"First of all, I would like to say congratulations to every one of us on our first official victory as a team." After the rounds of applause, Blake continued. "We still have to continue training and working hard to keep securing victory in future exercises."
"Before we continue training I will like to address some of the issues I noticed in the match." Blake said.
"The first is our formation, it was more of a defensive formation than an offensive one. Castiel's elements are offensive, but I ended up putting him in the support role." Blake explained.
During the exercise, the students were meant to be on the offensive to capture the flag and end things quickly because the mechanical puppets couldn't get tired. If Castiel was part of the attack, they would have had a better chance of capturing the flag.
"So, if there are 3 on the offensive, are you planning on putting Tessie alone as the support?" Brian asked.
"Yes, but instead of putting the support role at the center I was planning on placing Brian at the center and Tessie behind or at the same position." Seeing them think about it Blake explained the reason behind his thoughts.
When the 2 mechanical puppets had gone through the front lines. They made quick work of Castiel because the enervative ability of the darkness element was useless against non-organic entities.
If Brian was at the center, not only would he be able to easily defend against the mechanical puppets but it would have been easier for him to support and defend the attack.
"Blake is making a point. I think we should go with the 3 of us as the offense, then Brian and Tessie as the defense because it will be quite risky to spread ourselves too thin." Luciano said.
"Since they are no oppositions then let's move to today's training." Blake said. "Our overall close-quarter combat skills are quite poor but before we address that I think I found the problem with the barrier array."
According to the system, battle arrays were like spells from the mother-stream, and just like normal spells they can be manipulated with the caster's willpower.
When a fire ball is conjured, it takes a default shape of a ball, but when the ignitor put in his will he would be able to control the shape and direction of the flames.
The same was for battle arrays. For example, the barrier array had the default shape of a dome and all it needed was the caster's willpower.
"Your theory is nice, but it will be very difficult for the willpower of 5 people to be in perfect synch." Tessie said after thinking of Blake's 'proposal'.
"I thought of it and I don't think arrays should be that difficult. Maybe it should be the willpower of the person controlling the center of the array." Blake 'suggested'.
The center of an array was where all the other parts emanated from, so once the command was given through his willpower, the other parts of the array will follow suit.
"I think that makes more sense. Let's try it out." Castiel said.
Blake began with the central region of the array and once it was formed, he envisioned it as a large square barrier.
The team followed the usual procedure and synched the mana flow of their parts with that of the center region.
Just like before a transparent barrier appeared but this time it was a large square.
"It worked!" The team screamed with joy as they celebrated.
"How did you know it will work?" Tessie couldn't help but wonder how Blake could have come up with such an idea.
"Like I said it's just a guess." Blake lied through his teeth.
With that settled the team started their close combat training.
…
During their next array mastery class professor Mack Hoffenheim warped into the class with his trademark smile on his face.
"Good morning everyone. From what I have been seeing you guys are having a fun-filled week." Professor Mack soon noticed the shaking of heads from most of the students.
"What's wrong?" Professor Mack asked.
"Although the team exercises are quite stressful, my main problem is finding the perfect team. Most of the high rankers have already teamed up with themselves leaving us low rankers with ourselves." A student complained.
The reason why Mack was considered to be the best professor in the magic school was because of his close relationship with the students. He was the only professor that would chat with the students about the difficulties they face.
"So your complaint is that you are getting low points because of this?" The student nodded.
"I will say you are looking at it the wrong way. In most of the team exercises you are not asked to face these high rankers, but to complete certain tasks.
Although the first to complete the task get extra points, as long as you complete the task you will still get the standard assigned points and even if you don't, you still get points for trying."
"Are you saying the members of the team don't matter?" The student asked.
Professor Mack shook his head. "I am saying you shouldn't blame them for your failure. From your statement you are clearly rejecting your fellow low rankers, so why do you expect anyone to team up with weaklings?"
"What I am trying to say is that you should grow at your own pace and not look at the exploits of the high rankers, because if you were strong enough to aim for the rank 1, then you would have already been in a good team or do the same thing."
"I understand. Thank you very much, professor Mack." The student bowed before taking a seat.
"Since we've heard from what seems to be the bottom of the class. No offense. Let's hear from the top, Blake please tell us how you feel about the school so far." Professor Mack said.