Class Awakening: Working Hard Can Evolve My Classes

After getting treated in the infirmary, the two returned to their classroom as if nothing had happened. Since Andrei didn’t bring up the sparring match, Zeke didn’t mention it either. Amazingly, despite being at each other’s throats just moments ago, nothing had changed between them.

This was just how men were.

Often, when two men get into a brawl, their relationship improves afterward, regardless of the outcome. They may look down on verbal fights, but they respect those who are willing to back up their words with their fists.

Of course, this didn’t apply to every scenario.

When the two of them came back to the classroom, there were still a few minutes left before the next class came. Zeke thought about his next plans. Evolving his class was just the beginning, and he was still far from his goal to get revenge on the Starlight family.

While he was deep in thought, the classroom doors opened, revealing a long-legged, beautiful woman with auburn hair. Seeing Professor Cybele again, Zeke put away his thoughts for the moment.

The next class was Monster Biology.

Professor Cybele wasn’t someone who liked to waste time, so she started the lesson right away.

"Eyes up here. We’ll talk about three monsters today, the first one is the Poison Ape..."

Upon hearing that name, Zeke lost his interest. But he still kept up appearances and acted as if he was listening intently. Otherwise, who knows what this woman would do? Being Seralune’s mentor, she was guilty by association in his mind.

But on the topic of the Poison Ape, this was one of the first monsters that made him realize the terror of monsters.

The Poison Ape was a Tier I Fiend, under the destructive-type. It possesses a shiny jade-like body with robust defenses. Being an ape, underneath its green flesh was the superior bone structure of the monkey race, allowing it to exert incredible destructive force.

But its most dangerous ability was [Poisonous Body], making it a terrifying bioweapon. With this ability, the Poison Ape transformed the air into lethal poison wherever it appeared, instantly killing those without poison resistance. In the early years of humanity, this monster alone killed thousands of Rankers.

A hundred years into the Age of Classes, this monster was finally documented in full by the Global Earth Alliance.

To create countermeasures against various monsters and to document them for future generations, the Global Earth Alliance formed a threat-class system that categorized monsters by their strength and abilities.

Monsters were divided into seven levels: Monster, Fiend, Archfiend, Dragon, Dragon King, Calamity Saint, and Emperor of End.

But since not all monsters on the same level had the same strength, another division was made to separate and distinguish each monster: ordinary Tier I, elite Tier II, and the strongest Tier III.

Aside from their strength, monsters were categorized into five different type-classes based on their primary abilities: destructive-type, speed-type, endurance-type, spirit-type, and abstract-type.

Under this system, the Poison Ape was categorized as a Tier 1 Fiend in the destructive-type, possessing ninety unique weaknesses and at least twenty behavioral patterns to use against.

Simplifying this system, the Poison Ape was an ordinary Fiend creature with incredible power, capable of mass destruction when left by itself.

’... Nowadays, the Poison Ape can easily be defeated just by following its documented weaknesses and behavioral patterns.’

At present, the Global Earth Alliance has encountered at least a million different monsters and has fully documented more than half of that. Being born in this era was both a blessing and a curse.

The days of humans being at the mercy of monsters were gone. The trend has changed, it’s now humans being at the mercy of other humans. While the average person no longer had to worry about monsters, the same could not be said for the other humans.

***

When the bell rang, Zeke was the first one to leave the class after Professor Cybele. As usual, he went to the training facility and looked for an empty spot to practice.

He grabbed a dummy sword and began training as soon as possible. 𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂

However, his way of training needs to be changed.

Taking a deep breath, Zeke assumed the Starbearer stance of the Starlight Sword Manual, a set of swordsmanship techniques and stances created by the legendary swordmasters of the Starlight family.

With the Stick Master class, he just assumed the most basic stance and swung his stick—and his proficiency increased by the accumulation of swings.

But yesterday, he trained with the same method for a couple of hours, but saw no increase in his proficiency. Then, he realized that perhaps different classes had different ways of training.

Since he had the Soul Swordsman class, perhaps he needed to train as a Swordsman!

Following this idea, Zeke recalled the times of him practicing the Starlight Sword Manual and simply replicated his training back then. Now that he was using a proper sword, he could perfectly execute the stances in the Starlight Sword Manual.

The Starlight Sword Manual had three different stances: the balanced Starbearer, with the sword held at chest height. The overbearing Starbringer, with the sword held over the shoulder. The aggressive Starpoint, with the sword held a distance apart from the body.

Each stance had multiple attacking and defending techniques, each having its own advantages.

Zeke discovered that the method for increasing his proficiency lay in mastering these techniques. As long as he practiced the techniques in any of the stances for a period of time, his proficiency would increase.

But he also realized a crucial fact.

Being techniques, once he mastered them, they... could become skills he could use.

The Starlight Sword Manual had at least one hundred techniques for each stance...

In short, the Starlight Sword Manual itself was a treasury of sword techniques.

’The Starlight Family...’

Zeke couldn’t help but feel unnerved. Now that he was a Ranker, he finally got a sense on why the Starlight Family could remain as an upper-class family for five hundred years.

He also realized now why the Starlight Sword Manual was one of the most sought-after treasures in the world. If a person could master all the techniques in the manual, then calling them a Sword Saint was by no means an exaggeration.

’Is there someone like that in the Starlight Family?’

Zeke thought of the elusive Starlight Guardian. If that was true, then taking revenge... at this point, he suddenly snapped out of his thoughts. He realized he had been lost in thought for a couple of minutes now.

’Focus. One step at a time...’

Even if the Starlight Family seemed like a bottomless well of power, it didn’t matter.

As long as he worked hard, he refused to believe he couldn’t get his revenge.

Zeke’s eyes sharpened. All will happen in due time. He held the sword in his hand tightly and executed a technique, clearing away all of the distracting thoughts in his mind.