Kai clenched his teeth as he glanced back at where the bear was standing back up. He couldn’t see it clearly through the cloud of dust surrounding it, but it certainly didn’t look too injured.

Sydney’s still too weak to take this thing on, and I don’t think Brewan and I can make up the difference. Aside from fighting it, though…

There was nowhere else to go. They could try to run away, but aside from the single water flask on Kai’s hip, they didn’t have any of their supplies on them. The bear was already back on its feet and heading toward them, so whether they could actually run from it in the first place was still up in the air.

“Brewan, use a dispersion spell. I’ll try to lure it into one of the other buildings.”

Kai ran out in front of the bear, waving the ruby sword in the air to attract its attention. The beast responded immediately, shaking its head as it lumbered out of the pile of rubble. Its footsteps looked a bit less steady than before, and Kai could faintly make out a line of blood running down from the top of its neck.

All of the black mist that’d been hovering over its shoulders was now gone, but the beast was still menacing. It opened its maw like it was about to roar, but paused before any sound came out.

Huh? Now that I think about it, this bear hasn’t made hardly any noise since it attacked me. Is it just because of its magic, or-

Kai didn’t have a chance to finish theorizing, as the beast decided to make up for its lack of volume with violence. It lunged toward the young man, but there was enough distance between the two of them for Kai to quickly backpedal out into the clearing in the center of the academy.

It continued chasing after Kai, but he continuously evaded it, luring it closer to the other two brick buildings.

Without its magic, this thing really isn’t that bad to fight. I’m fast enough that as long as nothing goes wrong, it can’t hit me. Heck, if it hadn’t hit my right arm earlier, I might have tried to fight it with Halia’s kiting technique. Or if I had enough mana to use the Moonlight Sword Technique again.

[I have a new idea. Even if there isn’t a formation on the door of the stables building, we should still be able to kill this beast.]

Kai nodded and shifted his gaze over to the third building. It was only a few meters further away than the dormitory building, and with the bear already chasing after him, it wasn’t too difficult to change his path.

Kai heard an annoyed huffing noise from behind him as he pivoted again, dodging yet another of the bear’s attacks and facing toward the stables building.

“What’s wrong, bear? Getting tired already?”

Kai did his best to hide his own breathlessness as he taunted the beast. It immediately leapt after him again, a bright fury glowing in its deep eyes. A small grin started to form on Kai’s face as it picked up speed, heading right for the entrance of the stables.

When he was only a meter from crashing through the rotting wooden doors of the building, Kai pivoted again, jumping out of the bear’s path.

It’s too simple to lead a beast into a trap.

Kai waited for the sound of the massive bear crashing through the doors, but it didn’t come. Confused, he started to turn around, but a massive weight slammed into him, sending him crashing into the side of the building.

“Wh- what the hell?”

Kai feebly climbed back to his feet, the entire right side of his body burning with pain. His right arm hung limply, the already injured appendage having absorbed most of the impact.

In front of the doors, the bear turned toward Kai, its eyes shining with a mocking intelligence. Behind it there were streaks of grass torn from the ground, starting multiple meters back.

Shit. I forgot what Brewan said before. The beasts here start getting a lot smarter after the first tier. A bear of comparable strength back home would’ve fallen for a trap like this, but the ones here are smarter.

Still, a small smile couldn’t help but grow on Kai’s face as he stumbled away from the giant bear.

I’m lucky I learned this right now, while I have people to back me up.

“Fireball!”

Brewan stepped out from behind some brush in the clearing, a blazing light hovering over the grimoire clutched in his grip. The ball of flame rocketed toward the bear before exploding against its snout with a force incomparable to a week ago.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Nothing about Brewan’s fireball now could be evaluated with the same ‘awfully weak’ Halia had given it when he used it on the first boar the duo had encountered. The force of the blast rocked the bear on its feet, nearly making it stumble into the doors of the stables.

Before the bear could regain its balance, Sydney stepped in to make his attack. The knight trainee had clearly been told their plan by Brewan. Using the dispersion spell cast by Brewan earlier, he was able to stay close to the fight without being noticed.

Even with a heavy limp, he was able to close the distance before the bear could react. All of the power of a strength-focused level 23 knight slammed into the bear. It hit even harder than his previous counter attack in the classroom building.

