The Third Party - Chapter 33

3rd Person’s POV (12 yrs. and 8 months old)

Five months have passed and their four new companions have slowly adjusted to the obnoxious training regime and class schedule, having been disrupted in between by Ken’s plans made it all the more interesting to learn and train.

But they were still not used to Ken’s unpredictable mind, as they were either pestered early in the morning when they were almost out of bed, on rest days where they go out and have fun on the nearby caves, but are only able to access three which where their master’s caves.

Sometimes they would become samples for Ken’s experiments, either by getting themselves doused in elemental spells or were subject to Ken’s physique inspection, it was not a good experience.

Thankfully the experiments stopped, they were relieved, until Ken said that he would continue for another time, with all of them, dread filled their faces as their expressions fell, the four thought to themselves how Ken’s friends were able to withstand such torture in the past.

Just as they were beginning to doubt their choice of training at the northern village, Ken explained to them the purpose of such experiments, he reasoned out to them that through all those stupid, and harsh experiments they endured were for them to be prepared both mentally and physically.

As usual they were outraged by such underhanded tactic, they threw acquisitions at first, Ken endured, but as they were afflicted by Ken’s power of concept, this time, the concept of adaptation, they were able understand, albeit slowly, but were able to.

Ken knew this was something akin to that of forcing people to do his bidding, but if he wants these people to rely more on their skills, abilities, and more importantly, themselves, he has to create scenarios wherein they are challenged, to bring out their potentials.

He was questioned thought, why he was permitted to do such methods, Ken explained that he earned himself a right to have control over the schedule in one of his duels with the Masters, or in his case, a duel with Master Klein.

Of course he lost, but he was still given the chance to make experiments and obnoxious trainings to better hone the skills of his companions, hence the reason. He still reasoned out that his tactics where underhanded and that they have the right to complain from time to time.

A month after the four saw results of Ken’s experiments on them, in the chances of being far more sturdy, observant, quick witted, and evasive, they were surprised and grateful for the results and wants to thank Ken.

But they did not simultaneously approach Ken, they did so in their own ways.

Riyah was first as she did not hesitate to confront Ken and give him her thanks, Ken was dumbfounded at first and then realized what Riyah meant, he smiled and said that since she had seen the results, there is no need to undergo it again -or maybe she’ll still undergo such training-.

Depends.

He also deduced that the others had undergone the changes too, he’ll just wait for them to approach him, and approach him they did.

Princess Lang confronted him through a duel, and as they were flinging spells left and right, Ken was surprised at how fast the princess was able to evade and react to her situation.

She had achieved her first win against Ken when he was unable to see the princess only to realize too late that she’s pointing her sword at his neck, and so their battle ended, with both parties satisfied and finally a truce between rivals.

Ken rejected the idea, of course the princess was shocked but hearing Ken explain why, made her even more indulged to be Ken’s rival, Ken reasoned, that by having him as a rival, the princess will be able to have a certain person to catch up to and be equals in terms of strength.

Icarus was not as grand as what the princess did, he only head-butted Ken and turned to prepare for the day, but it wasn’t Ken who was embarrassed, it was Icarus, and that’s when Ken realized that he too is expressing his gratitude.

Ken’s friends where unpleased with what transpired, he calmed them down by reason again and showing that he was okay as he used healing magic to alleviate the pain, nonetheless the two were fuming but got stopped the moment they acted upon themselves to confront Icarus.

And literally, they were stopped on their tracks with Ken’s ice magic, both looked like scolded puppy of not getting what they want, Ken sighed as to what he should do but smiled as the two reasoned out that they understood the situation perfectly later that day.

Flin just played a song for Ken as a sign of his gratitude and the two talked the whole day away right after the incident with Icarus.

On this fifth month, they were visited, by one of the rulers of the wild. The mountain Lion King who rules the animalistic side of the forest was here today to witness the growth of the children with two of his chosen warriors.

The passing of the position of throne of the mountain Lion King is similar to that of nobility or royalty, meaning, any offspring or first born of the King, will ascend to his throne once his time is up, and like any King they would have a Queen to be with.

