I rolled out of bed and looked around my shack.  Over the past couple months of training with Griff I had reached the point where I no longer needed to pay a visit to Jesh daily.  As such Griff had let me use one of the shacks that lined the training area as my sleeping quarters. 

The shack was just a one room building.  In the room I had my bed, which was just a cot with some bedding on it, a bucket in the corner to relieve myself with, and a small mirror next to the door of the shack.  At the back of the room was also a chest that had some spare clothes in it which was the first thing I headed to this morning after getting out of bed.

Opening the chest, I found several identical outfits and picked one at random.  As I got dressed, I went ahead and checked my bucket.  I grimaced at the smell, “I should probably dump that tonight” I said out loud to myself.

As I finished putting on my pants I started to move towards the door of my shack, as I passed the mirror on the wall, I caught a glimpse of myself.  While I didn’t have any monstrous muscles, or well-defined abs, gone were the days of me being considered fat.

My arms, chest, and shoulders were all pretty well toned.  As for my stomach, it still had some fat on it, but not much.  My double chin had disappeared, and my face had started to regain some of its more elegant features.  As a matter of fact, if not for my unkempt hair, and all the dirt on me, I would look almost as well as I did during my teen years back in Reis.  Thinking of my home put a sour taste in my mouth so I stopped that train of thought and put on my shirt.

Walking out of my shack I turned away from the training area and made my way towards the mess hall.  Looking out at the sun that had barely risen above the horizon I figured I had enough time to eat a meal before Griff dragged me back to the training area.

While I walked, I made sure to constantly channel my mana throughout my body.  Over the past month or so Griff had started making me channel my mana while performing the usual workouts that we did.  At first this had made the daily routine far more exhausting than usual, but at this point I could casually channel my mana without hardly any difficulty. 

As I approached the mess hall, I saw that as per usual, it had several guards already inside, likely the night shift that had recently been relieved by the morning shift.  I went ahead and stepped inside, grabbing two bowls I stepped into the line waiting to be served.  After my bowls were filled with soup I went and sat next to the entrance of the mess hall and started eating.

Within a few moments of me sitting down a large beast wondered up to the mess hall and sat down next to me.  “Hello Ms. T” I said as I scratched behind the pandas’ ears.  “Working hard?” I asked as I continued to pet her.  Ms. T looked up at me and gave me a lazy huff in response.  I reached into the second bowl of soup and pulled out a piece of meat that I fed to her.  She happily ate it before standing back up.

Once she was standing, I placed the second bowl of soup on the tray that she carried on her back.  She gave me a grateful huff and then walked off towards Jesh’s shack.  After Ms. T had left, I quickly finished my bowl of soup.  Once I was done, I carried my bowl to a servant and handed the dirty dish off.  I then exited the mess hall just as Griff finally made his appearance. 

He gave me a quick look over “You ready to start?” he asked as he finished appraising me.  “Of course.” I responded with a smirk.  “Someone’s getting cheeky” he said with a smile.  We turned and started walking towards the training area.

“I see you are getting quite comfortable with channeling your mana” He spoke as we walked. 

“It’s been getting easier by the day. I practically don’t have to think about it nowadays” I responded.

“That’s good” he said, “starting today we are going to change up your training a bit.”

“How so?” I asked, to be honest I was a little surprised.  For the past couple months my training had been overall, pretty consistent. 

“We are going to start combat training in preparation for the arena.” He said, “You’ll be fighting a variety of people using the same rules and restrictions that the arena follows.” He paused for a second then looked at me doubtfully “Aside from our sparring sessions, have you ever fought anyone before?”

“Several times” I responded nonchalantly.  Now that I knew what the new training regimen would consist of, I was starting to get excited.  Honestly, I was looking forward to testing out my abilities.

Griff looked a bit surprised at my answer “Really?” He asked dubiously “When you first showed up, I didn’t take you for the type that had seen combat before.”

I responded casually “It is tradition in my family to join the military at the age of thirteen.”

“What an unusual tradition for humans” he said. “How did you get so fat if you were in the military?” He asked.

A memory of a monster from the past flashed before my eyes.  I quickly pushed the thought away before curtly responding “I retired.”

He looked as if he wanted to say something, but upon examining the expression on my face, decided against it.  Shortly after our conversation we made it to the training area.  I noticed that there were five guards standing in the middle of the sand pit.  The guards were talking to each other as they stood around waiting for something. 

When Griff and I stepped into the sand pit the guards took notice of us and stood at attention while looking towards Griff.  Once we reached the group of guards Griff started talking, “You lads are probably wondering why I called you here today.” He spoke.

The guards looked around at each other uneasily.  “I’ve decided to give each of you here a chance for some well-deserved rest.  If any of you can beat Gale here in a duel, I’ll give you a week of vacation time.”  Griff said cheerily.  A few of the guards perked up when they heard this.

“What happens if we lose?” One of the more cautious guards asked.

“You’ll get to do double duty for a week” Griff said with a smile, “and if you refuse to fight, you’ll get two weeks of double duty.”  A couple guards groaned when they heard this whereas the one who initially asked the question started sizing me up. 

