New rivals

Soon after my talk with Mr. Tom I head to the cafeteria. Getting there, all of the other members are waiting and a big celebration begins.

I meet up with Gora, Lumiere and Ruina who have reserved a table for the four of us.

Apparently, it was just like Tom said at the end, including me and the blue-haired guy, apparently only five contestants have passed. But I have no idea how the other three might even look like. I didn’t get to see them back in the grounds, and I’m certainly not finding them in the middle of this crowd.

People who I never met before come up to me to shake my hand and pat me on the back.

Salazar also shows up:

“Well well well! My keen eye was right once again! Ha ha! This will be fantastic, my comrade, because now we are rivals!” He lightly hits my chest with his fist.

“I always dreamed of this! Two people sharing a common goal! Helping one another through challenges and competitiveness! How exciting! I must go now, for I must train to be sure to beat you. See you later my rival!” He darts off into the celebration.

“What was that about?” I ask Gora.

“Salazar was the “Ace” of the last exam. Believe it or not he has a lot of potential. And since you’re clearly the ace on this one, now you have a rival!”

Just thinking that I’ll have to interact with him again makes me tired.

But at the same time, it is not all that bad.

It’s been a long time since I celebrated my successes, so I let myself go.

We all party the night away. Better to savor this moment. Getting accepted as a recruit was step one. Next up is where the real hard work begins.

To be able to take down slumberwalkers by myself I got to give my all during training.

After the party starts to calm down I head to my room and go to sleep.

I wake up the next day extra early and I rush to the entrance of the mesa. There I get to see Gora and the rest one more time before they leave on another sighting.

“Promise you won’t push yourself too much, I’ll get worried otherwise!” Ruina says while pulling me down so she can pat me in the head.

“Train hard and take care. Remember to take breaks, hydrate and head to the infirmary in case of injury.” Lumiere says while shaking my hand.

“Do your best! And uh, bye, I guess. See you later.” Gora once again gets awkward in front of the other two. They have smirks on their faces.

They head into the carriage and head off, waving goodbye back at me.

I return to the cafeteria and after eating my breakfast, I notice the HQ is a lot emptier now. It looks like a good number of members were staying a little longer to see the potential exam. but now that is over, they have left in sighting quests. Almost everyone remaining are other recruits in training like Salazar. Just waiting for their first missions so they can become official members.

I head to the training grounds, getting there I only see two others. The small guy with blue hair and another girl.

As I get closer the girl approaches me in a rush and before I can say anything she introduces herself.

“Hi!! It is nice to meet you Mr. Ace!” She extends her hand for me.

She has messy medium orange hair and animal ears peeking from them. A single fang tooth from her top canine is also visible.

Looking at the shape of her ears and her messy hair really reminds me of a lion’s mane. Could she be a dire lion or something?

“I’m Lafanda!”

I shake her hand. I’m about to open my mouth to introduce myself when a green snake gets right up to my face and licks my cheek with it’s tongue.

“What the?!”

I jump back and take a better look at it to see where it could have possibly come from. Its body is coming from behind Lafanda. Was she hiding it there?

“And this is Mimi! She already likes you!”

As she introduces Mimi, Lafanda does a twirl in place. I can see the snake is actually coming from her lower back. It’s a part of her body.

“Wait are you?”

“Ding ding ding! We’re Chimera Kin. We’ve been together our entire lives.”

“I’m Hasega… No, sorry. I’m Akihiko of Human Kin.”

“Oh my goddess I knew it!” Lafanda gives me a tight hug. Mimi joins in rubbing her head on my face.

“Wha- what this this for?”

“Were both of rare kins! That makes us practically family!”

“It does?”

“Of course it does. Have you seen another chimera here? Or another human?”

“I guess not.”

“See. If we were to look around until we found more of those like us we would search forever. Is way better to just be together like this.”

“Theres definitely some truth to that.”

She finally let’s go of me.

(If we count with Mimi as part of the ones that passed the exam there’s one more missing.)

“Where is the last member? I heard there were five that passed the exam?”

“Apparently she won’t be training to go on sightings, so she is practicing separately from us.”

“I see…”

I guess not everyone is as eager to fight slumberwalker as the rest here.

“Now come on you two should get along. Is going to be only the four of us from now on.” She starts pushing me towards the small guy and Mimi goes around and pull him towards me.

“Do we really have to?” He grumbles.

“But of course! The people you pass the exam are always the ones you go on your first mission together and eventually become your main team to go on sightings. Is only natural we try to get along!”

He looks extremely annoying. I decide to be the bigger man and take the initiative.

“Look, I’m sorry about yesterday. But what Lafanda says is right. If we are going to be on the same team, we should at least try to get along. Once again, I’m Akihiko of Human Kin.” I extend my hand for him.

“Alright, you win. The name is Juni of Slime Kin.” He shakes my hand.

“Slime Kin? Oh, now I get it, that’s why you…”

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN THAT’S WHY I’M TINY!!!”

Juni jumps up grabbing me by the collar again.

“I WAS GOING TO SAY YOUR HAIR IS BLUE AND SKIN SLIPERRY. DON’T TAKE OUT ON ME IF YOU HAVE A SORE SPOT ABOUT YOUR HEIGHT!!!”

“WHY YOU!!”

We begin to roll around the ground grabbing onto one another.

“Oh, look at them Mimi, just like us when we were kids. I didn’t know you guys were so close to each other. You’re practically brothers.”

“WE ARE NOT!” Me and Juni say in unison.

“Good to see the new recruits are getting along. Ha ha ha”

The three of us turn around and see a member of the guild approaching. He’s full of grey feathers all around his body. He reminds me of a Harpy.

“Hello, my name is Gulliver and I very nice to meet kids with so much spunk.”

“And you are here to?” I say.

“Hello Mr. Gulliver!” Lafanda chimes.

“To teach you Blessings of course! You may have the potential to use them but that doesn’t mean you will know how.”

“Oh, you’re a teacher.” Juni says

We get up, clean ourselves and get in line.

“Alright kids, get ready to learn. Blessings class has begun!”