Bond Master

Playing The Game

With everyone strictly limited by their small starting reserves of stamina and Mana, the intensive defensive drilling inside the concrete bunker could not be sustained continuously. It quickly evolved into a series of long, mandatory rest breaks, which seamlessly transformed into a highly competitive game played between Ren Barrett and the first-year student mages. Even while sitting flat on the cold stone floor to recover his breath and settle his racing heart, Ren never truly lowered his guard.

His newly enhanced senses remained hyper-focused on the firing lines across the subterranean hall. If a casting student grew lazy with their physical form due to fatigue, or if an incoming elemental projectile was noticeably weak, unstable, or slow-moving, Ren would instantly spring to his feet or lash out with an iron-studded spiked gauntlet, swatting the attack cleanly out of the air before it could come anywhere near the large iron targets arrayed behind his perimeter.

To the highly trained gaze of the class supervisor—the lone veteran academy professor assigned to evaluate the dozen lower-tier mages in this introductory block—this spontaneous game was the single best source of motivation he had witnessed from his students in months.

The recruits assigned to this specific subterranean hall were the chronic underperformers of the current elite intake. They were young men and women who lacked natural self-motivating drive, and their raw elemental abilities were normally far too weak to justify the allocation of a personal instructor, even one at the modest military rank that Sergeant Rita Corvina had achieved.

Left to their own devices, they would have spent the morning half-heartedly launching basic spells at static blocks, rapidly growing bored and complaining about their lack of progress.

Now, however, the entire atmosphere of the concrete bunker had been utterly revitalized. Watching a scrawny commoner first-year student from the industrial foundries successfully knock their spells aside with a pair of physical weapons ignited a fierce, collective spark of competitive pride within the casting block.

They were pouring every remaining ounce of their Mana into inventing creative casting paths, desperate to slip a single elemental projectile past Ren’s perimeter. The supervisor stroked his jaw as he watched Ren's fluid, instinctual reflexes, shaking his head in quiet astonishment.

To his experienced eyes, the young Bond Master, commanding the unique Bone-Plate Rend skill, was displaying an incredible rate of adaptation. At this rate, Ren was highly likely to completely eclipse Sergeant Corvina in raw combat effectiveness by the conclusion of his very first semester.

Corvina herself was a reliable soldier, but she was no legendary prodigy; it had taken her three long years of brutal border service just to claw her way to the middle tier of Ascended Rank fighting strength. She lacked the spark of true genius when it came to complex magical pathways, but she was an exceptional martial artist and a superb, practical teacher. Not only had she successfully lit a fire under her own unusual student, but her grueling defensive drill was now forcing the academy's weakest mages to train harder than they ever had in their lives.

Ren and the mages continued their relentless back-and-forth game until the distant noon bells began to chime across the academy’s eastern sectors, signaling the end of the morning block. With the arrival of the midday hour, the daily schedule for the first-year student class shifted dramatically. The mages were required to move to the theoretical lecture halls to memorize complex runic configurations, study elemental matrices, and learn the structural theory of new spells.

Ren, on the other hand, was scheduled to transition into close-quarters unarmed combat training, interspersed with introductory lectures on the foundational care of bound creatures and research assignments regarding the historical methods used to increase a monster's power beyond the standard limitations of its species.

"Hey, Foundry kid, come with us to the district cafeteria for lunch," one of the first-year student mages called out as the group began winding down, lowering their focus devices and sliding their wands into their uniform holsters. "It looks like you awakened an exceptionally cool combat utility right from the start with those ranged kinetic spikes. Most warrior classes are incredibly boring to watch until they're at least reaching the upper tiers of the Awakened Rank and can finally start hitting targets more than two meters away from their own blades."

Ren turned his head to look at the speaker, rolling down his sleeves to conceal the faint, pulsing red mark running the length of his forearm. The speaker was a tall, remarkably buxom girl with a cascade of bright blonde hair. Over the last few days, the massive influx of physical energy brought on by the Divine Serum—and significantly accelerated by his soul-bond backflow with Grim—had triggered an explosive growth spurt in Ren's baseline physique.

Looking at her now, he realized she was only a tiny bit taller than he was. A quiet wave of satisfaction washed over him; at this rate of physical development, his body would reach a completely normal, formidable height before he was forced to attend large-scale lectures with the wider student body, preventing his old reputation as a scrawny, undernourished foundry kid from preceding him through the academy halls. At the very least, within this specific casting hall, his relentless performance earned him the genuine respect of his peers.

Ren gladly accepted the invitation, falling into step with the mages as they exited the heavy iron doors of the concrete bunker. They walked along the sweeping stone pathways that carved through the academy’s immaculate grounds, heading directly toward the specialized academic sectors.

When they arrived at the grand dining hall of the casting district, the sheer scale of the culinary resources provided to the elite classes became instantly clear. The serving counters were piled high with an astonishing variety of nutrient-dense foods, designed to satisfy the altered biology of newly awakened humans.

Ren moved down the service line with a large ceramic platter, purposefully stacking it high with thick, heavy cuts of raw monster meat. Ensuring that the surrounding students were locked in deep conversation and not paying close attention to his movements, Ren took out his personal flask and lightly drizzled a measured, generous portion of the mana-infused monster blood over the pile of raw flesh.

With a single, concentrated thought, Ren reached deep into his mind and unlocked the heavy spiritual gateway of his Containment Vault. The response was instantaneous. A faint, invisible ripple passed over the platter, and the entire pile of blood-soaked monster meat simply vanished into thin air, pulled directly into the mental space to sustain his hidden companion.