“Sir,” The guard sizing me up said, “all of us here have gold rank cores, is it safe to assume that Gale has a gold rank core as well?”

“Nope, Gale here has a white stage core, but I’ll have his collar limit his mana usage to below that of a silver stage, so you won’t have to worry about that” Griff answered the guard.

“Now, who wants to go first?” Griff asked.

The guard who had been asking question stepped forward.  “I will, are we going to be doing armed or unarmed combat?” The guard asked.

“Armed, go choose a weapon from the shack over there” Griff said as he pointed to the building that held the weapons in it.

As the guard walked to the shack, Griff moved over to me and adjusted something on my collar.  As he did so I felt something weird flow through my body.  When he was finished it felt as if there was something covering my mana core.  I tried to make my mana flow throughout my body and was surprised to find that only a small amount of mana was able to leave my core at once. 

Griff noticed me struggling to make my mana flow and explained, “In the arena all participants cores are suppressed, to help level the playing field.  Otherwise, if a gold stage and a white stage fought each other the fight would be too one sided.  However, the primary purpose of limiting a core is to prevent combatants from summoning a spark.”

I nodded in understanding, “So no one can summon a spark in the arena.”

“For the most part, yes” He responded.

I looked at him dubiously when he said ‘for the most part’ but he simply shook his head.  “I’ll explain it better later, but for now, it looks like your first opponent is ready.” I looked over at the shack and saw the guard had walked out carrying a spear.

After the guard reentered the sand pit Griff had me go and grab a weapon as well.  Seeing that the guard had chosen a spear I decided to fight smarter rather than harder and picked out a flimsy, worn down wooden shied, as well as a broadsword. 

Stepping out of the weapon shack I moved back into the sand pit and stood opposite from my opponent and waited.  Griff and the other four guards moved out of the sand pit before Griff explained the rules, “The fight will continue until one side surrenders or is unable to continue fighting, any questions?” I shook my head, and my opponent did the same.  “Good, then let the fight begin!” Griff called out.

My opponent immediately took a fighting stance with the tip of his spear facing me and started inching towards me.  I also took a stance placing my shield in between myself and my opponent and began moving towards him. 

The moment I got within range of his spear he began his assault.  From what I could tell, he was decently well trained as there wasn’t a ton of wasted movement between his spear strikes.  However, every time his spear shot forward it deflected harmlessly off of my shield. 

He cautiously circled me trying to find a hole in my defense during his attacks.  I simply stayed in his range and continued to casually block his strikes as he threw them at me.  “Are you just going to hide behind your shield like a coward?” He asked.  Clearly my defensive strategy was starting to get to him.  “I figured I would let you tire yourself out for a bit” I said sarcastically with a cocky grin on my face.  That comment seemed to make him angry as he started to attack with more force behind his spear than before.  I just continued to block his blows with my shield.

Finally, after a few more swings a crack rang out as my opponent’s spear managed to pierce through my shield. “Ha” he yelled out victoriously, but his moment of triumph was stopped short.  The moment the head of his spear was all the way through my shield I simultaneously spun my body around his attack while dropping my shield from my off hand.

Once I let go of the shield, his spear tip dropped into the ground from the added weight of the shield that was now hanging uselessly from the front end of his spear.  He quickly realized that he had been baited and attempted to pull his spear back, but I wasn’t about to let this opportunity slip by.

I brought my foot up and stomped down on the middle of his spear, violently ripping it from his grasp causing his body to jerk forward towards me.  He tried to correct his footing as he stumbled forward, but before he could I had my broadsword held against his neck.

“Enough” Griff called out stopping the fight.  “The winner is Gale.”

I let my broadsword drop to my side and used my empty hand to help my opponent keep his balance.  “That was a good fight.” I said with sincerity.  “Yeah right, you planned that from the start.” My opponent said with a self-depreciating smile on his face.

“True,” I said, “but you still fought well. Let’s fight again sometime.” I spoke while reaching out my hand for a handshake.  My opponent looked at my outstretched hand for a moment before he smirked and shook it. “Next time I’ll be the winner” he said as he shook my hand.  “Not if I can help it.” I responded with a friendly smile.

As he walked out of the pit Griff called out “Alright then, which one of you is next?”  The remaining guards looked nervously between each other.  “Oh, come on now, can’t you see how exhausted Gale is after that fight?” Griff goaded the guards.

I simply stood still and looked excitedly towards the guards wondering which of them I would get to fight next.  One of the guards groaned that this was going to be impossible, but a different guard stepped forward and volunteered to go next.

“Great! I’m glad to see that one of you has some backbone.” Griff shouted out. 

As my next opponent stepped into the weapon shack, I began making plans on how to beat him depending on what weapon he chooses.  When he stepped out of the shack with twin daggers, I chuckled to myself and went into the weapon shack.

When the guard saw me return with a large battle axe, I could visibly see the hope drain from his eyes.  Griff simply laughed and yelled, “Let the fight begin!”