Chapter 6

Far in the east, at the edge of the Celestial Empire stood a lonely structure. From a distance, it looks almost like a gigantic tree grove, but from a closer distance, man-made structures can be seen. The walls are forged between gigantic mana trees that encircle the city in a strange amalgamation of nature and steel. Archers in silver armor and longbows can be seen patrolling the top of the gigantic wall.

Yansen, the fortress city. The shield that protected the empire against monsters for thousands of years.

The good Duke Feng was beloved by his subjects. He taxes them fairly, uses public funds honorably, and deeply cares about the well-being of his subjects. He did not gamble, drink only during festivities, and did not partake in any debauchery. A rare human, not just amongst the nobility of the world but amongst humanity in general. Duke Feng had 6 daughters, all famous for their intellect, strength, and beauty. The citizens had teasingly named the city “The Valley of Flowers” in honor of the good Duke and his family.

Today is the founding day of the city. All food and drinks for the festivities are paid for by the city and the duke himself. A celebration that would last for 7 days and 7 nights.

The ducal palace of Yansen is a plain-looking building. The word “palace” is quite a flattering description of this place. It was more similar to a big building with a giant courtyard. Thousands of citizens can be seen eating and drinking in the courtyard. Thousands more are in the city streets celebrating. Long stairs leading down from the main palace and into the courtyard are decorated with thousands of flowers in hundreds of colors. The flower petals blow in the night wind. The merriment of the party drowned out any anxiety about the war with monsters that plague their everyday lives. The Duke can be seen drinking with his wife at the top of the high steps.

The Duke was a large man, his height was twice the size of normal soldiers. The tall muscular body seems to be brimming with power. Black long beard and long white hair tied up behind him. A gigantic Eastern man of middle age. His wife sat next to him, a serene smile on her face. A mature woman that looks to be an elf. Her beauty, like most elves, is difficult for humans to compete with, mysterious and unreachable.

A figure wearing a black robe appeared behind the duke from the shadow of the building. Nothing identifying can be seen on the figure, except for the glowing golden eyes.

“Lord Duke, news from the middle kingdom. It's the prince” The voice of the black-robed figure also has no identifying information. Man or woman, young or old, nothing can be gleaned.

“Good! On the founding day, my brother sent news! Good fortune! Good! Hahahaha. What is that kid doing? Has he become a famous mage yet?” The Duke laughed merrily with a red face, his wife looked at her husband with tender eyes. They are both truly happy today.

“..........Lord, the prince met with an accident and has moved on to the heavenly palace.” For the first time, the voice of an old man can be heard shaking from sadness. “Furthermore, our spies found a potential asset”

It was as if time had stopped. The music, the merriment in the courtyard, the flower petals blowing in the wind, everything stopped.

The old man in the black robe looked at the courtyard, time had stopped. The Duke was unleashing his power without restraint because of the news.

“Lord! Please restrain yourself! The commoners will suffer from mana overload if you do not” the old man was holding onto the lord’s shoulders.

“Husband stop, please” A tender, mature voice of a woman. The Lord's wife was unaffected by his power.

“Right, sorry Lealatha” The duke finally regained his senses and time moved again. Quite a few commoners suddenly threw up down at the courtyard.

“Tell me what happened.” After the old man told him the tales. The Duke turns to his wife and the two seem to be speaking to each other, but no sounds can be heard by anyone else.

A while later.

“Call my daughters, and select 10 aura masters with strong individual fighting powers. I will wait at the portal” The Duke got up while a giant sword flew out from the palace. The Duke jumped on the sword and flew away at high speed.

“Please tell the witch, she will answer to us” After watching her husband fly away, Lealatha turned around and told the old man in black. Her eyes glowed golden.

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Jace started running towards the front gate forest to test his new spell against real monsters and also complete the forest cleansing quest. After the chimera died, he had expected to get 2 quest completion messages, but only one message came out. Jace realized the chimera was only one monster, granted an especially powerful one. Now that a monster wave started to form, he needed to help subjugate it before the forest was considered a “cleanse”. But he didn't expect the three classmates to follow him.

“Why are you guys coming? Do you even know where I am going?” Jace was annoyed. He didn't have time to make friends with these people.

Kim had a meek smile.

“Hey! Can you be a bit friendlier? After what we have been through, even if we are not friends, we are at least comrades. You have to learn to make allies and forge connections. It will be more useful than pure power sometimes” Cade said something about building connections and the necessity of having a healer on your team. Jace had heard those words before and almost grimaced from hearing them again.

Beth, whom Jace thought to be the quiet and cool type when they first met, had turned out to be just as talkative as Cade when she found something interesting. She had been ranting since they started running.

