The top students felt betrayed about the school´s decision but there wasn't anything for them to do because they had to acknowledge that Jason and Seron were too strong for them.
At least for the moment and mainly because of their weird abilities, they still had to analyze.
Jason and Seron looked at each other smiling brightly, when they heard that they would be able to spar with the strongest students from all classes.
This could be considered an immense opportunity and Jason was even happier to have received such a pleasant privilege.
Thinking back to the time where he was only a novice rank and extremely weak, Jason noticed that it hasn't even been that long since he became strong enough to compare himself with his peers, and thinking about his current combat prowess, he could only smile.
With a mana core rank of a 1st Adept, he could already defeat other classmates with a mana core rank of the 5th Adept rank, after adding the amplifications from soulbonds and in Jason´s case his baptism.
Jason´s mana core size and physique reached the 4th Adept rank while he could still defeat 7th Adept ranks with his strategies, mana eyes, and his evolved ranked black fire affinity once someone underestimated him.
Being underestimated was rather unlikely within the special combat classes and Jason was expectant to see how strong the other classes were.
Following Till, Jason and Seron talked to each other and Seron estimated that most students had the strength that was comparable to theirs when they didn't use their most powerful attack.
The biggest problem in his opinion was the excessively powerful elemental affinities from evolved beasts and some even said that there was an unblemished beast soulbond within the 6th affiliated Vanguard school, which shocked Jason.
window.pubfuturetag = window.pubfuturetag || [];window.pubfuturetag.push({unit: "64ce79d606107d003c23ea27", id: "pf-5140-1"})Even though this student was said to have only a few soulbond spots it was already rare for someone to contract an unblemished beast as the first soulbond but Seron looked around unbothered.
In Jason´s opinion, Seron´s behavior could only be described as nonchalant, as Seron told him, that his second Soulbond will be a rare guardian rank cub, which was even more shocking than getting to know that someone formed a contract with an unblemished beast.
They trailed behind Till for five minutes until they arrived at the highest floor of the combat arena, where the other students were already waiting for them.
Looking at the badges on their school uniform, one could see 74 different numbers in pairs and it seemed as if they were the last to arrive.
Once they entered the combat arena, everyone immediately began to scan their mana core rank, before they smiled weirdly.
'A 1st-Adept rank and a 3rd Adept rank? Is that some kind of bad joke?' they asked themselves upon inspecting Jason and Seron´s core, while Seron and Jason did exactly the same.
Everyone except Jason could only see the mana core rank, while he could see everyone's real strength behind them, forcing him to smile weirdly.
While Seron saw mana core ranks between the 4th-7th Adept rank, Jason noticed that only around 30 students had a mana core size of a 5th Adept, while the strongest one´s seemed to have already reached a mana core size infinitely close to the Expert rank, which caused a wide gap between the strongest and second strongest, who had a mana core size infinitely close to the 9th Adept rank.
Fortunately, there was only one of such existences and Jason immediately thought it had to be the students that bond an unblemished beast.
Seeing Jason´s gaze remaining longer on her than on others, the slender girl with blond hair and blue eyes wasn't sure what to think about him, except for one thing that was for sure.
window.pubfuturetag = window.pubfuturetag || [];window.pubfuturetag.push({unit: "64cc9e79c7059f003e4ad4b0", id: "pf-5109-1"})`HOT!!` She thought as her gaze remained on Jason, even though he averted his gaze to scan through the other students around her.
Jason was astonished to see that the top student of class one was the blond girl with her slender build but her mana core size spoke more than a thousand words.
Mixing themself among the 148 other students, Seron and Jason looked at Till who began his short speech.
"Today, everyone here can be considered the best of the best among the combatants in our school's first grade. Due to our negligence, the school didn't establish a special combat class for the last few years to strengthen the new generations' best warriors, but after the goblin tide occurred, all schools will start to focus more on enhancing the abilities of our combatants once again. This is the reason we founded the special combat class.
