Heaven's Greatest Professor

"Trash Sweeping Stance!"

This fucker! Agnes screamed inwardly, hearing him utter the name of his made-up skill. Yet his move had the raw power in it, laced with the ruinous baleful aura of his Intent. He leapt at her, sweeping the broom unrelentingly.

Now, Agnes' own path didn't develop under a class system. She had no class, nor did she receive much benefit from the system in her path. Her raw physical power was the weakest of her attributes, yet she still could overpower most human rankers of the iron rank.

Yet against this fucked-up Janitor she felt like hitting against an unavoidable bulwark. He wasn't using his energy, however. Coupled with the poor choice of weapon and the handicap he put himself in, it was easy for her to deal with his moves.

But Agnes would not have the same satisfaction if she used her dark energy to crush this guy. After all, he gave himself a handicap or not using his energy. If she defeats him like that, he would have reason to believe he'd something on her. No, Agnes would make him use his energy and crush him thoroughly. She would make him cry…

Thus, Agnes summoned her own Intent, as a dark aura vibrated around her sword. It hadn't been long since she had awakened her Intent, and she had already managed to incorporate the intent into her Darkness element. The two powers were basically made for each other. If used in synergy, she could leave this pretensions fella dry of energy in seconds. But that would be too easy…

Her blade met the broom, as the vibration of her Intent began to bite through his baleful intent. A look of stunned surprise appeared in the fella's eyes, but soon that look changed into acceptance.

"Truly, as expected from Madame Captain," Warden said, reinforcing his intent to strengthen the broom. "Fine then, take my next move: Cleansing Spree."

Warden's body twisted in swift motion as he attacked her side. His moved in berserker speed, the broom moving in wild arcs. His speed was superior to hers, without using energy to empower their moves, but her perception was high enough to see the attack coming and block it.

This time, the battle between the two intents was more balanced. While her Intent began to devour, his intent tries to overwhelm and break her intent into pieces. Both of them had to power more and more into, as their intent beginning to erode away at a similar rate.

Although not contradictory, both intents were of the tyrannical type. One wanted to devour, the other wanted to break and erode. What were the chances that they would meet each other with similar mastery in their intent?

Which meant the victory would depend on the mastery of their weapon.

Soon, they began exchanging moves in sprees. There was no metal clanging sound in their air with their weapons clashing, but there sure were sparks of remanent intent there.

A gleeful smile spread across the face of the new recruit, as he fought more frantically. Unlike before, his smile wasn't pretentious. At the spree of battle, he let out his true self out. He's someone with deep battle lust, far more than her. Agnes could judge that easily, staring at his focused eyes. But that didn't mean she would lose.

She simply didn't have that drive of combat, but that didn't make her skills obsolete against his charge. At the end of the day, she was the captain, although there were complications with that, there was a reason she received the role above Luis, who was a silver.

While Warden's moves were more crazed and frantic, Agnes was more collected. Ironically, it was she, whom others called the crazy bitch, but in the fight, she was decisive as ever. The years of training had imbedded into her muscles, into her bones. Even at the mere sight of a small opening in his move, she thrust her sword towards his thigh.

Red hot blood oozed out from the wound she inflicted on him, yet there was no apparent sign of pain or anything on his face. He became sharper, not making the same mistakes again. However, though masterful as he was with his broom, it wasn't his ideal weapon. Hell, it wasn't weapon at all.

Agnes found more and more flaws in his posture, as her blade continued to draw more blood from him. And yet, she was on the defensive, parrying away a dozen of his onslaught moves.

The recruit wasn't bad enough that he made a terrible mistake for her to deal a critical blow; he was sufficiently good enough to keep his critical organs in check from her blade. Yet Agnes humbled him, cutting his limbs dozens of times. Her devouring intent invaded his system, disabling his natural healing process. Well, it should have if this guy was your average human in her camp.

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No, he was a monster with regenerative abilities as well. In mere seconds, she found all his wounds closing up, not even leaving a scar behind. He was so used up with this regeneration, that he could disregard all these wounds… but what about the pain… after all, the devouring power of her intent was something insidious in wounds, when it draws in raw energy and essence, it causes terrible pain.

The guy disregarded it like was nothing. True, he regenerated those wounds in seconds. Still…

He feinted an attack and finally managed to deal a blow. His broomstick smacked on her shoulder, hard as the intent leapt from the broom to into her. It eroded away the blue colour of her enchanted uniform. Agnes immediately incorporates her Intent to intercept the foreign intent and devoured it till nothing was left.

"You're some kind of monster, aren't you?" she couldn't help but say between their clash.

Warden didn't bother to answer.

"That's alright," Agnes smiled coldly. "I'm a monster myself."

A couple of minutes later, Warden was on the ground with no visible wounds on his person other than his torn janitor uniform and pants. He shook his head, taking the two broken pieces of the broom.

"This was my favourite broom," he mumbled, wiping fake tears. Then he threw them away like they were nothing and looked up at her, his eyes gleaming. "That was fun, Madame Captain, but I fear I disappointed you with my poor showcase of skills."

Agnes glared up at him. She snorted and walked away towards the others. "We're on the move again," she declared. "Kevin, keep an eye out for a better place to spend the night."

***

Eventually, they camped near the top of a high ridge. As Warden was still in his Janitor uniform, everyone seemed to be content in giving him all the auxiliary tasks of setting up the tents, ward stones, and cooking the food.

"Hmm, a delicious smell is wafting off," Milia said as she came out of the tent, which was for her and her brother. She came and sat near the bonfire, sniffing at the curry he made.

A few seconds later, her brother Milton came out of the tent as well and sat next to her, his shoulders glued to her, as they locked arms with one another. Honestly, this was probably the first time Warden had noticed them not glued to one another like they were some young couple… Their aura was very intimate, easily giving evidence of what Kevin had been shouting since the beginning.

Milton seemed to whisper some joke into his sister's ears as she giggled out, leaning into his body.

Warden shot them a look and then turned his head. Fuck, whatever they were, he wasn't going to get his nose into it.

"You're still continuing with that farce?" Caleb said as soon as he joined them in the camp from the lookout. He had been out with the captain and Kevin on something the captain didn't bother to share.

Warden looked at his ragtag janitor uniform, which he sewed back and shrugged. Honestly, he was already running out on the tunic and shirts he bought. While it was proper to wear his light armour and cloak, Warden thought about giving it a rest, as they provided too big of a difference in his ability to test his raw abilities.

Besides, the legendary equipment's abilities were very eye-catching. June had already warned him about unwanted people taking interest in them. Why Warden failed to comply with that most of the time, he figured he'd keep them inside his subspace until he was in some big fight.

The only problem in his way was the limited supply of his clothing. Perhaps I should train my warding skills better…. can't just always get my shirt destroyed in battle, can I?

"I warn you, don't pester the captain too much with this farce," Caleb said. "I'm telling this for your own good, if she ever gets her screw loose with your pestering… even with all your abilities you won't be able to save yourself."

Warden raised an eyebrow at that. "That sounds scary."

"She is scary… if you awaken her ire.."

"Hmm," Warden mumbled. "But she's only Iron ranker."

"And yet she's a captain," Caleb said gravely. "And listen to me when I say this... she had not used any of her background to get to this rank. She killed her way through in the battlefield... countless silver-ranked creatures had fallen to her blade."

Warden thought deeply on that, remembering the moments of his battle. The fight had genuinely been fun, and Warden was looking forward to fighting her more.