The rotting wooden doors exploded into tiny chunks as the bear was catapulted through them. The massive beast was thrown almost a dozen meters into the abandoned stables, kicking up a thick wall of dust.

There was no clean cut appearing on the beast’s body, though. Despite the entire entryway being destroyed, no formation was activated to attack the bear.

[Quick, tell Brewan to send another fireball in there! All of the dust in there is probably from straw and wood because of the stables.]

Kai frowned as he tried to figure out what the composition of the dust had to do with anything, but he still relayed the instructions to Brewan.

[Right, and back up too. If I’m right, the blast from this is going to be huge!]

Kai and Sydney both limped away from the side of the building, and following Halia’s instructions, Brewan shot another fireball after the bear.

BOOM!!

An earth-shaking explosion ripped through the bottom floor of the stables, followed almost immediately by a second one as the upper floors were rocked by a similarly powerful blast. Every window on the building exploded, along with chunks of bricks and other rubble.

[Yeaa!! Explosion!]

Kai was almost knocked from his feet by the shockwave.

“How the… did Brewan become a tier 5 mage when I wasn’t looking?”

[Dust explosion! I told you it wouldn’t be good if you lit a fire in a really dusty area before. After thinking about it more, though, I realized this probably wouldn’t happen in the classrooms. The explosion is only so big here because of the wood dust from the stables. Heh, and everyone said we’d never use this in real life.]

On the other side of the clearing, Brewan looked similarly shocked at the effects of his attack. He hadn’t completely leveled the building, but it wasn’t far off. If not for the sturdy brick construction, they would be looking at a pile of rubble now.

[Also, - wait, how is this thing still alive? That is one tenacious bear. It isn’t moving at all though. You should go in and finish it, if you get the last hit before it dies, you can absorb a ton of mana.]

Kai looked skeptically at the building in front of him. Even if the bear wasn’t in a fighting state anymore, just entering the building looked dangerous. There weren’t any lingering flames from the explosion, but the structure itself looked like it could collapse at any moment.

[C’mon, you’ll get way stronger. Even if the building starts to collapse, I can use the mana you gain from the bear to save you.]

The notion of getting stronger finally motivated Kai enough to limp forward through the gaping hole where the doors once were. The air within the building was considerably warmer than outside, and all of the walls were blackened from the blast. In the center of the room, the crumpled and scorched figure of the bear lay limply on the ground.

Kai could hear the footsteps of his two teammates following him inside as he stumbled toward the bear. Now that his adrenaline was starting to run off, the pain shooting from his right side was even worse than before.

“Halia, don’t use all of my mana to make me stronger. I need some to use the techniques from back at the sect.”

Kai raised the ruby sword in his left hand, then thrust it down at the already gaping wound in the back of the bear’s neck. The beast shuddered once, then went still.

[You reached Level 14!]

[Mana +25!]

[Mana -10, Strength +10.]

[Kai- Lvl 9 -> 14]

[Strength: 45 -> 55]

[Mana: 14 -> 29]

Kai’s level shot up five times at once as the ruby sword turned the bear’s massive mana reservoirs into Kai’s own. New strength rushed through his muscles, and Kai stood up a little straighter. It wasn’t enough to completely combat the fatigue he was feeling from the fight, but it helped.

“Hey, look over here. There’s some kind of passageway under the floor.”

Near the corner of the room, Brewan was kneeling down as he examined a destroyed portion of the floor. The dust explosion has destroyed large portions of the floor, revealing a passageway hidden beneath it.

“Hey. Don’t be too curious. That’s how people end up dead.”

Sydney pulled Brewan back from the hole, then glanced over at Kai.

“There could still be more formations active in a place like this, just because the bear didn’t trigger any doesn’t mean we won’t. For now, we should go back to the building we were in before and spend some time recovering. Both of us are too injured to make a break for a settlement right now.”

Kai nodded along with Sydney’s words. He was pretty sure his right arm was broken.

[Shit. This is not good.]

“Huh? My arm?”

[No. We have bigger problems.]

[Terror Bird- Level 30]

Kai froze as he stared at the blue box hovering in front of him.

[It’s on the outskirts of the academy still, but it’s heading here fast. Also…]

“Tier 3.”

Kai muttered under his breath, and his teammates looked over at him.

“The terror bird from before. Halia just detected its mana, coming right towards us. It’s tier 3 now.”