Chapter 21: Instructor Norman
Thirteen spent the rest of the day sparring with his friends and acclimating to his new attribute.
When he fought Nine, Thirteen found himself in complete lack of control throughout the fight. While he could certainly wield his now superior strength and body cultivation to great advantage, he never felt like he could control the direction of the battle.
Not only did Nine possess supernatural Intuition, he had also succeeded in the first step of The Mind's Eye; One of three techniques that make up the Heaven's Eye Script he cultivated.
According to Nine, the Mind's Eye was the most mundane method, with the others being called the Eye of Fate and the Heaven's Eye, neither of which he was capable of learning the first stage of at the moment.
The Mind's Eye's first stage enhanced all of his natural senses by an extraordinary amount, which would surely benefit a perception meta more than Nine, but apparently his increased senses meant that Nine's subconscious intuition had more information available to it, and so he was able to easily predict Thirteen's movements despite not consciously watching for the signs.
It seemed that Nine was quite pleased with himself for matching Thirteen even after the awakening of a second attribute.
Fighting with Forty-five was stressful. She had a habit of letting her smallsword attack on its own whenever her guard was blown open, and just as Thirteen would focus on the filtering smallsword, she would attack quietly with a dagger.
He enjoyed fighting with Ten the most. They both preferred unarmed combat, and their abilities complimented that style of fighting the most.
As they each exchanged pointers, Thirteen truly realized how fun training could be. He would learn to hide his movements from Nine, train to react quickly to Ten, whose movements would blur, and learned to expand his combat awareness when fighting with Forty-five. He also made sure to practice the unarmed disarming technique taught by Melia earlier in the week, and took a few unfortunate blows as a result.
Walking back to the dining hall with his friends, Thirteen only wished Four had shown up to join them in the dojo.
—
The days did not pause with Thirteen's new advancement, and come the next morning it was time once more for classes. During Theory Hall, Instructor Piers began to teach them yet another new subject. He taught them of the wilderness, of flora and fauna, and how to spot signs of danger in the wilds.
During Cultivation Hall, Nicholas expounded on some of the less combat oriented paths of cultivation, focusing mostly on the productive paths of Alchemy and Forgemastering, speaking from the point of view of a fighter about things they will find use of in the future, how to acquire them, and what to be careful of your opponents possessing.
At the end of Cultivation Hall, all those who had completed a milestone in their cultivation were awarded with additional resources. This included Thirteen, Eleven, Ten, Four, and about 2 or 3 others.
When it came time for Combat Training –which the instructors had now taken to calling Practical Training– It was raining quite heavily. Thirteen was lucky, he had worn a cloak today to keep warm, so he threw the hood up and closed the front, protecting his body from the rain.
Gathering in one large group, the children all stood before Instructor Norman, their archery instructor. He waited for a moment, looking at them all, most covered in cloaks.
"Well? Grab a fucking bow already! You think we're stopping for this? Hurry up! We're not here to admire the fucking weather, quickly now!"
Thirteen, along with the rest of the 8th generation immediately ran to the weapon racks to grab a bow and quiver. 'Stop swearing already' he complained inwardly. To grab the bow and quiver, he unfortunately needed to undo his cloak at the front, leaving him to drench as the wind blew the cloak around.
"The targets are closer than usual. You pissants should be able to do at least this much with a bit of rain right?! DRAW. AIM. LOOSE!"
Thirteen followed the crude orders as he tried to steady his bow in the wind, his arms becoming cold. When he loosed the arrow, the bowstring thrummed and sent droplets of water in every direction. Very quickly, Thirteen lost sight of his arrow as it shot through the rain toward that vague target in the distance.
"Good! Now draw. Aim. Loose!"
This process continued until all ten arrows in Thirteen's quiver had been shot, and the class followed Instructor Norman to the targets.
The targets were simple wooden panels with the outline of a person drawn on them. There were no markers, bullseye, or aids for aiming at the vital points. They were expected to find that on their own.
'Ugh… that needs some work' Thirteen criticized as he looked at his results. The feather fletching on the arrows were colored with dyes, half being red, the other half being blue. This was a bit of a learning tool for distinguishing the results between different methods, techniques or whatever it is one decides to experiment with.
Instructor Norman inspected everyones results as they stood inwaiting, reprimanding them in exaggerated ways as if to disguise the real advice he gave between curses. "Thirteen! What on earth were you aiming at boy? You shot the target in his fucking toe! Keep your bloody arm still when you loose!"
"Understood Instructor." Thirteen replied stiffly, eyeing his arrow that clearly struck the knee, and not the toe.
"And aim higher god dammit!" Norman added as he moved on.
"Ten! Are you having fun playing games with the filth?! Move your target back further and do it again!" He heard the instructor yell a while later.
This continued for a while until they were given permission to retrieve the arrows and head back to their positions.
The class continued like this in the heavy rain and wind for hours. Thirteen's only peace was that the targets were large, stationary and closer than usual. 'At the very least, Instructor factored in the challenging weather.' He thought to himself.
When the class finally reached its midpoint, there was a small intermission. The eighth generation had all wrapped themselves tightly in their cloaks as they used the few sparse trees in the practice area to shield themselves from the rain.
"Don't you think this is a bit much?" Thirteen heard from behind him. Turning to look, he saw a figure shorter than him, with the same hooded cloak wrapped around them as everybody else.
"Just because we won't get a fever with what we eat doesn't mean they should leave us under the rain for hours on end." It was Forty-five, he realised. It seemed she had looked for a friendly face to complain with.
Thirteen knew what she meant. The food they ate everyday was specially treated and filled with nourishing energies to keep them healthy and energetic regardless of their schedules or treatment.
"There's nothing to do about it. Piers said back when we first took his class that things would only get harder and stricter. We can't serve something like a King if we can't stand the cold, right?"
Forty-five remained silent for a stretch before mumbling "whatever" under her breath, obviously not content enough with that.
Giving a shrug of his shoulders, Thirteen took Forty-five to find the others while they awaited the continuation of class.
A while after they all met and began to distract each other from the cold, Instructor Norman's unpleasant voice called out to them. "All right you lot, get over here already! Quickly now, quickly!"
"Welcome to your first survival class. It's fitting that we have shit poor conditions today, it will do you all well to expect this possibility in the future. Now listen up. The lot of you are a very valuable investment, understand? We need you capable of surviving no matter the circumstances. SO! If you find yourselves lost in the wilderness, what is the first thing you need to consider?"
"Food""Water!""Shelter" The children began to call out.
"WRONG" The Instructor interrupted. "The first thing to consider is how much light you have left in the day. Next is to assess your circumstances to decide whether you will be stranded for at least a day. Only then, can you begin to list off priorities based on your situation."
Thirteen was beginning to realise that Instructor Norman really liked to shout. Throughout the rest of the class, he yelled constantly as he quizzed the students on what they learned in Theory Hall, and showed them how to put it to practical use.
He would assign them the task of building a simple shelter in groups, and then sit back and watch. With a snap of his fingers, he lit a fire in the example campfire he had them build earlier, and then sat back and watched them work in the cold as the rain avoided himself and the fire like an invisible curtain covered them.
All in all, it was a rather hellish few hours.
When finally the class came to an end, Thirteen couldn't feel his fingertips. And yet, just as always that meal awaiting them seemed to expel all that was bad and began the slow process of invigorating them once more.
Gifts
-- Gift
received Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone