"Alright, Astor," teacher Loran said. "Go two rounds with Mattheo."

pᴀɴdᴀ nᴏveʟ On the side, a young man with long red hair sighed. He had two very heavy and hard gauntlets with spikes near the knuckles. Surprisingly, he was using knuckles as his weapons.

Astor looked at Mattheo and gestured to the side with his head. The two of them had fought many times before. Astor was the most powerful person in the Advanced Grade Caterpillar Class, and Mattheo was the second strongest. Because of that, it mostly fell on Mattheo's shoulders to fight with Astor.

"It would be really great if you could hurry up and become more powerful," Mattheo said to Shang while walking past him with a helpless and somewhat joking tone. "I don't want to spar with that guy every time I come here."

"I'll try my best," Shang said.

Mattheo only chuckled a bit. "You do know that I was only joking, right? You can take all the time you need."

Shang wasn't quite sure how to respond. On Earth, he would have simply given off a polite and small chuckle, but right now, he just didn't want to. It was like it was just too much work.

While Mattheo walked to Astor, Sarah frowned with frustration. She had worked so hard, and she was absolutely certain that she could fight evenly with Mattheo. Yes, she had lost every match so far, but all of their fights had been even most of the time.

As one of the very few women in the class, Sarah felt like she had to prove herself. Oftentimes, women weren't seen as talented warriors by men. After all, the sad truth was that it was harder for women to reach the different levels in the Soldier Stage.

The power one needed to reach each level was universal. It didn't matter if the warrior was huge or small, thin or thick. Sadly, that meant that smaller and weaker people needed to train more than bigger people.

It only became irrelevant as soon as the warrior reached the Peak Soldier Stage. At that point, gender and size didn't matter anymore. After all, everyone would have the same starting point.

Sarah trained so hard and put so much effort into her career, but she still hadn't been allowed to spar with Astor. Sarah was mostly put against the fourth or fifth strongest in the class, which she always decimated in a fight.

When Astor was on a mission, Sarah would get to spar with Mattheo. Those spars were very even, but she hadn't been able to win yet. Because of that, Sarah was certain that she could also act as a sparring partner to Astor.

"Sarah, you go fight with Shang," teacher Loran said. "I haven't been able to properly see his techniques yet since Astor won that quickly."

Sarah frowned as she glanced at Shang. She was already annoyed that Shang was in her grade with a superior body. After all, the body was literally the only criterium that decides which grade someone belonged to.

It was literally unfair. That wasn't even a subjective perspective but an objective one.

Of course, on top of that, Shang didn't even deserve to fight with the likes of Astor. After all, if Shang didn't have such a powerful body, he would be at the bottom of the class. His body was literally the only thing strong about him.

Shang wasn't oblivious to other people's feelings. He could very well imagine how many people in the class felt.

How did Shang feel?

Of course Shang felt a bit embarrassed. After all, he was essentially the equivalent of someone that had been held back a grade. They didn't manage to reach the grades necessary to advance, which meant that they had to repeat a year. That person would then sit in a room with people one year younger than them.

It was embarrassing. Such a situation gave off a feeling of inadequacy.

However, Shang wasn't too embarrassed. Yes, it was bad that he had the most powerful body out of all of them, but Shang also didn't forget that he was literally four years younger than all of them.

Shang had advanced far faster on his path to power than everyone else in the school. At 15, he managed to reach a level that normally only 20-year-olds could reach. On top of that, Shang had only been in this world for a bit more than six months.

Because of that, it was also unfair to say that Shang was too powerful for this grade. After all, Shang had only had six months of training. That amount of time basically counted as nothing.

Sadly, in this world, age didn't matter.

Everything revolved around power.

It didn't matter if Shang were 30 or six years old. As long as he was in the same Realm, everyone would look at him the same way.

BOOM!

Shang looked over and saw that Astor and Mattheo had already started fighting a couple of meters away, and very quickly, Shang's eyes widened.

Small explosions came out of Mattheo's feet and elbows, boosting his speed. This made Mattheo reach the same speeds as Shang, even though Mattheo had a far weaker body. That was already very impressive.

On top of that, Mattheo managed to unleash an absolute barrage on Astor. With the speed of his two fists and the explosions, he let Astor gain absolutely no momentum. He was essentially barraging him with a storm of attacks every single second.

He managed to be far more aggressive than Shang, and the pressure Astor was under was obviously also far higher than when he fought Shang.

Astor didn't even manage to unleash an attack yet. He simply didn't have any opportunity to.

As a watcher, Shang couldn't imagine how Astor could win that fight. He was essentially being suppressed into a passive state, only waiting for his defeat.

Yet, for some reason, Astor managed to always just barely parry or evade an attack. Sometimes, he would push his shoulder forward and receive Mattheo's fist, which he would skillfully divert to the side.

It was insane! The control one had to have to pull something like that off was nuts!

But even Astor couldn't parry such an avalanche of attacks for long. A couple of seconds later, he messed up a parry, and his shoulder got broken.

And that's when it happened.

Suddenly, water appeared beneath Astor's feet. It wasn't much water, and it definitely couldn't hurt anyone. It almost seemed senseless to summon that water.

Yet, just an instant later, the water below Astor's feet quickly pushed him half a meter to the side. It came very sudden and without warning. It didn't make any sound, and it basically just happened.

But the effect was devastating.

This sudden repositioning had caught Mattheo off-guard. Mattheo had just released an attack, and he was off-balance.

As Astor moved to the side, the power that had destroyed his shoulder got used by Astor. He allowed his shoulder to be shot back, and Astor rotated with the power. In essence, Astor was using his opponent's power to rotate.

And then Astor suddenly stopped.

All the power of his rotation had been pushed into his sword, and his sword swung towards Mattheo with insane speeds.

"Alright," teacher Loran said as he stopped Astor's sword.

Astor and Mattheo released a sigh.

"You've become better," Astor said with a praising smile.

Mattheo only smiled bitterly. "Thanks."

On the side, Shang's eyes were still wide.

Only now did he truly realize how far away he was from Astor.

Astor hadn't even used his Affinity against Shang. On top of that, Shang hadn't managed to put even nearly as much pressure on Astor as Mattheo.

Shang had thought that he wasn't too far away from Astor, but that was obviously not the case.

There were worlds between them.

Literally, the only reason how Shang had been able to fight him for a couple of exchanges was due to his body.

The difference in experience was massive.

"Watched enough?"

Shang looked over at Sarah, who had pulled out her hammer by now. "Teacher Loran can keep watch over up to three fights at once. I let you watch their fight so that you can truly see the distance between you and them."

"You are in our grade, and there's nothing I can do about it. Only you can do something about it."

Sarah raised her hammer. "Become powerful enough to no longer be a shame to us."