The old man had gone to the other room that was attached to the side of the martial arts hall. The room that, since I had been here, had assumed it was the restroom due to the noxious odour wafting from under the door. It turned out that is was actually a storage room. After around ten minutes of idly twiddling my thumbs listening to the occasional grunt, curse, and crash of what I can only assume was an item that held some importance shattering on the ground, the old man burst out and shouted,

  "Ah, here they are!"

  He was holding a pair of fairly large gauntlets. They were red in colour with a turtle-like pattern. The fingertips were pointed like small daggers with black tips.

  "Finally, I knew I still had these around here. You can borrow these in the meantime. Heck, you can even keep them if you give me what they're worth." The old man then handed them to me.

  As I held the gauntlets in my hand, I could feel they had a weight to them. The design made me suspect that they were beast crystal items. Beast crystal items often resembled the animal they had come from. In this case, it looked like it came from a turtle-like creature.

  As I scrutinized the gauntlets, the old man was impatiently tapping his feet, excitement exuding from his eyes. "Well, are you just going to stare at them or put them on?"

  When I slipped both the gauntlets on, they seemed to be a little big for my arm size. Without warning, the gauntlets gripped around my forearm and fingers. They started to reform and shrink down until they fit nice and snug. It was as if they were hand made for my arms.

  "They look good on you boy. Unfortunately, they're only intermediate tier crystal items. If I let you borrow anything higher tier then that, it wouldn't be fair to the others."

  "Thank you, I promise to repay you for this in the future."

  Although the old man said some might see this as unfair, I thought it was totally fine. There would be many participants at the tournament from all sorts of different backgrounds. Would people think it was unfair of nobles gifting their child equipment? I could understand where the old man was coming from though especially since he was an elder of the academy. They might think he was playing favourites.

  With the gauntlets in my hands, I was eager to test them out. I sparred with the old man for a good while, getting a feel for them. It was a shame I couldn't use my full strength. Otherwise, I think the two of us could have had a good match.

  The gauntlets' strength was on par with my Ki-empowered hands. If I was to infuse the gauntlets with Ki, they would become even stronger. The sharp fingertips allowed me to use them as claw-like weapons. And their sturdiness allowed them to double as a shield and weapon.

  Because of how strong the gauntlets were already, it allowed me to focus my Ki on other areas. Before I could only focus on either attacking or defending. Now I could do both.

  At this point, all I needed to do was save up some money so I could get the blacksmith to create a chest piece out of the fanged boar. It seemed like I would soon have a fine set of armour for myself.

  ******

  After training had finished and the evening came, I meandered to my favourite spot in the academy: the roof. I wore my hooded cloak and the black sash around my neck. Why was I wearing all this? Well, because tonight I had a plan.

  Tomorrow was our rest day where students were free to do what they wanted. Four days a week of training and one rest day before hunting on Saturday and one rest day after. I was eager to test out the true strength of the gauntlets and wanted to get my hands on some intermediate crystals.

  Although we would go hunting on the weekends, we would be stuck mostly hunting basic tier beasts and that was pretty much useless to me now apart from selling their crystal cores.

  After draining the mana of the minotaur, I now had ten points to add to my Ki. If I focused this on my shadow skills, then it would allow me to cover myself and one other person. After witnessing Noir's amazing speed, I had come up with an idea. If I was to use my shadow skills on Noir and me, we would be able to swiftly sneak past the guards without being seen.

  I tested my theory while walking around the city a few times and it seemed like no one had noticed. After all, the black sash knights were rare in the first place so not many people knew how to detect them or what to look out for when someone was using these skills.

  I summoned Noir and the big black horned wolf appeared by my side. I mounted Noir and activated the shadow skill. Black shadows started to appear and surround Noir and me until we eventually blended in. It worked even better at night.

  Noir set off like a bullet hopping from building to building till eventually, we had reached the City wall. Without any hesitation, Noir jumped from the top of the wall and landed on the ground. Despite the great height Noir jumped from, he wasn't hurt. As Noir ran off into the distance away from the guards. I used my dragon eyes skill to see if anyone was making a fuss.

  My dragon eyes skill could now reach a great distance ever since my body had evolved into that of a dragon knight. As I looked into the distance, it was as I had expected. No one had noticed anything at all. The knights on the wall had only felt an odd gust of wind pass by them…nothing to be suspicious about.

  The shadow skill wasn't perfect. It would often distort the area it was being used in. But with it being night time and Noir's fast speed, we were practically invisible.

  With this, it was time to go out hunting.