Only their tradition of who rules is akin to that of wolves, unlike alpha, and beta, the mountain lions go by King, General, and Judiciary. The General and Judiciary position is given to a warrior lion if the King deems them worthy, and only the heir to the throne is able to choose who he or she will give the position to.

Almost all responsibility and power is given to those lions holding the position. A unique tradition, Ken thought as they were able to learn their hierarchical system in the past, but this time they were able to watch and experience for themselves the system those Mountain Lions follow.

The three mountain lions approached the three masters in their feline form, fortunately, the group was informed ahead of time of the visit, so they were well groomed to receive the guests, even though the Lion King looked to be of lower status and strength as their Master Klein, they were reminded firmly to be respectful, as the lions were the owner of this vast valley.

“Greetings your majesty.” said Master Klein as he bowed on a ninety degree angle, along with the other two masters.

“Raise your head Klein, we can forget about formalities for this time, it’s good to see you” said the King, although the three humans got themselves accustomed to magical beasts talking, the voice of the King still caught them off guard as it held nobility and maturity to it.

As if the King speaking is like going up against an individual with power, nevertheless they were able to adjust quickly. All eleven students/ disciples stood in a formation of two lines, six at the front, and five at the back, alternating from boy to girl and so on, awaiting for instructions.

As this day was Monday, everyone wore their training attire and had their weapons set aside for exercise, as this was what they would normally do, but with the visit of the King, they instead wore their combat attire and had their weapons strapped behind their back and/ or by their waist.

Everyone knew the purpose of the visit, and it is to test out the chosen warriors of the King in a battle between the two lion warriors and two students, the battle shall be done by one versus one and simultaneously done at the same time, so as not to waste time as they only have one day of visit before returning to their responsibilities.

After the 1v1 battles, then comes the by pair battle, a team-fight of sorts, and the two students chosen will also be the ones to fight in it.

As usual everyone asked the purpose behind, and the masters told them that the King came to test out the strengths of his warriors, since they are unable to test it out on their kind, might as well test it out on them.

Everyone was absurded by the fact, but then Icarus asked that were those warriors the strongest in their kingdom and had no one to spar too, Master Ulysses confirmed it and said to them that even though the warriors are adults and are adept in combat, they have never once in their lives tried fighting against a human or a magical beast in human form.

The only downside with them is that they are unable to assume human form since they are primal animal beasts, the reason behind is that their ancestors are of pure animal form before turning to magical beasts, unlike primal magical beasts, where they are well integrated with magic and are born from it.

Additionally, primal animal beasts are only able to use from one to three types of elements, while magical beasts can use and learn other types of elements, aside from Ken’s arcane magic, which can only be learned by humans, and sadly, only ever available to humans.

Anyone can call them either primal animal beasts or magical beasts -just not primal magical beasts-. But having them go against children is still quite absurd in itself.

In regards of the position of the warriors why they are called ‘General’, and ‘Judiciary’, the former governs the military might of the Lion Kingdom, while the latter governs the political affairs of the Lion Kingdom, apparently they have this kind of system in this valley.

“It’s good to see you too your highness, here are our disciples your highness, you may pick two of them for the mock battle.” said Master Klein and gestured to the group.

“My, my, are we really going to head in to battle first? Why not make ourselves comfortable with them, we have a day’s worth of time for our visit.” said the Lion King, as the group thought, still uninformed of the name of his majesty.

“If you insist, do we take a leisure day and let them talk before the battle? Or we let the warriors join in on the session of the disciples?” asked Master Klein. The King fell into thought giving the choices consideration.

“We can do the latter.” said the King and strolled towards the sidelines before pausing with his two warriors. “And where might I stay for the time being?” he asked.

“Please, this way.” said Master Lana as she guided the King near the table where they usually eat lunch, for beside it is a makeshift rock for the King to leisure himself, the King nodded to his two warriors to let them go to the group, and that they did.

“Allen, please lead the session, you may now start the class.” said Master Klein to his son, Allen nodded and proceeded to command the group along the other two warrior lions, and the two masters proceeded to where his highness is. The group then changed attire for the session.

