The week had been a very difficult one, not only because of instructor Zirrack but all their professors. They all told them the same thing and made their lives more stressful. A lot of students had been punished and had gotten their points deducted, while some had broken down due to Zirrack's torture, but it was finally time for him to rest and hunt beasts.
After making sure that he was done with everything he needs to do, Blake left the school and boarded a carriage that took him to the adventurer's association. He planned to check if they were any commissions he complete while he was hunting.
Normally he would head straight to the forest to hunt for beast cores, but after seeing how tight and tough the school was he knew at this rate it would take months if not a year for him to advance to the C rank.
'Well, since I have no family to return to during the first-semester break, I might as well use the opportunity to complete as many commissions as possible.' Blake thought as he pushed the door open.
[If rise in rank you should be able to get more information about the empire and with the help of the association you should be able to get information of the world at large.] The system said.
Blake's problem was a big deal because he was searching for both answers and questions. He didn't know much about infinite realm neither did he have a clue what his purpose on the planet was.
All he had been doing throughout his stay so far was to get stronger so that he could face anything that may come his way.
'Can't you give me a clue of what I am meant to do?' Thinking about his hardship he was facing and the ones yet to come, Blake was getting frustrated. If he already knew the goal things would have been much easier for him, but with the way things were going he had no idea how long he was going to stay in infinite realm.
[I wish could tell you, but I am in the same situation as you are.] The system replied.
'Who the f*ck will summon random people to a world as large as infinite realm without a clue!' Blake felt like cursing the All-Father's entire lineage aloud, but he wasn't too sure if he had one and also seeing that he was alone he decided to bottle everything up and move to the billboard.
[According to Bryon's statement and the books we have read so far, they all say that he was in a weakened state and to protect infinite realm from a serious predicament that was to befall it he summoned you guys.] The system said as they both searched the billboard for commissions related to beasts.
'So let's set questions for ourselves. One, what sought catastrophe would infinite realm be in that they would need the help of outsiders to solve?
Two, what happened to the other races? If they were wiped out the face of infinite realm, then why weren't the humans the weakest amongst all the races go extinct as well?'
"This 2 should do…" Blake sets his eyes on 2 commissions. The first one requested the gall bladders of 4 bruks, while the second requested the talons, feathers, and beaks of pelcars.
Bruks were the lesser evolution of knoxs and for Blake defeating them would be easy. Their strength lay in the power-packed behind each of their attacks and since their hides weren't as thick as that of a knox, it would be a walk in the park for him.
As for the pelcars, they were birds twice the size of eagles on Earth. They had talons and beaks that can pierce and tear a human with great ease. The bones are relatively long, and the wings taper to a point to allow for high flight speed with low drag, and low energy consumption during flight, but their weakness was that they lasted stamina and couldn't fly for long.
Blake was planning on capitalizing on their weakness by using his throwing knives to hunt them.
He saw a commission that was requesting beast's cores, but since they were the main reason he was hunting in the first he decided to leave the commission and left for the forest.
Unknown to him, it was Vlad who had placed the commission through his servant.
…
Hours later, Blake was done with his hunt and had begun harvesting the beast cores.
'4 bruk cores, 3 pelcar cores, 6 morg cores, and 2 sklade cores with the corpse of a coreless bruk.' Blake felt bad when he spoke of the little bruk he had killed.
After locating and killing the first two bruks, he went in search of the last one and found 2. It was after killing them that he found out they were mates and they had a youngling which he eventually killed.
"Seems the wounds caused by the berserk wyvern to the forest hasn't completely healed." Blake felt sad when he realized that he was killing families for his gain, but once he saw the beast cores all those thoughts were erased.
…
When the class free days were over, his paused journey through 'hell' continued.
During the new week, they had begun lessons on the mirror spell that let them see a spot from a distance, but it was useless to Blake when he found out its flaws.
For the mirror spell to work, there had to be a transmitter and receiver just like a radio. It meant someone had to be close to the area meant to be spied on and in addition to its flaws was that the two mirror spells had to be within a range which was dependent on the strength of the one casting the spell.
Apart from the basic magic class, professor Tacitus had shown them how to process magical materials that enhanced the attributes of forgemastered items. This made Blake purchase some of the items he needed to practice with, but unlike before he wasn't complaining because he had a lot of exchange points and he was too exhausted to complain.
With everything that was going on in the school, Blake was nearing his limit. With the stress that came with Zirrack's training and other professors, Blake had been sleeping very late daily and that was affecting him.
For him to keep up with his training, power mastery, forgemastering, and practicing drawing arrays he had to stay up till the early hours of the morning. The places he could rest a bit were in the canteen, history class, and array mastering class that professor Mack had missed for the 4th time.
'I wonder how those who are offering 3 specializations are faring?' Blake couldn't help but chuckle. He was thankful to the system for advising him to chose only 2 specializations.
[Your mental health isn't great, you need some rest…]
'Obviously!' Blake rolled his eyes at the system for stating the obvious.
[You need to cut down on the activities you indulge in or maybe reduce the frequency at which you practice them.
For example, you can reduce the number of times you practice forgemastering and most importantly don't use all your free days for hunting beast take some rest.]
"…."
…
The next week professor Mack finally showed up to the class, with heavy bags under his eyes.
"Sorry for missing so many classes, I was so engrossed in my research that I wasn't aware of much time had passed." Professor Mack said with an apologetic smile.
The students weren't angry in any way instead they were grateful. His absence had given them some time to rest and hearing that the greatest dimensional researcher of their time, was busy with research meant discovery was about to be made.
"As for you…" Professor Mack said looking at Blake. "The school has awarded you with 4000 points for aiding a professor's research, but that isn't all. Since I felt that the reward wasn't enough, I decided to give you an extra reward but that will be after this class."
"Now for today's class, we will be talking about how to enchant a weapon with an array." Professor Mack went straight to the topic of the day because he just wanted to get this over with before heading back to rest.
'Finally!' Just a little more and Blake would have screamed out.
The previous week he was finally able to inscribe the array with mana at his fingertips, but when he tried to enchant the array one of his throwing knives it ended up as a total disaster.
The system had told him the reason for the process failing, but even after trying the system's method, it failed. According to the system, he needed more practice, and most importantly he needed to see how an expert did it.
"First things first, don't try enchant an already forged weapon, because the chances of it failing are very high."