Field Expedition

"My guess is that once you've tasted what this Stardust Artifact can do for you, you'll still be itching to collect Spirit Essence no matter what. As it happens, once your training quarter ends, we'll be taking you outside the city for a two-month field expedition. When you come face to face with real Demon-Beasts, that urge should vanish on its own." Teacher Tang Yue said.

"Field expedition??" Mo Fan had never heard of this before. *Is this the legendary high school military training they always talk about?*

"Every Mage must face this day eventually. We don't cultivate Mages so they can live in comfort, and we're not doing it so you can compete with one another — we do it so you can stand against Demon-Beasts when it truly counts. The expedition is a significant test of who you each are at your core." Teacher Tang Yue said.

"I'll take it seriously."

"No," Tang Yue said. "This isn't an assessment. All I hope is that when things go wrong out there, you and the others will manage to stay calm — and think about how to survive." She let the words land with quiet weight.

With that, Tang Yue turned and left. Mo Fan tried to call after her, still full of questions — but found her shapely figure dissolving slowly into a patch of shadow untouched by moonlight. Then she was simply gone. No trace left behind.

This time, Mo Fan saw it with perfect clarity.

She truly merged into the darkness. Her entire body vanished without a sound, as if she had never been there at all.

Mo Fan scrambled down from the water tank on the rooftop and leaned out over the railing, craning his neck to look below.

A chill ran through him. Tang Yue — who had just been standing on this eighth-floor rooftop beside him — was already down on the ground, moving at an unhurried pace toward the faculty apartments. The dim moonlight stretched her silhouette long across the courtyard, making her look like some solitary spirit of the night.

Then she stepped into the tangled shadows cast by a cluster of trees, and vanished again — swallowed entirely by the dreary dark. The mysterious teacher was gone without a trace.

*What kind of skill even is that?*

Of every element Mo Fan knew about, only Wind Element could achieve rapid movement through Wind Trail — and he already thought that was remarkable. Yet Tang Yue used something else entirely, some unknown magic that let her slip into shadows and pass through them at will.

*That's insanely cool. When will I ever learn something like that?*

Come to think of it, Teacher Tang Yue was clearly no ordinary person.

He'd heard that a Mage had to reach Intermediate Level before awakening a second element — which meant Tang Yue was at minimum an Intermediate-Level Mage.

No wonder she'd outclassed every senior practical instructor at the school. An Intermediate-Level Mage was already the ceiling in most people's eyes!

It seemed Tang Yue was an enormously powerful patron to have. *He needed to hold on tight.*

"Have you heard? Once the training quarter's done, we're starting our field expedition."

"What even is a field expedition?"

"Going out into the wilderness, obviously."

"Come on — I've heard since I was a kid that Demon-Beasts are out there. The kind that eat people alive. I'm not going."

"You don't get a choice. It counts toward our college entrance scores — it's basically a required subject."

"It's just a field trip. What is there to be scared of? We're Mages. Even if we run into a Demon-Beast, one Ice Vine and it's a frozen statue."

"But I've heard Demon-Beasts are terrifying. Our Demon-Beast Studies teacher keeps telling us never, ever to face one alone."

Just as Tang Yue had said, the moment the training quarter ended, a grueling field expedition would immediately follow — and in all likelihood, real Demon-Beasts would be involved.

Demon-Beast Studies had always been a subject. Teachers had been warning students about Demon-Beasts for years on end, yet not one student had ever actually seen a real one. Even those who'd snuck online to watch Demon-Beast footage found it no different from watching a Hollywood monster blockbuster.

Now, at last, the students were going to see the real thing. Once the announcement was made, the entire school could talk of nothing else.

The expedition would begin with the Elite Class.

After the annual assessment, most Elite Class students had already mastered all seven Star Motes — and with another half-year behind them, every person should by now command their element's skills with genuine fluency.

Only students who had mastered magic skills were permitted to participate in a field expedition. An ordinary person facing a Demon-Beast had no means of fighting back whatsoever.

Time moved quickly.

Using the Loach Pendant, Mo Fan had brought both his Lightning Element constellation and his Fire Element Stardust to roughly five or six times their original state.

Both Lightning Seal and Fire Burst he could Release with complete confidence.

Fire Burst — which he could practice openly at school — had grown faster than ever. He could complete the entire Release sequence in roughly three seconds. Lightning Seal took a little longer, around four.

The rest of the Elite Class needed anywhere from five to ten seconds to successfully Release a skill. In terms of Release speed, Mo Fan was already in a class of his own.

The hundred students of the Elite Class were divided into five groups of around twenty each.

Each group would be accompanied by a teacher and led by two field instructors.

Five school buses loaded up the young Mages and rolled out beyond the city limits.

The route had been arranged in advance: they were heading for Xuefeng Mountain Waystation.

Xuefeng Mountain Waystation was a key outpost maintained by the Hunters' Alliance — a vital node in Bo City's supply chain — built into the floor of a mountain valley.

"Remember what I've always told you," said Demon-Beast Studies teacher Zhang Jianguo. "Every city's waystations mark the outer boundary of the Safe Zone. Beyond the waystation lies territory where Demon-Beasts can appear at any moment. Until you have the ability to handle Demon-Beasts on your own, do not — under any circumstances — step outside the waystation's Safe Zone. If you do, what you'll leave behind is a pile of bones."

"Within the waystation perimeter," said Luo Yunbo, the Hunters' Alliance squad leader assigned to Group Three, "the Hunters' Alliance, the Magic Association, and the major magic clans all conduct daily patrols and maintain defensive lines. Not a single Demon-Beast will be allowed to set foot in a human settlement. But our power has limits — we can only protect what falls within those boundaries. Outside the waystation, we are helpless. Forests, valleys, wilderness, mountain peaks — the terrain is far too complex. Even with powerful Mages at our disposal, there is no way to root out every Demon-Beast hiding in caves and beneath the ground."

Luo Yunbo was a dark-skinned man — rugged-looking and, it turned out, unexpectedly handsome. Several of the girls in the group were already stealing glances at him, the same wide-eyed, flushed admiration they'd have for a particularly good-looking drill sergeant.

Luo Yunbo was the group's lead field instructor.

The deputy instructor was a woman named Pan Lijun — lean and hardened, with the same dark complexion earned outdoors. She was a far cry from the schoolgirls who had yet to be tested by the world beyond the campus walls.