“By the Gods!” Sofia cursed when the Earthen Bear emerged with a roar so loud that it made the ground shake. Julliete caught her arm but that was only because the brunette lost her footing, too. But together, they prevented each other from falling over.

The two Casters in their impromptu team didn’t fare as well, though. All four of their teammates were boys. Alonso and Jorge, the Casters, looked like a typical member of their job: thin as a rail and fragile as a flower. At least Mark and Javier, the Guardians, were robust. Still, their agility left a bit to be desired, as all four of them crashed to the ground.

A message spell went off and babbled into her ear, “All students, return to base camp immediately.” It repeated a couple of times, then expired. Sofia and Juliette glanced at each other, turned to stare at the giant monster, and grunted.

“Yup, we don’t want to fight that,” Mark said as he struggled to his feet. He helped the Casters to theirs while Javier was already jogging towards the valley entrance.

“Such courage,” Sofie chuckled as she followed behind them.

“Yeah, brave men,” Juliette echoed mockingly.

“Discretion, ladies,” Mark replied with a laugh while his silvery tail swished, “is the better part of valour.” He was an A’sungit tribesman, a wolf-kin, though he looked more like a human male with canine ears and tail than the other, more beastly-looking kin.

“Why?” Alonso asked, the human Caster kept glancing back at the Earthen Bear. “You want to fight a Behemoth Elemental?”

“‘Course not,” Juliette said. “But we’ll eventually have to.”

“Decades away,” the other Caster, Jorge, a short Durandir, said. “No need to run to our deaths.”

Sofia snorted in derision. Casters were cautious to a fault, not even daring to close in on their enemies. While her eclectic mix of spells allowed her to fight at a comfortable range, ever since learning under Professor Davar, she found pleasure in being up close and personal.

Another roar went through them, this time from the front. The golden wheat stalks were taller than Sofia, but the twin Guardians, Mark and Javier, were just tall enough to peek over the grain. But then again, the Behemoth Bull that emerged straight ahead couldn't be missed.

“Bull!” Sofia growled as she bit off a curse.

The roar toppled her over, and this time Juliette hadn’t been next to her. She went down on one knee, her mind racing. Two Behemoths! Even one meant dire things and highlighted the hasty nature of this exam. A Conflux Break. The student groups must have killed too many of the lesser elemental beasts in too short a time frame.

She didn’t really know much about the Golden Fields Conflux save for the fact that it served as the republic’s northwestern border. And while the harvestable gold was nice, it wasn’t nearly worth their lives. Besides, any resource found in Confluxes must be refined and purified of its Elemental energies as the possibility of a negative reaction once it leaves the high concentration zone is nearly a hundred percent.

She spotted Department Head Farron’ir flying towards the beast, and then, there was a dull roar from behind. Sofia looked back and couldn’t help but stare. There was someone fighting the bear but was too distant to get a good look at. If she had to guess, it would be Professor Davar since they saw her a couple of hours ago.

Wordlessly, the sextet continued their run. Sofia was nervous closing in on the Elemental Behemoth but was relieved to notice that other professors were fighting, too. She saw a few student groups ahead, but they weren’t moving faster than a cautious walk.

“We should slow down, too,” Mark said.

“Or run faster,” Juliette countered. “Get out of the way before that Behemoth spawns its kin.”

“Too late for that,” Jorge grumbled as he pointed at the Bull’s feet. Sofia jumped up and caught sight of dozens of smaller bulls, closer in size to the actual farm animals, even if they still looked like they were made out of metal. They reminded her of Steelds, actually, but they had a feral air to them.

The smaller metal bulls charged through the wheat field and trampled the crop. A couple of them were headed south. The student groups in front of them ran directly away from the bulls, but that also meant that they were headed away from the first valley.

“They’ll be trapped in the hills,” Sofia said. The valley walls were either tall hills or outright cliffs. Even so, the ones with a slope gentle enough for an easy climb were covered with golden trees and shrubbery. Who knows what lurked there?

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

The other regular elemental bull would cross their paths if they continued their path. Sofia shuddered as she watched the smaller bull go through the wheat. Those things were tougher than they looked and even the slightest accidental touch could slice through skin and cloth with equal ease. In fact, she could see sparks flying from the bull’s metal hide as they scraped against the leaves.

“Incoming!” Javier yelled.

The wolf beastkin drew his arming sword and placed his bucker hand in front. His black ears lay flat against his scruffy hair, and his tail curved downwards. Elemental energy swirled around him, and as he was one of the rare Metal affinity Magi in Niria, and the Conflux was replete with that elemental energy, he was soon inundated with so much of it that it was visible to the naked eye. Sofia saw the Metal elemental energies as sparkles of gold, which, when given a closer look, were actually miniature weapon forms, shifting from swords and spears to guns and bullets.

His twin brother, Mark, assumed the same pose, but his elemental affinity was Earth. Guardians used their Elemental Affinities to reinforce their bodies and were often deficient at Arcana Weaving in one form or another. That, or their Elemental Heart Refinement Formula took up all of the inscribed nodes for body reinforcement or defensive spells.

“Are you two crazy?” Jorge screamed. The Caster student wove a spell that accelerated his movement speed, and the edges of his body were already beginning to blur. “That thing will carve us to bits!”

