Chapter 93: Ambush Practice

The team came at Karl again, spread out and sneaking up on him through the dorm building, with one even leaping out of the window. [Now,] Karl ordered the beasts, sending them into the battlefield. Hawk moved to intercept the flying target, while Rae spit out a large mass of web to trip another, and Thor went with his signature charge, throwing another man high into the air with a flick of his thick neck. The three of them crashed to the ground at the same second, and Rita blew her whistle. "Karl, how did you know that they were coming?" She demanded. "A side effect of bonding, Hawk. I have fantastic peripheral vision, and I can focus on any spot I can see without moving my head. I had all three of them located before they attacked." Karl explained. "Then was it necessary to throw me again?" One of the men wheezed, climbing to his knees. Thor had gotten the same target twice in a row. Although he didn't spear the man between the legs this time, the two upper horns made for an excellent tossing platform, and he had peaked well over five metres in the air. "He didn't injure you this time. I mean, with the hit. The sudden stop at the end looks like it wasn't much fun." Karl amended. "Are they aware of what is happening around you before you call them out?" One of the men asked. "Probably more than I am. I don't know how much they can see, but they do have a solid awareness of their surroundings." Karl explained. "Alright, so it's not easy to sneak up on you either. We should check on Agent A. He looks a bit rough." The wheezing man replied, referring to the one that Hawk had intercepted. Alice rushed over and noticed that the man was conscious but having a deep moment of personal introspection as he stared at the sky and began to question his life choices. "Is anything broken? I have healing potions from the Witches." Alice offered. "Just my pride. Can you fix that?" He asked, and Alice noticed that there were six deep scratches in his training armour. Not only had Hawk knocked him out of the air, his attack had broken the man's Guard, and Hawk's claws tore up his armour before dropping him on the ground. "It feels like we were the ones who got ambushed." The third man agreed, nursing a twisted ankle. Rita and Alice both sighed, but it was Rita who spoke first. "I can already see that this will not be a viable training method in the long term. They already understand basic strategies, and their response time is fast enough that it will be very challenging to ambush Karl even if they are resting. We will have to come up with another method of preparing them for combat." Rae gave her a pointed look, which the Sergeant returned for a moment before shaking her head. "Even I can tell what that look means. The only way to truly train for combat is to be in combat. Karl knows enough martial arts that he should be alright in a fight, but the Academy wouldn't approve of putting you all in danger just to get better training results." She reminded the spider. [Hawk would agree to let us go outside.] Rae pouted. Hawk's mind became curious, and the spider beamed the mental version of a smile at him. [If we were hunting outside, you could eat them after you killed them.] She announced. [This is not a democracy; majority rules don't win here.] Karl informed them in his best stern tone. Rae had already found Hawk's weak point. As soon as she mentioned food, the Windspeed Hawk would be on board with whatever she wanted to do, and Thor would go along simply because that's where everyone else was going. "You look like you're having an intense discussion," Alice noted as Karl talked to the beasts. "They all want to go outside to train. I don't necessarily disagree with them, as our training options are limited here, but it is safe here, and safety in numbers is a good thing." Karl replied. Thor bobbed his head happily as he heard those reassuring words from the boss, and the instructors did their best not to laugh. They had been brutally bested by the Lightning Cerro twice in as many hours. But still, it didn't feel like the creature was a threat; he was just too friendly. "Let us discuss that for a few minutes. There are groups of students looking to go outside on missions, and we might allow you to lead one of them, as long as there is a second Awakened Rank or higher member, as you are still a first-year student and untested in the field." Alice explained, earning herself a glare from Rita. Daniel wisely sat at the back of the field, as he had been doing all day, and avoided drawing attention to himself as the two argued over the appropriate course of action. The student training missions were normally not dangerous, certainly no worse than the Goblin Tribe had been, and Karl was much stronger now than he had been even that recently. With the addition of the two new pets, he alone would rampage through a Goblin Tribe. Nothing that they could do would significantly injure a Lightning Cerro unless they managed to swarm it and pin it down. That seemed unlikely with Hawk and Rae both in the fight, even if you didn't count Karl himself as a combat asset, as he would be mostly watching out for the other students. The outcome seemed inevitable, and after twenty minutes of discussion and a few tersely worded phone calls, the ladies returned with a smile on both of their faces. "You will be allowed to lead an away mission. Student Dana will be going with you, along with eight of the Common Grade first years. It is a herbal resource gathering mission in a lightly monitored area, and there will be emergency assistance available on a ten-minute helicopter ride, should you activate the emergency beacons." Sergeant Rita informed Karl. "Understood, Sergeant. Thank you for this opportunity." Karl replied as seriously as he could while trying to ignore the excitement of his beasts. They were finally getting somewhere where there might be mice, and Hawk was overjoyed at the prospect.