In this special combat class, everyone will fight against each other and learn about all kinds of combat styles first hand, while we will focus on learning a variety of tiered techniques.
The school will provide a large number of techniques in order for everyone here to increase their strength by a large margin, but don´t think everything is free!
You´ll only be able to learn these techniques as long as you remain in the special combat class, which means once someone who aspired to enter the special combat class defeats you, your permission to read the technique will immediately be removed.
Some of you may question why we give out tiered martial art skills and the answer involves multiple reasons.
First, we obviously want to strengthen the next generation to prevent any accident like the Goblin tide to happen ever again.
We already suffered enough through the last few months with too many casualties during the beast tides, like it happened in Jiro- and Cyro-City.
window.pubfuturetag = window.pubfuturetag || [];window.pubfuturetag.push({unit: "663633fa8ebf7442f0652b33", id: "pf-8817-1"})This could have been avoided and the government grants the schools a small fund to help out with increasing the future strength of Astrix.
As for the second reason, the three big schools and the government decided to hold a tournament after the new year starts, which is only 100 days from now on.
With this, the big three want to motivate everyone to strive for more, as the rewards can be considered huge, to simplify it.
Among the rewards is a piece of peak grade-3 equipment, pseudo-mana low grade-3 equipment, and even soul weapons and armor, high-quality fruits to increase one's soul energy, impurity cleansing fruits, and even some that increase the affinity towards a certain affinity.
But that's not it and there is much more, which has been provided by the Drake family to strengthen our newest generation!
These items are not even commonly found on the other islands and one could say that some of these rewards are even rare on Canir!
In total, 3000 students of every grade will be able to participate in the tournament, while 1000 spots belong to the Vanguard school.
You all may think that every branch will have 150 spots, while the main school has 100 spots, according to the student ratio attending the schools, but that is completely wrong.
Right now, only students from your own school can challenge you for the special class spot, but one month from now, even the other branches and the main school students will be able to challenge you.
In order for everyone to understand the strength of the Vanguard main school's first-graders.
Right now, within the main school, more than 500 students have reached the 8th Adept rank and among them close to 100 students have reached the 9th Adept rank, while a few ascended to the Expert rank.
Including their soulbonds, one could estimate that around 1000 students with a mana core size at the 9th Adept rank exist within the Vanguard school.
900 among these 1000 will challenge you if not even more and you´ll have to either win or fight desperately in order to participate in the "Big-Three tournament".
This may be shocking and to be honest, even I´m baffled because such high mana core ranks were rarely seen in the Archipelago when I was young.
Humanities strength is increasing with each day passing, as Argo´s mana increases slowly and the resources it creates become more, increasing the chances for youth like all of you to ascend into higher realms in a shorter amount of time.
What this means for everyone is clear, most of you are essentially too weak and in two months we want everyone to give their best to become stronger.
If each of you wants to keep the spot within the special combat class, everyone has to give 150% for the next three months until the tournament starts.
Everyone has been sent a special permission key to the quantum watches and bracelets, once you get challenged, a signal will be sent to you and both will have to meet up inside the school.
The time one can get challenged is only within the combat class lessons, otherwise, it would be extremely difficult to find a time where one can meet up, and additionally, it would be unfair to send someone a challenge at 2 am, right?
That´s mainly it….Everyone is already granted permission to access all kinds of techniques, but keep in mind, that once thrown out of the special class, the access to these techniques will be locked until one can defeat someone else from the special class, retrieving their seat.
Strive for more and keep becoming stronger, that is my wish for everyone and don't let your butt kicked by someone else!!"
Till ended and the whole surrounding seemed perilous quiet, while Jason and Seron looked at each other.
Right now they could barely defeat someone at the 5th Adept rank with their soul world amplification and the main Vanguard school is said to have some powerhouses this year from all kinds of hidden clans and families and they owned strong techniques as heirlooms, like Seron´s family had.
But this didn´t mean that both of them were discouraged. It was only a new challenge for them to show their determination and ambition which increased even more.
