Wayne Harrows. He was a fairly soft-spoken man which came as a surprise, considering what he had done moments prior, but there was the slightest tinge of unease in his voice too.
"As I said, we're pressed for time so let's get through this quickly," he announced to the room, "First off, raise your hand if you're familiar with the City's famous annual festival."
There wasn't a single hand that remained down. The three day festival took place every year to celebrate the founding of Tralis City in...whatever year it was founded in. Adrian honestly forgot, but remembered the news reports of the festivals from previous years very well. Parades, rides and festival food galore. He was looking forward to actually being able to attend it himself this year.
"The association has never had any part in anything official," Mr. Harrows continued, "But, as you'll come to learn the longer who stay in this line of work...they're obsessed with strength. And this year, they've insisted that they want to highlight the strength of you kids."
Adrian leaned forward in his seat; his interest piqued. What's this?
"Arrangements have been made for both the west and east branch schools to compete against each other in a friendly competition on Sunday, the twenty-fifth of September, the final day of the festival. I apologise for springing this on you all so suddenly, but it was requested that I tell you this as soon as possible."
That was all Adrian needed to hear. He leaned back in his chair, smiling at the mere idea of a competition. Competition meant a chance to prove himself, and a chance to prove himself meant he had to be more than ready. He wouldn't let himself be anything less than perfect.
The constant sounds of shuffling could be heard as everyone looked around gauging each other's reactions. Some looked to be scared, others smug, and others a mix of anything and everything in between. Clapping his hands, Mr. Harrows brought the commotion to an end, ready to give them all his first instructions.
"We're going to get you out for some practice right off the bat," he said, "If you look on your row, you'll see that you're all sat with two other people. They will be your groups for your very first practical exam."
"Already?" Adrian's surprise of the exam was quickly taken over by a different, more worrying, feeling. Looking to the left, past Isabelle only confirmed it. Alex hadn't moved an inch after any of Mr. Harrows' words. His eyes were still fighting to stay open; glued to that damn book.
"...Isabelle," he whispered, leaning back into his own chair, "It's looking like we're actually a group of two.
She didn't open her mouth, but he saw her nod her head with a painful looking smile on her face.
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Following the announcement of the exam, Mr Harrows had given each group a five hour time limit and small sheets of paper with vague clues written on them. They were supposed to lead each of them to different locations in the outskirts of the city. That way two groups couldn't cheat and put their clues together to find what they were looking for faster. As he put it himself, "Finding the location of your exam is half the test. You can't possibly hope to call yourself a spirit hunter if you can't get past this one."
In the tedious search for where their clues would lead them, Adrian, Isabelle and Alex had found themselves lost in a winding suburban neighbourhood. Looming far behind some of the houses, tall trees could be made out. A sign of the woods that were also nearby. Possibly a location they'd have to search soon? There was no way to tell for sure with an exam this cryptic.
The only clue they had that made sense was that the location of their exam was "a quiet area to the north of the city". It could have been more northwest or more northeast for all they knew, so to save themselves the confusion, they decided to travel as perfectly north as they could.
"Veiled in mystery, I lay forgotten. Once alive, now dead and rotten," Adrian said, squinting at the other clue, "Man, who the hell thought that riddles were a good idea?"
"I'm stuck too," Isabelle said, "Um, Alex, do you have any ideas? We could use the help!"
For the forty-five agonising minutes they had been walking, their third group member had been sluggishly dragging his feet behind them, eyes glued to his phone. He still looked half dead, so how he had kept his eyes on a bright screen for that long was truly a mystery. He didn't even respond to Isabelle's question, either. She waited a bit longer, but soon awkwardly scurried back to walk with Adrian. "I-i'm not good at talking," she whispered.
Adrian patted her on the shoulder in solidarity. "Don't push yourself too much. Let's just try to figure out this stupid rid-"
He was forced to take a slight step forwards to stabilise himself as his shoulder got bumped by Alex, who also dropped his phone in the process.
"Oh, crap. Did it crack?" he asked. Adrian closed his eyes and took a long, sharp inhale.
They'd been spending too much time walking past the same copy-pasted detached houses, making no actual progress on their VERY FIRST exam and one of their group members couldn't be bothered to even try and help. He recognized that Isabelle was pushing past her social awkwardness to try and get them all to work together, so for her sake, and mostly his own, he decided to calm down and try too.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
"...I'll get your phone, man." He leaned down to pick it up and saw that it wasn't cracked, but there was something interesting on the screen.
A social media post from the thirty-first of August, five days ago. It was a bit blurry, but he could clearly make out a humanoid figure with unnatural skin of a deep purple complexion standing in a forest. It was draped in an oversized, dark blue jacket and had a head of shoulder length, unkempt black hair. Some of the smaller details were harder to see, but two things he couldn't possibly miss were the horns sticking out of either side of its head and curling upwards.
His mind raced as he tried to make sense of what he was looking at. A rogue spirit? Rogues that have the appearances of humans were becoming a more common occurrence after all. Could it have been an edited picture? It didn't really look faked upon further inspection. There was always something uncanny about the idea of a spirit that looked way too much like a human that made Adrian's skin crawl, even more than the ones that just looked like abstract monsters. Masking his discomfort with a straight face, he showed the picture to Isabelle to get her input.
