Nathan

Year 2849 | Month 5 | Day 7

Once we arrive at where the large box is, I notice the instructor messing with some sort of magical panel that had appeared in front of him. After waiting with the other cadets for a few minutes as half of them stand there glaring at each other, the instructor presses one last button on the panel and steps back.

I follow suit just in case, pulling Cyria along with me by the shoulder to her surprise before a sudden pulse of light flashes from the large box and it flares outwards slightly. The inside of the box then begins to grow larger, making it very strange to look at – as if I’m looking through some sort of magnifying glass. Except from the wrong direction. After that, the inside of the box begins to change into some sort of fire-scorched battlefield.

Well, that’s certainly interesting.

Some sort of mock battlefield arena.

Which makes me wonder if that arena the headmistress spoke about yesterday uses the same magi-tech as this box.

“Jackson Cale and Samantha Bridge, enter the BFS and begin your duel once the countdown reaches zero,” Instructor Leo suddenly declares with his arms crossed in front of the panel.

At his words, a second year boy and a third year girl both enter the box – which I’m guessing is the BFS. Both of them have weapons on them outside of just the one they are fighting over – which happens to be an Arcadian Metal combat knife.

After they’re both inside of the box, a large, bold countdown appears at the center of it counting down from ten.

I can’t help but lean forwards a little in anticipation of seeing my first duel between magicians.

While they’re waiting for the countdown, the girl pulls the compound bow off of her shoulder and grabs an arrow from the quiver on her back, meanwhile the boy simply unholsters the pistol from its place on his hip and unsheathes a knife from a strap built into his uniform’s pants.

The two then tensely watch each other for several seconds before bursting from their positions as soon as the countdown reaches zero. As they’re running, Samantha releases an arrow at the boy whilst barely dodging a bullet with some sort of wind spell, making it fly straight past her shoulder from the inaccurate quick shot Jackson makes. But before the arrow can reach him, he raises his arm and summons a magic circle that creates a green barrier around his body. The barrier has hints of powerful winds flowing through it, marking his mana as wind affinity mana.

Once the arrow reaches it, it slides against it for a second before being knocked away, leaving the black arrow chipped and his barrier noticeably damaged. But Jackson doesn’t seem to let it bother him as he sprints forward towards Samantha again while she is still nocking another arrow to her bow.

I see her eyes flick to him at his movement before she actually drops her bow and grabs a second arrow instead, quickly touching the backs of the arrows together and making them combine, with the fletchings of the two arrows dropping off as the arrows begin to thicken in size.

Jackson’s eyes narrow slightly as he sees this before he fires his gun once more at her, only to miss again before she grabs another arrow. She then tosses it into the air in front of her and creates a green spell circle in front of her palm that quickly fills with instructions before blasting a powerful wind outwards right as the arrow falls in front of the circle, sending the arrow straight towards him.

The boy’s eyes widen at this before squinting again as he tries to move out of the way, only for the arrow to strike directly at his barrier, shattering it the rest of the way from the combined force of the arrow and the wind and leaving a faint scratch on his shoulder, through his uniform and the armor underneath it. And yet, despite the pain he must be feeling, he ignores it with only a light grunt and instead leaps forward the last of the distance between them with his knife, only for the blade to be blocked by the girl’s combined arrow as she twists it around to lock onto the knife and redirect the force of its blow, throwing Jackson off slightly before she manages to disarm him of his knife.

Samantha then finishes it off with a kick towards his gut while he tries to bring his gun to point at her, only to be too slow as he lets out an oomph of pain and falls onto the ground. Before he can get back up, she gets down and activates another spell that creates some sort of ball of wind that she simply smashes down onto his head, knocking him out.

The girl quickly moves to grab Jackson’s wrists and turns him around before grabbing a zip tie from her back pocket and tying his wrists together. She then gets up and looks at the instructor.

It isn’t until I see the instructor nodding his head towards her that I realize I’m smiling.

That was great!

Although I’m not really sure why she just happened to have a zip tie in her back pocket.

“Well done, cadet Samantha,” Instructor Leo says with a nod before looking off to the side of the room and saying, “Bring him out.”

Suddenly, the wall opens up on one side of the room and some sort of training dummy walks out of it before going directly into the box and grabbing Jackson’s unconscious body. It then walks with Samantha out of the box and unceremoniously drops him onto the ground, waking him up again from the force of his head smacking onto the metal floor of the room.

“Shiiiiit…” he groans while trying to get up, only to realize that his hands are zip tied. “The fuck?”

I hear quiet chuckles from the other students as the instructor looks at Samantha and says, “Get those off of him.” He then turns to look at another pair of cadets who were fighting over weapons and says, “Cadets Bridget and Rooks are next.”

And with that, the class continues with duel after duel after duel until seven different duels are fought and the instructor looks around for any other fights over weapons. Once he finds none, he messes with the panel, doing something that makes the box return to its previous size and appearance before he walks over to a magi-tech board that I actually hadn’t noticed before.

“To keep things simple, this class is to teach all of you cadets how to fight both magicians and non-magicians, through any means necessary,” he says, instantly attracting everyone’s attention with the image that appears on the magi-tech board behind him. The image looks to be that of a fire-ravaged battlefield, with several unnatural canyons, and even a strangely out of place tornado. On the battlefield are dozens of thousands of soldiers, both those wearing the black and red of our nation, and those wearing the green uniforms of the Collective Kingdoms. And amongst the soldiers, there are approximately thirty or so on each side with magician ranks, each with their own variated uniforms.

I’m not sure which military ranks are considered magician ranks for the Collective Kingdoms – outside of the fact that they seem to call their magicians Knights instead – but I do know that our magician ranks range from second lieutenant and above, with every soldier below those ranks being a non-magician.

“Some of you may ask why you need to be taught to fight with non-magicians as well, but I think this should explain it to you on its own,” the instructor continues as he moves to the side, letting what I had thought was just an image begin playing as a video, showing everything move as the sounds of explosions and gunshots echo throughout the classroom.

The magicians on both sides of the fight seem to be scattered in groups of five magicians each, with every group having a sniper stationed someplace high above the ground, who also fights off any soldier that manages to get close to them in their semi-secluded locations. The other four members of the groups tend to vary, with each of them generally having a mixture of fighters, healers, and supporters amongst their ranks, with all of the four members working together to wipe out large numbers of enemies with both their magic and their weapons.

“That’s a lot of non-magicians attacking them…” one of the other cadets mutters from somewhere in the room, but I don’t take my attention away from the video as some of the other cadets begin saying similar stuff.

As the instructor had said, the video does explain pretty damn well why we need to be on guard against non-magicians.

Suddenly, the video pauses as the instructor moves up to it again and says, “If you somehow couldn’t figure it out, strategies in war tend to focus on wiping out as many magicians as possible from the opposing army. Especially since the Warzones are protected by anti-missile and artillery barriers to immediately disable any heavy arms from being used, leaving the magicians as the only powerhouses on the battlefields.”

I stare at the screen despite its paused state as the instructor continues speaking, “It may be harsh, but the higher ups in most nations – and especially in our own – tend to view the average non-magician as fodder; only to be given recognition and a nice life if they manage to actually kill a magician. Which almost never happens.”

He has the video begin playing again as he turns down its volume and finishes, “It’s also one of the reasons why we don’t allow non-magicians on the academy grounds.”

It’s at this point that I turn to look at him and notice the complicated look in his eyes.

“It’s because the Republic doesn’t want you getting emotionally attached to any non-magician,” he says, moving his gaze between each and every cadet, “because it’s highly likely that they will die on a battlefield sometime in the near future.”