Chapter 72 - Duelling and Healing Classes

The duelling class was held in the biggest training ground in the academy. The ground housed the 200 or so people who decided to sign up for the duelling classes. There were many Elders teaching the class due to the large amount of students opting for it. The class was split into groups and each Elder was in charge of teaching at most 15 students. There were two large duelling fields and a open hit style classroom for each group. You can guess the size of the size of the training ground with this information.

I was ȧssigned to Elder Akash's group which also had Rohit and surprisingly Aryan in it. I was happy to see the familiar faces in my class. They introduced me to the rest of the group. The people in the group all had good magical strengths near the same level. Also everyone except me belonged to 19-24 age group.

In the group of 15, there were only 2 girls and by looking around the training field I found that it was more or less the same in other groups. This was surprising since when I looked around in the morning in the meditation grounds, the ratio of men and women was almost equal. It was no large disparity like this. When I asked about it to one of the girls, she said that most tribes do not allow girls to take up duelling field since it was male dominated and against their tribe's culture. The girls were only encouraged to take up Healing and Potions related fields as it required less physical strain. The Indian society, both mundane and magical was like that, I was informed.

There were also two non-Indians in my group. Both were from Asian countries near here. One was from Thailand and another was from Singapore. These countries had very small magical population and hence the children in these communities were taught by their parents or relatives in their own homes and only when a child wanted to further pursue his magical studies was he sent here or to one of the Chinese sects. This was preferred since Chinese sects had many restrictions.

Coming to the Duelling class, it focused mainly on the practical side of duelling. We were expected to be ready with our own spells for the duels. Hence despite my late entry I did not have a lot to catch up on.

The class started with Elder Akash directing us to run a few ŀȧps around the huge ground as warm-up. We were joined in the run by the other groups in the training ground. This was followed by a few warm up exercises to avoid unnecessary injuries. Elder Akash then pit the 15 of us against each other in mock duelling battles. Elder Akash observed all of them and when a battle was over, he gave us his views on what a did wrong and what he had to improve on.

To my disappointment and shame, I lost all of my 12 out of my 14 matches. Every one of them except two newcomers like me had more than 2 years of duelling experience and destroyed me very easily in the matches. Everyone had different and unique styles and before I could find ways to defeat them they easily knock me out. Rohit it seemed like was holding back quite a lot in the last duel just so that I had a chance to pass the test. He defeated me in a few minutes in today's match by moving a lot faster than last time and knocking me out. Aryan cast unique and powerful spells that I did not know how to defend against. One of my group mates named Akhil was able to shoot spells out his eyes and caught me off-guard. I was told that it was his tribes speciality and none of the other tribes were able to replicate it. Thankfully even after all the battles, I was not physically hurt and I did not have to get treatment otherwise I would have missed my Healing classes.

Elder Akash called me aside after the mock duels and told me what I lacked was spells that subdued people and the experience duelling otherwise I had both the physical and magical strength required to defeat them. He recommended some books related to non-lethal duelling spells to make up for my lack of spells and then the class resumed.

The next part of class was dodging. Elder Akash would send small stones at us at high speeds and we had to dodge without using spells. I excelled in this due to my improved eye sight and reaction speeds due to my falcon animagus and faced no problems.

With that today's Duelling classes ended. Tomorrow there will be mock duels again but instead of dodging practice, we will have another practice. I was quite happy with how the class was conducted. The duel defeats brought me back to the reality and taught me that even if I was magically stronger than everyone and knew a lot about magic, I could still be defeated easily by someone weaker than me. It was a good lesson to learn. In real life I could not afford these defeats as it could lead to my death but here I could afford to lose and learn from my mistakes.

After a short rest and lunch, it was time for my Healing class. I am expecting to face a lot of problems in this class. All the healing knowledge I have learned till now is in English while here it is totally different. The people here have their own spells and their own way of doing things. I will not be able to use my past knowledge here and I will have to learn what is taught here from the ground up. The class may end up as a waste of time for me.

The class ended up being a lecture. We sat in our seats listening to Elder Yamini talk about various medical things. This was the first time I was seeing a female Elder in the academy. She looked like she was over 60 years old and wore the traditional clothing called saree but unlike the male Elders clothing, her saree was colourful.

The class was too boring to me. I knew all of the things that she was teaching and I felt it was a waste of time. All the information was same just different names.

I needed to do something about this class since I was sure after the first class that it was going to be a waste of my time. So I met Elder Yamini after class and explained my situation to her. After a few minutes of interoggation she understood my situation and gave me a way out of it.

She listed out some 10 books to me and told me that I had to memorize all of them in three days. For these three days I was given permission to skip the class but after the deadline was over, I will be required to write a test to check my knowledge and if I pass, she will ask a Master healer to take me as an apprentice. If I fail, I will be kicked out of the class and will not be allowed to attend the class again.

The ȧssignment was quite challenging but I felt it was an easy thing to do so I agreed. After thanking her for giving me such a chance, I left the room and walked towards my next destination. The academy library.