Rose had looked out for Lenny at the ranking but had been unable to find him. She thought they could encourage each other, or at least she would be able to heal him between rounds, but he was nowhere to be found. It turned out that that would be unnecessary, however, as there were a couple of hired healers frantically tending to the worst of the injuries.
For a moment, she wondered if she should help but knew she needed to save her strength. She thought back to her training with Mother Mercy. "To save others, you must live." This was usually followed by a flurry of blows. And each time, as she thought she was catching up, the Madonna would increase the speed and strength of her attacks. In this way, she'd gradually gotten better, increasing her skill with the quarterstaff bit by bit, until the point that she thought she could handle herself quite well. "Surely, I should score highly?" She thought to herself.
She had found Harry not long after that, who was engaged in a fight of his own. There were moveable walls in the training hall, which had partitioned the room into smaller cells. They seemed to be re-enforced with some kind of protection against their attacks. A Spirit Tech creation no doubt, with a significant price tag. Still, she wondered how more people were not seriously hurt during the sparring, even with the speed ability users stepping in before critical blows. It was then she realised that no one above the green sash seemed to be part of the group assessment. She was sure she had seen the Salamander boy enter the same portal as them, so presumably their assessment must be taking place elsewhere.
For the first round, each person was paired with someone of the same colour sash to see if they should move up or down the rankings. Rose's first opponent was a wind user, and she'd found herself defending wind slashes from many different angles. She did well blocking the attacks, moving her staff gracefully with little wasted movement, but as the slashes were clear with subtle white edges, they were difficult to see, and a few had been able to get through.
Her opponent smiled seeing blood. But as Rose rubbed her arms, the cuts practically sealed in front of her eyes.
"A healing ability? How quaint…"
She leapt forward, throwing out two more wind slashes but received a strike in the face in return that knocked her out cold.
Harry had caught the end of her fight, and though they had exchanged words briefly, they both realised that it was unusual for them to speak to each other one-on-one like this.
"Where is he, do you think?" asked Rose.
Harry simply shrugged, distracted by something he had seen. He was quiet after that and eventually made an excuse to do his own thing, preparing for his fights.
Rose's next opponents were a summoner, who brought forward a strange, scaled lizard creature to fight on his behalf, and a girl who could produce long bone spikes from her forearms. Both were green sashes and considerably stronger than her previous opponent. She put up a good fight but was simply outmatched. After losing both fights, she went on to win three of her next four and ended up in the 165th place out of 250 students. She had not done great, but not terribly either. She was about middle of the yellow sashes, the largest of the seven groups.
The coloured sashes, barring a few exceptions, had turned out to be a relatively good indicator of fighting ability. After all, the defence boost and ability itself provided by spirit essence were usually pretty effective in one-on-one fights, especially in a scenario like this, where no one knew each other's abilities. Not to mention that many of those with higher ability levels were the children of stronger factions, who had been trained for many years.
There was one standout, however. The young woman from their section with a red sash had come 209th. While this was fairly low out of a group of 250, it was ahead of all the other red sashes, most of the orange sashes and even one or two yellow sashes too.
This had not gone unnoticed, and the weapons instructors were currently discussing the student.
"She's outworking them," said Master Berg, a muscular man with long blonde hair with grey streaks. His thick, tanned frame was covered in a dark brown light armour that left his arms exposed, revealing serpent tattoos with the tails intertwined in intricate knots.
"She'll not survive the first outing," said Master Mancini. His hair was also long, but white and covered by a long flowing black robe.
"I'll take that bet," replied Master Berg.
"Please, you'll simply set her with a strong group."
"Fine, I bet that, not only she'll survive, but she'll be at least a yellow sash in next year's grading."
"I'll take that bet," said Master Mancini.
But before they could agree on a wager, the girl looked at him strangely. It was clear she had overheard their conversation, or at least enough to catch their drift.
"Girl," the large man said. "What is your name?"
"Valentina. But my friend's call me Vee."
"Vee, my name is Master Berg, but you can call me Erik. If you wish to learn how to fight, sign up for the hand-to-hand combat class."
Vee paused for a moment before answering. "I'll think about it."
He laughed in response. It was a deep belly laugh and those around began to stare at the strange man.