The Great

Lila Fairheart: I told them to not go all out. Why didn’t they listen? Especially Aurora, she was usually trying to get me out of trouble. I guess she couldn’t resist fighting a world-class warrior.

I sighed out of frustration and worry as I knelt down to look at Aurora. She was in pretty bad shape as her Auburn hair was slightly burned at the fringes. Her face was covered in black soot and her arms as well as her entire body was covered in red burn marks. But the explosion of electricity hadn’t harmed Geon at all…..

I walked over to him as he was dusted off his shirt. He stood tall both literally and metaphorically. His clothes were slightly singed but otherwise—he practically didn’t break a sweat. He looked at me and gave me a big smile. “Wow she’s really good! Oh wait, yeah we should probably get her to medical.”

The range was in even worse shape as half of the right wall was absolutely obliterated, and there was a giant crater that was formed in the middle of the ground. Huge pieces of debris were spread around the range as I had to maneuver around them to get back to Aurora.

I began to carry Aurora on my back and walked towards the medical center. There had been an emergency wall that was erected in front of the control panel sensing the insane amount of liquor imbued attacks flying through the air. It saved me and also made it possible for me to go help Aurora.

It was actually really hard carrying her—since she was a lot more muscular than she looked, but I was used to carrying people to safety. I had the ability to restructure and modify living cell structures. It made me a very good medic and a healer on the battlefield. I could also use it for some very gruesome and offensive capabilities as well, but I always liked healing better.

There were some exceptional complications with injuries related to Aurora’s electricity attack—so I wanted to take her to the medical staff instead of me just healing her.

I began to pant a little as I walked up a flight of stairs and reached a big circular open court that had a hard floor made of smooth stone. Geon followed as we walked–eyeing Aurora’s state with slight concern.

He was cute. Maybe a little bit of an idiot from what I saw, but he was noticeably good-looking. Tall, muscular, and powerful, he was probably used to getting a lot of female attention but he didn't really act like it. He didn’t give off the playboy-attitude, which I found really nice….

The medical ward had an entirely cube-like build, with steel outlines following the edges of the cube. It had large windows and well illuminated rooms.

I walked inside and saw several medical staff in white robes. They were rolling beds and several of them had clipboards and were conversing with each other about some stuff that I couldn’t hear.

I walked over to the front desk while catching some very concerned looks as people saw me hauling an unconscious student on top of my back, “Hel—, h—, hello. She was training and got a little hurt and I think some of the injuries are a little complicated so can you help her?”

She looked at me with a slightly concerned face, “Uh yes, Lila Fairheart right? Mr Leveten, I assume?” She continued to write down information on a sheet of paper and passed it to an older gentleman who motioned for me to follow him. I passed by some people in the hallways but it was surprisingly calm for a day at a hospital. Of course the staff would never say it—since it was sort of like a jinx to say that in the medical field—but it wasn't too busy since school wasn’t in session and normal people wouldn’t be training.

Aurora was rolled in on a stroller and I sat down next to her. The doctor examined them and gave a relieved sigh, “Well the good news is that the injuries are not life threatening, but it was good that you came here. Liquor supplements will probably do the trick,” he began to put liquor tablets along with several herbs into separate squeezable-pouches.

“There’s no internal bleeding?” I eyed him with a slightly hopeful look.

“There isn’t–she will be alright. But you should really tell them to stop doing whatever they were doing until school starts. These injuries would have been quite fatal if their attacks—which I assume was what caused the injuries—were released at maximum output.”

I told them that…. I looked at Geon but I didn’t really give him a hard time. I could tell he was holding back and he was currently helping the doctor put wet towels on Aurora’s forehead–which was sweet. ”Yes sir, but I do have one question, what’s that chart on the far side of the wall?” The chart had caught my eye since I walked into the office. It had a triangle on it with different labels all color coded. The bottom row was the largest and green, the second to the bottom was blue, the middle row was orange, the row second to the top was red, and the very top was black. They were labeled with symbols which I hadn't seen anywhere else before.

“Oh those are the standard attack levels for all warriors in all empires. The levels go from light, minimal, heavy, deadly, and finally, level unstoppable. We created this system in order to categorize the severity of certain attacks and the appropriate level of medical attention needed for these different attacks,” the doctor fed Aurora some weird looking mush with a spoon.

