General Nathan developed a look of surprise, but as he looked around, almost no one seemed to have the reaction as him.
"What, am I the only one surprised by this?" he asked.
Head-General Paul glanced over at him.
"Have you ever seen student Hikiko with any form of bag or luggage on him?" he asked.
General Nathan's eyes narrowed.
"Well, of course he-"
Nathan's sentence was cut off, as he actually thought about that for a second.
It was true.
In all of them, albeit brief, times he had seen Hikiko Tsukuru walking around school, he had never seen him having something on him that could be used to carry supplies.
In fact, the only kind of "bag" he had ever worn was that weird thing he had worn in the previous week, that he used to carry around what appeared to be a blob of pure liquid metal.
"Huh," General Nathan muttered.
General Duke scoffed.
"So he's got a Storage Skill, big woop," he replied in a dismissive tone. "Like that's ever going to be useful in a fight. In case you've forgotten, shit-for-brains, there's an Ability out there in circulation that does just that, and absolutely nobody is dumb enough to use it!"
The Skill that General Duke was referring to was called "Endless Void".
It was by far the cheapest, and easiest to acquire Ability on the marketplace, purely due to the fact that nobody wanted it.
Even Abilities like Mono's Future Sight and the Stone Transformation Ability possessed by the late Riley were seen as more useful than just having the ability to store things.
Head-General Paul narrowed his eyes.
"What kind of items was he…mass-producing?" he asked.
Sergeant Faye turned to him.
"Mostly just things like daggers, swords, arrows, as well as a generous amount of his Healing Potions," she replied.
General Nathan tilted his head and scrunched up his face in confusion.
"Wait, arrows?!" he asked. "I thought he used daggers to fight!"
General Duke rolled his eyes, and looked at General Nathan like he was an idiot.
"If he can throw a dagger, why can't he throw an arrow?" he asked in a bored tone.
This "meeting" had turned out to be even more boring than the Second-Year General had feared it would be.
"Although…" Sergeant Faye's voice replied, causing them all to turn to her. "He did make a few…rather peculiar objects, as well."
Head-General Paul raised an eyebrow in confusion.
"What makes them so…'perculiar'?" he asked.
"Well," Sergeant Faye replied. "One of them appeared to be a cylinder of translucent glass filled with a strange, green liquid, attached to an iron rod. Another appeared to be…can of some sort. He also created some strange, transparent glass cylinder filled with what appeared to be…silver dust with a metal cap on top, as well as a metal wheel with six of those…bullets of his sticking out of it."
A look of collective confusion came across the faces of everyone at the table.
They all couldn't help but agree with Sergeant Faye's description of the items.
They did seem rather…perculiar.
After a moment, a look of realization came over Sergeant Shizuka's face, as if something had just clicked in her mind.
"Wait," she replied, causing the others to turn to her.
They all watched in amazement, as Shizuka activated her Soul Weapon on her right hand.
The hand lost its fleshy coloring, and took on the consistency of a stone statue, with dirt and grains of rock pouring off like sand.
A mass of solid rock began to protrude from the center of her palm, and began to change shape.
It took on the exact same appearance as one of the items that Sergeant Faye had described.
A cylinder with a long stick attached to the end.
Those who possessed the Earth Ability among the group, specifically, Sergeant Dillon, General Duke, and Head-General Paul had looks of wide-eyed shock on their faces.
Seeing Sergeant Shizuka use her Soul Weapon in this way felt…wrong.
It essentially broke one of the core rules of the Earth Ability.
The Earth Ability had always stood out from the other Elemental Abilities because users of it could not simply generate Earth from their bodies, like the other elements could.
Rather, Earth Users could only control the Earth around them.
Yet, that rule seemed not to apply to Sergeant Shizuka, due to the mechanics of her Soul Weapon.
Since she could literally turn her body into Earth, she could also use that Earth in tandem with her Ability.
Essentially, Hikiko Shizuka was the only Earth Ability User who was never at the whims of the environment around her.
Sergeant Shizuka gripped her still-stony hand around the "rod" of the strange item, deactivating her Soul Weapon as she did so.
The others watched as her hand slowly lost its stone-like consistency, turning back into living flesh.
"Did it look like this?" she asked, holding the strange earth construct out in front of her.
Sergeant Faye narrowed her eyes.
"Yeah," she replied. "Exactly like that."
Meanwhile, over with Head-General Paul and General Duke, they were still trying to get over their shock at Sergeant Shizuka's Soul Weapon.
"That…is one busted Soul Weapon," General Duke muttered, his eyes narrowed.
Head-General Paul nodded, his eyes also narrowed.
A feeling of jealousy washed across both him and Head-General Paul.
It made the Soul Weapons of the two Earth Ability Users, Paul's ability to alter the composition of the Earth, creating strange, black balls of exceptional hardness, and Duke's ability to cover himself in a suit of hardened rock armor that made him essentially look like an Earth Golem, look like mere parlor tricks by comparison.
Head-General Paul cleared his throat, causing the others to turn to him.
"What exactly is that, Sergeant Shizuka?" he asked.
A cruel smile crept across Sergeant Shizuka's face, filling the others with a sense of great unease.
She placed the Earth construct down on the table, and reached into her breast pocket.
"Maybe you'll recognize it in its…current form," she replied, as she pulled an object out of her breast pocket, and held it up to the others.
Immediately upon seeing the object, everyone's face morphed into a look of wide-eyed terror, and they all leaned back in their seats, attempting to make as much space between themselves and Sergeant Shizuka as possible.
In her hand, Sergeant Shizuka held a white, metal ball covered in a hexagonal, honeycomb pattern that was constantly illuminating with light-blue light.
Near the top, there was a circular indention, like a moon crater.
It was a modern-day grenade, one powered by a low-power Beast Crystal, usually only spanning from Basic-Tier to Intermediate-Tier, instead of traditional explosives.
The military typically gave them out to Low-Level soldiers who weren't lucky enough to be assigned to pilot mechs, or given high-Tier Beast Gear.
"GRENADE!" General Duke screamed, as he jumped out of his chair and slammed face-first onto the ground, creating a loud thud that shook the whole room, his hands clutched around his head.
He began forming a sphere of Earth around him, and prepared to activate his Soul Weapon to shield him from the incoming blast.
Head-General Paul looked down at him.
"General Duke King, get a hold of yourself!" he yelled in an authoritative tone. "It hasn't even been activated yet!"
There was an awkward pause.
"Oh," General Duke's voice replied from inside the still-forming Earth sphere, as it began to break apart and crumble, revealing the General underneath. "Right."
The others all watched as General Duke slowly got back up on his feet, and sat back down in his chair.
He then snapped his head over at Shizuka with a look of annoyance on his face.
"And as for you, Sergeant Shizuka," he replied in a serious tone. "Put the Beast Grenade away."
Shizuka rolled her eyes, a look on her face that told the others that she had found Duke's actions deeply amusing, and placed the Beast Grenade back in her breast pocket.
Sergeant Faye narrowed her eyes.
"Well, at least now we know why the area in front of the Training Center on Pioletic looked like a bomb went off," she replied, staring intently at Shizuka's recreation of one of Tsukuru's "stick grenades".
Sergeant Leo's face hardened.
"True," he replied. "But we still don't know how he managed to start a forest fire."
General Nathan gulped, feeling a since of immense dread in his chest, as he heard the conversation between the two Sergeants.
He turned towards the Head-General.
"Head-General," he replied, causing Paul to turn to him. "Maybe we should…check just what else student Hikiko has created. You know…before he ends up doing a significant amount of property damage to the base."