He had an audience. They consisted of Hiro’s finest, whom Ioha upgraded from wandering circus to rookie company the last day. Nanami and her two drivers were also there.
Get a job! She had. Rank assessments were occasions for recruiting.
The trainer, bald just like the guildmaster but in far better physical shape, glared at them. “Distance attack!”
Ioha adjusted his mental picture of the spinning shield above his head and slung it. With fireworks attached it looked, as Ai would have said, seriously cool. Since it did displace air while it spun over the field, it hummed audibly and Ioha arced it over the stands until it returned and cleanly sliced three wooden dummies into half. On its way to the fourth, it sputtered and blinked out.
“It says you don’t have a dependable distance attack.” The trainer looked down at an invisible screen. Ioha wanted to learn that ability one day. Magic data screen, or at least magic reader.
He nodded to his trainer. “I don’t. It takes too long to set up, and real enemies move around.” His reach increased a little, though. That was good.
“Proper use?”
Ioha bit his lip. The trainer was no idiot. “I can initiate an attack with it, and it should more or less always work against massed ranks.”
Some hollering reached him from the side of the training field.
“Any other attack?”
He had one. His ability rank was absolutely abysmal, though. Ioha gave the trainer another nod and walked almost into two-handed spear range of the surviving dummies. “My range and precision is awful, but by definition it constitutes as a ranged attack.”
“Drop the long words!” a helpful comment crossed over the fence and marched over the field to where he could hear it.
Do I need to fix my talking habits? He chewed a little on the inside of his cheek. Can’t be arsed. He crouched and threw up two hard shields above him, before he extended two hard staves even higher up and triggered them. One slammed into his own shield, and the other missed one dummy by almost a metre.
The trainer looked at the disaster. “OK. I see. Proper use?”
“None, Sir! Not yet. Right now, it’s for training only.”
“Names?”
Names? “I don’t understand, Sir!” The thought never occurred to him. “Do I have to?”
“Your attacks are new. I need a name for future referrals.”
Ioha scratched his head. “Call the failed one Divine Spears.”
“Divine?”
“Got my magic abilities after my contract.”
The trainer nodded. “Fair enough.” He looked down at his invisible screen and started typing away at an equally invisible keyboard. After he was done waving in the air with his hands, he looked up again. “And the other?”
“Divine shield.”
“Improper. Shield is defence.”
Made sense. “Slicing shield?”
The trainer hesitated a little. “Slicing shield is OK.” He took some more notes. “Any more?”
“No, I only know those two.”
“Good. Next, I want to see your defences. Yesterday, you said yours was more of a tanking role.”
He had it coming, and it was true. Today he arrived fully equipped, including his worn and extremely green brigandine. His new one needed another two days to be finished.
The trainer attacked, first with ranged attacks and after that with an ever faster flurry of disciplined attacks. Ioha fended them off with shield and partisan.
“You can handle multiple opponents as well?”
“Yes, Sir!”
Another three trainers walked onto the field. Again, Ioha had to fend off attacks until he finally was overwhelmed. When they finally got through, they took a step back and looked at each other. “That’s all?”
“No, Sir!”
“Told you so,” one trainer said to another. “Make ready!”
With the addition of hard shields, traps, force fields and barriers, a new spell he learned during the patrol, he could keep them at bay more or less forever.
“What’s the use for this kind of fighting?” That was one of the new ones.
“If I’m alone against three? To stay alive. If I had two companions as well, you would have been full of holes by now.” Ioha rose from his defensive stance and rested on his feet. He cast four hard shields around the one complaining.
“A little full of yourself?”
“Try moving away from where you are.”
The trainer tried but failed. “What did you do?”
“I trapped you with shields. Actually, I could kill you right now. The trainer over there can attest to that.”
“For real?” the trapped one said.
“For real. The kid sliced three dummies with an attack that only works against stationary targets. You qualify as stationary right now.”
“Sliced?”
Ioha cast his hard round shield above him, spun it up, added fireworks and triggered it. It hummed and arced across the field and neatly sliced a dummy in two before lodging in the ground where it dissipated.
“Is he taken?” The audience had grown larger.
“He’s with me,” Nanami said.
“Nanami, this is supposed to be the rank assessment for those who just dropped their provisionals, not D-ranks. Could you please not abuse your reputation?” The woman who faced his company captain looked to be in her fifties, cropped hair greying considerably.