The morning air was still crisp and fresh as it carried with it the cold atmosphere. So as the group we’re exercising they felt at ease firstly from the cold air, and that the warrior lions did not treat them any different.

The group conversed with the warriors at the beginning of the session, they were able to make themselves comfortable with one another, so now they don’t feel any tension while exercising, only the warriors have difficulty doing the disciples exercises, and were asked to sit it out.

Except for running or jogging.

After the exercise now came magic training, the group showed their magic to the two warriors and the warriors did so too, the group exchanged ideas on how they can better improve their control, power, and efficiency in controlling magic.

Since the group were still young, their magic were often chaotic at times, compared to the warrior’s precise and controlled way of using magic, even the princess was slightly impressed, seeing as she comes from a noble bloodline.

With what the warriors taught the group they were able to at least use their magic moderately compared to the warriors, just slightly controlled and precise, they were glad to have learned such useful method, but as always they did not even turn to look at how Ken is doing with his magic.

Even the warriors are impressed at his control over his magic, but everyone except White knows that this was due to Ken’s first created skill, concept, causing his mastery over elements and arcane magic to be maxed level. A cheat skill, as what White always thought.

Lunch rolled by smoothly, the group had a hearty meal giving praise to Ken’s cooking as he would do every lunch on Monday, surprisingly it became tradition since the last time Ken and Celine talked about him cooking, while their guests ate theirs raw.

No one had any qualms as they were able to experience it in the past. Right as they were able to rest for an hour after lunch they are now ready for the mock battle. Everyone wore their combat suit again and prepared their weapons and proceeded to a formation on the field.

Luckily the afternoon was in laid with a few clouds making the heat bearable, as the group again waited for further instructions, the masters walked up front to them with the three mountain lions at their right, ready to pick out two students to fight against.

“Your highness, have you picked the students to spar with your warriors?” asked Klein.

“Yes.” His highness took one look at the group and settled on one individual then another. “I would like the avian boy and the panther girl to fight my warriors.”

The group was surprised by his majesty’s choice, but as they were long mentally prepared, they had no qualms of the matter and accepted it.

“Icarus, Lila, do you accept the challenge?” asked Lana, of course, permission is of utmost importance in a formal setting such as this one, hence Lana’s concern of asking them.

“I accept Master Lana.” said Lila.

“Yes Master Lana.” said Icarus, as both bowed lightly in respect before standing up straight.

“Very good, now begin preparations.” said Ulysses, the group dispersed to the edges of the field, all nine of them have a role assigned as they will be in a formation to make a barrier, this was a proposition introduced by Ken -again- with the purpose of keeping all the excess energy inside, and the spells from rampaging the surrounding trees.

Except for the spells, the energies left by each spells will be converted by Ken into the world’s energies that will be expended to grow energy recycling plants, this new experiment was created by Ken after he had learned how to convert excess energy of spells to be used again, kind of like adding a new species of a plant but still related to those around it.

Regarding how to measure out the energies exuded by these plants will be a topic for another day, cause for now, the battle will start. Icarus will be the opponent of the General Lion warrior, while Lila will be the opponent of the Judiciary Lion warrior.

The barrier had already been set up by the students situated evenly at the side of the field, as the focal points for maintaining the barrier, this method was introduced to let the people inside not hesitate to go all out without damaging the surroundings.

As Ken had deducted, magical beasts are more prone to using wide area of effect spells instead of single targets, just like him, but not really like him, just that there’s a similarity.

Those who are classified as warriors do focus on single target spells and techniques, but he still wonders what it would be like if he combined both concept into one, bet it would be a disaster.

Two of the masters namely Ulysses and Lana, are to be the arbiter for the two battles while Klein is with his majesty. The group is allowed to bring their weapons into battle despite it being an advantage against the animal beasts for the extra safety in distance.

But having them up against adult warriors is kind of a bit hard core, so giving them the permission to use weapons is a good safety measure, they hope it would be. Both battles will be melee combat, wonder how they’ll settle it, Ken thought, as he made the final touches of separating both parties into two areas.