Alonso nodded in agreement while his hands were also going through a set of somatic components. Sofia grunted, “Leave if you want to.”

“‘Course we will,” Jorge grunted. “No way will I risk my life fighting with a provisional team.”

“Run then, coward,” Juliette hissed, while Sofia snorted. The twin Guardians just shook their heads.

Sofia began casting her spells, moving her body in through the stances of Roaring Volcano at same time. Unlike the original display Professor Davar showed them, this version was mainly to increase resonance with elemental energy rather than used as a fighting form. The stances were truncated and more fluid, and even though the resonance was lower, the speed of going through forms meant that more were gathered around her anyway. She took some distance from Juliette to allow her roommate to make the wide stances of her Sweeping Gale.

The bull shifted course and was headed directly to Sofia! She gasped in surprise at the flames bursting out of the bull’s nostrils and eyes. Is that thing immune to Fire? Only one way to find out.

Somatic and vocal components flowed like water as Sofia cast Fire Blast. The three-circle spell would have taken her nearly a minute to cast if not for the fact that the stances of the Roaring Volcano shortcut the energy-gathering phase of the spell. The bull was still fifty paces away by the time her spell was ready, and she let loose.

Elemental Fire condensed into a small orb and with a flick, she sent it flying. Almost as soon as she did so, she began another cast of the same. Juliette slashed from top to bottom, and her blade released an arc of cutting wind. The bull snorted, lowered its head, and smashed into Sofia’s Fire Blast. The orb exploded and covered the beast in flames. Juliette’s Wind Blade sliced into the flames and smoke a moment later and exposed the creature, who looked none the worse for wear. But the Wind Blade sliced into its horns, shattered, then stabbed into its hide.

Mooo! Scrinch!

The blade dug into the metal hide, carved into it for an inch and dissipated. The edges of the wound were glowing red, and Juliette’s follow-up Wind Blade slammed into the reddened hide, and parted it more easily.

“Blast it again!” Juliette yelled, and Sofia let loose her second Fire Blast, this time aiming lower.

The orb exploded into the bull’s sternum, which it shrugged off. But the heat made the metal skin far more malleable, and the follow-up Wind Blade carved deep into its shoulder and chest. Blood spurted out of the shallow gash, but that was all the time they had. The bull slammed into Javier, as the Guardian interposed himself between the beast and the two girls. Mark slammed into the beast from the side a moment after it hit Javier, causing it to stagger.

Sofia dashed around to the flank, followed closely by Juliette. Spell components flowed from her mind and into her fingers and lips. She shifted her spell from a blast to a sustained sphere. The kinetic force accompanying the Fire Blast wasn’t doing anything and she needed the heat more than anything else. A Flame Sphere gathered above her palms, a couple of inches across. She tossed it towards the bull and it ballooned in size, stretching out to two paces wide. Her mind focused on keeping the spell going even as she continued through the stances of Roaring Volcano. The elemental Fire converged into her sphere and she sent it to flank the bull.

The elemental beast swung its horns at Mark, who hunkered behind his buckler. The shield was augmented by Earth Elemental energy which caught the force of the blow and directed it to the ground. Still, he wasn’t good enough to negate the hit, and he stumbled backwards with a pained yell.

Javier slammed his sword into the bull’s face. The creature was taller at the shoulder than the twins, so his sword tip only poked the creature’s maw. It deflected off the scales and he managed to direct it towards the nose, which was quite sensitive as the beast flinched and bellowed.

The Flame Sphere pressed against the flank and Sofia rolled it over the creature’s back. The metallic grey hide quickly turned red with heat, and slowly turned orange as though it were a piece of metal set in a forge.

“Wind Blade!” Juliette yelled as she unleashed the spell, which slammed into the heated hide. It carved a deep gash into the creature, and exposed rib bones and muscle. The bull’s panicked and pained reaction caught Javier by surprise and he got slapped by the bull’s front left hoof.

Crunch!

“Ahh!”

“Wind Blade!” Juliette cried out as she unleashed another spell. It hit the already existing gash, but instead of orienting the blade broadly, her roommate twisted it so it was more like a thrust than a slash. The spell slid between the ribs and into the thoracic cavity, though Sofia was unsure which internal organs the spell wreaked havoc on. She focused the Flame Sphere on the wounded area, and it seemed the outer hide was the only part of the beast that was resistant to flame.

The disturbingly aromatic scent of roasting meat wafted into her nose and she felt herself salivate.

“Not the time!” she muttered.

Another Wind Blade slammed into the beast, and it must have hit something vital. The bull dropped down, and though it was still breathing, it was finished.

“Mark! Javier!” Sofia cried as she ran towards the wolfkin siblings. Mark was holding his side and wincing in pain, while Javier was favouring his left leg.

“We’re good,” Mark said as he pulled a potion vial from his belt. “More importantly, finish that thing off and retrieve its core or run. You decide.”

“I…” Sofia muttered as she glanced around. The other bull had been intercepted by a teacher and had been slaughtered. The creature was of the same level as the goats except for the fact that they were more vulnerable to fire. This was a good chance to finish the exam. “Let’s grab the core.”

Kaboom!

Behind her, the world turned to gold and the shockwave of the explosion knocked all of them off their feet.

Then it started to rain blood and gore.