96 More Bullies

By the end of the class, all of the dummies were still in perfect condition. Regardless of what everyone tried, they couldn't even scratch them.

Oli gathered with Yeter and Netra so they could all go Vloz together.

"Can I join you?"

The group turned to see Karos, and Oli smiled. "Of course! All you had to do was ask. Let's go!"

Together, the four of them headed off for the library. They found him on the first floor, helping a few novices select some new battle arts. After he finished helping them, he came over to see them. "How can I help?"

"Is it possible to get dummies installed in our cultivation rooms?" asked Oli. "It would help a ton and it would be great motivation for the other members of the advanced classes."

"I can't help you with that," stated Vloz, shaking his head. "They've already been installed so there's nothing else I can do."

"Wait, really?"

"Really. We did it while you were in class today," replied Vloz. "That way you wouldn't have to wait too long to get started."

"That's great!" Oli looked back at Yeter and chuckled, "Sorry, Yeter, it seems like we've got to get started right away."

"Actually, Oli I have a request."

Surprised, Oli turned around to meet Karos' gaze. "What's up?"

"Can we spar?" asked Karos with an excited smile. "From what I saw in class, we've both grown a lot. I don't think I can beat you just yet, but I still want to test my strength. So, can we?"

Oli's head tilted in thought before he laughed, "Sure, why not? Will outside the library work?"

"Let's go!" Not waiting another second, Karos bolted out the door with his lightning-like speed.

"Oh! This will be good!" Yeter quickly followed after Karos, excited to watch and learn a few new things.

Netra glanced at Oli. "Since you got them so excited, you should actually try. I'd like to see how strong you really are."

With a sigh, Oli waved goodbye to Vloz and left with Netra. They easily found Karos and Yeter outside.

In typical Yeter-like fashion, Yeter had charged at Karos with a stomp attack and was evaded in the blink of an eye.

"Calm down, Yeter! I'm the one he's facing, not you," chuckled Oli.

"But I want to play too!" whined the stallion. "I'm just warming him up anyway. If he couldn't dodge that, then he wouldn't have any hope against you."

"Fine, fine. Just back up and let us spar first. Then, maybe, Karos and I will play around with you."

"Okay!"

"Good, now that's he's not interfering, should we start?" Karos asked, brandishing a warm smile.

"You can go first." Earth essence gathered around Oli, covering his entire body and slowly compacting. It wasn't anywhere near as thin as his father's essence armor, but he was glad that he could at least make some kind of essence armor, even if it was very basic and fundamental.

"Alright, then I'll test out my offense with your defense. Here I come!"

The lynx almost disappeared, traveling at incredible speed toward Oli. Lightning essence danced over his fur, yet it seemed to be calming down. Its movements were tamer than lightning should be and followed a guided course, though the lightning was still wild and rampant.

Just as Karos appeared in front of Oli and struck his hand forward, all of the lightning around his body madly rushed into his paw and directly into his attack.

Despite his earth essence defenses having a natural advantage against lightning essence, Oli's blocking arm was still forced back. A patch of his earth essence armor was forcibly broken by the mad lightning.

Taking a few deep breaths, both Oli and Karos backed away laughed.

"Wow… That's a strange battle art," mentioned Oli. "You let stagnant lightning on your body rush to your attack toward the point of impact, using its sudden momentum to push it into a single point of mass destruction. That's scary…"

Karos added, "To think your earth essence armor was able to block it without you needing to do anything else… You always surprise my Oli. I didn't know you found such a battle art."

Oli laughed but didn't say a word. He didn't want to mention that his essence armor was a concept created from a battle art and not an actual battle art. It wasn't perfect, but Oli understood that his father's Infinite Compression art was an incredible battle art with many applications in defense or offense.

"Let's go again!"

"Try me!"

Both youths clashed again and again, glad to test their strikes on an actual opponent.

Karos was very glad to have the test dummy since they taught him how to better focus his attacks and he could make general tests of his strength. But putting the attacks up against a living person was the application of the knowledge he had gained from his day with the dummy.

And now that he knew for sure that what he did with the dummy helped him, Karos was confident on how to better use the dummy to maximize his training.

Oli was glad he could test his essence control over and over again. It would speed up his comprehension of the Infinite Compression art and would allow him to make small tweaks to gradually increase its strength.

"Not bad for some novices."

Oli and Karos broke apart and looked toward the new spectators. They frowned as they saw two familiar faces behind two unfamiliar faces.

One of the youth in the lead continued, "I heard that you bullied my friends. From what I can see, you're strong enough to face early adepts. But what if you faced a high adept?"

Suddenly, that lynx who acted like the group leader disappeared and reappeared in front of Oli with his back to Karos. "Young Master Karos, please don't get involved in this. This guy and his friends fought bullied some of the weaker adepts, so I'm here to show him that a novice shouldn't be acting above an adept."

"We're in the middle of sparring. If you interfere with that, then I'll have to get involved," stated Karos, squinting at the lynx between him and Oli.

"I thought you'd say that…" sighed the lynx. "Jinter, keep Young Master Karos busy but don't hurt him. Just get in the way."

The second unfamiliar figure, a wildebeest, smiled. "You've got it Haldeck!"

Just then, that wildebeest charged at Karos while earth essence gathered around him. It was much thicker than Oli's defenses, making good use of his superior plane's greater quantity of essence.

Karos tried to force his way past the wildebeest, but all the wildebeest would do is get in the way. And the wildebeest's essence armor would barely shake against Karos. It was a total mismatch.

"Now, let's see what you've got!" laughed Haldeck.

Oli instantly created his biggest earthen hammer and swung it at the nearing lynx.

Haldeck's speed was even greater, making it very difficult for people to react to him, let alone touch him.

The only way Oli managed to find Haldeck's true path of attack was thanks to his soul. He sent out some spiritual energy to fill a four-krin wide bubble. As Haldeck moved into close combat, Oli could guess where he was going.

At that speed, Oli had no hope of hitting the lynx, but he could kat least block.

As the lynx's first lightning coated claw rushed at Oli, it was swatted aside by Oli's giant hammer.

Startled, Haldeck shook his head. "Not even most of my classmates can do what you just did. You'll definitely be in the advanced class, but for now, you're still just a novice."

Then, a look of fright filled Haldeck's eyes. He swung his tail around but hit nothing. As he looked to the side, he found Netra, who had almost landed a sneak attack but instead dodged his tail.

"So, you're the girl with perfect dark essence," stated the lynx. "I won't lie, that was terrifying. I didn't think it was possible for someone to be so invisible before."

"Oh? Is that so?"

That calm, gentle voice caused everyone's spines to seize up and waves of goosebumps to travel over their bodies.

Everyone stopped what they were doing and looked directly in front of Haldeck between him and Oli, the same place where the voice originated. There stood a giant leopard with blood-red patches, eyeing Haldeck into submission.

"H-headmaster…"

"Silence," continued Vloz. "I saw the whole incident, so I don't need to hear your side of the story. You and your "friends" have done enough. I'll be contacting your chiefs and parents about this. You may even be suspended from the field trip coming up."

"But--"

"Shut up! There's no use arguing when you're clearly the one who was looking for trouble. If you don't want trouble, then don't go causing it," continued Vloz. "Now, get lost! If I find this happening again, then we'll take expulsion from the academy into consideration."

Without another word, the bullies scurried away, not daring to look back at Vloz.

Vloz looked at Oli and the others. "You did well blocking that attack. Sorry for not interfering sooner, but I thought that you could learn something from that quick exchange. Take care."

And just like that, Vloz vanished into thin air, leaving the youths laughing and in awe.