Icarus made the first move by charging forth and swing his sword horizontally to slice the head of the lion warrior, but was blocked by its claws making Icarus jump back creating distance, good thing he remembered to always keep distance when planning for his next move.

“Come on kid, I think you can do better than that.” said the lion warrior while feigning yawning. Icarus with a hard face grippe his sword tight and ignited it with his flames, ‘Flame Magic: Searing Flames’, one of his basic spells that coats either his fists or weapons in fire.

He went to swing again and this time the warrior dodged the swings so as not to get burned while he prepare a defensive spell, earth guard, after it finished preparing he counter attacked by parrying the boy’s swings, and the two continued trading attacks, blocking, swinging, blocking, and dodging by any means.

“Flame Magic: Soaring Torrents!” Chanted Icarus as a circular pillar of flame erupted at the location where the lion warrior was at. Fortunately, with the defensive spell still active the lion warrior suffered minimal damage.

The Lion lunged at the unsuspecting boy who thought that he had won just as the spell was still raging, pressing the boy to the ground. Using his flaming sword as shield from the claws grazing his face, Icarus pushed of the Lion warrior and rolled back to catch his footing.

The two clashed again in swords and claws, but this time, the lion warrior copied his spell by coating his claws in hardened earth for extra firepower, and did another spell that let him conjure earth spikes towards Icarus.

Icarus dodged the spell by jumping backwards, and just as he landed an earth pillar rose from the ground hitting him square on the stomach flinging him upwards.

He landed again only to be assaulted by the pillars, but this time he was quick to dodge as three pillars simultaneously popped up from the ground to impale or hit him.

He jumped to a diagonally aligned pillar thinking it was safe since the spell only targeted him on the ground, little did he know that the earth pillar was also just raised earth having strengthened constitution, and still under control of the lion warrior.

Without a second to spare the lion warrior surged up an earth spear on top of the earth pillar, wounding Icarus on his left leg.

Icarus jump up and sprung out his red hot wings, and used the fire to heal his bleeding leg, and in no time the wound was gone, but the long trace was still there on the combat pants he was wearing.

Sweat rolled down his face, his facial features contorted in pain with the fast pace of the healing.

He dived down charging at the Lion, “Flame Magic: Flaming Charge”, a single direction spell that projects him towards a direction coated by burning hot flames pushing the lion warrior, and he ascended to the air before landing and scorching the earth around him.

Icarus retracted his wings but made the flames burning around him to turn into a red colored armor that matched his burning sword.

The lion conjured another defensive spell that made his skin look stronger and harder as the two resumed fighting in melee combat, both disregarding spells and using their mana to maintain their buffs.

On the other battle was fairly similar to the former, only this has one side flinging spells after spells of earth magic, while the other dodged through smokes of white, and occasionally popping out on every angle just to get a hit.

Lila kept moving on her toes as she noticed that not only is this lion warrior indescribably good at using earth magic, they are also able to manipulate the earth around them with just their will and thought.

Her every dash and step has a follow up to move at every other direction in order to avoid those earth spikes.

She could not believe how stupidly absurd these lions are with earth magic, not to mention their seemingly impregnable defense, for every time she takes the offensive, the judiciary lion is able to defend well, even his blind spots.

Lila grit her teeth as she’s beginning to sustain damage from trying to fight back, ‘Shadow Magic: Cloud Zone’ an area of effect spell that covers a certain zone in dense fog which enhances her abilities making her move faster.

She began to hit hard at her opponent at every given chance, and she’s beginning to see the result as every earth shield seems to chunk away from her barrage of daggers, coupled with the fog’s cover, making her attacks even more unpredictable.

Suddenly she felt something ominous coming, and right before she had lunged at an earth shield she backed away just in time as the shield exploded into sharp needles unto its surroundings but not hitting the caster.

“Impressive child, I didn’t think that I would be cornered like this, now it’s my turn.” said the Judiciary Lion warrior, as he pounded on the ground creating large spikes around it and a line of spikes rushing towards Lila.

