Spirit Taming

Chapter 465: Holding Blame

"I think she is splitting herself up too much. How can she focus on us, her herbs, and her beast's notes. What else was she doing?" Maria was sure that this woman was spread too thin. Someone had to have negative side effects on their mind if they were going to keep splitting their focus like that. It was just a fact.

"I would assume it's part of a skill she and her beast share. But she is considered a genius, right? Maybe that's where she shines. It was her ability to split her mind in to different tasks. Imagine if you had a problem to solve. Split your mind and solve it three different ways.

You'd have a solution sooner." Clark had a feeling this was closer to what Professor Gloria did.

"I believe that you are correct. While most records do not share what Professor Gloria's skills are, she is known for accomplishing multiple feats at once. She managed to grow the bubbling coral, the seafoam ripple weed, and discover the micro sea flowers within a single week. Each was harder to do than the last.

Especially the micron sea flower which is considered the smallest saltwater flower ever discovered!" Ella was in heaven. She is very happy to be able to read her idols' notes.

"I think you need to calm down Ella, you might be too excited." Isa giggled seeing that Ella was constantly breaking away from her usual stoic self. Ever since her brother had been injured and the group helped her through it, Ella had shown a lot more emotion. Especially when it came to sharing how she felt about things or what her goals were.

"You don't understand how much I can learn from all of this. The journals that I get to read on that shelf will be better than anything you can buy. They are personal research journals that will teach me how to lead my research in the future." Ella was too excited and rushed ahead. This left Isa, Maria, and Clark a little stunned.

They hadn't expected that she wouldn't be able to hold back and would directly rush inside the river stone building.

"Excuse me," Clark caught a student that was passing them. He switched gears quickly after Ella had rushed away. He was sure that he would be able to get to training sooner by asking for a little help. "Do you know where the pebble shrooms grow?"

"Pebble shroom? You want to go to the rock garden? Why?" The student looked like he thought Clark was crazy.

" for the pebble shroom. I asked Professor Gloria and she is letting us harvest some so we can use them in training."

"Oh… well, good luck with that. If you survive, let us know. We can't get anywhere near the rock garden right now. It's just down that path. It's marked with a red painted sign to warn people to avoid it. That rocky vine beast is territorial." the student looked at the three and shook his head.

He wondered just how crazy some people were.

"We have to get it after we dodge another beast? Was that professor looking to get us killed?" Isa was a little frustrated. Information had been greatly withheld from them. It wasn't fair at all.

"I kind of expected this. It felt like she was testing us a little after Clark realized her beast had grown. Probably normal, but we can manage." Maria's positivity was infectious. But Clark had barely heard what the two girls said. He was already moving down the trail marked with the red painted sign. He had no worries at all when it came to the rocky vine beast.

The path was lined with bushes on each side until it abruptly stopped and became a very large rock garden. The set up was enough to show off how much education was needed to make this happen. Some rocks were placed to force the flow of water through certain areas while others were placed to catch and pool water.

Some were even set up to allow vines and unique mushrooms to grow up them or in their shadows. It was a wondrous sight at first.

"There it is. The feared rocky vine beast." Clark pointed at a boulder making both Isa and Maria wonder what he was doing.

"That's just a boulder." Isa was sure that Clark had broken. His mind had somehow shattered after all this time.

'Rocky vine beast- rare

The rocky vine beast is known for pretending to be a boulder. It is similar to a golem in the fact that it has a main body made of hard stone. This plant and earth type beast uses earth and roots to create rocky vines that attack. It will then draw prey in toward the boulder that is actually its main body and mouth.

They are not very intelligent until they become older, meaning that they will often get in to foolish fights with any beast that comes too near. However, they enjoy the sun and will often move toward any form of light that they see. They are also easily distracted with light energy crystals.

The best way to fight…'

Clark didn't read much more. "Isa, hand me one of the left over light energy crystals we haven't sold. I will show off a little." Isa just frowned a little in confusion as she handed the lower tier light elemental energy crystal to Clark.

In a single toss, the crystal landed next to the boulder. Before any of them spoke, ten vines made of stone lurched from the ground and wrapped the crystal. The boulder immediately opened up showing the stone teeth before it dropped the crystal in. "that is the rocky vine beast and it will be very happy for the time being. Let's grab those mushrooms." Clark pointed out the mushrooms on the ground.

As the two girls started to understand what had just happened, Clark had focused on the pebble shrooms. They were small brown capped mushrooms. There were pebbles all around them and even inside them. Small bits of pebble poked out here and there while Clark picked them. He also noticed that the pebbles all around were covered in spores which meant more would grow in the next few days.

This was why Professor Gloria had been fine with them taking these ones. More would be growing soon.

While this event was happening, there was already a slight uproar happening elsewhere.

"The hell you mean that I can't touch the forge!? Huh? You think you are tough enough to stop me from working here too? I have every right to be here. Your vice headmaster even showed us the way!" Ralph's angry words were enough to put Grace on edge. The two of them were standing right in front of the entrance to the forge where a Terra Academy student had blocked them.

"There is more going on in here than you need to know. Right now our senior student is forging a very important piece. You can not interrupt him." The younger students were very adamant, but they were also not sharing how long it would be or how one person could take over the entire forge. It was a forge made for twenty people to work at one time!

"So one person is worth twenty? That's what you're saying? How about this? I creak open the forge and let my beast eat away all the metal. Then I will leave just enough left for you to have the one working forge. Then no one will ever interrupt their precious work again." Ralph got right in the student's face.

The others backed off as the molten boar appeared to be heating up too. The slight toxic steam that came off its body was also enough to scare them and their beasts.

The average first year like the ones in front of Ralph had no way to counter Ralph. He was stronger and definitely more intimidating. "Ralph, maybe there is another forge to use. We shouldn't destroy it since it's not ours." Grace was the voice of reason. But what she didn't realize was that Ralph was just putting on a show to draw out more people.

The moment that a crowd had gathered, Ralph found that there were easily ten more students that had been told to wait and hadn't left the area. "Look at this, even Terra Academy and Terra City has worthless rich kids that force everyone away. I count ten more that could be in there working. So, we are all going in and when anyone asks, tell them that Ralph from Nova Academy came to even things out."

By taking the blame right on his shoulders, Ralph had opened the chance for the other ten to push through in the forge as well. They didn't have to worry about angering a more powerful tamer than themselves. But even more, Ralph had used his standing in rumors from the tournament to stun the students at the door. That was why he was so easily able to walk in the forge with grace at his heels.

In turn, Grace was very impressed with the deception even she had fallen for when Ralph was gathering attention.