Chapter 36: Purpose of Combat
Moments later, they were all inside the hall for Combat Class. The professor hadn’t mentioned the fight again after his initial burst of enthusiasm, but everyone, Jethro especially, still sensed it was at the back of his mind.
"You firestarters and your rush to use powers that you barely even understand," he muttered as he sauntered to the central dais, boots echoing. "Hahaha! Such childishness! Back when we were barebrains like you, at least we pretended to have some decorum!"
Once he got to the dias, he spun around and faced the students that were looking at him with the complete attention his introduction deserved. Then he shot them a fierce smile. "But isn’t it that raw hunger to fight that we’re here to mould?! Mhm? Hehehe."
He pounded a fist into his open palm for emphasis.
Jethro, sitting at a position similar to where he sat in Basics Class, narrowed his eyes at the peculiar man. The fact that everyone accepted him as a professor spoke volumes about the institution’s trust, or perhaps its tolerance for the unconventional. He looked nothing like a professor, more like a bodybuilding coach from Jethro’s old world.
He was extremely tall and even more muscular. His entire head was framed with silver hair, down to his jaw where his beard was braided to a double-bun. He wore a long dark blue coat that gleamed under the hall lights, plain black pants held together by a cool-looking blue belt, and an armored shirt. Only his left hand was gloved, the right one had an oversized beastlinker that stopped just short of his shoulder.
When Jethro thought more about it, it made perfect sense that a professor like this would teach Combat Class. But it also got Jethro curious about the man’s strength and the mechbeast he owned.
His class hall was fairly different from the Basics hall. First, it was a whole lot darker. The floor was made of a modular grid of hexagonal plates, and the wall was obsidian-steel. Rather than a sun simulation, the room was illuminated by a moon simulation, giving it a somber and steel-like feel.
Yet the atmosphere was far from soothing. Along the edges were cyberstatues of Riftwalkers and their mechbeasts locked in dynamic battle poses, while a holographic screen high above the dais showed a real-time wireframe analysis of an extremely brutal clash between two tamers and their mechbeasts.
"If you’re going to fight...!" the professor’s voice thundered, claiming their focus from the battle on the screen. "...then you better be doing it for a purpose! It’s combat. It serves a purpose. If it doesn’t serve a purpose then it’s simply chaos. It’s meaningless."
He looked around the hall. "What purposes does combat serve?"