How To Survive A Calamity

Monday.

The most dreaded day of the week.

'...I don't wanna go...'

With the first week and banquet over, the academy semester was officially beginning as of today.

Which meant, official classes were starting.

I stepped through the entrance of classroom A-1.

The bright scene of the large and expansive classroom presented itself before me. In it were a number of familiar looking students scattered around.

Some were in groups and chatting lively without seemingly a care for the world

And a few others remained alone behind their seats.

Amongst them, I spotted the family figures of a platinum blonde.

The aloof and estranged Ceres was as always leaning forward against the desk of her seat. Her steady and unrippled red eyes were drawn to the front of the class, her thoughts a mystery.

After our unexpected encounter at the training hall during the banquet, Ceres and I have had no other particular contacts with each other.

It didn't even seem like we met. And after that, neither did I see her return back to the hall again.

'It really was a one time thing. Ceres has no reason to show up at the general training hall when she has better facilities in her dorm room.' thinking that in passing, I passively shifted my gaze away from her before she could notice this time too.

Class A-1 was enviably bright and lively for a Monday morning.

'How nice it must be to be kids. I envy their vitality and optimism.'

With the banquet hosted for the first year now behind us, and after the extracurricular week, different friendship and acquaintanceship have been made.

With the exemption of only those with zero social skills, and loners.

At the same time, I have also become something of a background myself too.

No one really turned to monitor me as much as the Frist days before.

It took a single glance for me to grasp the sight of the classroom, while suppressing a sigh.

"Hm?" Just then, while i still stood next to the door, I glanced back over my shoulder and caught sight of Alex's family figure approaching from down the hallway.

He seemed to be in the friendly company of a female cadet with light purple hair, who gingerly waved before rushing off towards the opposite direction as soon as i turned.

The bright look on Alex's face said they were acquaintances at best.

...So even that bastard really could make friends after all.

"Yo." Alex spotted me in passing and waved.

Before he could say anything else or approach, I nodded mildly and walked away..

Leaving the entrance finally, I silently headed to my seat at the back.

In a few minutes, Instructor Wrenna arrived in time and promptly began homeroom.

"The calendar has truly officially began. You've had one week to understand the scheme, and adapt to the Academy's surrounding, so now the next thing step is to fill out your list and choices of special and extra courses. During that, you can freely pick from with the Combat department, Magic department, Alchemy department, or research department. And concerning each of the aforementioned main departments, and majors, more details will be explained..."

The academy was a large and truly massive institution with thousands of students and resources. But there were four main and primary faculties which was of these cadets were distribut

Faculty of Magic.

Faculty of Combat.

Faculty of Alchemy.

And the Faculty of Research.

These four principle faculties or departments held the main pillars of the Aegis academic system.

It was also mandatory for each student to belong to one of the faculties and major in specific courses or subjects by the way.

Well there were also smaller, and sub divided faculties branching underneath each of these mentioned four, but that required additional details and explanation for later.

In any case, I had to chose a Faculty, and a corresponding major too since it was necessary.

There was no problem there, since I was going to major in close combat under the combat department.

Aegis had a special and unique academic system. By having a major that fell under one of these faculties didn't necessarily restrict the cadets from not having any others, and some times in other departments.

That was the part where, 'further details and explanations ' will be given.

Without realising it early, my face subtly drifted to Alex's back upfront.

'Hmm...I wonder what department that guy will go for...'

"You have until the end of the week to make up your mind and reach a decision about your chosen departments," the glossy black haired, strict faced, and purple eyed instructor Wren added and continued. "But your course applications should be submitted by the end of the day. I believe you had enough time to make enough research."

After giving a slight and brief introduction, and informing us about some announcements here and there, the first period continued on with the cold and aloof instructor eventually rounding up in the nexct fourty minutes, to an hour.

Homeroom and the first period ended, and following our new and revised class schedule, the next class we had was Basic and General Combat Class 101.

First, I think I should make a few things clear.

In Aegis, there were three types of classes or courses.

