Chapter 129 127 - Returning To The Academy
The last few days leading up to returning to school life went smoothly. No new news had come out about where the Fellowship disappeared to, but their activity seemed to have slowed down since failing to destroy the Big Apple. Milo continued to stay at the Incubus Guild as he had nowhere else to go. With Corinna's death and his old apartment building being destroyed the only thing still tying him to the city was Krista.
Milo upgraded his Reinforce ability as well, it became similar to Ken's ability, allowing him to reinforce to a more extreme degree depending on how much damage he received while the ability was active. Milo had also received his cut of the loot from closing the gates in Atlantic City, in total he had received 12 rare ranked cores, 5 unique ranked cores and 1 heroic ranked core from the Cerberus boss. Overall it was a major haul and he debated what he should use the cores for since his Magic Power stat had taken a major leap.
He had continued his practice with the new changes to the system, using both the training rooms of the guild and the simulation to test his limits. Following the information provided by Zenox, Milo knew he had to improve and training was the easiest way to do this. Through his practice he had improved at spreading his focus to control multiple elements at once and also using all the elements more effectively. Through his experimentation, he divided the elements into 3 categories; damage, utility and defense. In the damage category, Milo found that Lightning and Fire worked best at dealing damage, all 6 elements could do damage, but Fire and Lightning offered the most destructive power. For the defense category, he placed Frost, Water and Earth due to their ability to block attacks and control areas the best. Finally for the utility category, it left the Air element, this was because it seemed to work best at enabling Milo, by controlling air currents, he could speed up his melee attack speed, change the direction of Ghoul's Bane in whip mode, and he had even improved his control over Destruction enough that he could fly a short distance while controlling the movement of the air around him, while still wielding one other element.
Mikael had contacted Milo as well, asking him about how he was doing since the attack. Mikael cared deeply for Milo, enough so that he chose him to be his apprentice in swordplay. Hearing about what Milo was put through caused him to worry deeply for the student he chose. He feared that the attack may cause Milo to be unsure of his decision to pursue the life of a Gatecrasher which would be a shame considering his talent, but Milo was still dead set on the path he was paving for himself, even more so after fighting the Fellowship. Mikael had also received the news from Jorge about Milo's apparent reawakening, he told Milo that he had handled the matter of his reawakening within the association, so he shouldn't have to deal with any media appearances. Milo was grateful for Mikael's help, he had helped him a ton thus far, dating all the way back to the first day of combat class the previous school year.
Milo had just finished packing his things when Krista knocked on his door. He had lost everything but what he was wearing in the Fellowship attack, but his team at the guild had come together to help him, Krista, and her mother all get the essentials that were destroyed including a new wardrobe. They had even put together money to buy Alucard enough food and treats to last Milo for months. The night previous they had thrown a going away party for Milo. Due to him only being an intern, they would be replacing Milo after he went back to school, but they were thankful for all the things he had done to help elevate the team to another level. Harvey had even broken into tears over Milo leaving, contrasting his brutish personality. Milo felt sad to leave the team behind, but he would be forever thankful for their help in improving himself as a person and Gatecrasher.
Corinna's funeral had also occurred, it was a small ceremony and not many people came, as Milo was the only family she had left. She was buried at small memorial to remember those that were lost the day of the attack. Milo struggled to keep it together throughout the ceremony, breaking down a few times. But it felt good to finally put Corinna to rest, he knew life wouldn't be the same without her, but if he didn't move on and live his life, he knew she'd give him an earful in the after life. This was the day before Milo and Krista were to leave for the Academy.
Milo and Krista were teleporting through the association to the Acropolis where the campus was located rather than taking a train this time, as public transportation was still in disarray from the attacks. They took a taxi to the GAA branch and were escorted to the teleporter that would take them to the artificial island. According to reports, the Acropolis had upped its security in response to the Fellowship attack on New York. They were worried that the Fellowship may attack the GAA headquarters, when stepping through it was strange to see the level of security that the Association had put in place. It felt different from their first year at the academy when things were more lax, and almost seemed more like a military base.
