Life Giver

After Instructor Redfire had completed his morning briefing, the students were all quite excited and many of them began to talk to each other with a fresh mind set.

Many new students were like Balon, they hadn't interacted with each other much but after Instructor Redfire's speech they chose to open up to each other.

Casmir, Zaya and Balon were less interested in this as they already saw each other as friends, Zaya even started to act more openly towards Balon.

After Zaya and Balon familiarised themselves with each other, they planned out their training together.

For the next three days, until Friday the day of the tests, they organised a training schedule. Casmir and Balon would spend a couple hours each day training their Qi flow while Zaya instructed them or trained by herself, afterwards Zaya and Casmir would train their combat skills for most of the day while Balon continued with his Qi flow training or joined them for combat training.

Zaya didn't need to train her Qi flow any further as she had already attained a control of 0.01%. This level of control was not the highest one could achieve but it was the barrier that separated cultivators from breaking through to cultivation Grade 2 and practicing the next stage in Qi energy control, Qi as water.

For the first day, Balon was content with this simple cultivation as he honed his body and allowed him to further develop his use of Qi energy, but soon enough he was drawn in by the enjoyment Casmir and Zaya had training together.

On the second day, Balon opted to join them in their training but only for a short time as he realised how high Casmir and Zaya's endurance was, they would never stop moving at full force as if they were truly in a life and death fight.

Casmir and Zaya's training was quite harsh, they would change between attacking each other with wooden weapons or practicing joint attacks against wooden targets at full strength. If either of them made a mistake or lost out in an exchange the other would lord it over them, encouraging but infuriating the other.

Of course the person making the error was almost always Casmir, even if Zaya did make a mistake she would beat Casmir up if he tried to tease her with it.

As the pair trained they gradually acclimated to how each other fought, every mistake was a lesson, every uncoordinated attack was a failure but those mistakes and failures dwindled as the days passed.

Casmir also took time when they were training to activate the Life Body Cycle, when he used the cycle, his body grew exhausted much more quickly so he tried to use towards the end of their practice. However Casmir did notice that he found it much easier to unleash his full strength while using the Life Body Cycle, it didn't make him stronger specifically just faster and cleaner in his movements.

By the end of Thursday, the Life Body Cycle had progressed to 18.2% thanks to all his hard work.

Every day Casmir came home exhausted but happy, he could feel his improvements in strength and speed when he trained the next day, after his body had rested and recovered.

If not for the Minor Body Cleanse the Life Giver Orb had Given him, he would not have been able to keep up with this level of training. Even Zaya who was training with Casmir didn't opt to go to the White Popper forest in Ellaris Park to train further after school, she was tired of training for the first time in a long while.

As their last day of training before tomorrows tests came to an end, the trio shared a simple meal from Big Beards food stand before they went home to rest.

Balon fell onto his bed as soon as he got home, unwillingly to move again.

Zaya returned to her tribe's new home in the city for a long relaxing bath.

And of course Casmir spent the evening under Rose's care, before returning to his room and embracing Elena to keep her warm through the night...

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The day of the tests was a cold day, the skies were clear and the grass was covered in frost that created a satisfying crunch sound when stepped upon.

Casmir arrived at the training field to find three arena's had been set up, two smaller arena's and one large one surrounded by raised seating. The area was already full of students and apart from the new students, only the instructors and senior students, who had been corralled into helping, were allowed onto the training field.

As Casmir walked closer to the arena's wondering what they contained. he suddenly heard Zaya call out to him from under the canopy of a nearby tree.

"This way Casmir! Move your arse!" Zaya called out loudly with some annoyance, attracting a few peoples gazes.

Casmir could only awkwardly jog over to were Zaya was standing, she was wearing some tightly fitted black clothing which had clearly been newly bought and on top of it was some rough leather pads covering her vital area's and her arms and legs.

The two different types of clothing didn't suit each other and made Zaya look quite odd.

"You look.. good Zaya, is that leather armour?" Casmir said with a teasing smile.

Zaya gave Casmir a cold stare.

"My father insisted on me wearing it, it's customary for my tribe to wear similar leather armour that we've made ourselves in any public fights..." Zaya explained coldly, but Casmir could see that her cheeks were slightly red in embarrassment.

"Oh you made it yourself? You're pretty good, my friend Rose knows how to make clothing if you want some advi-.."

Zaya was clearly growing more agitated as Casmir talked and eventually she spoke out.

"No!...I don't need to learn how to sow... Don't talk about it anymore..." Zaya said very clearly with a hint of anger.

Casmir was quite surprised by her reaction.

