’A bloodline, hm?’ Back in the VIP lounge, Principal Vermont mused as he took in the information.
One would expect him to at least be a little furious at watching his students get waved off like they were unimportant, yet he seemed more interested in Osho than his own students at the moment.
He watched the replay of the entire altercation, and the more he saw, the more he became certain that the bloodline assessment was correct. It wasn’t normal for a beast to suppress other beasts that weren’t that much weaker than it with such ease.
’Interesting.’ He thought and shifted his gaze to Principal Timothy, who was having a conversation with Fredrick, who looked a lot less uncomfortable.
"Timothy, it seems like you’ve been busy lately. Is this boy your trump card?" Vermont asked, his voice cutting through the din of conversation like a knife as he addressed the older man casually.
Timothy paused and faced Vermont with his usual serene smile.
"Trump card? I’m afraid I don’t know what you are talking about, Vermont. The boy is impressive, but we are not helping him grow for our sake. Only his?" Hearing this, Vermont vaguely raised an eyebrow, not believing this sentiment at all.
"Mhm. Regardless, what course is the boy studying? From what he has shown us so far, he seems quite adept at combat." He changed the subject as his gaze shifted back to Osho.
With everything he’d shown thus far, he had to be choosing a course related to combat, no?
"Beast Engineering & Evolution," Tomthy answered curtly, and this response didn’t just take Vermont by surprise, but a great deal of the other VIPs. The only ones who didn’t seem surprised by this information were, naturally, Mrs Jane and the other Expert Ranks who were familiar with Osho.
Vermont then frowned.
"You can clearly see that his beast excels at combat. Why allow him to take a path that’s so jarringly different from the ability he displays?" He asked, seeming genuinely dissatisfied, as though Timothy was allowing Osho to waste his potential on something meaningless.
"Why not? It’s his path, after all. Who am I to tell him what he can and can’t do? Besides, how are you so sure he doesn’t have talent in that path that rivals or even surpasses his combat talent?" Timothy retorted calmly, but Vermont just snorted.
"You’re always . These are children. They don’t know what they want half of the time. You can’t just let them do something else when they are so obviously talented in a certain area. It’s wasteful and pointless. What happens when a student suddenly feels like the path they chose isn’t for them? Young people are fickle, and what they think they know often is just a spontaneous decision they made after interacting with that option briefly." Vermont argued, but Timothy shook his head.
"Whether or not that is the case, in the end. It is their path, not ours. Even if they don’t know what they want to do, they can still explore. That is why the colleges have different options that one could choose. We can advise them, sure, but ultimately, the choice is in their hands. You saw they often don’t know what they want, but how do we know what they want? Because we are older? Sure, maybe we have an easier time reading them and their intentions. But we aren’t them. In the end, it’s their choice to make." Timothy explained his point of view despite knowing it was a pointless endeavor.
The two of them have had this argument so many times that they’d lost count. Their ideologies were just too different, so them clashing on that front was almost a natural thing at this point whenever they interacted.
Fredrick watched the interaction with some interest. Compared to the two, he was quite a bit younger, and he had to admit that both of them had a point. However, Fredrick was more inclined to Principal Timothy, not because of any bias, but because he also believed in the freedom of choice.
If not for that, had he listened to his mother and just stayed at home, he would have never encountered that mysterious person in the Black market who helped evolve and heal Hydro.
Then again, he wasn’t naive enough to believe that making choices yourself didn’t lead to bad results here and there. The death of his other beast when his ’family’ wanted to get rid of him is a prime example of that. He made the choice to take that task in an area that wasn’t the most controlled or had the most surveillance despite knowing the beef those people had with him.
In the end, an individual is an amalgamation of the choices they made from birth to death. And choices required freedom. For better or worse.
’Gale!’ Osho sent out a command, and a powerful gust of wind emerged and blew away several sharp branches that came from above, aiming to impale him and Ellie.
In return, Sugil created several crystal spikes that shot in the directions of the wooden spikes, but they had limited success in hitting their targets.
What were their targets? Well, about eight monkeys jumped from tree to tree around the duo. Each of them had bark-like skin and fur, which made them difficult to see with the naked eye.
They possessed a nature/wood affinity as they pulled off branches from the trees before sharpening and enhancing them with Mana. They’d throw these projectiles with surprising speed and accuracy.
Alone, they weren’t particularly threatening, but together, they became a bit more of an issue despite all being of the Novice Rank.
Not to mention, they were considerably agile, and they moved across the trees like ice-skaters, allowing them to control and change the direction they moved whenever on a single tree, causing their movements to be unpredictable.
Unpredictable to those who weren’t perceptive enough, that is.
Something that didn’t bother Gale at all.
’Do it.’ Osho instructed and the bird nodded.
The monkeys never stopped moving to prevent the duo from having a chance to pin them down, it would have worked on most weaker opponents, but Gale was anything but.
Suddenly, the air pressure at the general altitude where the monkeys resided suddenly increased to a tangible level. It was so abrupt that none of them had a chance to try and defend against the change. As a result, they all got slowed down midair, enough for gravity to do its job and pull them downwards.
Seeing this, Ellie and Sugil immediately reacted as crystal spikes shot from the ground where the monkeys were meant to land, aiming to impale them.
The result of this was mixed as about three monkeys got impaled on the spikes, but the remaining managed to twist their bodies out of the way at the last moment to avoid the same fate.
Seeing their brethren writhing and bleeding on the spikes, the monkeys let out angry shrieks as they prepared to take to the trees again and continue their assault.
Something that was cut short when a blur went past three monkeys, and before they could react, their heads went flying with fountains of blood.
’That’s six.’ Osho thought as the remaining two monkeys went from furious to frightened. Without hesitation, they turned and got prepared to run. However, one of them got a crystal spike to the back of the head while the other got sliced to bits by invisible wind blades.
When the last one fell, Osho and Ellie let out a breath simultaneously before giving each other a fist bump.
"Nice." Ellie chuckled and Osho just smiled, both of them seeming unperturbed by the bloodline scene before them.
The blur that had been flying around was, naturally, Gale, who returned and perched himself on Osho’s head.
’How was it?’ Osho asked as he raised his hand to stroke the feathers on the bird’s chest. Gale chirped and replied through their bond.
’Fun! I wanna do it again.’ He replied happily.
’Well, there will be more than enough chances to fulfill that wish.’ Osho smiled before taking a look at his point bracelet. It seemed to believe he and Ellie had contributed to the fight equally, so their points were also equally split, meaning they each got 100 points from the endeavor, pushing Osho to 150 points while Ellie stayed at 100 due to not having hunted anything previously.
"Kinda crazy that we can do this now. I remember how unnerving the notion of fighting multiple Novice rank beasts felt before. But now we can handle them pretty easily." Ellie commented and Osho nodded.
"It’s a natural part of becoming stronger. Something you couldn’t handle before suddenly becomes little more than fodder in your eyes. But that’s why we should still be careful. You never know when the seemingly weaker opponent is actually a talented monster that kills stuff above its rank." Osho pointed out and Ellie nodded. They’d know, considering the two of them fit that description pretty perfectly.
With that said, the two of them started moving again.