Chapter 36: Changed Plan

"Clark!" The familiar sound of Maria's voice caught Clark off guard. He had not thought that she would be waiting outside his room.

"Were you meditating here to wait for me?" No one had done such a thing for him before. It reminded him of when his parents would wait to start eating dinner if he was outside playing still. A memory that hurt but also made him want to smile.

"Of course I am. Do you know what's happening in a day? We are going to a wild area!" Clark froze in place. He thought he had heard her wrong.

"What wild area? When? How? Isn't it too soon?" All of these questions rushed out of his mouth while he started to formulate a different plan.

"One of the older classes will mentor our class so we can go to one. Only our elite class can do it. But they gave us two days to prepare. You were not here the whole time. I even checked the library." This was more forward than Maria had been yet. Clark was struggling to rationalize it.

"That leaves a day. I will be ready. I was preparing things for my mentor but now I will prepare myself. Maria shivered slightly remembering the look that Alexander had given her. She was sure that the man was powerful and knew too much.

"I…do you want to prepare together?" Her meek personality returned as she asked Clark to train with her.

"That depends, do you have a weapon? Battle styles? Materials to strengthen Lit?" The glow sting jellyfish spun in the air hearing its name from Clark. It appeared that it had taken a liking to him even though it had not interacted with Clark at all.

The interrogative tone made Maria shy away before she gathered her wits again. "Bow and arrow and speed shooting." She sounded like she had spent a lot of effort on these two skills. Uit Cark could see her still hesitant.

"And?"

"I just started dagger training." This was the thing he had wondered about. Close combat was something everyone would end up in regardless of what weapon they liked to use. It was why Clark could be considered the strongest because most tamers focused on weapons with longer range while their beasts fought.

"Then don't use the bow and arrows at all. Only use the dagger against Crim. he will be ready in a few hours for training. I need to do some reading first." Clark saw that Maria had gotten fairly excited by him accepting her training proposal. But Clark was already thinking of other things while entering his room.

"Crim, you are going to eat a snack then prepare to train in close combat against Maria." Crim jumped up from the curled up position on Clark's bed. He was sure that crim had been resting and not training himself as Clark had instructed. "And if you slack off I will let Devi bite you. He is your older sibling, he needs to keep you on track."

While Devi became focused on Crim, Clark handed Crom a smaller piece of the dragon wing bones. The entire attitude of Crom changed when he saw it. The bone shards had dragon essence that crim could feel easily. That meant that he knew exactly what they were for.

In a single bite, the shard was eaten up and Crim was standing motionless. Clark watched as the coloration in Crim's scales changed slightly to become slightly dull. The color seemed to spread all over Crom's body eventually reaching the small wings.

Slime seemed to ooze out of the scales on the wings reforming in to a tougher shape. Clark was becoming mesmerized by the way this process worked and quickly jotted down additional notes. The way a slime dragon grew and adapted was very important for him to remember when he chose more materials for Crim in the future.

"Now for my book." Clark started reading. He had the goal to read it in just two hours. The goal was self imposed so that he could begin to test his theories and build a technique with the black throwing needles. He wanted to ensure he would be able to paralyze or even defeat bests with a single attack.

The way the book outlined biology was simple to grasp. Many creatures in the world had similar muscle builds. That gave them points of connections that were weaker than others. Identifying those points was easy for the people that paid close attention. The movements of any creature naturally gave away their weak points. Clark would just have to take the system analysis and his own intuition to learn how to gauge the perfect places to attack.

The two hours passed by in a flash before Debvi came tugging at Clark. He had been the only one keeping track of the time passing by. "Thank you Devi. Crim, are you ready or do you need more time?" Clark saw Crim rearing to go. He had absorbed and familiarized himself with the small shard already breaking it down. If Clark didn't have the connection he would still have felt that Crim wanted more shards of the bones now.

"You can have more after we train for a little while. If you can train your dodging well enough I will even give you some of the dinner I get in the dining hall." This seemed to be the perfect motivation for Crim. more food and more dragon essence. What else could he want?

Since their rooms were right near each other, Clark was at Maria's door in just a minute. His knock caused a slightly high pitched gasp before Maria opened the door holding a sheathed dagger. "You're ready quicker than I expected." Clark didn't miss the slight scars on Maria's hands. She had been training already and Lit had been healing her hands when she messed up.

"Yes, Crim is going to be dodging you while we train. We should head to the training field behind the arena. It's open for all students to use at any time of day." Clark would make sure he took advantage of that when he trained with Crim. it would allow people to think he only had one beast even more than before.

"Why did you want me to leave my bow? If Crim will dodge only then won't he want to dodge from long range?" Maria had no idea why Clark was setting it up this way. She was sure to strike Crim directly.

"You need to rely on the dagger as if it is the only thing you know. If you have your bow you will rely on it." Clark answered simply. It was a conclusion that Maria would have come to eventually. "But, I won't be fighting close combat. I will be the one attacking from a distance while Crim dodges as well."

Clark flashed the black throwing needles at Maria who gasped in surprise. She didn't think that Clark had been training with weapons since he had straight up punched his first opponent in the academy. It was not unheard of to tamers use their fists to face beasts. They were usually known as strong and brutal tamers.

"Crim needs to be able to focus on his body and use it to dodge close and far attacks. I want to train this earlier to become memory." Crim growled softly in approval. He would accept the challenge that Clark was offering him.