As Lake stood in front of the instructor he was silently weighing his options while thinking of a solution to get out of this predicament.
He knew that Instructor Bane was a serious teacher after observing his fate but he didn’t expect him to directly challenge him after seeing his spar.
"What to do now is the question," Lake silently thought to himself.
He could just follow Bane’s challenge and reveal his true strength, directly showcasing his true power to the students and the instructor.
This actually came with some benefits if he were to do it.
He would be able to showcase his talents which could reward him with more resources from the academy in the future. However, the problem with this method is the amount of students he would offend in the process.
Lake was no idiot. After peering through the fates of various instructors he knew exactly what kind of devils these instructors were. If he were to reveal his true strength, and it surpassed their expectation, they wouldn’t hesitate to raise the difficulty of the year in order to promote the growth of the other students while also nurturing his own growth.
This was exactly the opposite of what Lake wanted. After all, if he were to increase the difficulty for the other students yet again, the hatred that was already piled on top of him would multiply infinitely.
But he must admit, from a perspective of results, this method would actually be quite good. With Lake acting as a goal for the other students to pursue, he would essentially act as a whetstone used to sharpen the skills of the other students.
No student wants to be outdone by someone else and they will naturally want to prove their skill and talents as the best. This is especially true for the students of the academy who all went through long hours of practice and training before taking the insane entrance exam to finally step into the academy’s grounds.
This level of hard work and achievement made every student in the academy slightly arrogant to some degree with the mindset of being the best.
Of course, there will always be students who are slightly better than others and this is exactly what the academy wants. When the difference isn’t that big it motivates the students that are falling behind to work harder to surpass the rest which is the kind of environment that the academy strives on.
However, in cases where one student outclasses the rest, especially to the extent that Lake does, is brought into play, it changes the dynamic of the academy entirely. These students, monsters in their own regard, would stand at the peak of the mountain on which their classmates reside, and would be seen as little more than beasts looking down at the rest of the struggling students trying to catch up to them.
The despair and inferiority these types of powerhouses bring to the academy is something that can break most students’ arrogance and hard working nature as no matter how hard they try, they could never catch up.
Fortunately, the academy was able to come up with a solution to deal with these situations and even use them to the advantage of the rest of the class. They did this by increasing the difficulty.
It may sound like a pointless idea but the effects it brought were surprisingly pleasant. Not only did the students not lose motivation, they instead became more hard working than ever before.
After all, no one wants to fail and with the difficulty being higher than ever, if the students wanted to even barely pass, they would have to put in an insane amount of effort.
This would force them into a state of never ending practice, bringing a pleasant surprise to the academy. Even if these students only barely managed to graduate, they were the students that stood at the top of the academy, all high class talents in their own regard with much higher strength than anyone in their generation.
And as for the students that surpassed even them, with the difficulty being so high even they were forced to put in more effort, becoming Martial Artists that would stand at the top of the world in terms of martial prowess and influence, becoming a leader of their generation.
After a while, the academy eventually came up with a name for these types of students, surpassers. People who surpass the rest of their generation and stand above them in a way that isn’t humanly possible.
In fact, the academy currently has three surpasser students attending. One was the third year, Gwenevere Silverveil, the princess of the Royal family and the other two were Bradford and Lake.
Bradford and Lake were already considered surpassers by the academy which was why they increased the difficulty of graduating so much already.
However, right now Bane wasn’t testing if Lake was a surpasser or not, as that was already confirmed from the entrance exam.
What Bane was testing was whether Lake was someone who surpasses even surpassers!
After seeing Lake’s performance during his spar, Bane’s intuition told him that Lake was the kind of talent that would outshine even a surpasser. If a surpasser’s talent was already considered a monster among geniuses, then Lake felt like a monster among monsters! That was the kind of talent Bane felt Lake had.
If that was true, he would have to immediately report this to the Principal and ask to increase the difficulty of this year’s students once more!
He could already imagine the future where all of these students will turn into big shots in the martial arts world, rising to the top in a single step and leading the future of the Grey Dragon Continent.
