The next morning Karl was waiting at the training grounds just as Sergeant Rita had instructed, when a large group of first year students arrived together, and a handful of senior students with black badges came walking in with casual smiles on their faces.
"Looks like we've got a new addition. Which group are you here to join?" One of the black badged students asked.
"No idea. Sergeant Rita just ordered me to be here." Karl replied with a shrug.
The students all gave him an assessing look, trying to guess what his skill and power level was at, but even with his recent growth spurt, he just looked like a handsome teen boy, not yet old enough to be called a young man.
Then the teachers arrived, two mages and Sergeant Rita, who had a bundle in her arms as she walked over to Karl.
"Flip your coat inside out. You will be the flag carrier for team five. Here is your actual flag for the mission, wear it as a cape, and I wish you luck. As I said, the first day is always the hardest." She informed him with a smile.
"OH? We get a rookie for today's training?" One of the senior students asked.
The larger of the two mages, an old man who must have been a natural mage and not one of the injected elites, cleared his throat and everyone fell silent.
"Most of you know the rules. Odd numbered teams are on defence, protect your flags as well as you can. The flag carriers are your team leaders. Even numbered teams are on offence, your senior will lead the team.
This is a group training exercise, as you alone won't be able to face down every threat that comes your way during training. Sergeant Rita will hand out the tokens at random, while the seniors know their numbers already. Senior Geoffrey is out on a mission, so Karl will be taking his place for the next few weeks."
Rita walked through the groups of first year students and passed out tokens, which everyone pulled from a bag, then the students grouped up based on the token they drew.
The fact that it was completely random, and that they wouldn't have any guarantees of a decent grouping, was already giving Karl a headache, but it looked like the others were well aware of the situation, and they were already making plans for how they would work with what they had.
That was the point of the lesson. When there was an emergency call, whoever was close to the emergency answered. You didn't get to pick and choose a front guard, healer and mages, you just fought with what you had, and there was no extra time to figure it out.
Karl's group was Dana, the mage girl who was behind him on the first day, along with seven large boys that all had shields and hammers or spears.
"Oh, come on." One of the other students groaned as they saw the group forming.
"How did group five end up with every defender in the entire class?" One of the mages agreed.
His group was five mages and three boys with short swords and daggers. If they were attacking, it wouldn't be too terrible, but they were group three, and they would have to defend a flag without anyone who could take an attack head on.
The flag carrier for group four laughed and pointed at his group. Eight first year mage girls, which left a grand total of two girls not on his team. Dana, and a warrior in group two.
But, they had picked the numbers out of a bag, so if there was any trickery going on, it was not easy to detect.
"It looks like today's game will be an interesting one. Sometimes the luck of the draw means that you have to improvise. While group five has the shields, they don't have a lot of mobility, and they only have one spell caster. It's not impossible to overtake them and capture the flag, you just have to get creative."
Karl draped the black flag with the golden Academy logo on it over his shoulders as a cape and tied it off, then joined his group to see what they could do.
"You will have two minutes to prepare, then we will move everyone to their starting positions." The older mage announced, while the other mage started to lay out a mat on the ground that had all sorts of fancy symbols drawn on it.
"Alright, what can everyone use for skills? With so many mages it will be difficult to just turtle, they will target me pretty quickly." Karl asked.
"The joys of being the new guy. They'll all be gunning for you because you're the only leader who doesn't know what he's doing. I'm assuming that you've been training for this since we got here, but the other leaders are all in the second and third year. As far as skills go, I can create fog, or magic missiles." Dana explained, then swept her dark curls back from her face to tie them in a ponytail.
"We're all common warriors, and we've all got the same two skills. [Slash] and [Guard]. It's a thing that apparently happens every year because Guard is the most common skill, and slash is easy to teach." One of the warriors explained.
"Alright, what does [Guard] do exactly? At your level, that is. I'm not worried about how the Dragon Bulwark uses his in the movies." Karl replied.
The students laughed at the thought that they might eventually manage to use the Guard skill at the Overlord level to create a barrier that could extend a whole city block.
"It covers an octagon about three metres across. It will take a couple of spells for the others to knock down, but if the attacking team leaders target one of us, we're pretty much screwed." The boy explained.
Karl nodded. "I expected as much. Does everyone remember the gladiator movies? The triple line formation and the turtle shell? When we're attacked, form up to create an overlapping wall with your shields, and only when we're in trouble, use Guard to block them out.
Staying close together will make us harder to find, as long as we're not in an open field, while Dana and I will have to be the offence unless they charge us."
Dana sighed. "You know, magic missile uses a lot of mana, I can't do it much. The fog is easier though, I'm pretty good at the fog."
"Is there natural fog where we're going?" Karl asked.
The others all shook their heads.
"Then save it until we're under attack. I don't want them to find us because of the fog itself. How fast does it cast?"
Dana frowned. "About ten metres radius per minute, slowing as it expands. If we want to use it effectively, it will take time."
[Time is up. Everyone, prepare to transport.] The mage shouted.