NOVEL NEXT 47: An Unfortunate Shoulder Bump
Watching the man who was holding the pointed rod slide it away after a couple seconds, Astrid breathed out a sigh of relief. It was a little weird he had taken it out in the first place, but at least he hadn’t become a feral animal or something, stabbing everyone without reason...
The hallway was silent as they walked, only filled by the sound of Estelle’s heels clicking against the ground.
Given Estelle’s dancing ability though, Astrid was one-hundred percent sure Estelle could’ve walked without producing any sound. She must’ve been doing it just to intimidate the administrators...
After what felt like an eternity of walking through the lecture hall area, the group made their way down a set of stairs to arrive at a smaller, more traditional hallway. With a wall on one side, the table-to-ceiling windows on the other side allowed for everyone in the group to get a clear look into the classrooms.
It... looked like a normal classroom.
Unbothered, Estelle opened the door and stuck her hand into the classroom. She released another blast of darkness, Astrid raised her eyebrows as she watched it rush through the room. It moved fast- if she blinked at the wrong time, Astrid might not have even realized what Estelle had done...
Moving forward after the administrators pulled off another hot switch, the group snaked their way through the school as Estelle took some minor notes on her clipboard while walking.
Flashing a smile and a nod towards some of the students as they walked by, Astrid tried to figure out what age they were to no avail. They looked... some age, neither old nor young. Perhaps just alive.
That was about the best Astrid could guess...
“Alright, the next place we’re coming up on is probably the highest area of interest.” The current administrator guide motioned forward as they came upon a set of luminescent metal doors. “The ultra-modern, cutting edge training facilities, aimed at-”
“Yeah, yeah, I don’t care, stop your advertising pitch,” Estelle waved her hand. “It’s not like I'm a prospective student. I’m assuming it’s quite full right now, correct? Since we haven’t seen too many students in other areas of the school.”
“Y-Yes,” The man nodded, pressing a keycard against the door. “The students should be training their bones to dust right now.”
With the doors sliding open, the entire group fell quiet as rave music filled the hallway. Watching a mosh pit form right in front of their eyes as a couple students began crowd surfing, Estelle just clicked her tongue and tapped her foot. “Training their bones to dust huh? Looks a little more like partying their bones to dust.”
Walking off before anyone could reply, Estelle slid on a pair of sunglasses to both shield her eyes from the light and hide them from the students.
Following along behind Estelle, Astrid tried to nod and smile towards the students they came across as the music faded and the party halted.
“What’s up,” Estelle laughed, standing in the center of the enclosed training area. “I’m sure you all know who I am. Sorry to shatter your hopes for a private training session, but I’m actually here on an inspection today.”
With a few of the more timid students beginning to tear up and quiver, Estelle hushed them before shifting her weight onto one leg. “Don’t worry, it’s not about how hard you all are working. It’s more that I’m taking a look around the school for some official Library of Truth business.”
Gesturing behind her to the worried posse of administrators whispering among themselves, Estelle grinned, pulled her sunglasses down, and winked at the frozen students. “If anything, they’re the ones who are in the hot seat.”
Watching Estelle's entire exchange with the students, Astrid couldn’t help but be in awe of Estelle’s demeanor... Faced with so many people, Estelle managed to reassure them all! She got them to all start idolizing her!
Just... How...? Astrid didn’t feel like Estelle had said anything too crazy.
Though, Astrid had to say, Estelle’s jokes were beginning to cause some second-hand embarrassment.
Shooing the students away, Estelle motioned toward the rest of the room. “Just keep training, pretend I’m not here. Or, well, if you want, keep partying, I don’t care if you do that either.”
Seeing the rest of the students scurrying off to train, Estelle waved off the administrators as well. “You all can just stay put, it’s not like I need your help with looking around a training field.”
Estelle then spun to look at Astrid and Valencia, “You two though, want to come along? Might as well, you know?”
Brightening up and doing some eye-to-eye, nonverbal communication with Valencia, Astrid gave a few quick nods before dragging Valencia along by the hand. “I’m curious, what do you think they’ll have?”
“Honestly, I assume a lot of nice stuff,” Estelle answered while falling in step with them. “The training facilities here are as close as you’ll get to top-notch without actually going to the best facilities directly offered by one of the three major organizations.”
Murmuring an “mhm,” Astrid took a second to process Estelle’s glob of words. Wasn’t that just a long way of saying “second-tier”?
One awkward pause later, Astrid gave Estelle a couple pats on the shoulder before taking a look around.
The training room, as a whole, was kind of crazy. Astrid felt it was straight out of... well... fiction almost. How much money could it have cost? They had come in from the main entrance, but because the training room they had come into was so expansive, there were... what, five other entrances?
Flanking several sections of the wall were huge glass windows making a second floor training room visible, some hallways, some pathways stretching further outward, and more.
Within the huge gymnasium were several sections—all of which now filled by training students.
“Where to first...” Estelle tapped her heel. Scrunching her eyebrows as she met the gaze of a few more lecherous students, Estelle glared and sent a mountain of pressure toward the group. “Alright, let’s go away from those people.”
Nodding and making some light conversation with some of the students they met along the way, Astrid couldn’t help but widen her eyes at some of the more impressive displays of power. Some people were sending cascading waterfalls, others were destroying entire sections of the compacted dirt floor, while others were just... wreaking havoc against other students.
There was a target range where people could test ranged attacks against dummies and targets. With screens along the side, Astrid noticed they had calculations displaying statistics relating to its depth of penetration, impact force, temperature, and more all laid out on one screen.
Another section was an open training field, with dummies, for the testing of physical feats, then there was a plain section full of outlined sparring fields for dueling students. Among all the sections though, if Astrid had to pick a favorite, she’d pick the environmental sparring simulator that took up a whole quarter of the area.
In it were, again, more empty training fields for sparring amongst students. However, in this area there were some crazy fake environments. One was a rocky forest with a stream running through it, another was a lava field, and a third was a desert wasteland.
Crazy stuff really...
Astrid train of thought, though, was put on hold when a couple of students sauntered up and bumped shoulders with Valencia.
