'I wonder what Professor Alice wants with me. I thought our weekly meetings were on Tuesdays."
Gale thought to himself after Zach left. In his mind, Zach turned into an errand boy long ago.
"You're really lucky to have a magus care about you so much. If she takes your side all the time, then it's even a better backer than an outsider magus like Ronda's father."
Tim said with an envious voice. Gale just shrugged and they kept walking to the classroom in the Round Building. When they entered the classroom, they found themselves inside a large room with a big arena in the middle of it.
When the teacher arrived, Gale found it was the same teacher as human combat, Professor Mercury. The bulky man entered the class and started speaking.
"I'm Professor Mercury for whoever doesn't know me yet. We will learn about actual combat with beasts since it's different compared to fighting with humans. It's easier in most senses since they are less diverse and less intelligent, but if you're fighting an elite beast, it might be harder."
Mercury explained to everyone what elite beasts were and the lesson continued.
"Today I will let you fight some fourth-rank magical beasts for practice. Remember, you can get the best results in this class if you go to the theoretical class about beast hunting. This way you can apply the tactics you've learned there and use the weaknesses of the beasts to your advantage."
He channeled his mana into a rectangle device and Alessa's voice was heard.
"Professor Mercury's mana detected; permission granted."
Mercury clicked a few spots in the device and a hole appeared in the ground of the arena. A red tiger came out, 4 meters long and 1.5 meters tall.
"Let's start with the highest ranked in class so he can demonstrate for everyone, and the rest can give it a try after him."
He checked in his Alessa watch the students list and found the highest ranked present.
"Oh, it's you again. Gale Stormborn, get into the arena. You cannot kill the tiger, or you'll be tasked to go and capture another in your free time."
He lied; it was his job, but he wanted to encourage the students not to kill the tiger to spare him extra work.
Gale nodded and entered the arena. A barrier made of water magic was raised and he was trapped along with the beast.
The tiger looked at him with hostility and started circling him. Since his job was to demonstrate to the other students, he chose not to just overpower the tiger with his magic, but to have an actual fight with it.
He figured that this class was synchronized with the beast hunting class since they learned about this tiger among some other tiger species in the other class, and now he faced one in this class.
Since he knew the patterns of the tiger's attacks, he felt confident to take it easy. He boosted himself with a fire spell to have a stronger and faster body and waited for the tiger to attack.
The tiger was a wind and water beast type and mainly relied on its wind powers. As expected, the tiger enhanced its speed with a wind spell and generated strong winds around Gale to hinder his movements.
Gale knew what was coming and felt relieved to see that the knowledge in the beast hunting class was precise. Since they had stronger bodies, tigers often tried to force their enemies into a face-to-face fight, in which they'd hold the advantage.
But Gale went through the strengthening of a ruler beast; a mere magic beast was weaker than him. He saw the beast pounce and send its claw downward, and he just stepped aside and let it miss his shoulder by a few centimeters.
The winds were getting closer to Gale, trying to hold him in place, but a huge fire was ignited and vacuumed all the air of the winds, weakening them considerably until they were completely gone.
The tiger pounced again, and Gale ducked under the claw and countered with a strong right hook, sending the tiger to the ground with a dislocated jaw.
The tiger whimpered in pain and Mercury decided to finish the fight there.
"Ah… that was a good punch. But students, generally you should try to defeat them by using your magic more wisely rather than go into a wrestling fight with a tiger. Next student…"
Mercury bound the beast with a water spell and sent it back underground to heal. The students started entering the arena according to their ranks and fighting the beasts. Gale was quite bored and had nothing to do but sit back and watch the other students fight.
Tim's turn arrived and he faced the tiger. Unlike Gale, he didn't try to fight physically but nullified the tiger's winds by raising a wall of stone that allowed him to walk freely. When the tiger pounced at him, he was ready and summoned a pillar of stone from the ground to clash with the tiger.
The tiger would be sent back every time, and after each clash, its frontal legs turned numb from the shock. A few minutes later, Tim defeated the tiger and returned to his spot next to Gale and Amanda.
"Good job Tim."
"Thanks!"
"Good luck Amanda!"
It was Amanda's turn next since she was just one rank under Tim. She used her water affinity to resist the winds and another water spell to make the tiger's claw get even stronger momentum.
The tiger stumbled a few steps forward upon landing, and Amanda used this opening to land a kick on its side from behind and bind it with a new water spell before it could recover from the kick.
Although the battles weren't that interesting, watching so many different fighting styles and mana manipulation styles gave Gale different ideas about how to utilize his own magic. Although he wouldn't imitate others' attacks, he could still try to learn some concepts from the way they used their magic.
