Chapter 19. Combat Practice
Cynog threw the student into the air. When this bug had crawled into his class, he’d thought he would simply teach a fly a lesson. Give a deserved beating to a child too big for his britches, and send him to do horse stance until he couldn’t stand straight.
Instead, he’d been impressed. Impressed, and more importantly… embarrassed. Challenging a child in front of all the other children, only to have to admit that the child was correct, and he truly did not belong in Cynog’s class? Rage burned in the warrior’s heart. He couldn’t accept such humiliation.
Yet, the emotion he felt wasn’t only rage, but also excitement.
Once, Cynog had possessed a bright future. He’d had exceeding talent in his small martial clan, and shone out as a star amongst mortals. When he was selected by a mage to attend a true mage school, he had received the well wishes and adulation of everyone in his village.
But when he’d arrived, he’d found out that the school was a trash-heap of a mage school, looked down on by all other mages. The lowest, weakest, least capable staffed it. One of the professors was out of his mind. The only two talents locked themselves away in the library or were truly devoted to the cause of teaching children low-level potions. The upper school was out of reach, too, limited only to the Schoolmaster’s closest, most powerful friends.
Thus, Cynog had found himself in a dead end. His star was dead. There was no longer any hope of ascension, no longer a dream of becoming the most powerful. He would burn out here; this was all the more he could reach for. He’d failed to ascend to Tier 4 several times now, and with each failure, it only grew harder to try again. He played professor because if he didn’t, no one would teach the children any martial art, but he did it without hope. No one with any real talent ended up at the Infinite Constellation School. This was where trash filtered down from all the other mage schools, where the dropouts and those too untalented for any other school to pick them up landed.
And then this child arrived.
At first, he’d thought nothing of him. Rhys, kidnapped by the Strawman. No—the disciple of the Strawman. Just another child with no talent, who none of the other schools had been willing to pick up. He hadn’t taken any particular interest in him. When he heard the kid was picking up the trash around the sect, he’d approved, but distantly. There was no reason to take any notice of it.
Not until Rhys had flaunted into his class.
The kid landed, skidding over the earth. He didn’t hesitate, but turned and fled. Cynog gave chase, letting the kid get a little breathing room. Rather than overwhelm him with his higher Tier, he wanted to see what the kid could do for real. He hadn’t missed that the kid was a bit lost, attacking an immobile target. Whatever skills the Strawman had taught him, they couldn’t be fully utilized in such an artificial facsimile of combat.
So it was time to turn up the heat. Let the kid take his field of choice. And see how deep those skills of his really were.
A grin played over Cynog’s face. He cracked his knuckles. For the first time in a long time, he felt himself longing for the thrill of battle.