Heaven's Greatest Professor

She was probably the first person in the same rank who managed to give him the run for the money... Well, he did play a farce with the broom and hadn't used any void energy lest it destroyed the broom. But she similarly suppressed him through sheer skills, without using her energy.

"Good thing you hadn't drawn your energy against her," Caleb said. "If you did, your defeat would have been totally unsightly."

Warden raised an eyebrow, asking what was that about.

"Her power makes any kind of attack of energy obsolete," Milia said from the embrace of her brother. "Most people cannot even land a blow on the captain. You can be proud of your accomplishment."

Then he recalled something he was meaning to ask, but forgot about it. She was probably the Agnes he had heard from Jason, considering their description of power was similar.

"Your Captain... I mean Captain Agnes," Warden said, clearing his thoughts. "How old is she?"

Caleb frowned at him.

"I mean," Warden coughed before they thought he was some kind of pervert. "From a friend, I heard about someone like her… wondering if they are the same person…"

Warden didn't know what else to say. The reverence and loyalty they had for the captain was deep, he didn't want them to have the wrong impression.

"Maybe," Milia answered. "Captain Agnes is somewhat famous. She won the Interschool tournament in her years after all."

"Hmm," Warden hummed, considering. If that made sense, then Jason and Anges should be about the same age.

Unfortunately, it was incredibly hard to discern one's age through their exterior… Still, considering the time dilation of this place, she could be anywhere between twenty to three years of age… she could be more, though Warden believed she should have advanced to Silver if she had that much of time.

Now, Warden couldn't help but wonder what kind of crime she could have caused to be drafted to the 16th infantry… Just the 6 years of mandatory service wouldn't land her as captain of the convicted infantry as far as he was concerned.

His contemplation went nowhere, so he discards it. And neither did he ask anything more… not that he wasn't curious… just the he felt it was wrong to ask these behind someone's back.

After done with all the menial labour, Warden sat in solace in one spot and brought out his instruments and a breastplate to work on his rune smithing…

That caught everyone's attention. They had seen him work before, but in most of the times, they weren't resting like this… Most time, when Warden runsmith, he seeks an empty spot of watching gaze and work on solace. So far none had bothered him during those sessions… but this time it seemed they couldn't help themselves when he was just beginning to work.

"So, you're an accomplished Runesmith?" Caleb asked.

"Depends on what you call accomplish," Warden muttered, letting out a sigh.

"Can you repair my spear?" Caleb didn't waste much time to get to the topic.

Warden shot the weapon a look. It looks fine from afar, but he would need to look deeper into the scripts to know what's wrong with it. Still, it didn't feel like a problem he couldn't solve.

"Maybe," he said. "I need to see for myself."

Caleb wasted no time to walk up to him and handed him the spear. "It's an old one, had been with me for about eight years now," he said with a sigh. "I think the Tier-4 Empower rune is damaged from how it doesn't augment my energy all that much."

"You're right," Warden said, pouring his awareness into the weapon. The spiritual awareness made it so easier to check the essence of things. "But it has another fault… the amplification rune is faulty as well… and from the look of it, it had been faulty for years. Why haven't you repaired it yet?"

Caleb shrugged. "Didn't feel like a need for it."

Warden frowned. Caleb didn't give much vibe of spirituality… if he wasn't wrong then perhaps Caleb's Spirit attribute didn't even reach double digits, which made it almost impossible for the fellow to ever advance higher than Iron. His control didn't feel bad… on the contrary with the little amount of energy he had he was masterful with them.

"So can you repair it?" Caleb asked.

"I can," Warden said. "And it probably wouldn't even take a quarter of an hour."

Caleb raised an eyebrow. "I'll give one hundred… no two hundred contribution points for that."

Warden shook his head.

"You want more…" Caleb shot a resigned look, wondering if repairing the spear would be worth it, considering he always had little energy to spare.

"No… you don't have to give me the credits," Warden said. "You're a Spear Master, correct? You can repay me just by sparring."

Caleb narrowed his eyes.

"Perhaps you have already seen, it hasn't awakened my Intent for long… there's still many things for me to learn."

"And you want to learn through sparring?" Caleb asked.

"Isn't that the way of the spear?" Warden gleamed.

Caleb met his eyes and laughed out loud. "Deal."

"Okay, give me some time, I'll fix your spear."

Warden got to work, unlaying all the scripts presented in Caleb's spear. he began connecting the eroded runes to the shell formation. The work wasn't much, considering only a few eroded runes could make the faulty formation faulty. But considering, Caleb had used this pear without repairing it for years, there were hundreds of faulty and eroded runes.

Warden wiped them and drew new ones. to work on tier-4 runes wasn't stressful and even less so when repairing. He was done in just ten minutes.

"Done," he said, handing the spear to Caleb. By the time, the captain and Kevin were back.

Surprisingly, they have surrounded him with their weapons in hand, as if waiting for him to repair their weapons.

"Can you look at my armour and see what's wrong with it?" Find your next read on m,vlemp _yr.