Naturally Casmir didn't think Zaya would react so harshly for no reason, there must be something else behind it but Casmir didn't nose into it, they had other things to do.

"Ok.. have you been to the Arena's yet. I assume they're for the three tests?" Casmir said slowly trying to change the topic.

Zaya let out a soft sigh before she explained.

"The left one is the Qi flow test, there's a large crystal sat at its centre that tests your control. The right one is the strength test but they haven't started testing anything there yet so I don't know what's happening..." Zaya explained as she pointed at the two smaller arena's.

"The big arena is where the ferocious beasts are, I went to have a look at them earlier and there's quite a few different types of ferocious beasts."

"I hope we get a strength based ferocious beast, even the strongest strength based ferocious beast there wont be able to push you back much." Zaya explained.

She had a deeper knowledge about ferocious beasts than most, she knew most of the different beasts that were kept there.

"Good job Zaya, when our beast gets chosen do your best to tell me its weaknesses but don't worry if you don't know much about it, we can handle any of them." Casmir said confidently, he had no doubt that they would be able to beat any of those low grade ferocious beasts.

Zaya appreciated Casmir's praise but she didn't let it show, her previous annoyance simply faded away as she nodded at Casmir.

"Yeah.. but don't get overconfident, stick to your training." Zaya reminded him.

Just as Zaya and Casmir were about to head over to look at the ferocious beasts, Balon arrived beside them.

"Hey guys! What's going on with the Arena's?" Balon asked.

Casmir smiled and explained what was going on to Balon, making sure to discretely warn him not to speak about Zaya's clothing.

They took there time to walked around the Arena's and wait for Instructor Redfire to explain what will be happening today.

Casmir was especially interested in the strange Crystal standing at the centre of the Qi flow test, he assumed it was similar to the Crystal Zaya's sister, Josena, had used to test his affinity. He also thought that it looked a lot like some of the objects in Master Bluefire's cottage but unfortunately, Casmir had not been studying Master Bluefire's refining textbooks like he should have.

He had simply been too busy and had forgotten about them, but he would soon come to regret it when he saw Master Bluefire next.

While Casmir was thinking about what to do about Master Bluefire, Zaya tapped his shoulder, breaking his thought process.

"Hey, stop daydreaming. Instructor Redfire wants everyone to assemble by the big Arena." Zaya scolded him after he didn't respond to her previous call.

"My bad, I was thinking about something else. Let's head over." Casmir replied with an apologetic look.

Casmir, Zaya and Bolan assembled near the big arena with all of the other students.

Instructor Redfire was standing on a raised platform near the big arena, this was the judging platform which gave the judge a superior field of the arena so that they could properly assess the students.

As Instructor Redfire looked down upon his students he nodded with a pleased smile, he could tell there were lots of students full of energy today.

"Good! You all look quite excited today, your senior's have spent the night setting this up for you. Give them your thanks!" Instructor Redfire shouted.

The senior students were lined up in an orderly manner in front of the crowd.

The crowd obeyed Instructor Redfire's request and a cacophony of noises resounded out from the crowd.

"Thank you senior!", "Thanks", "Blessings!"

The senior students were quite happy receiving their juniors praises but only a few dared to show it fearing Instructor Redfire would reprimand them for being too proud.

Soon enough Instructor Redfire began to explain what would happen in todays test's.

The Qi flow test was quite simply, the students would inject their Qi energy into the large crystal in the first arena, they needed to maintain their Qi energy at a certain rate for 5 minutes and within a tolerance of 2%.

This was a relatively popular test and many people would take part.

The ferocious beast test was once again quite simple, the hundred or so pairs would be matched up with a ferocious beast whom they needed to either defend against for 15 minutes, kill or disable. The ferocious beasts would be assigned based on the students strengths and weaknesses, those pair weak in speed would not face an opponent strong in speed or vice versa.

This test would occur last and was the main event for today, Instructor Redfire had set this whole test up like a party or a show, this could be seen from the stands that surrounded the main arena.

Clearly Instructor Redfire had done this to entertain and excite his students for the year to come.

The most peculiar part of Instructor Redfire's announcement however was his description for the strengths test, apparently the strength test would be a joint test.

10 people would need to join together to contest against an unspecified target, for now, no one knew what was going to happen but the senior students couldn't help but look at instructor Redfire with strange gazes.

They knew exactly what this silly Instructor of theirs wanted to do.

Instructor Redfire finished his announcement at this point and led the students towards the first test, the Qi flow test.

Over 400 students wanted to take part in this arena included Casmir's trio, they all lined themselves up around the arena and prepared for their turn as the watch the first student step forward towards the stone.