One of the instructors glared him down. "Stop! We are starting the assessment. Wait your turn, Arthur Grayjoy." she said to him firmly with hand on the hilt of the massive zweihander blade she had strapped on her back. He backed down, but Alice could tell that it was not over between them. She had to focus on her opponent. One of the first skills her class was taught were the magical wards. The nobles would use their basic skills to try and get passed the wards. If they could, they got bonus points. Alice was not going to drop her guard. Essentially this was more a matter of seeing if they had the proper form and if we had the proper levels of mana and technique to pull the spell off in a combat scenario. The instructors told us to begin. Alice quickly put up her ward. The noble was wielding a rapier. She tried poking holes in the wards with quick thrusts of his blade. When that did not work, she tried to go for the legs and anything he could reach that was not covered by the ward. Alice was not going to let her. When time was called 5 minutes later, she had not broken through Alice's big ward.
It was only Alice and one other commoner that was able to stave off the brutal assault of the nobles. His name was Timothy. He was an aspiring mage. He was taking all the disciplines of magic as well as a melee combat class for his program. His schedule was set in such a way that the restoration magic class was the only one they shared. Darell had succeeded in breaking the flimsy ward of the common girl he was paired with up. He had the restraint to keep the girl at blade point for the rest of the assessment. She could not put up another ward. The other noblewoman was a very sadistic bitch. She broke the guard of the other classmate and continued to strike at her until she was bleeding heavily from her face, arms and legs. None of the instructors said or done anything about it. Now that the assessment was over, the girl was led off to the infirmary for treatment. Because it took so long, she had her next assessment right away. It was melee combat. This meant a total inversion of the role she had before. It was a noble spellcaster with a ward. Alice had a longsword. She wanted a win.
Breaking the ward of the noble man was pretty difficult. Because of the nature of the noble classes, they got extra help and instruction to make them better than all of the commoner students. It was an aristocracy for a reason. It did not matter to Alice one bit though. She hacked and slashed at the ward to no avail. She only had a minute left to go and it seemed really bad. Alice had an idea though. She turned around and bucked with her hind legs. The sheer force was enough to launch the noble back a yard. His ward was dispelled due to the break in concentration. The magic absorbed most of the kinetic energy of the kick so he was not harmed. Alice did threaten him a little with the sword in her hands to keep him from. That kept him from putting up another ward. The assessment was over. Alice was the only one in her class to break the magical guard of a noble. One of the nobles that succeeded said "You were pretty good for a centaur. What's your name?" Alice smiled and put her blade back in the sheathe at her waist. "My name's Clara Horsebutt. What's yours?" she asked. "Alan Pinel."
Alan
