Chapter 63 (Patreon)

Jiran’s students held as wide a variety of ideas and opinions as any group one thousand strong would. His only interest, as he hovered above them in the air, protecting them with his aura, was to unify their thoughts in the direction of their orders.

There were two conclusions Jiran had established with certainty, regarding life on Madra. The most important was that life and death were separated by the thinnest of barriers. All it took to doom an entire city was a single mistake, a moment's hesitation, or one ignored order.

He could vividly remember every single time he had come across a destroyed village or town. Homes ripped apart, rubble and bodies lining the streets. The half-consumed corpses of children, mothers, and fathers. None were spared when the beasts came to consume.

The undeniable truth of ruin and death had led him to the second unbendable law of Madra.

When it came to beasts and the preparations required to stop them, mercy was a sin.

Jiran took a page from Professor Sophia’s book and instilled his aura with emotions.

Resolve, formed from the desire to never again see the horrors he had witnessed.

Faith, from standing side by side with his fellow imperials against the hordes of beasts come to slaughter families.

Pride, at the countless weak humans who chose to risk their lives tiering, to then return home and protect.

Against their will, one thousand students were filled with a fiery passion to protect the people of the empire, to crush their foes beneath their boots, and to charge forward into danger for their companions.

“Cadets, march!” When Jiran’s shout came, echoed within the aura that blanketed them, they moved like a fire had been lit under their asses.

With a battle cry erupting unbidden from their throats, the disorganized mob rushed forward with flailing limbs, instantly resulting in a tidal wave of riotous chaos.

Whoops! Better back it off a little.

Jiran lowered the intensity of the emotions in his aura. Then he began to smash two waves of pressure together in the air. He formed the explosive clapping into a rhythm he remembered from Earth. Every little boy who had seen a military movie would remember the beat and how marching soldiers rhymed along with it.

I’ll have to come up with an actual cadence if we end up doing this every day. For now, a simple beat should suffice.

Hey, I finally learned something new! Emotions can be instilled into an aura. That is so cool, and useful. Thanks, Sophia!

As Jiran’s aura backed off in intensity, his fellow cadets began to think and reason once more. Most easily matched the beat he had set and the chaotic mob turned into a semi-structured blob of shuffling humans.

The Military Academy La’valiance’s entry exam was a rigorous test that weeded out the foolish and incompetent with great efficiency. Those who failed were sent along to the standardized academy for soldiers.

Those who passed and entered the officers’ academy tended to be the brightest and most motivated.

Within a minute, those intelligent students had organized themselves into orderly lines and marched along to the rhythm Jiran had set.

However, expecting one thousand people to instantly come together into a cohesive whole was foolish. There were several who were slower to pick up the pace, and even a few who outright disobeyed.

“I can’t believe I’m stuck in a group with the academy’s number one delinquent.”

“The Garden is a stupid name, are they trying to grow us into proper little soldier plants?”

“Who does this low-born think he is?”

“I heard he did something to the princess., If we all attack him at once, we can avenge her and gain some favor with the royal family.”

Jiran landed in their midst. His aura pushed those who were struggling to keep up while he squared off against the four boys who stood defiantly against Sophia’s orders.

They sure are making this easy on me. Should I thank them for being cohesive enough to gather into a little group?

A boy with silver hair, the shortest of the four, stepped forward. He was a bulky youth, large muscles barely constrained inside his uniform. His face was flushed with anger as he glared at Jiran with eyes full of hatred.

His uniform is so tight his neck is purple. No wonder he’s so pissed, I would be too if I couldn’t breathe all day.

“You’re going to pay for what you did to the Professor!” He said while looking over both his shoulders.

Sophia had already left the area. After confirming she was not watching him, the boy’s angry glower turned to a vicious smile as he took another step toward Jiran.

That’s why he’s a little familiar, these are the guys who helped that asshat back in the classroom.

“Is there some reason you’re not following orders?” Jiran asked in a light tone, completely ignoring the silver-haired boy's statement.

“A filthy peasant doesn't have the right to order me to do anything,” Spittle flew from his mouth as he responded. Somehow, his face had grown a darker shade of red and purple as his muscles flexed.

“The funny thing about orders is that they always come from somewhere else. See, I was given my orders by Professor Sophia, she was given her orders by the headmistress of the academy. Are you going to tell those two you aren’t willing to follow their orders?”

That’s as nice as I’m willing to be. You’re the one who chose to be here and subject yourself to the military. If you don't want to follow orders, then life is about to get very uncomfortable for you.

“You don’t know anything. My mother is Major Smautick. When she hears about what you’ve done today, you’ll learn how things really work around here,” His blue eyes shone with a vile, gloating sheen as he made his stand.

A small smirk spread across Jiran’s face as the four boys continued to stand defiantly in front of him.

“Last chance, cadet. March,” Jiran punctuated his command with a tilt of his head in the direction of the rest of the students.

“You wouldn't dare touch me. If you do, my mother will make you regret the day you were born!” He stood defiantly with his chin held high.

I can’t believe he name-dropped his mom, twice. Does he have no pride at all?

“Your choice,” The moment Jiran took a step forward, the silver-haired boy lunged.

