Chapter 372: Duskhand Day 1-3
Training Centre
Duskhand Military City
Githal
November 3rd
530th Divine Year
"Attention!"
**THUMPP!!
The Lieutenant’s call had all the new recruits present standing at attention as best as they could under the early 7 am sun. He then pointed two finger’s continued and multiple sergeants stepped forward to begin inspecting their postures.
Naturally, there were a lot of them who had improper attention postures and had to be corrected by the soldiers.
"At Ease!"
Once again, the sergeants went forward and inspected the recruits, correcting their postures with strict attitudes.
"Stand Easy!"
Now this one had a lot of them, especially those who didn’t have military backgrounds looking around with confused gazes.
But after seeing their more knowledgeable fellow recruits’ actions, they quickly copied them and relaxed their postures further.
After this, the Lieutenant then introduced the Major who was to act as their training Commandant, who then proceeded to brief them on their training schedule.
Contrary to most of their expectations, they were still in their orientation period and would spend a total of two days (today included) learning how to march for their military parades.
They didn’t expect exemplary marching from them, just to show them how said parades would seem so they should prepare their minds.
And that was exactly what they spent the 3rd and 4th of November doing.
On the fifth, they had an early morning parade where they put the 30 hours of Marchpast training of the past two days to the test.
When this was concluded, their commandant then split them into various battalions, each under the supervision of First and Second Lieutenants.
They were assigned battalions based on their existence realms, elemental affinities, skills and magic that were screened and documented on the 2nd.
Due to this, Rachel and Arthur ended up in the same battalion, where the First Lieutenant in charge began briefing them.
"On your Recruitment days, you all were initially informed that you would be assigned to platoons based on your documented details, but a new order was passed to group you based on your current abilities.
And what better way to see how good your abilities are, than to have them tested in live combat."
The man walked up to a trolley behind him and pulled off the cloth covering it, revealing hundreds of wooden weapons of various types arranged there.
"You have all been assigned combat opponents and you will be called out when it is your turn. Until then, you would spectate the spars and try to see if you can pick up a few things."
After saying this, the man and his assistant Second Lieutenants took their seats on an elevated platform where they could easily overlook all the 800 recruits in this battalion.
It went without saying, that the battalion that Arthur and Rachel were in, was naturally the one with the strongest and most special recruits in the November 2nd batches.
They were going to call out a dozen pairs and have them battle at once, with a limited time for each set.
"Recruits 559 and 659."
Arthur and Rachel were called up within the first set, as the Lieutenants wanted to see just how good the highest-level Superior Master the newest divinity wielder were in combat.
They were asked to pick their weapons of choice, but despite this, both of them refrained from doing so for differing reasons.
"I’m okay without a weapon."
"I fight better with my own weapons."
The Second Lieutenant only raised a brow in light surprise before shaking his head and holding up his right hand.
"Ready?!
Begin!"
Arthur held out his right hand, channelling his divinity through his arm seamlessly and creating a sword made out of the silver energy.
Upon the weapon’s appearance, the expressions of the spectating senior officers betrayed their intrigue as they could see how efficient his energy manipulation was, and also noted how strong his control was.
"No, let’s see how strong these constructs are..."
The moment the First Lieutenant spoke, Arthur kicked off the ground and dashed towards Rachel, with all the spectator’s eyes widening as the boy’s speed was simply outrageous.
Even more so for Rachel who was faced with Arthur’s sword that was slashing straight at her. However, at the last moment, the ground in front of her cracked open and rocks erupted from within, smoothening out to form a curved earthen barrier which Arthur’s sword clashed with and slid right off.
"Oh, that’s sturdy.
Guess I should increase my force then."
The boy spoke with a grin and flipped the blade around, catching it once more and doubling the density of the divinity that made it up.
The instant Rachel sensed the energy increase, she quickly jumped away, a mere second before Arthur slashed right through the earthen barrier she had just created and cut through to the ground where she stood.
Both of them locked eyes at that moment, a grin appearing on Arthur’s face as he ’vanished’ from her field of view and reappeared behind her.
’He’s fast!!’
Rachel thought as she turned around mid-air and crossed her hands in front of her chest. This gesture caused the earth around her to erupt, forming two streams of fist-sized rocks that crossed in front of her and blocked Arthur’s second strike.
In that same moment, she snapped her right fingers and some of the rocks were moulded into the shapes of tiny daggers and shot forward, prompting Arthur to take distance while swinging his sword to block them all.
She waved her hand and sent some of the rocks flying upward whilst Arthur was busy with this, landing on the floor and imbuing some magic power into the earth.
Six stone spears sprouted from the ground around Arthur, aiming to pierce him but he stomped his foot on the ground and generated a shockwave that blasted them all to bit simultaneously, whilst also using said shockwave to springboard himself up into the air to avoid the giant earthen fist construct that punched the empty air where he was a moment ago.
Arthur flipped his body around in the air and descended to the ground with an axe kick, but Rachel quickly jumped to the ground to avoid the earth splitting kick as fast as she could.
Even so, this did nothing about Arthur’s follow up where he released dozens of divinity-filled slashes in a single breath, sending each one of them out at speeds of around 100m/s.
Rachel had her work cut out for her as she stretched out her right palm, before generating tiny two-ringed magic circles on each of her fingers.
While the spectating Lieutenants saw her activating the spells ’simultaneously’ and were shocked, Arthur’s superior vision allowed him to notice that there was a fraction of a second delay between the activations of the first two, the second two and the last spells.
The ground trembled as multiple earthen projectiles erupted from below, piercing through Arthur’s divinity slashes and cancelling them out.
A quarter of the earthen projectiles remained in the air, while the remaining three-fourths descended to the ground with little vortexes of wind spinning around each one of them.
Within the same breath, two giant walls of spiked rocks manifested on Arthur’s both sides, closing in on him rapidly with the intention to squash him in between.
Arthur tried moving but the tendrils of light emerged from the ground and snaked around his feet, wrapping around them tightly to lock him in place.
"Well...this is bad."
"You should do well to surrender."
They had this short exchange in the short moment her attacks needed to reach Arthur, however, the young godslayer only revealed a wry smile and released magic power from his body.
Seeing this, the spectating senior soldier leaned forward as they wanted to see what Arthur’s ’Magic’ was, given that he had only been using divinity since the beginning.
"Gravity."
"?!"
With that one word, Arthur unleashed gravity-infused magic power from his body, creating a localized gravitational field that disrupted the trajectories of all the projectiles, causing them to veer off course.
Simultaneously, he used his aura to break the light tendrils holding his feet and freeing himself from the restraining spell.
With a swift movement, he kicked off the ground and closed the distance between him and Rachel, moving at a speed even faster than before.
’So that’s the secret to his speed! Gravity magic!!’
