CHAPTER 38: THE STUDY OF EACH UNIQUE CHARACTERISTICS OF ABILITIES EVER EXHIBITED

Everyone looked around the classroom, trying to find where the voice was coming from, but to no avail as it felt like the voice came from everywhere around the classroom at once and the continuous echoes did not help matters.

"Over there!" Aoi whispered the Xenon and Jason, pointing straight ahead at the front of the classroom, which had no desk, chair, or board.

No sooner had Aoi pointed, that the space where he pointed to turned into a tall man in a black garment, his glistening black hair flowing almost to his knees and he seemed to have no irises as his eyes were two balls of complete white.

"A sharp eye you got there." The man pointed to Aoi. "I am Copious Klaon and I am the one in charge of TSEUCAEE, which is the short form for The Study of Each Unique Characteristics Of Abilities Ever Exhibited, I know the name sounds somehow but I am confident my classes won’t be disappointing." Copious addressed the class.

"Now! Its your turn, introduce yourselves by stating your names and abilities, starting with members of the top ten students within our midst." Copious continued as someone who looked exactly like him walked into the class with a clipboard and a pen – a small, hollow, ceramic, cylindrical tube with a pointed end, little cylindrical packs of ink is loaded into the hollow insides to aid writing, which is what is used on this world.

"Don’t pay attention to him, just start." Copious looked around the classroom at Jacquez, Xenon, Aoi and Jason with expectancy.

"I am Jacquez Pascal, number 9, and I have two abilities." Jacquez started after none of the other three looked like they were going to start. "The first one allows me to manipulate my size," he demonstrated by shrinking a few feet and returning to his normal size. "And the other allows me to negate other people’s abilities." Jacquez finished and took his seat.

The other Copious who had been scribbling stuff on his clipboard as soon as Jacquez started talking, looked up at the seat the other three were seated and made a ’go on’ like gesture with his head. Aoi stood up.

"Um, Sir Copious – no not you, the original." Aoi said, looking at the first Copious who appeared from thin air.

"How did you... no nevermind, what is it?" Copious asked.

"Well, my ability is rather complicated and I would prefer not to speak about it." Aoi replied.

"Okay, but you know i have to know either way, right? That’s the whole purpose of this subject."

"Yeah, I know, privately." Aoi muttered and took his seat, avoiding the questioning gazes of his two friends.

Jason stood up shortly, introduced himself and his powers, and took his seat, gesturing to Xenon that it was his turn.

"I am Xenon Prasedymum and I also have two abilities... for now." He added the last words in a mutter. "I can move very fast, though I don’t know my top speed yet as how fast I can move increases with my lev... I mean ousia stage. And my second ability enables me to create lightning, though I can control it well yet." Xenon finished and was about to seat before the Copious with the clipboard stopped him.

"Can you show me? Your lightning powers" He said.

Xenon stretched out his right arm and shortly after, faint streaks of white lightning were flashing around his arm. With some effort, Xenon managed to gather them around his palm in a very erratic ball for a few seconds before he lost control and all the streaks merged into a solid white one that struck the classroom room and left a very nasty burn there.

"Amazing!" The clipboard Copious said and jotted stuff down. Xenon wanted to say the strike on the roof was a mistake but stopped and sat down. The green haired Erythrosite with color changing irises, Juan stood up immediately after Xenon.

"... I can morph my body into various stuff, it’s not really like shape shifting but..." Juan was saying, but Xenon stopped listening and turned to Aoi who was sitting beside him.

"So, what was that about? Why don’t want to talk about your powers? I’m pretty sure everyone saw what you did at the entrance exam so I don’t why you’re trying to avoid saying anything about your ability." Xenon said.

"You can’t understand Xenon, it’s very much complicated than what you saw back then. You saw my hair change colour, right? Do you know why that happened?"

"I don’t know... maybe you’re super saiyan or something." Xenon replied and almost slapped himself when he realized what he said, though luckily Aoi didn’t really pay attention to him.

"I’m not super whatever, it’s complicated and I’d prefer if you didn’t ask." Aoi replied and turned to face the front of the class.

Xenon, with his mouth hanging open in shock at Aoi’s attitude raised his eyebrow in question to Jason who just shrugged and turned away too.

The rest of the class introduced themselves one after the other but Regina who was allowed, like Aoi, to not state her ability.

"Um, sir, may I ask why you told us all to state our abilities?" Jacquez asked after the introductions were over.

"Why? Well there are two reasons. The first is to assist each and every one of you – as well as all students on this island – to understand your ability better and bring out your potential. The second is to keep track, name, and categorise all abilities ever exhibited, so it will be easier to keep track and train abilities better, to you and to those who will come after you." The real Copious – the one without the clipboard – replied.

"We have used up my first period on personal introductions, so now, the second period will be for the subject introduction." Copious added, smiling, while the one with a clipboard walked out of the class.

"In my lessons, we will not rely on textbooks, although we will use them from time to time. TSEUCAEE is very self explanatory in itself so there’s no need explaining what my classes will entail to you.

"My lessons will almost always be outdoors, and from time to time, your combat classes and my class will host joint lessons. Have you guys picked your house, class representatives?" Copious asked.

The classroom replied with ’NOs’ and ’NOT YETs’.

"Okay, for our first lesson, follow me." Copious said and walked out of the class. "In an orderly line!" He shouted.

What was supposed to be the TSEUCAEE classroom was actually a large building with many rooms along its corridors, and they had been taking the class in one of the rooms to the right. Now Copious Klaon was leading them down the corridor to the door at the end.

"Separate, make the line two!" Copious ordered and they obeyed. Now everyone was on the lines, stretching from the back door to the entrance of the building.

Copious opened the backdoor and stepped through, the rest of class wowed as they followed him. They were now behind the building in what seemed to be a very large park, except for the fact that there was soft white sand almost everywhere on the ground instead of grass.

The space behind TSEUCAEE’s building was very vast, large enough to fit eight hundred students comfortably. There were trees planted at the rim to isolate the space from the rest of the academy grounds and provide shade from the sun.

There were tall grasses that separated some places from others like cubicles but apart from that, the ground was occupied by soft white sand.

"That!" Copious pointed to the building they exited. "Is full of boring rooms where boring classes happens. But this!" He stretched out his arm towards the large space spread out in front of them. "Is where the real fun happens!" Everyone unconsciously nodded in agreement, excitement etched upon their faces.

"Now for my first lesson we are going to be doing something physical. What do you say a team death match – of course nobody’s going to die." Copious announced.

"Isn’t that sort of supposed to happen in our combat classes?" Jacquez asked, but he tied his long blonde hair to the back anyways.

"No, your instructor is not stupid enough to allow what I have in mind, not because you’ll hurt yourselves, but because you’ll destroy everything in your surroundings. But fear not, this is what those trees are for," Copious pointed at the trees planted around them. "They absorb stray attacks and do other things, you’ll learn a lot about them in Ecobiology. Now, Aoi Mitsugo and Regina Bestiarum, you will come with me, while..."

Copious’ head vibrated, then turned to two. The rest of his body too began to vibrate and it seemed as if the new head was trying to wrench out it’s trapped body as it squirmed outwards till two arms were free, then pushed against Copious’ body till it’s whole body was out of him – fully clothed in the same black garment both Copious and clipboard Copious had on them.