General courses where all students, irrespective of the departments or faculties, equally attend and we're mandatory.

Specialized courses, or Special classes where students of specific faculties, departments, and majors had different courses to attend according to their corresponding parts. And just like the general classes, these were also mandatory to attend, and necessary to their departments.

And Extra courses.

The last one were actually just like additional and extra classes which weren't particularly mandatory to attend, or necessary to the students majors or departments.

They were just mostly there to gain some extra credits, and have a slight more wider range.

Extra classes weren't necessarily the same as extracurricular activities either.

And General Combat Class 101, or GCC for short, was amongst one of the many General courses which involved the entire class.

This was necessary. In the end, Awakened and Heroes, despite their affinity and skills at least had to be well familiar with combat to fight against the demons and other threats.

"Alright, listen up you twerps! This will be your first official general combat class, and from today, I instructor Derrick Greybarn will be your leading instructor for your time as first years!!"

General combat class was held outside, in one of the large empty fields behind the massive gym building and training hall.

The excessively loud person who spoke was a massive and brawny dark skinned middle aged man, with arms as thick as trees, and muscles that defined his lines and body from even underneath his equipped armor.

He had shaven brows, and short pale orange hair. His build, and demeanor have him a particularly different type of intimidating pressures. Especially from his ferocious express that seemed like he'd beat up a thug just for running past him.

Teacher Derrick's voice was so loud my head thrubbed.

He swept his gaze across the field at the entire class, and his slightly dark skinned lips pulled and curled slightly.

"Since this is only the first lesson, I'll need to first of all gauge and test out your skills to judge your average level. We don't have much time, and there are 37 of you in A-class, so each of you will pair up in two's, and then be split in two batches to maximise our time. A batch will have today, and the second batch will have the next session of this class." Instructor Derrick soundly explained in an easy to understand manner.

But there was still a remaining issue.

I looked around at all of us.

'There's 37 of us though.'

And it didn't seem like I was the only one to notice this obvious fact.

"Hahahaha!!" At the same time, the muscle bound instructor gave a rumbling laughter. Enjoy new adventures from empire

He yanked off the great sword sheathed in its scabbard and hanging behind his back before thrusting it into the ground.

There was a wide and toothy grin on his wiled looking face as he looked at us from up front

"Don't worry about the numbers," he said, and raised one finger to his chest, "I'll fill in the blank!"

The faces of some of the cadets flicked at his troubling words. Even I thought that this was a little straining, although it was to be expected I guess.

But in a case like this, shouldn't the instructor have some kind of assistant? Managing a class of this magnitude of such a class, shouldn't the instructor in charge have an assistant or two?

'Plus, If muscle Derrick plans to get involved personally, how exactly is he supposed to supervise the rest of us?' he said he'd fill in the blanks, but he should feel in his own blanks first!

I get that 37 is an odd number, the next course of action in this case would be to have one of the students participate twice, or have one exempted from the exercise entirely.

And there's what mattered.

'Ah, I was hoping I could skip out on it using that excuse too...' yes! I heard about the macho Derrick Greybarn from Adrianne, who described this terrifying looking instructor as... charming.

From that, I could vaguely guess that the first exercise would likely turn out this way, and so I was prepared to feign an excuse and step out under the pretence of lack of adequate members.

I had no talent and was the bottom of my class, Derrick wouldn't bat an eyelash for someone weak like me and let me do as I wish.

But all of that now doesn't matter.

'He's going to directly fill in the last number himself because...' I had a strange inkling as to why he'd suddenly do this.

As the cadets openly expressed their uncertainty, the feral grin on Derrick's face which put all of his white teeth on display widened and he slowly turned and gave a look towards a specific direction.n/o/vel/b//in dot c//om

"Don't worry, don't worry. I already told you..."

Yes, that was right.

The instructor of the general combat class was a muscle head and a not so closet battle junkies.

"I'll fill in for the empty seat!"

His target was no one else's but the top of the guest year class, Rank 1, Ceres Walker.

[A/N: Two bonus chapter coming soon]