Lila jumped back but as she looked at her opponent, two earth spears had already readied themselves to hit her, and that they did, Lila got hit by both flying spears square on the shoulders pushing her back as the spears impaled themselves on her shoulders to the ground.

She cried in pain as it coursed through her, she did not waste any time and turned to white smoke as they dispersed from her location to converge at a relative location behind the lion.

“Shadow Magic: Darkened Thrust.” she thrusted towards the lion with both daggers brandished by shadow magic hitting the lion square on the back then flipping forwards and facing the lion warrior.

The lion roared in pain and checked his wound before looking back at the girl, he was surprised to see that the wounds he inflicted were nowhere to be seen.

Lila’s spell Darkened thrust saps out a huge amount of mana from her in exchange of dealing tons of damage that heals her in the process and leaves a poison that chips away slowly at the health of her opponent for some time -blame the concept on Ken-.

Lila kneeled as she felt the brunt of burning away such a huge amount of magic. The lion noticed the girls labored breath and smirked to himself before pouncing to finish the battle, but was surprised as the girl dodged with ease downwards and inflicted a wound on his right leg.

He looked at the girl furiously as to why she was still able to move after using such a relatively strong spell, the girl smirked at him and stood tall as if nothing of what she did made her weakened.

The lion thought to himself that he has to finish the fight for if he dragged this for long he’s afraid that something in his system will kill him, seems like he noticed the poison. The lion warrior conjured one of his deadliest spells, and Lila prepared one of her execution strikes.

“STOP!” a shout reverberated right before both parties could deal a finishing blow against one another, the group looked at who had spoken and saw the King with Klein, standing at the raised stone, and walked towards the field.

“I think we’ve had enough of the duels, Klein please tell your students to release the barrier.” said the King, Klein nodded at the students and almost simultaneously, the barrier was lifted, the King walked towards his two warriors who joined one another to meet the King.

The King conjuring a healing spell to recover the strength of both his warriors and curing the one inflicted with poison.

“What have we talked about not going all out on the kids?” he said.

“But they were using dangerous spells and attacks sire.” rebutted the General Lion Warrior, still on his hardened skin spell.

“I agree your highness, if we did not prepare dangerous attacks of our own, I’m afraid we would be the ones in grave peril.” said the Judiciary Lion Warrior.

“True, but we still have to remember that they’re still young, and have not that much control over their powers, do you understand?” the King said, as the two lions nodded.

They understood the implication behind the King’s statement so they did not bear ill feelings, the two turned to look at their opponents and apologized who just looked at them dumbfounded still covered in bruises and tattered clothing.

The King turned to look at Klein with look that says ‘Explain’, Klein understood and hurriedly bowed to the King.

“I’m curious, were you the one who taught them such spells Klein?” asked the King, Klein felt nervous as he didn’t know what to say, he did not want to expose Ken.

“It’s okay if you cannot tell me now, but I expect you to tell me soon.” said the king calmly, but his aura was murderous, sweeping on everyone making them sweat cold, Klein looked everywhere but not on Ken as to not give away the truth.

‘It’s okay Master you can tell them.’ spoke by someone into Klein’s mind, he looked at Ken as Ken smiled at him and nodded.

‘Are you sure?’ Klein asked.

‘I’m sure Master.’ replied Ken respectfully.

Klein looked at the pissed of King who looked afar, swallowed the saliva on his throat and cleared his mouth coughing to get the King’s attention. I don’t want to piss off the King any more than this, Klein thought.

“Your majesty, please do not be offended by what I’m about to say.” The King nodded for Klein to continue. “But the person behind the spells of our students, is also our human student, Ken.”

Klein waited for the laugh to come as he looked at the King intensely, but they were surprised by what the King said next.

“Oh, now that makes sense.” Everyone was dumbfounded, including the King’s warriors as they all hang their mouth on their faces, or they just imagine to.

Ken walked to Lila snapping her out of her trance and collaborated with her to cure the poison coursing through the Judiciary Lion’s wound, all the while the rest were still frozen. With the initial spell of the King, it made their task a lot easier.

——-