“There are recordings of intelligent monsters responsible for wiping out empires in the past. Behemoth was rumored to be such a monster as well. However, since there were no surviving witnesses, it was treated as a rumor. But looking at that thing’s purposeful actions. It's intelligent. There is also the matter of the monster wave suddenly forming at the same time that beast showed up, and how a monster like that was able to be in the dark forest in the first place.” Beth has gone on another one of her rants. The group has quickly gotten used to this aspect of her personality. “Chimera are monsters that formed as a result of a pile-up of monster corpses combined with dead mana. It is technically an undead monster. The problem is, that a chimera can't form in the dark forest. First, the mixture of this particular chimera is already an issue. Northern Wolf, Scarlet lion, undead goat, and also that unknown snake. Do you guys notice anything?” She turns to look at the group while they run towards the front gate’s forest. Everyone had started to listen to her while she was ranting.

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“Those monsters are from different areas of the world,” Jace answered. He has been studying monsters in preparation to hunt them “The dark forest was only supposed to contain relatively simple monsters. Slime, Orcs, Goblins, Red Rabbits, giant mushroom man, etc.”

“Right, you have done your reading.” Beth smiled at Jace, which made his heart skip a beat. Beth noticed that Jace's eyes softened when he looked at her. “Moreover, battle mage troops constantly prune monsters and burn their corpses. Even if these monsters exist in the forest, and they happen to get killed by the troop. Their corpses would have been burned. So we can conclude that it was purposely made.”

“Is she a professional detective or something?” Cade made snide remarks that were ignored by the other three.

“If we also take the matter of the monster wave, the death of Senior Lee, who specializes in spatial magic, and the chimera suddenly knowing spatial magic into account. Don't you guys think everything is a little too neat?” Beth said while playing with the chains on her skirt as she ran. “As for the monster wave, the most likely explanation is that someone planted a massive amount of mana stones around the dark forest to jump-start a monster wave. And as the final step, fed a student specialized in spatial magic to the chimera.”

Everyone listened to her rants and found a few points quite confusing.

“Wait a minute. Why would someone feed a student who specialized in a rare spell like Portal to the Beast? If they just wanted it to get stronger, then any student would do, and how could they know that the beast would learn to use that spell? That's not exactly a common thing to happen” Kim asked, she was out of breath from running here

“Think about it, someone let loose a man-made chimera into the best mage academy in the world. And they most likely fed Senior Lee to that monster on purpose. Also, that chimera just happens to have a head that works perfectly with that spell. Why would they do that, unless they knew it could learn spells? Or they were made to be able to learn spells” Kim's face immediately paled. She realized what Beth was implying. “There is a possibility, only a possibility. That we have a cultist in the academy”

Jace didn't care about cultists or the academy being in danger. He only wanted to get stronger quickly, but he is beginning to realize, that someone like Beth might be extremely valuable to him. Then he suddenly got annoyed because he realized Cade was correct. Forming useful connections and powerful allies was very important.

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The Front Gate

Miss Wanders, real name Jaan Yawaraat, is one of the most prolific magic/history researchers in the world and a magic theory teacher at Greylight Academy. She was being cornered by six red monsters.

A vicious monster that looks similar to a typical rabbit with the exception that it has a humanoid shape and walks on two legs. The beast is only as tall as the average table but the muscular and lean body gave off an intimidating feeling. These rabbits go berserk at the sight of the color red. It prefers to use its claws to shred its victim to pieces, bathing in their blood, hence the name, Red Rabbits.

Miss Wanders held an ordinary sword in her hand. She barely knows how to use it, but she thinks having a weapon is better than being bare-handed. Behind her, a group of students cowering and healing each other. A few students stood next to her, each of them holding an Eastern sword in their hands and each having another sword floating in front of them. Aura warriors in training. They stood against the monsters bravely, yet their legs were shaking.

Monsters are unimaginably strong. Even just one monster needed a professional team of soldiers to kill them without suffering losses. Now, they were facing six of them at once with a dozen aura warriors and mages in training. And to make matters worse, the moon is hanging in the sky above them, serenading the monsters with pale light.

“Students, please don't engage them directly. Support me with your spells and focus on controlling their movements. Aura warriors attack from the back.” In truth, Miss Wanders did not know what she was saying. These are just the things written in the basic combat manual when fighting as a group against strong opponents. One person usually draws the attention, taking the risk of death and injuries. The job of the warriors and paladins. The mages and aura master will usually support and do damage from behind. But in this situation, she could only take on the role with the highest risk herself.

Miss Wanders has never been on the battlefield. She has never even fought in a sparring session. A researcher is not supposed to be in this situation, but a monster wave does not care about that. Every able-bodied person will be drafted in such a situation

She sent a message to the main building a while ago to ask for reinforcements in the hopes of preventing death and taking defensive positions until reinforcements arrived.

