Chapter 73: Hershal

Hershal was a school that was known as a grammar school. These schools prided themselves on giving the students the best results in the country without having the need to pay private tuition. And Hershel was one of the best grammar schools.

To get into a grammar school at the age of 13 students were required to take a test. Depending on their test results students would be told if they were allowed to enter into Hershel or not. The problem was these tests weren't your normal maths or English tests.

Most of the tests were puzzles or problem-solving skills. The worded questions gave you scenarios to which you had a multiple-choice answer.

An example of one of the questions would be. A Teacher is currently disciplining a student in school, the teacher goes a step too far and slaps the kid around the face. What would you do?

1. Tell the teacher that's wrong and try to help the kid.

2. Do nothing and let the scenario play out?

3. Tell another teacher or head of staff what happened in class.

4. Tell your parents once you got home and let them deal with it, after all they're the adult.

All these questions were to determine if you were the right student for their school.

Hershel wasn't as big as Westgate as they didn't have the same private funding from rich parents but the school was in top shape. It looked as if the building hadn't been touched and was kept clean by robots.

Currently, in the Hershal's VSW club room there were five students 3 male and 2 female and the teacher was at the front of the class. The students all had the uniform straightened perfectly as if they all had a form of OCD.

Every one of them was sat in their seats with their back up straight and they even all had similar styles. All short cut hair for the boys and women all hair no longer than their collar bone.

The teacher standing at the front of the room was no different. The teacher Damien was also the coach for Hershal's VSW team. They had just finished watching a video of their performance in the last round of the VSW team.

The team had a flawless victory winning 5-0 against the enemy team in the first round but the teacher was still going through all the mistakes that they had made. Once they had finished the teacher changed the screen to display the match between Eton and Montem.

"As you can see our expected opponent Eton lost to an unknown team Montem," Damian said.

The video continued to play until it had finally finished.

"You can see, there were two players in particular that had an outstanding performance, my guess is that they registered using smurf accounts to catch the enemy teams off guard. As you can see the rest of the team is nothing special. Although we have no footage of the man at the top, we can assume he is average like the archer at bottom and the person at mid also displayed nothing too special."

While Damien was explaining, Frank who was the leader of the team had a different opinion. He too had done his own studying of the Eton team and knew that the players at the top where the best two players on the team.

It was clear to Frank that the team had a good strategist who had done his research. And Montems strategist had to be confident enough in the person's skills at the top to put him there. Frank thought it was the wrong decision for the coach to put their focus on the two people mainly shown in the video.

But Frank didn't raise his concerns for one simple reason. In Hershal, you never went against the teacher no matter what happened.

*****

Novis had just been at his grandfather's dojo and went to fetch out the bamboo sword and long sword that both Arthur and George had originally come from. Novis took a look at both of them to make sure that he could still see the dragon engraved towards the hilt of each weapon and as he had expected they were still there.

Once he grabbed both weapons, he put them in a long black bag and rushed back home.

As soon as he got in, he wanted to speak to his brother straight away but before he could go up the stairs, his mother had caught him coming in through the front door.

"Hey Novis, oh what's in the bag you got there?"

"They're just some stuff from grandpas place, he said I could keep them, so I want to put them on display on my wall."

As Novis said that he suddenly had a thought. Maybe his mother would be able to see the markings? Novis quickly rummaged through his back and brought out the wooden bamboo sword. He didn't want his mother seeing the longsword thinking he was doing something dangerous.

"Mum, do you think you could take a look at this bamboo sword? When I showed it to Scarlett, she said she could see a dragon near the bottom of it but I couldn't see anything. I think she might just be playing tricks on me though."

Novis's mum took the bamboo sword from Novis and started to look around, she looked long and hard and couldn't see anything at all on it.

"I think Scarlett just decided to get some payback on you for once, there's nothing on that sword but the wood it was made from."

Novis smiled

"Thanks mum." Then Novis quickly Ran up the stairs.

This confirmed that not all family members related to Novis could see the marking, his mother was a part of his grandfather's side so would also explain why his grandfather could never hear or see it either.

Novis patiently stood outside Bill's door waiting for one of his games to finish. Novis could always tell when Bill was playing a game or not as Bill would shout and curse through the door. When the shouting had stopped, it that was the time for Novis to enter.

Finally, the room seemed to have quietened down and Novis entered Bill's room.