It looked like being up at the crack of dawn was going to become a regular thing, Karl decided, as Sergeant Rita and Jill were at his door first thing the next morning. Rita had a book with her on monster biology, but this one was different. It focused on the innate skills of various monster skills, instead of just giving an overview of the species.
It was written from the perspective of a researcher who was trying to develop more ways to strengthen the skills of the elites with similar abilities, and for Karl, it was much easier to understand than the vague descriptions in most of the other textbooks.
“By the end of the week the Bureau of Elite Development will probably have a plan to bring you before other juvenile monsters, either newborn or still in eggs, for the avian and reptile species.
I don’t know what they will find you, or if they’ll even give you options other than the ones they prepared, but now that they’re convinced that you can bond a second pet, they are determined to try. What you need to do is understand the skills that they have so that you can build a proper team out of your tamed monsters.
You can focus on a specific skill set, like stealth and scouting, or a generalized combat team that can take on most threats, but you don’t have much time to make the decision before the next step happens.” She explained.
They were seated at a table in the cafeteria, which was still almost empty so early in the morning, but that gave him nearly two hours to go over the various species in the book before he needed to get to his first class.
“These Tortoises, exactly how large do they get? I think that the text is incorrect.” Karl asked.
Rita looked at the book and shook her head. “No, that’s right. They grow between eighteen and twenty-five metres long. They’re a saltwater species, but they can happily live nearly anywhere.
If all your pets grow as fast as Hawk, I wouldn’t recommend that option if you are given it. There aren’t many situations where you will have room for a twenty-metre-long turtle. It’s too wide to even fit down most city streets without damaging the buildings on either side.”
The thought made Karl laugh. A massive roadblock of armoured shell, just blocking an entire roadway to prevent a target from fleeing.
Then there was the Demon Croc. Technically, they were an alligator, but at an equally impressive twenty-five metres long and able to run at over a hundred kilometres an hour in short spurts, Karl imagined that the shape of its snout was the least of anyone’s concerns when meeting it.
Then there was the Red Gold Panda. At a maximum height of twenty centimetres high, it was adorable, but its innate skill was Vampirism. If it bit you, it could drain a human of blood in a matter of seconds.
“If we knew what they were going to bring, it would really help.” Karl sighed as the time ran out, and it was time to go to morning accuracy training.
“Best to be prepared for anything. The more you know about monster skills, the better that you will be able to plan for the skills that the ones they do present can use.” Sergeant Rita replied with a shrug.
Rita’s mood only got worse as Daniel and Alice came to watch the training all day long. By the time that the day was finished, she was visibly annoyed, but the other two seemed to be enjoying the show, and they were happy to give training hints to the other students who were training near Karl and Tank.
Originally, Karl had assumed it was the fact that they were here from the Government that had annoyed Rita, but some of it seemed to be personal. They obviously knew each other from before this week, and were close enough in age that they should have been in the Academy together.
The number of Elites was small enough that it was a bit like a small town, everyone knew everyone in their age group. It was a strange thought, as Karl had always viewed the Elites as a sort of untouchable existence that was above the common people like the mine workers, but now that he was here, it had a similar vibe to the mining town, but with a different sort of hard work and less of the black lung.
The daily training became predictable, with Tank increasing the difficulty every time that Karl thought he was getting better, while the evenings of that week all went the same. Eat, train, then Dana would come over in the later evening so she could actually sleep, as her neighbours had realized that she was torturing them back with the Golem which didn’t have to be summoned all the time.
But what they didn’t know was that while the Golem had been practising his line dancing until the small hours of the morning, Dana had been asleep on the balcony of Karl’s room.
Her daily training had also intensified now that she had Jill as her personal tutor, and she was so exhausted that she had to be literally carried out of bed some days to get ready after Karl had left with Sergeant Rita.
Unlike Karl, who just hurt everywhere from physical training, her mind was completely frazzled from the requirements of her mana expansion training, leaving her feeling sleep-deprived even in the middle of the afternoon.
Perhaps that was what the Colonel had meant when she said that Sergeant Rita went easy on him. He hurt everywhere, even in places he didn’t know could hurt, but he was still functional, and it was clear that Dana wasn’t going to make it much longer at this rate when the Saturday training session rolled around and Colonel Valerie was the one that met them at the door in the morning after breakfast.