His body moved with power and grace. Jiran noted that the noble boy's body must have absorbed close to maximum density for his tier. He was far faster and stronger than a fresh Tier four would be.

The punch sailing toward Jiran’s face would have easily blown a meter-thick tree in half, or blasted a hole through solid steel.

To Jiran’s senses, enhanced far beyond normal by his Uniqueness, the punch moved at a snail's pace. To make the confrontation even more unfair, the movements of his rippling muscles painted a tapestry that Jiran effortlessly interpreted.

With a minor shift of his head to dodge the blow, Jiran grasped his wrist and underarm. With a spin and a bend of his hips, Jiran threw the malcontent directly into the ground so hard he bounced four meters into the air.

Before the noble landed from his rebound off the rocky dirt, Jiran thrummed with the power of a full body molding. With a lightning-quick step, Jiran appeared beside the human bouncy ball and palmed the back of his skull. He then slammed his face into the ground with enough mana-fuelled force to completely bury his head.

Jiran gripped the noble by the hair and pulled him out of the ground. He held the unconscious bloody-faced rag-doll out at arm’s length. When he turned to the other three, they looked at him with gaping mouths.

“Was he strong?” Jiran asked with open-faced curiosity.

All three immediately shook their heads in the negative. Which caused Jiran to sigh at their misunderstanding.

“I’m asking you honestly, if we had everyone in our group fight, how highly do you think he would rank? What about all three groups, would he be in the top ten?” He lightly shook the noble in the air while mentioning him.

“Uh, maybe in the top ten? Definitely in the top twenty.” A lanky boy with brown, greasy hair responded.

“So what if you beat him! You’re a tier higher than him so it’s only natural you would win,” The outburst came from a different boy.

This one was tall and well-muscled, like an Olympic gymnast. He had sandy-colored hair that covered one of his eyes. He glared at Jiran with intense hatred and fear.

“You’re wrong, but it hardly matters. He was the leader of your little resistance so I’m assuming he was the strongest. Are you guys really satisfied being so weak?

“You sided with that professor who was filling your heads with crap that makes you weaker, and now you're actively fighting me instead of asking how I got so strong.

“My class will be open to everyone. If you want to come and learn just so you can try to pay me back someday, I don’t mind at all. The empire needs to be stronger, we need to be stronger. You’ll understand when you fight the graymin.

“Here,” Jiran tossed the unconscious boy at his friends who scrambled to catch him before he fell to the ground once more.

“March, cadets!”

The three carried the dangling, dead-weight between them as they begrudgingly chased after Jiran.

I wonder what's causing some of the nobles to be so antagonistic. There has to be more going on behind the scenes that I don’t understand. Or maybe I just have the bad luck to keep running into the crap ones.

Then there’s the question of why everyone is so weak. The empire is two thousand years old. How is it possible they don’t have a more firm grasp of the basic principles of matter and physics?

It’s bothered me since I first started reading in Samris’s library. I always thought what was written in some of those books was just a joke. But they actually believe it’s true.

I need to figure out what is going on and do something about it. I feel like my country is hanging off a cliff by one finger. Our population is so low, and we have such a terrible grasp of how to use mana. All it would take is one bad day.

Jiran forcefully shifted his thoughts back to the task at hand. Once he caught up with the group, he was pleased to see they were moving together in an organized fashion.

Jiran picked up their pace by increasing the steady beating of his aura. The nearest flag and their first stop was close enough to pick out details of what appeared to be an obstacle course.

Starting from a staging platform raised a meter off the ground, a plank across a pit of mud provided the first challenge. If not for the large axe blades suspended in the air by ropes, the course would have looked simple.

Off to the side was a massive mouse wheel inside a wooden structure. Jiran could see an attached assembly of pulleys and ropes. They went through an underground system of tunnels connecting the wheel to the obstacle course.

From what he could discern, it appeared to require 20 or so people, running at full tilt, to power the various moving parts of the obstacle course.

After the plank were several platforms that would move up and down. While the runner was jumping between the platforms, blades larger than Jiran’s body would spin through the area, forcing them to jump or duck.

There was an area where boulders had to be pushed through narrow channels up an incline while sawblades chased you.

At the end of the twenty deadly obstacles was a creek with flowing water. The dirt there was stained red, proof that over the years many students had not escaped the course unscathed.

Isn’t this a little extreme?

After memorizing the flag, Jiran led the group to the next closest area, a simple series of bare fields inside a lightly wooded area. Target dummies were placed sporadically throughout the fields and lines of short stone walls were set up to show the correct distance to stand from each dummy.

Practice area for long-range attacks. Looks fun.

The next flag was planted before a shed full of shovels. The nearby field was hard-packed ground full of rocks and gravel.

Trenches in rough terrain are standard for any defensive line against the graymin. They have superior eyesight and the way they slowly creep across the terrain makes it nearly impossible to ambush them.

Letting them approach a defensive trench and then springing an attack is an excellent strategy for lower Tier soldiers. And it all starts with learning to rapidly dig a ditch without mana.

As Jiran was examining the field with his aura, he noticed a familiar blond, blue-eyed female flying his way at high speed.

Here we go again…