"The location tag says it's near Grillber's. That's a diner that's not too far from here, right?" she scratched her face and cracked a small smile. "M-maybe we can, like, get some extra credit if we take it out... A-after the exam, of course!"
"...What?" In the short time he’d known her, he'd learned that Isabelle had a weird sense of humour. That was no doubt her attempt at some kind of joke. A baffling one, but an attempt nonetheless. "Actually, never mind," he sighed.
"Actually, can I just get my phone back?" Alex said, letting out a long yawn. Slightly embarrassed, Adrian handed him his phone back, part of him still curious about that picture. "Y'know, considering you were working together, I thought you would have figured out that riddle was mostly a bullshit diversion a while ago."
Adrian's eyebrows furrowed. "Huh?"
"You forgot? Harrows said that if we can't figure this out, we can forget about being spirit hunters. So obviously, we can’t just go around using our eyes as they are to find whatever it is we’re looking for. We have to look for it like a spirit hunter would." He tapped the side of his head and yawned again, mocking them both. "Since when was solving crappy riddles ever part of the job description?"
The forty-five minutes they wasted walking around like idiots had been playing back in Adrian's mind since Alex started talking. With his fist clenched, he took a single step forward. He probably would have done something regretful if it wasn't for Isabelle, the saint that she was, swooping in at the last moment.
"I-it's our sixth sense, right?" She said quickly, "Whenever a spirit hunter's trying to find something, they should use their sixth sense!"
"Now you get it." Alex, eyebrows lowered, glanced at her then up at Adrian. "I took a look at your name tags before you got to the auditorium, so I pretty much knew who you probably were. We've got a girl from the Ambers family and William Hunter's son. You don't really live up to your titles though."
Between Isabelle holding him back, and not wanting to disturb the neighbourhood, Adrian silently came to the decision that decking Alex like he wanted to wasn't the right choice. Too much was riding on this exam for him to be Getting into it with someone like him. "...Don't talk to me about a damn title."
He turned back around and amplified his eyes using his spirit energy, activating his sixth sense and causing them to glow the same bright orange as his flames. The ability allowed him fully to perceive the spirit energy floating within the atmosphere as long as it was above a certain threshold of strength, and within his three-metre radius limit. Small orbs of energy, each one a different colours and size, danced around in the air. Their serene nature helped to calm him down a bit too, as he locked onto the the strongest source that was directly next to them. On the path they were walking was a faint trail of smoke-like dark spirit energy, floating amongst the orbs. It extended far off into the distance, making a right turn further down. More importantly, it gave off a familiar feeling. "This is...Mr. Harrows' spirit energy. He left it here for us to follow?"
"Seems like it," replied Alex, shrugging his shoulders.
"...So why start having a hissy fit if we were on the path anyways?"
"Why ask so many questions? I wouldn't have stayed quiet for so long if we were going the wrong way. It's not like I want to fail, either." He sighed in exasperation and casually walked right past the both of them. Leaving Adrian watching on, his eyes twitching in disbelief. Annoying as it was, he knew he could force himself to accept whatever else he might try to pull as long as he wasn't trying to outright stop them from getting to their end goal. Moving forwards and keeping a close eye on the spirit energy trail was his only concern.
“S-sorry,” Isabelle whispered, as they followed behind him, “I took the riddle too seriously.”
“We both did, don’t sweat it. I’m not losing to him next time.”
They reached the point where the trail weaved to the right. Beyond a large wooden arch was a quaint-looking nature trail leading deeper into the woods. The calming aroma radiating from the lush and well-kept plants wasn't one that Adrian wanted to spend too much time admiring. "Let's get this done," he said, noticing the mean side eye Alex was giving him, "No more time wasting."
They ventured into the sea of green, continuing to follow the spirit energy trail as it twisted and turned, even leading them off the main path entirely at times. Isabelle followed closely as Adrian marched through in silence, occasionally losing track of the trail's direction in his haste. "W-we still have a few hours of our time limit left," she said, swiping away the leaves and twigs in her hair, "We don't need to rush."
"It's better to do it quick," he replied.
Peering through the gaps in the branches where the other side was visible, he forcefully broke through out into a large clearing where a lonely mansion lay. It'd clearly been long abandoned. Countless vines had wrapped themselves around its exterior. Bits of it had been chipping away, exposing the dull shades of grey and green underneath. Adrian followed the trail to the mansion's front door and two larger sources of spirit energy, coming from within its decrepit walls, slowly became easier to sense. He turned back to the other two. "You guys sense that as well, right? There’s two rogues in there."
"A-alright. Go time."
The human spirit is a limitless container for spirit energy. It's main job is to hold one's spirit energy within them and keep it flowing at a regular rate, similar to how the heart pumps blood around the body. It is not perfect, however. In times when strong emotions conflict with ones desire, the spirit weakens and allows spirit energy, the manifestation of ones desire, to escape the body. These spirit energy residuals float, unseen, through the atmosphere and, over time, accumulate like sediment and form a ‘core’. From that core, the tangible, monstrous entities known as 'rogue spirits' are formed.