Unfortunately, the monsters were smart, they noticed the attempt at stalling and threw one of their own into the battle line to break the stalemate. Chaos broke out soon after. The monsters rushed into the broken battle line, shredding students’ limbs and body parts all around them. A few senior aura warriors and senior mage students managed to fight back.

Aura warriors launch their swords toward one rabbit, focusing their damage on only one enemy at a time. The swords circle the rabbit at high speed, keeping it from escaping. Then 7 flying swords stabbed into a rabbit’s body, tearing it into pieces. Unfortunately, these Aura Warrior apprentices were still far from becoming masters, that one move had drained their aura completely. Now, they must resort to only martial arts.

In another corner, Miss Wanders used Telekinesis to hold back five of the rabbits. She can feel her brain almost exploding, blood leaking from her eyes, nose, ears, and fingers. She was drawing mana from the air to supplement her mana pool. But her body could not handle such large quantities of mana. She is suffering from mana overload.

Senior mages in the back launch various spells at the rabbits. Fireballs, ice shards, magic missiles, wind bullets, all the basic offensive spells. One silver-haired senior pulled pieces of bark from the mana trees, condensing and hardening them into small black bullets before launching them at the rabbits. A spell she saw from a freshman during combat magic class. Fortunately, they managed to kill one of the rabbits.

Miss Wanders finally lost unconsciousness. The students pulled her back into the battle line while the four remaining rabbits regained their movements. They rush at the Aura Warriors standing on their grounds at the front of the battle line. They fought valiantly but it was impossible to win against monsters with pure physicality.

Screams of students filled the air. The rabbits shredded two Aura Warriors into pieces and injured countless other students.

One of the rabbits suddenly stopped, there was a very small hole in its body, only the size of a pen. After a moment's pause, the rabbit’s torso was blown away, followed by a zapping sound and strong wind.

The rabbits and students look around the area, searching for the source of the attack. Then they saw four people running over from the main building. A chubby guy with black hair and an unfriendly face was in front of the group. He was quite a famous new student.

The infamous Zombie Jace

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“I got one.” Jace was ecstatic. Months ago, he couldn't even dream of killing a monster with his power. But the stinking coming from his hands reminded him of the situation.

The rabbits turned their attention to the immediate danger that suddenly blew up one of their allies. The three rabbits immediately ran into the three lines, their red eyes can be seen shining in the dark. They are waiting for a chance.

“Cade and Kim help the other students. Jace, can you still use that spell?” Beth had somehow taken command of the squad of four, but no one protested.

Cade and Kim immediately ran to the group of injured students to help them. Cade was the best student in nature magic class, his healing magic was leagues above everyone else. His appearance here will help save the lives of countless students. Kim on the other hand, had started to put up invisible domes of mana. She was using magic from her homeland, but Jace wasn't sure what effects they had.

“I can!” Jace answered confidently. Beth looked at him and smiled.

“Ok! I will try to stop their movements.” The chains on her skirts are floating.

Beth held up her hands towards the tree line where the rabbits were hiding. The rabbits were on guard and red eyes could be seen moving about at high speed. They do not intend to allow her to shoot magic at them, but that was not Beth's plan.

The mana trees quickly turned red and dozens of them exploded into flames.

“She is exploding the mana within the trees.” Jace was amazed at the different ways that mana can be manipulated. As a newbie to the world of magic, he needs to learn about various ways mages can manipulate mana.

Beth’s chain lashed out and bound all three rabbits that jumped out of the forest to run away from the fire. Beth attempted to bring them all together, to group them up in one place. They were extremely strong. She drew on the mana in the air to move and bind them at the same time. Beth started to show symptoms of mana overload.

“Good job, Beth” Jace held out his hands. Sparks of electricity ran along his fingers. A few pieces of mana tree bark were placed on top of his hands. Sparks of electricity ran up and down his fingers at high speed and suddenly the tree bark pieces disappeared. Jace's entire body flew back, but he regained his footing quickly.

The three rabbits that were chained together in the air had several hundred small holes that suddenly appeared all over their bodies grotesquely. One second later, the three rabbits were blown to pieces along with some of the trees behind them. Zapping sounds echo throughout the forest like the sound of a storm, and intense wind follows.

“That's not what you used before. What is that?” Beth was about to lose consciousness. She was hanging on because her curiosity must be sated.

“Modified version of my spell. The bullet was not properly condensed so it shattered, turning into an area attack. A successful test” Jace looked at his mangled hands. Not blown to pieces this time, but twisted in horrific ways.

“You are pretty cool.” exhaustion finally took her and Beth fell to the ground.