Demon-Beast!
The valley was pleasant enough. To the south lay a palm-shaped lake; to the north, a raised mountain pass jutted above the terrain.
The One-Eyed Demon Wolf's old den was right at that pass — visible at a single glance from the center of Hundred Herbs Valley.
Group One's leader was, of course, the class's resident two-faced charmer... of course, it was Deputy Class President Mu Bai.
Mu Bai had managed to win over everyone in the group during this Field Expedition, and the girls admired him more than ever. That they'd reached Hundred Herbs Valley this quickly was largely thanks to him.
"The den's right there — I thought this bounty was supposed to be some big deal. Look at us, already here!" Zhao Kunsan laughed.
Zhao Kunsan, that insufferable pest, had clawed his way into the Elite Class in the final quarter and was immediately back in cahoots with Mu Bai.
"Be careful. No bounty is ever this simple." Mu Bai had grown up in a powerful clan — he'd seen enough of the world to know that bounties were never settled so easily.
The twenty-strong group, with Mu Bai at the lead, had already climbed the steep slope up to the den's mountain pass.
Standing at the pass, there was a small spring pool — its water sitting at roughly half full.
The cave mouth was visible ahead, its opening enormous, wide as an underground city tunnel.
Peering inside revealed nothing but impenetrable darkness, the kind that stirs a deep, instinctive fear of the unknown. A cold draft whistled out from the depths, and goosebumps rose across every inch of exposed skin.
"Maybe... maybe we should wait until more people arrive before going in?" He Yu said, shrinking back.
"I agree. That place looks terrifying." Every trace of Zhao Kunsan's bravado had evaporated.
Who knew what was lurking in that cave? Charging in blind like that...
If there was actually a Demon-Beast in there, none of them would be walking out.
While the group debated, another team could be seen making their way up from below.
"That looks like Group Three — thank goodness!" He Yu said, relief washing over her face.
Groups One and Three were considered the strongest of the five, given Mu Bai leading one and Xu Zhaoting fighting for the other.
Seeing that Group Three had lagged so far behind, Mu Bai allowed himself a cold smile. Sure, Xu Zhaoting and Mo Fan — both S-scorers in the annual assessment — were on the same team. So what? When it came to real-world ability, someone raised in a great clan still had them comfortably beaten.
The two groups merged quickly. The other three had probably not even cleared the Demon-Vine passage — some might have been eliminated all the way back at the gorge.
Fair enough. Not every Wind Element mage had the nerve to make that jump.
"Alright, let's all go in together. Light Element — you're finally good for something. Get your lightbulbs on!" Now that the numbers had swelled, Zhao Kunsan's courage returned, even if his mouth hadn't improved any.
The Light Element students groaned.
Hard to argue, though — the unofficial nickname for their basic-level skill was "walking lightbulb."
They activated their abilities, flooding the craggy cave walls with light — but deeper in, darkness still swallowed everything, and hearts began beating inexplicably faster.
"Wind Element takes point and scouts ahead. You have Wind Trail — if anything goes wrong, you can pull back immediately." Mu Bai moved like someone raised in a great clan, instinctively knowing how to deploy a team.
The Wind Element students didn't argue. Zhao Kunsan, Zhang Yinglu, Yang Xintian, and the others pushed forward.
"Brother Fan, I'm heading up to scout — what are you looking at?" Zhang Xiaohou was Wind Element, so scouting duty naturally fell to him as well.
Inside a cave this large, without someone out front to guide the column, the whole group would descend into chaos the moment anything went wrong. Mu Bai's call was the right one.
Mo Fan lingered at the cave entrance, eyes fixed on the spring pool just outside the pass.
It had rained a few days ago — water in the pool was unremarkable.
But something was nagging at him.
"The waterline stain is still visible along the pool's edge — meaning the water used to sit right there. The mark is fresh. No more than half a day since the level dropped... and evaporation doesn't work that fast," Mo Fan muttered to himself.
"Could it be Group One filling their canteens?" Zhang Xiaohou offered.
"We all refilled at the lake down below. No reason to climb all the way up here and do it again." Mo Fan kept going.
"Then you're saying..." Zhang Xiaohou rarely saw Mo Fan this focused.
"The chief instructor mentioned that a pack of One-Eyed Demon Wolves used to live here. That pool right at the cave entrance — almost certainly where they drank. The waterline dropped within the last few hours, and the stain is still fresh." Mo Fan was thinking out loud.
Zhang Xiaohou was no fool. He grasped the implication in an instant, and what little color remained in his face drained away completely.
"Brother Fan, don't — don't scare me. You're saying something is still living in there, and it came out to drink just a few hours ago?" Zhang Xiaohou stammered.
"That much water gone means whatever drank it was very large — or there's more than one." Mo Fan added.
Zhang Xiaohou's teeth began to chatter.
"Come on. Maybe I'm overthinking it." Mo Fan dusted off his hands and fell in with the group already entering the cave.
Zhang Xiaohou scrambled to the front of the column and relayed Mo Fan's observations to Mu Bai, Xu Zhaoting, Zhou Min, and the others.
But he never got to finish.
A foul, reeking gust surged out from the cave's depths and slammed into all forty students at once...
It hit like a breaking wave — hair and clothes whipped in every direction, and something wet and sticky spattered across every face.
**"AWOOOO!"**
**"AWOOOO!"**
Two bone-chilling howls erupted from deep within the cave in rapid succession.
In that instant, every single student understood what that damp, rank blast of air had been.
*Oh god — that was spray from a Demon-Beast's roar.*
All forty students froze solid, bodies locked rigid.
A heartbeat later, their faces contorted — pure, primal terror flooding up from somewhere they'd never been forced to confront before.
A Demon-Beast.
An *actual* Demon-Beast.
They'd discussed Demon-Beasts endlessly at school, played out a thousand heroic battles against them in their heads — but when two cold, hungry green eyes actually fixed on them from the darkness of that cave, every last thought in their minds went blank.
The Light Element mages' radiance still hung in the air, illuminating the cave ahead.
A paw covered in coarse green fur stepped out of the darkness, razor-sharp claws sinking into the cave floor...
Then a head slowly emerged into the light.
Rows of serrated fangs came into full view — massive front teeth jutting from the upper jaw all the way past the lower, bared to open air, bared to forty pairs of wide, stricken eyes.
Green saliva dripped slowly from those sword-like canines. It was hungry.
A savage wolf's head. A neck radiating far more raw power than any ordinary coyote. A body larger than a camel — every inch packed with stone-hard muscle, blanketed entirely in deep blue fur that stood on end like a field of needles.
It stood before forty students, its green eyes sweeping over them the way a predator surveys a meal that has delivered itself — ravenous, and utterly indifferent.
"Run — run — *RUN!*"
Someone screamed it in a trembling voice. No one knew who.