At that time, he could brag about the fact that he was the one who taught these big shots when they were still diamonds in the rough, waiting to be discovered. The contribution he would have made to humanity would have been tremendous!
Suddenly, Bane saw Lake raise his hands while he was still thinking about what he was going to say to the Principal after he tested Lake.
Lake sat down next to the instructor while he watched the other students continue their spar.
Instructor Bane who was next to him had a dark look on his face while he radiated a slightly intimidating aura.
At first when he stated his surrender Bane had found it funny that Lake thought he could actually get away from this duel.
After all, Bane was an instructor at the academy and held a certain level of power and influence. If necessary he could forcefully start a spar or a duel with a student without their consent and then give an explanation later.
Of course, he had to make sure and hold back as if he went overboard with his authority it would be the same as playing with his life as the Principal values each student greatly and without a suitable reason, it would only end badly for any instructor that would dare to abuse their authority.
However, when Bane was about to continue with the duel regardless of Lake’s will, he saw Lake walk up to him before whispering something in a low voice that only he could hear.
"In with the new and out with the old, Ms. Lynn will be quite upset if she hears about Little Flower sneaking around behind her back."
When Bane first heard these words he froze for a moment before cold sweat started dripping down his back.
"How the hell does this brat know about Little Flower?"
Bane thought as he glanced at the relaxed Lake sitting next to him.
Since Kate was sent to the infirmary for recovery, Lake no longer had a partner to spar with so he sat on the sidelines and watched the rest of the students fight.
Noticing Bane’s grave expression, Lake smiled as he spoke casually, "No need to worry, I assure you that I haven’t spread this information to anyone and only came across it by chance."
"Brat, do you think you could get away with blackmailing an instructor?"
"Do you think you could escape your angry wife?"
At Lake’s retort, Bane went silent for a few moments.
"...You swear that you will never spread this information?"
"So long as you don’t make things too difficult for me, Instructor Bane."
Bane gritted his teeth, as he replied hoarsely, "Fine!"
After that, both of them became silent as they turned to observe the rest of the students in the hall.
Lake took this time to observe each student’s combat level. Although he could see their training through their fate, this would be the first time he saw them fighting in real life.
After observing for a while he got a basic idea of their level.
If Lake had to categorize based on his Weapon Master skill, he would say that most of the students here had reached basic level proficiency with a few of them actually taking the first few steps into advanced level proficiency, which was on the same level as him.
Of course, these students have only mastered one or two weapons at most while Lake had mastered all of them to advanced proficiency, placing them in two completely different categories.
After looking around a bit, Lake’s attention was mostly placed on the spar between Bradford and Allen.
Their spar was on a completely different level compared to the rest of the students and Lake could see that Allen had reached advanced proficiency with the sword he was wielding, combining and intertwining several moves together to attack Bradford.
Bradford on the other hand blocked each attack Allen sent his way with ease while also occasionally countering, looking completely relaxed which contrasted with Allen’s intense attacks.
However, the more Lake looked at the spar the more interested he became as in his eyes, that wasn’t a spar but a training session similar to the one Lake had performed on Kate.
Although it wasn’t on the same level as what Lake had done, it was still the same formula of one student training the other, the trainer in this case being Bradford.
This only served to further Lake’s curiosity when it came to Bradford and his mysterious fate, Lightning Emperor.
Lake also noticed Allen’s enhanced Fitness Index. Lake estimated that he should be nearing the Low Rank Martial Apprentice Level soon which is already an impressive growth rate considering his fitness index was only around 0.8 the last time he saw him.
After looking through his fate, Lake was finally able to understand Allen’s explosive growth and his sudden friendship with Bradford.
It seems like Lake wasn’t the only one who had his fair share of adventures over the three month break. In fact, it could be said that Bradford’s and Allen’s adventure was even more intense than Lake’s.
Lake took his time to look through the details of the two’s adventure from the perspective of Allen as if it was a movie.
Bane who sat next to Lake also noticed the spar between Bradford and Allen as a drop of sweat slid down the side of his face. He still had a dark expression on his face but he was smiling internally.
"This year is full of monsters. Even if I can’t get the super monster next to me, I’ll just have to settle for the other monster below him."