor would have no second target for his game, and they were set up a few dozen metres apart, just enough for him to get a good run at them.
“Alright, we have the basic data for the beasts now. It’s not precise, but we can set up a training plan from there. What sort of skills did you want them to learn? Stealth for Rae, but what for the others?” Sergeant Rita asked.
“I think that if we can get Thor to learn a secondary attack spell, that might be best. Lightning would obviously be the first option, and I’m thinking of trying to teach him a lightning breath type attack.” Karl suggested.
“Like he was a Kaiju from the movies? Breathing Lightning and stomping down buildings? That makes sense, and it should work with his skills. What about Hawk?”
Karl shrugged. “That’s the part I’m stuck on. The skills he has are precisely what he needs. If he’s going to learn something new, it would have to be to grow in a different direction because he already knows the skills that are best for a Windspeed Hawk.”
Rita smiled. “Then we can work on that. What direction do we want to help Hawk grow in?”
