After many more long minutes, battered and bruised.....

"Uff!" You huff, collapsing back into your chair in the Monster Theory classroom. Miranda, to your left and in perfect condition, looks around at the four of you sitting silent and exhausted in the never-could-be-comfortable-enough classroom chairs. You've all changed back into your school uniforms again and packed away your equipment.

"H-how did it go?" She asks, trying to find a classmate willing to form words at the moment but failing. She settles on you, and you just give her a long groan in response.

Ben sets up at the front, many large paper slides ready to be looked over in this class that you're hoping for once will just be listening to information. You even have a pen and your empty workbook out, ready to brainlessly write any word he says and then fall asleep later.

Ben, now ready, looks up at the lot of you. "Ready to go?" He asks, in a way more excited teacher-y way than you ever thought you'd see out of him.

Your friend is really taking to this University well, which is good to see! But even for him you can't get your energy levels up just yet, and he seems to get the message when he looks over to the other corner and sees Delilah's sour expression and tired, puffy, half-closed and angry eyes.

"Yeesh." He says, pausing for a moment. "Well, today we're going to be focusing on some basic anatomical weakpoints common across different types of monsters. Some monsters have special weak spots you'll have to learn later, but it's a little known fact outside of Warrior circles that there are a few big ones shared by lots of them. Make sure to pay attention and add these to your notes, because it will be something you'll get tested on later. Any questions?"

He looks across the whole class again, trying to gauge everybody's word retention levels after Professor Phoebe's torturous eighty minute Combat Class. You're only barely able to manage the strength for a supportive smile, which he sees and appreciates. Miranda hesitantly raises her hand.

"Yes! Yes, Miranda, you have a question." He says a bit too quickly with a relieved smile.

"I-it's not-- could I please go to the bathroom?"

His face drops and he stares at her for a long pause. She shuffles nervously in her seat.

"Um, I- sorry, I can- I'll hold it."

"Go to the bathroom, Miranda." He says. She gets out of her seat and quickly totters towards the door.

When she returns a few minutes later, the rest of you are a bit better rested, and you for one are having a much easier time paying attention, so it's not all doom and gloom. Ben gets back up, going over to his large paper slides with a bit less energy than before (but still more than average) and flips the first blank slide over the back of the stand.

"Ready to begin, everyone?" He asks, standing beside a big painting that he probably did of various components of some sort of eyeball.

"Yeah, I have a question." Jace says, raising his hand. Ben is probably a bit annoyed by the delayed timing of the question but he's too good of a sport to show it. "What were the monsters we fought just earlier? They were, like, grey with grey armour-y bits. But different grey. And scythe arm things."

"It sounds like they might've been a veloxodonta." Ben smiles, spotting an opportunity. "It's more of an animal than a monster, but people generally think of it as a monster since you won't find it anywhere other than our island. Besides that, it can't be tamed and it attacks any other living thing on sight, so it's just as much of a threat as any properly-classified monster."

"And -- what weaknesses does it have, then?"

"I'm glad you asked!" Ben says, slapping his hand against the slide of the eyeball components. "A lot of the monsters that evolved on this island are nocturnal, and that means their eyes are built to pick up more light. Now, a lot of the time their eyes can adjust just like ours, but light sources like fire or reflecting the sun can completely disorientate them, since they have a much lower minimum intake than we do. You can generally tell which monsters this applies to by looking at their....."

The class continues for the rest of its eighty minute duration, but you don't retain much more than that and your notetaking endeavour was, admittedly, shoddy work at best that you abandoned midway through.

You'll definitely focus up and take notes for the exam later, on other days, but right now it's probably okay to let your mind wander and get the work done some other time. People get wiser with age, so you in a few days will probably be way more responsible and studious than you right now. Besides! You did the same in your last year of regular school, and it didn't impact you too much back then. You think. You weren't really paying attention to that either.