After gearing up all the students followed the teacher's as they walked into the forest.
"Did you actually make the recipe for those cupcakes? I still can't believe it." Gareth asked as they walked to kill the time.
"Yup, I told you guys I took cooking as my elective." Max replied as he looked around at the scenery and took a bite of his cupcake.
"Could you make some of those for my birthday please? With frosting and all, that would be like the best birthday gift ever!" Vitria added after she took a sip from her water bottle.
"Sure! Just remind me a few days before and I'll do it." Max said as he finished his cupcake.
The group continued walking uneventfully, atleast until they reached the area where the first activity would be held.
"Alright, we're going to separate into 6 teams here, each team will go with their own teacher, the objective of this activity is: make a fire, purify water, find 8 different edible plants and a suitable shelter for the night. All of these objectives must be achieved without the use of your Elemental powers, any team found cheating will be instantly disqualified. To make sure all of you atleast try, the team that finishes the activity first will get a special reward." After Mike finished explaining the teacher's separated the whole class into teams and started walking into the forest separately.
Max's team consisted of himself, Gareth, Vitria, a Water Elemental named Susan, a Fire Elemental named Johnny, an Earth Elemental named Ben and the overconfident Lightning Elemental Max learned was named Julien. Their teacher was Ian, the Plant Elemental.
They walked for a while and ended up on a part of the forest with less trees, Ian stopped them when they reached a small rivulet going through.
"Here's the place, we are starting the activity at... 2:03 PM! Remember the objectives, you have until 7 PM at the latest to complete them." Ian said as he took out a survival knife from his backpack. "This is the only tool you'll be given and be able to use. It has a low-quality Fire Stone on the pommel for lighting the fire." He explained a he took took out a cap the knife had in the bottom to show a reddish black stone, which he put back on as he handed the knife to Vitria.
After getting the knife Vitria inspected it for a bit before speaking "Alright, I think the best way to do this is if we focus on multiple tasks at the same time, we need wood for the fire right? So while we get the wood we also try to find all the plants we can and categorize them later, if you find a plant you think might be poisonous do not touch it, is everyone OK with this plan?"
"And who made you the leader of this group?" Jul asked as he crossed his arms and gave Vitria an accusatory look.
"No one, but do you have a better idea?" Vitria gave him an annoyed look back.
"I- No..." Jul decided to shut up after that while the group agreed on Vitria's plan.
"Alright, for the water part, I need someone that is good at wood carving or handling a knife." Vitria said as she looked at the group.
"I am." Ben said as he put his hand up.
"Great, I need you to carve a deep hole into a log, clean it up, and then fill it with water, that will be our pot to purify the water, then we will use the fire we're going to make to heat up a rock and put it inside the hole with the water, the heat of the rock will purify it by boiling, I'll need your help for that, we won't have the tools to move the stone and I don't want to be the cause as to why someone ended up with a burn." Vitria said as she pointed to Johnny.
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Johnny nodded and after a few moments to finish up the plan the group separated and went to scavenge in the forest.
Half an hour later the group had managed to get all the wood they needed along with a couple of plants.
They started by crumbling dried leaves, dead grass and old bark to make tinder, then Vitria smashed the Fire Stone on the pommel of against knife against another stone and used the sparks generated to light the tinder, then with the now lighted tinder the wooden sticks started burning.
Vitria passed the knife to Ben who started carving a rectangle-shaped hole into a small log Gareth brought, while he did that the group categorized the plants they had found.
"So... the only edible stuff we've found is the Spiral Berries, Coal Shrooms... That's all uh?" Votria sighed.
The Spiral Berries looked like a string that formed a downward spiral covered in pinkish red balls that tasted like grape.
The Coal Shrooms got their name from their shape, a rectangle with a striking resemblance to a pencil made of coal.
"Should we go and explore after we're done with the water?" Johnny said as he burned the poisonous and useless plants they found while Gareth used an air current to get the fumes away.
Vitria nodded as she put the Spiral Berries and the Coal Shrooms inside a plastic bag.
"Isn't that against the rules?" Susan asked as she looked at the teacher while signaling at Gareth and Johnny, Ian only shrugged.
After half an hour of carving Ben managed to finish the hole, after cleaning it he filled it with water from the rivulet and moved over to the fire.
Johnny put a hand inside the bonfire and after tossing some still burning sticks aside he took out a red hot stone, which he unceremoniously dropped inside the rectangle-shaped hole filled with water, the water steamed and boiled until it used up all the heat of the stone, leaving purified water and a cracked stone.
Vitria took the log to the teacher "Hmmm, that was pretty smart... I'll accept it, So the last thing you need is the other 6 edible plants and find shelter." Ian explained as he wrote on his notebook.
"Are we really going to sleep out here? We have perfectly good tents all the way back at camp..." Susan said as she got up and dusted herself off.
"Don't worry about it, we'll be going back to camp for the night, it's just to check if you guys know the basics of a good shelter."
Ian said as he checked his phone "Damm, if you keep it up the special reward might be yours."
After a few minutes of gearing up again the group continued their walk into the forest, 40 minutes later they had found 6 more edible plants, bringing the counter to 8, they haven't found the shelter... yet.
They continued the walk until they came across a big tunnel on the ground that after a through investigation turned out to be an old burrow an Elemental Beast had made, the whole group could fit inside even though it was a bit crowded.
"So... are you sure about this? Have you checked for anything that may imply the Elemental Beast still lives here?" Ian said as he looked at Vitria, who seemed quite nervous.
"Y-yes! We checked every nook and cranny of the whole burrow, the scent of other Elemental Beasts its there but its also old, and considering how unkempt the place it's obvious no one is staying long term." Vitria responded, still a bit unsure of her answer.
"Well, I'll be damned if you guys don't have luck on your side." Ian said as he wrote another thing in his notebook. "Alright, that counts as finishing the first activity, let's go back to camp."
After almost an hour of walking the group managed to reach the camp by almost 5 PM, they were welcomed by another group that got to the camp before them, but thankfully it turned out that they hadn't finished all the objectives, rather, a hive of Aurum Wasps had attacked them, leaving the teacher no choice but to finish the activity sooner than expected as they had stung some students.
Before the reward could be given out all the groups had to be back at camp, so to kill some time the teacher's took out some board games they had inside the cottage.
After just a few games in which Gareth lost incredulously after making one too many blunders all the groups were back on camp.
"Alright everyone, that would be the end of the first activity, almost all of you did a great job with the activity, I would like to say that deserves a reward too but that's not how it works, so... the team that gets the reward is... Ian's!"
"We won! Let's GOOOOO!" Gareth put his arms up in the air and screamed.
Everyone on the team else did less screaming and more cheering to celebrate but they we're all equally excited.
"Ahem-" After a few moments Mike fake coughed to get everyone's attention and continued speaking. "Now it's time to reveal the special reward! Drumroll please." Alex used his phone to play the drumroll sound effect out loud. "... Pizza night!"
With that the cheering came up again from the winners while the other teams looked at them with annoyance.