Yulon sat in his office, looking into a tub of water. To his right was professor Leon, and to his left was professor Lok who held a wooden stick above the pool. The tub displayed the current actions and locations of various students from the teachers’ point of view.
“Why did you tell them that they were being watched? Shouldn’t you keep that as a secret?” Leon asked curiously. His wolf was sitting in the corner of the room, sleeping.
Yulon watched as Kyrion spotted one of the instructors quickly right before falling from the tree. He had an inquisitive look in his eye and a slight scowl.
“Short answer, certain parallels in chaotic years. Long answer Lok would you care to explain? It’s kind of an inside joke. Considering it was your group of four that caused the incident.” Yulon said with a smirk on his face.
“I’d rather an instructor not get killed by one of our fledgling students by accident. We have a lot of students with dangerous parents.” Lok said with a smug look on his face.
“How? These are fledglings the strongest could maybe last a minute against a practitioner. I haven’t seen the potential to kill an expert in any of them.” Leon seemed more curious than concerned.
“I’m sure you’ll find out sooner or later..” Lok had a professional expression on his face. But his eyes showed excitement as he looked at Leon’s wolf. It looked up, nodded, and put its head back down.
Leon was frustrated by this point, so he asked the obvious question. “How does one overpower an expert while so weak?”
Yulon smiled.” A mystery, but I’ve been forewarned about students who may have an instant death ability.”
“Plural?”
“Yes. There are 3 in this class. 2 of which can’t access their power willingly, the third can use theirs but probably won’t unless it’s necessary.” Lok added as he nodded to Leon.
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The group of students stared at the boar’s motionless form, not breathing and not moving. The purple mushrooms littered the area, covering it with a purple miasma of spores.
“Nico?” Damian asked.
“This fog is highly flammable along with the mushrooms. So I suggest we use fire and run for the hills. This is going to get messy quickly.” Nico explained, with eyes almost burning with anticipation.
“You sure love your fire.” Everest backed away from his book-reading companion.
“Fire has its uses afterall.” Nico waved his finger at Everest.
“Burn it and pray it decides to run. What do we do?” Wura popped her knuckles.
“Everest I want you to cover the area with cloth bindings. They may burn, but that’s fine. Noah set up a wall of molten metal far ahead of us, Wura I want you to hide behind a tree spear ready to thrust when it passes. Pigs aren’t good at changing direction when charging. After that I want you to get some distance. Kiara and Kyrion will bombard the beast from above. Assuming Kiara can get up said tree. If not, she can....”
Kiara interrupted him, “If he can climb a tree then I can too! Probably even better.” with pride in her eyes and irritation in her tone.
“Kiara... My brother isn’t good at things like thinking, or the like, but when it comes to climbing trees he’s in another league. Just because he makes it look easy doesn’t mean it is.” Asela tried to warn her slightly older friend. But they didn’t work as intended.
“Ok…. I will engage from behind when the barrage of ranged attacks starts. Now for the tricky part. The start of this fight rests on Nico and Asela. I need you to make a strong fireball capable of dealing a good amount of destruction to the nearby area and weaken our foe. Lastly, be flexible. Should all else fail, attack the boar with everything you’ve got. Get ready. We start on my signal.
Kiara struggled to get up her tree. It seemed much more challenging than she had assumed. Kiara made claws of ice, which she used to pierce into the bark, putting one hand in front of the other to scale the tree. By the time she arrived, Kyrion was already settled on a tree branch.
Everyone else entered their positions. A thin web of cloth and molten barricades are the only defenses.
“Light it up.” Damian said the signal as Nico and Asela sent a condensed fireball at it.
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The flame connected head-on, but the effect was more than they expected. All the mushrooms on the boar exploded, setting off a chain of smaller explosions that sent shrooms and debris flying. Kiara was knocked out of her tree. A speeding rock hit Nico in the back as he stood in front of Asela. Everest was knocked onto his back and seemed to vanish into the bushes. Damian and Noah were the only ones on the ground in perfect shape.
Kyrion was surprised by the reaction and looked down, noticing his partner had taken a fall and wasn’t moving. So he jumped down to check on her. Kiara was still breathing and somewhat conscious, but she couldn’t be moved carelessly.
“Don’t move, I’ll make sure you don’t get any more injured.” Kyrion joined Noah and Damian, who had taken their vanguard positions.
“Kyrion, you’re supposed to be in the backline.” Damian said stoically.
“My partner can’t go anywhere right now so I have to protect her.” So Kyrion said, gone were his carefree eyes. What remained was pure conviction, something that seemed out of place on the young boy.
Noah nodded in understanding, his body bulking up slightly, features growing more masculine and feline. His canines extended and sharpened, and his eyes turned yellow with slits in the pupils. His skin grew fur, and hot metal solidified around him, forming a suit of armor. Noah got on all fours, ready to intercept anything that entered his range.
Damian’s sword radiated a dark yellow aura as he began to fill it with mana. Likewise, his body gave off a spectral aura of yellow energy that engulfed the boy as he shifted stances.
From the fire came the bounding boar, and with it was a trail of flames, as liquid flames began to leak from the beast-like blood. It knocked down everything in its path and headed toward the two that started the fire. Its legs clipped on the molten barricade, and it lost a good chunk of its speed. It ran, not on hooves but on its remaining stubs. The creature found itself entangled soon after entering the cloth weave, which tightened around the beast.