“Unstoppable level attacks are actually banned from tournaments, but they don’t come around often. Students almost never have one of them in their arsenal. Based on how much damage she took I’d guess that she was hit by a heavy-level attack,” I looked over at Geon and he put his hands up in defense,

“I didn’t know about all that. Sorry, I’ll uh….hit her with a minimal-level attack next time. I mean, she’s not weak–I feel like doing that would be an insult,” I sighed.

This doctor is pretty good at analyzing warriors though.

I spoke with a hint of curiosity, ”So if you were to get hit with an unstoppable level attack, what would happen?”

To my surprise he answered my question seriously, “Well for one these attacks are literally unstoppable. You can’t block them or counter them in any way—it’s a guaranteed hit. The damage that comes with them can vary but usually they aren’t that drastically more powerful than deadly attacks. They aren’t usually world-destroying moves but the fact that they can’t be stopped is what makes them so deadly. Some people do have unstoppable level attacks that pack quite a punch though so if you get hit, you would probably die.”

Aurora started to wake up and I walked over to her. “Uh, my head hurts a lot,” she groaned in a muffled voice as she slowly started to blink.

“Is everyone ok, what happened to the training range?” Aurora was still slightly dazed but ok. I pulled her in and gave both her and Geon a very hard ear pull.

“Hey, ow, ow, ow—ow, sorry,” Geon frantically swatted my hands away and Aurora giggled at the sight of us. The doctor smiled and walked out. I didn’t even get to thank him, or ask him his name.

“Well, win goes to you,” Aurora sighed and leaned back into her bed.

Geon nodded, “Yeah, I really didn’t expect you to hit me with a lightning spear though—that kinda hurt”. Aurora giggled a little and Geon rubbed his cut on the side of his body.

I spoke up, “Don’t hurt yourself again before school and I’ll let you guys live.” Geon nodded and we walked out of the medical ward together.

I looked at Aurora and Geon, “Hey is the ice cream parlor open—we probably need a little something to cheer us up. We should probably get Evay out of the dorm as well. Let’s go get him.”

It was a crazy coincidence that we were actually going to share a dorm since we just happened to let Geon and Evay in on opening night. They had nowhere to go so we let them in only to find out that we were roommates. I guess it wasn’t too unlikely since there were a record low number of first years this year, and the kids with good records usually got paired up.

But we were going to be living together and I wanted us to feel more used to each other. Plus I could tell that Evay really needed to improve his social skills so doing this would help him with that…

“Sure, let’s go back to the dorm,” Aurora led the way as we passed by various students enjoying their last few days of their vacation.

We walked in the door room to see Evay up off of the couch and in the kitchen. He was strangely examining the furnaces, the coil stoves, and the cupboards like they were some alien devices. It was actually kind of funny. Aurora chuckled a little at the sight of his curiosity.

Evay looked at us with bright and excited eyes, “Oh hey guys! I wanted to show you guys this new thing I found out. Did you know that you can activate the stove with liquor!” I looked at the others and they all gave me a confused look.

“Wait what? Last time I checked you couldn’t…..” Geon looked over to where Evay’s hands were.

Evay looked confused, “What? Well how do you explain this?” Evay stuck his hands out near the fire and the stove suddenly burst into flames.

“WOAH, WOAH, WOAH, Lila help me put the fire out!” Aurora shouted and dumped a bucket of water onto the stove.

It was strange. Could Evay control fire? If he could, he had really good control over it. Most of us would have destroyed the entire dorm if we attempted to light a stove with our liquor-abilities….We had no idea who he was and what abilities he had, but he seemed to get more mysterious day by day.

“Burning down buildings is my thing—we can do it together if you want,” Geon smiled sheepishly. I took a look at Evay’s hand. It had been a little red but had healed almost immediately.

Evay shrugged, “Huh, well I thought I found something but oh well,” he moved back towards us and looked at the floor, “So what are you guys doing?”

“Well we wanted to get ice cream, are you in?” I saw him look up at us and he smiled, “Sure, uh yeah ice cream. That sounds nice”

Geon wrapped his arms around Evay and Aurora and he smiled brightly. “Let’s go then!” I laughed as I saw Evay’s face go bright red. Aurora freed herself awkwardly and ran to my side.

I smiled and whispered into Aurora’s ear, “I have a feeling that this is going to be fun.”