The First Legendary Beast Master

Chapter 1711 A Turtleʼs Tragedy

While Opal turned the spare warehouse into a luxury spa for bunny girls, Karl was turning the apartments for the new Immortals into something that looked less like rubble, and more like the traditional apartment blocks that they had been.

Only, with a few upgrades that the original designers hadnʼt bothered with, or hadnʼt known about.

The most notable of the changes was the fact that Karl added the basic runes for mana gathering to the main room in every apartment, and put a small mana crystal in the floor so that they could keep a diffuse collection of stored mana within the Clan.

Not only would it help everyoneʼs progression, it would also provide backup mana if the Clan was attacked again.

In an emergency, every bit of mana that could be called upon to keep the barriers up mattered, and if their existing defences could have taken a few more hits, the New Home Merchant Clan wouldnʼt have been doing as much repair work.

Karl could sense Leoʼs despair as the turtle realized that the school had been smashed, and they were going to have to sort through it all for valuable reading materials before they could start reconstruction.

That was a tragedy to the young turtle. He had friends who went to the school.

But now that he thought about it, they should be somewhere in the compound as well, and he didnʼt know if they were all okay. Not everyone who had been defeated was able to be resurrected, the Clan had taken hundreds, possibly thousands of casualties.

Now, in relative terms, that was less than five percent, versus over ninety percent permanent casualties for the Gralpedrin Templars, but that was not the point.

Those were all people that might be his friends, or the family of his friends.

The underground safe zones hadnʼt been breached that he knew of, but many of his friends had powerful parents, and they would have gone to fight and defend the New Homeʼs territory.

Leo started to help sort through the rubble, picking out books and stacking them in orderly piles using the [Thorned Vines] spell.

It wasnʼt a powerful nature magic, and was mostly a crowd control skill, but it was great at grabbing things. Then someone elseʼs vine tried to grab the same books he was going for, and Leo looked up to see that Cindy Lou had joined them, and was using her magic to clean the rubble from the classroom.

Her eyes were red, and Leo feared the worst, until her heard her mumbling about her backpack, which was left at school when she evacuated, and held many precious memories.

Cindy Lou liked to keep pictures, gifts from classmates and other trinkets along with her school supplies.

”Weʼre two classrooms over. Our class was there.” Leo informed her, pointing with his chin to his left.

”Youʼre sure?”

Leo nodded. ”Iʼve been working my way over there, but didnʼt want to leave work behind me.”

That helped calm her a little, and Leo discretely sent vines over to sort through the rubble around her desk, protecting her backpack as well as he could. There was likely going to be a lot of damage to the trinkets inside, as an entire level of the school was above their classroom. But as long as he held the vines over it, nothing that shifted would damage it more than it already was, and Cindy Lou should be able to recover something.

Slowly, they made their way through the classrooms of the older students, sorting belongings into piles and books into stacks.

The rubble was left where it was, in case someoneʼs skill would let them save energy using it to rebuild the place.

That was the best that they could do, as Leo didnʼt have enough magic to fully rebuild a whole school. He didnʼt really care, though. More of his friends were starting to come out to help them clean up the rubble, along with parents. That let them all know that their classmates were alright, and that they would get any precious memories that were left in the rubble back today.

Finally, Leo and Cindy Lou made it to their classroom, and the turtle carefully extracted her backpack, along with all the ornaments and school supplies that had been in her now crushed desk.

”I think that this is everything from your desk.”

Cindy Lou rushed to the cluster of vines and carefully picked out everything, trying not to cry at the condition of her treasures. It was all smashed, and her favourite pencil was broken.

But when she opened her backpack, a small smile spread over her face. The stuffed trinkets were dirty, but not torn, and the pictures that she had inside her bag were all in pristine condition. That was the important part. Those had all been hand drawn by her friends, and they were irreplaceable. Leo kept sorting through his classmatesʼ stuff, being careful to keep it all organized by person as he stacked it off to the side.

That way, everyone could find what they had left at the school.

But other than Cindy Louʼs backpack, there wasnʼt too much in the class. Most of the kids didnʼt bring much to school with them other than their notebooks. But they really didnʼt need to bring much. The school provided what they needed, and most of them didnʼt take anything home at all unless they had an out of class assignment, which was uncommon in the early years.

Only after they had awakened a System did they start devoting all their time to study.

As long as they learned to read and write in the first few years, the school generally felt that they had done their basic job. Anything that they retained from the other classes was a bonus.

By their standards, Cindy Lou and Leo were model students because both had excellent memories, and they actually actively learned new things outside of

class.

Even if it risked having them labelled a ”know it all” by their peers.