Chapter 18: Chapter 17

After the craziness of yesterday I had forgotten the weekend was over and I had classes for an embarrassing amount of time. I only realized when Charlotte mentioned going from morning training straight into the normal class was going to suck. And oh boy did it suck. Our instructor did not take it easier today, so when other students started showing up and saw both of us laying on the group drenched in sweat, there were some confused looks. After explaining to the fourth and fifth groups that we had participated in the optional morning session (that most people appeared to have forgotten about), it looked like there’d be no one joining us.

 

We had been told before class that even though we might have been initially placed into one of the lower-fitness groups, the highest one was probably now the best fit. Even in this group, the class was easy due to the fact that more breaks were given and emphasis was placed on knowing why we were doing specific exercises and how to act and eat outside of class to remain healthy. That tickled some faint memories, both of education in the other world and family meals from this one. This slower teaching style seemed to agitate Quartz and crew for whatever reason, but they mostly whispered amongst themselves while acting like gossips.

 

After class I went back to what was quickly becoming my nook in the library. I didn’t need to go to my next class, so I had more time to study other things. Today the plan was to look into some of the non-wetland plants around here while I also went to retrieve the items I stashed yesterday. After I received my disguise-clothes I could turn in the plants from yesterday and head out again. I had left my notebook with the notes on herbology in my room so the body that was going out could use it while I was in Ability class.

 

It only took around twenty minutes to retrieve my stash. I decided to leave the sword where it was- I didn’t have a place to really keep it and I didn’t want anyone asking where I got it. From there it was another short trip to hand in my bounty. The plants had wilted a tiny bit from the overnight storage, but not so much as to make them undesirable. The actual process was the same as last time, and I was out of the building with a nice bit more money than what I got yesterday. I think this was mostly due to the Moonbulb being so hard to find.

 

Not wanting to run into the bandits that raided the wagon lined up nicely with wanting to head to one of the fielded areas around the city, so I left out a different gate today. From some maps of the area available in the library, after a strip of dense woodland, prairies broken up by wooded thickets lead up north past the country's border. Like always, the walk was nice and calming as other me had to go off to the Ability Training class. 

 

When I arrived, I was surprised to see the same teacher as the combat class, along with two others. One of The Academy’s selling points was a focus on the development and study of Abilities- so having more teachers for this class did make sense. Due to the uniqueness of each person's Abilities, we were divided into groups based on how eccentric they were. Since the ability they were aware of was simply having a dragon-esc tail, I was in the ‘normal’ group. On the other end, examples could include prophecy, teleportation, and other space-time manipulation. Most people were in the middle ground- having an Ability that was not quite bound by normal natural laws, but not so much that you’d have to throw said laws out the window.

 

Since only about a third of the population had Abilities that were noticeable, the class was smaller than normal, but only by a bit. My group had three other students, and the teacher was of course the one of the three I already knew. Actually, I know his name now. During introductions, one of the others asked for it- apparently it's Deryl. He stated that since our Abilities were more ‘normal’ in general, most of the initial class would be quantifying their properties as best as possible and trying to increase their capabilities. 

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From there we were led to a smaller room off of the classroom where we had been gathered. It had machines that looked like weight trainers, hydraulic presses, probes, and a myriad of other testing implements. Reading from a list he had pulled out Deryl called for one of the other students- who had a “Sensory Aptitude Increasing” Ability. They were put through a gauntlet of tests including a vision test, a smell test using vials of liquids, a hearing test using increasing amounts of muffling material in their ears, and a hilarious touch-test. For the last one, a second student was given an image to trace on the first’s back, who then drew what they felt. 

 

The results were something like 20/5 vision, detection of smells in even the most dilute solution they had available, easy hearing through more material than most walls, and a decent drawing. The level of improvement over the average easily puts them in a high-power classification. Such classifications operate independent of what the Ability actually does- which causes a slight breakdown when classifying the more exotic ones.

 

For me, the tests were for muscle strength, material strength, and sharpness of the ridge- basically what I had tried testing on the first day after getting my tail. For every strength test the result was that the rest of my body would give before it. When I was made to pull down a bar hooked up to weights by pulleys, the foot straps slipped out after about (self described). For testing the sharpness, I was told to try stabbing the tip through various materials. Leathers, sheets of metals, even a few sections of chainmail were used- and none withstood anything more than a firm push. Most could even be sliced through if held properly. The last test entailed trying to (with my consent) chip a small section of the ridge near my back. 

 

The first thing that was tried- mostly as a formality for defensive Abilities- was a simple chop with a bulk-standard sword. The sword was cut into a few centimeters with no damage to the tail. A stone chisel was almost split when tried head-on, and blunted when tried from the side. After a quick demonstration of his capability to cleanly flatten exactly half a coin with a full swing of a sledgehammer, Deryl tried that on the ridge as well. I definitely felt the impact and the hammer was intact, but the floor tile needed to be replaced after it shattered. He then quickly stepped out and said something to an assistant before we continued testing the rest of the group.

 

As we were finishing the last test, the assistant came back in with an old looking fang and stuck it into what looked like a hydraulic press. We positioned my tail properly and supported it to keep it in place before the machine was switched on. After the fang and tail plating came in contact, the machine started to groan increasingly loud. After a couple dozen seconds, I could swear it started smoking before one of the supports to the upper section snapped in a deafening screech. The dial indicating the weight being exerted read above the maximum of 5000kg, all of which was concentrated to a small point by the fang- which I was informed was a real dragon tooth, capable of piercing heavily enchanted platemail with much less force. 

 

Needless to say, I was also ranked as having a high-powered Ability for breaking every test.

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