This wouldn't be the only change that they'd encounter. When they arrived at the campus, a security checkpoint was at the front entrance. After getting through it, they went through a similar process to when they first enrolled. Milo was exempted from the Ability Evaluation as he was already in the X rated class, but Krista would have to retake it to see if she had improved any over the summer.
After splitting up there, Milo sent a message to his friends to see if any of them had arrived yet. Allana had come a day early, one of the perks of being a sibling of a guild master. Maria was included in this group too as her family had a lot of prestige tied to their name. Chris and Mark were waiting for their evaluation like Krista, and Zach had already unpacked and was up in his room.
Milo thought about what he should do, and decided that he should get unpacked before anything. Along with this, Alucard was speaking to him from inside the Beast Vessel ring asking to be let out so he could stretch his wings. For this reason, Milo headed up to the dorms. Unlike the previous year, Milo was given a luxury dorm. This was one of the perks of being X rated in his second year. He had no roommates and instead got a room to himself. It was located on the top floor of the dorm building. So Milo pressed the top floor on the elevator and in no time he was at the correct floor. He made his way to the room that he was designated and scanned his holo to enter the room.
The dorm was much more spacious than the previous year. Bigger bed, bigger dresser, bigger bathroom. Overall, everything about the room seemed more like an apartment, it even had a small kitchen that Milo could use. Unlike his old apartment though everything had the newest technology implemented. Milo set his luggage down on the bed and released Alucard from the pocket dimension in the ring. Once he was free, he immediately spread his wings and stretched himself all the way out.
Alucard was now close to three feet long, almost double the length he was when he hatched and his wing span had grown with him. It was strange for Milo to think that under a month ago he was just a baby. After stretching himself out he flew around the room eventually settling on a chair that was in the corner of the room. Milo laughed at the little quirk of finding his perfect spot before he began to unpack.
Eventually he had his toiletries out and went to put them in the bathroom. Looking in a mirror for the first time in a while Milo realized that he desperately needed a haircut, since heading home for the summer he was too busy to get one causing his hair to be way too long. He took note of this before continuing about putting things away.
After everything had been put away, Milo checked his phone and saw that everyone had finished what they were doing. Chris and Mark wanted to meet up with Milo, as they had seen Krista and she told them they were in for quite the surprise when they saw him. He told them his room number and after waiting for a few minutes he heard a knock at the door.
When he opened it, he could see Chris looking at him with a shit-eating grin on his face. He held up his wrist to show that he too had finally made it into the X rated class. Milo welcomed the two of them into his room. He learned from them that Chris, Mark and Allana had all reached the X rated class. This caused Milo to wonder how many other students had advanced as in their first year, there were only 19 students including himself. Krista had pushed into the A rated class, as her training of reading customer's minds while doing her part time job seemed to have made her improve.
After talking about their rank, Milo's old roommates noticed the coiled up snake in the corner of the room. Alucard was currently fast asleep, as apparently it was difficult to sleep comfortably in the Beast Vessel Ring. Milo was surprised he hadn't woken up with how loud Chris was when talking. Seeing the beast his two friends went wide eyed in surprise. They hadn't expected Milo to come back with a tamed beast. It was already rare enough to find a beast egg, but to tame one without a tamer ability(according to their knowledge) was even rarer.
Milo explained that he won the egg in a game at the Underground. The two of them had no idea what that was so Milo explained that it was a sort of underground market for gatecrashers. Hearing this the two of them realized that Milo had a lot of stories to tell.
"You must have a lot of stories from this summer," Chris said with a sly smile, "well while you were busy, so was I and I think I'll finally be able to wipe the floor with you in a spar." He formed a small fireball in his hand, it was glowing a pale blue as if to show that he had improved, as previously Chris's flames were orange in color and weren't as hot.
Milo grinned back, activated the Disaster ability to create a small arc of electricity between his finger tips, causing Mark and Chris's eyes to widen. "I doubt that," he said.
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