Noah met the beast and began to tear at it. Removing skin and bone. But the creature still moved as though the pain didn’t register.
Turning its body to the side. The boar rolled onto its side, crushing Noah and knocking the wind out of him. Noah’s form wavered, and he was forced to shift back. Noah had to crawl out of combat as his rank-one endurance wasn’t enough to keep up with that level of damage.
Damian charged forward, slicing and stabbing at the beast, creating wounds it didn’t even seem to care about. The boar shrugged him off, but instead of fighting back, it began to charge forward again.
Kyrion grabbed the boar by its tusk, locking it in place as roots came up from the ground, enveloping the creature’s body. Pinning it in place and squeezing it as it struggled. The boar made no audible noises, but it was far from giving up.
Damian shortly caught up and started carving up the boar with his sword. Still, it did not go down. Damian made sure to remove its eyes, but it was as expected. The creature wasn’t the one in charge of its body.
Wura came running forward, spear ready, as the tip began rapidly rotating. She stabbed the creature where the brain should be and destroyed it. Yet the beast still moved.
When Wura removed her spear, the wound revealed a giant mushroom wrapped in a purple light where the boar’s insides should have been.
Damian capitalized on the new vulnerability damaging the light barrier encasing the mushroom. The boar continued to sink into the ground as the roots pulled it down. The host body was done for, and the plant needed to find another quickly.
The mushroom shattered into mist, coating the area with a purple cloud. Which paralyzed the kids nearby. Causing them to slip into a state of unconsciousness.
The shroom then grew stubby white legs and moved toward the highest concentration of mana in the area. Finally, it slowly headed toward Kyrion.
Kyrion watched in silent terror as the creature approached while he was unable to defend himself.
Tendrils protruded from its body, reached for the child’s head, and connected.
A roar came from deep within Kyion as his entire being and more rebelled against the intrusion as the world faded into black.
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Kyrion reawakened in a tent, surrounded by his friends in various states of disrepair.
Nico had a bandage covering their back, protecting stitches. The kid was still unconscious.
Damian was moving around in a daze. He was awake but just barely. The fight had clearly taken a lot out of him, physically and mentally. He had a guilty look on his face, but Kyrion had no desire to poke him.
Asela was crying in the corner of the tent where Kiara was situated. Her eyes were red, and it was clear that she was stressed out.
Kiara looked worse than she was, a bandage was wrapped around her temples, and her head was propped up with a makeshift cushion.
Noah was hurt but able to walk around pretty well. The limit to his damage was light bruises and scrapes.
Wura was also walking around quite well, not quite injured like the others, but she also had a dazed look about her. It could have been an effect of the mist.
Finally, there was Everest, completely unharmed Everest, as well-dressed and cheeky as ever. Only he wasn’t cheeky, his eyes were cold, and his expression was monotonous. If anything, he seemed disconnected as he sat on the ground.
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Leon was biting his thumb in worry. “We need to go in. No, we will go in. Those kids are in danger. That is no fledgling rank monster, it’s a mid tier practitioner rank. They aren’t ready for it yet.”
Yulon looked to Lok, who was beginning to look almost manic. “I agree with Leon on this matter, but it seems you know something we don’t.”
“I can see it. What’s going on inside is something that papers will be written about in the future. His regeneration is fighting off its influence, while the spore tries to break his mana pool down and consume it. It heals itself and draws more energy from the mushroom. Like an immune system fighting disease. Looks like this child, won’t be given an ominous title like his predecessors.” Lok said excitedly, already pulling out a pen and paper.
Leon looked in surprise. “Predecessors? I met the child while traveling from a rural village.”
“Oh. You wouldn’t know. The Death Tyrant survived her execution and raised a clutch of monsters. But that’s top secret. You can’t choose your parents after all. If we excluded based on ties to dangerous people then we’d have to get rid of most of our students.”
“Luckily the only thing that boy doesn’t share with his mother is her thirst for blood. He did inherit her stubbornness and desire for petty pranks but he mostly aims to inconvenience people.” Yulon seemed almost relieved.
Leon looked confused, “What pranks. I haven’t heard anything from the other students.”
“He did it to the class two students, that baron’s brats. He snuck small seeds onto their clothes, you remember the ant incident right?” Yulon seemed disinterested by this point. The story had been retold so many times that he wondered how Leon didn’t know about it. He was pretty sure they talked about it at one point. Then again, Leon rarely participated in their social gatherings, so it could have been someone else.
“Oh yeah that was bad. How did you figure out it was him?” Leon seemed interested in the answer.
“Oh that was me, he has this look in his eye. You have to know what to look for, they also have the same tells when lying. Which is quite funny, let me tell you, the boy could convince me the sky was red If I didn’t know them. Anyhow, let’s get back to watching.” Lok made himself comfortable and started watching the trials.
“Are you going to tell me what his tells are?” Leon looked at his fellow instructor.
“I’m a seer, not a snitch. I don’t know what he’s lied to you about as of yet. Although you should be careful around lightning swords. They could be the death of you. I’d recommend breaking them before they can deal damage.” Lok smiled to himself.