“No abuse. He passed the E-rank yesterday.”
“What the? Kid! Who the fuck are you?”
Charming lady. “I’m Sir Ioha Questingtank, Ma’am!”
“The hell. Kid’s knighted?”
“Yes. Went renegade or something. He registered with the guild early June,” Nanami explained.
If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
Renegade? Guess that’s one way to look at it. “Sir, do you need anything more?” Ioha said and faced the trainer.
“Yes. Physical attacks.”
Ioha released all spells, the second trainer with them, and made ready. As expected, he had a hard time getting through the defences of his opponents, and his attacks on the training dummies weren’t too impressive. Especially, his skill with the spear lacked. Human opponents didn’t just charge into where he let them impale themselves.
“So he’s just a tank, then?” The irritated one of the trainers said.
“Anything more?” The first trainer asked without as much as looking at his colleague.
Ioha took a step back and rested on his shaft. “I have a few destructive abilities as well as some for partial mind control.”
The trainer gave him a very long look. “Are you saying you learned magic taunts?”
Ioha nodded. “I don’t think they’re suited for a training field.”
“This is a rank assessment. We need to know what our members are able to do.”
Ioha shrugged, “And how do you…”
“Use it on him. He’s been a pain the entire morning.”
Ioha followed the thumb pointing at the pain. “Are you sure?”
“Oh yes!” The grin was outright evil.
A simple maze went up in a fraction of a second, with fireworks funnelling an unsuspecting opponent where Ioha wanted them to go. COWARD! Someone taunted, counted as unsuspecting. The pain looked up, his entire face a mask of rage. The first steps, Ioha’s fireworks led him in the direction of his hated enemy. The last they lied, and Ioha caught him in a box of hard shields, with feet trapped in a force field. Then Ioha activated one trigger on the shield protecting him. It moved forward, and Ioha placed a shield behind the knees of the trainer, just like he caught Canadena off guard the only time he squeezed out a win against her. The trainer fell on his back, and Ioha slammed a hard shield on top of him and added an Anthony catching field as another layer. He bent over his downed opponent with his partisan in both hand, pointing down.
“Sir, if I release the bottom shield, I can stab right through this magic goo before he can get out.”
“That won’t be needed.” He looked at his colleague. “Let him stay there for a while. He needs to cool down. So, anything else?”
Ioha nodded. “Destructive spells. I can’t use them here.”
“Why not?”
“One turns a field around me into swirling razor blades.”
The trainer nodded. “I can respect that it would pose a problem during training. Instant kill?”
“No, just continuous damage.”
“Healer, over here! Cast it!”
Ioha complied, the trainer walked into the slashing hell and quickly backed out again. He bled from all over his body, but the healer quickly stopped the bleeding.
“That was nasty,” the trainer said. “And more?” Behind him, the healer applied spells to his legs.
“One that makes you rot from your insides and one where you start bleeding. Contingent on if you refuse to attack me.”
“A taunt then.”
“Yes.”
“And more?”
“I’m sorry, Sir. I’m oath-bound to my guardian god to keep my last abilities a secret.”
“I see. How would you rate them, effects undisclosed?”
Ioha pondered the question. It was fair. “Hard to say. Strong E-rank or weak D-rank. I’m not sure.” He thought some more. “Oh, I also have a D-rank self-healing ability.”
“Plus the usual assortment of abilities that keep you from starving or freezing to death, for example?”
“Yes, magic enhanced outdoor abilities. E-rank, maybe. I honestly haven’t put them to the test yet.”
“Self-healing you said. Where did you get the assessment?”
This wasn’t the time to tell an outright lie. “I didn’t, really, but my party-member in Spellsword Academy was the strongest healer among the freshmen. Our fourth years said she would have been the strongest among the second years as well.” Truth. They never said she was the strongest in the entire school because they didn’t know Ai was quickly catching up to the insane combat healer who taught her one-on-one.
“And?”
“She compared my ability with hers.” How should he explain this. “There were weaker students, and while on patrol in the border-zone we had healers I could compare with. Of course, my ability only extends to myself. I’m useless as a healer for anyone else.”
“OK, I’ll accept that.” The trainer looked at his still prone colleague. “Maybe release him now. Your overall assessment is C-rank. Doesn’t change your formal rank, though.”
That caused an uproar. Ioha had expected a D-rank assessment. He might not be prone to bragging, but his parents told him not to underestimate himself. Hiro’s finest hollered and jeered, and Nanami and the old woman she spoke with gave him long looks.
“Next!”
Ioha changed places with Hiro and walked to where Nanami still stood staring at him. She didn’t look altogether happy, but neither did she seem angry. He used one of the cat spells he learned to a degree and jumped over the fence.
“I always thought you were a knightage student,” she said after he landed.
“Sorry, didn’t seem important at the time.”
“So I got myself a defensive frontliner trained as a cat?” Nanami grinned at him.
“That would seem correct.”
“How high can you jump?”
Ioha extended aura to his feet and jumped a little less than two metres. “I was a pretty poor spellsword student.”
“I can see that,” Nanami said and smirked. “Speed?”
“Superhuman but still worst in class.”
“Senses?”
“Danger sense among the worst. Active perception among the best.” He fidgeted a little. “I’m trying to train my danger sense ability. That’s why I wanted to join the patrols.”
“I’m still here, you know.”
Both Nanami and Ioha turned. The old-timer looked less than pleased. “Ioha Questingtank, Ma’am. I’m with Captain Nanami’s company.”
“She told me. Pity. What about the rookies?”
Ioha hoped Nanami would take pity on them, but she just grinned. “Ioha’s crew.”
They’re not my crew! “Unfair,” he mumbled. “Hiro’s company.” Ioha pointed at the field, where Hiro went through his assessment. “They’re called,” it was impossible not to flinch, “Black Flaming Dragon guild.”
“What the fuck? A bunch of cosplayers passed the test?”
Ioha nodded. “Residents,” he explained. They had all done their first year here.
“And they created a company and called it a guild? That shit went out of fashion years ago.”
“She’s an early survivor,” Nanami said out of nowhere. “Misaki,” Nanami pointed at her acquaintance, “really hates the dolled up adventurers guild.”
“Why the fuck not? Only an idiot would squander our chances to build a solid defence and invent this shit.”
‘This shit’, if Ioha understood correctly, probably referred to the entire adventurers guild organisation. Now, with Isekai building a proper power base, it could work. Renting out mercenaries was good business throughout history, even though he could understand why the old woman thought of them in terms of sellswords instead.
“Came here looking for my boy a dozen years ago and only found this fucking disaster.”
She had a colourful language if nothing else. “And these days?”
“Built myself a proper mercenary company, took jobs from the Clevastis and hunted down the guys up north. We had them killed so they stopped raiding the villages.”
Ioha had a feeling her company didn’t hunt monsters, but he had to ask. “What about the border zone?”
“The shiny kids from the guild take care of that, and there’s a permanent force we set up together with Wergaist. Well, Clevasti in reality, I guess.”
So she hunted humans after all. A mother who lost her son and turned her grief into manhunts for revenge. He could see that happen. Not all the early ones had been schoolkids. In fact, most hadn’t. But in the end, teenagers adapted faster, and Isekai became a town ruled by kids who had grown up. The real invasion of fantasy diehards started when both Nagoya gates got in order.
“Misaki runs the church subjugations.”
“Church subjugations?”
Nanami nodded. “There’s an infestation up north-west. Christian, Muslim and Buddhist fanatics try to start wars and kill what they call heretics whenever they get a chance. She hunts them down.”
“Why, there’s freedom of religion,” Ioha protested.
“Kiddo, when that freedom turns into true evil, we kill them. Trust me, Earth religions this side of the gate represents true evil.” There was a deep-rooted hate in the woman’s voice.
“Ioha, I don’t fully agree with Misaki, but I respect that she’s saved hundreds of lives. We’re talking fanatics. They are religious maniacs who had to flee through the gate.”
“Ah. I don’t know what to say.”
“What about thank you?” For a moment, humour replaced Misaki’s boiling rage. “I do it, so you don’t have to.”
Ioha remembered what he had done to Anthony after he tried to force himself on Ai. There was that and the arseholes who started beating another student to death during the tournament. And yet, he couldn’t see himself having the stomach to actively fight other humans. He turned to Misaki and bowed. “Thank you.”
