Gloom Wolf Beast!

In the next instant, the entire group of student mages turned into startled birds — crashing into one another, shoving blindly, stumbling over their own feet as they fled toward the cave entrance in a panic.

"Run! What are you just standing there for?!" Zhang Xiaohou saw He Yu frozen rigid beside him and grabbed her arm without a second thought.

"W-wind... wind... Wind Trail... damn it!!"

He tried to complete the spell, but with his heart pounding out of control, his Star Motes simply refused to link.

During normal practice, he had already been able to complete his Star Trail flawlessly, a hundred times out of a hundred. He had felt so confident, so in command of his magic — yet with a terrifying Demon-Beast just twenty meters away, he discovered that everything he had learned was completely worthless.

The Star Motes that always obeyed him were now like panicked fawns, scattering madly through the Stardust of the student mages. Not a single person managed to cast a spell. Every last one of them fled on pure instinct toward the cave exit.

"Mo Fan! Mo Fan! Quick — run!" Zhang Xiaohou dragged the petrified He Yu and bolted for the entrance.

Mo Fan was no different from the rest. Between the screaming, the sobbing, and the unmistakable sound of someone losing control of their bladder, he couldn't concentrate enough to Release his magic either.

*Have to run.*

He had managed to link six Star Motes, but when the beast roared, his Mental Intent shattered before he could reach the seventh. Magic was simply out of the question.

Left with no other choice, he reached out and grabbed Zhou Min.

"Let go of me. I'll hold back this One-Eyed Demon Wolf while the rest of you calm down." Zhou Min, it turned out, had a death wish.

"Are you out of your mind?!" Mo Fan didn't bother arguing. He slung her over his shoulder and ran.

Zhou Min looked fierce, but she was still a slight girl when it came down to it. After training in the Lightning Element, Mo Fan had built up enough physical strength that carrying her at a sprint was manageable.

It wasn't that he was unwilling to give her the chance to cast — it was that he himself could only string together six Star Motes right now, and she was at least a full tier below him in cultivation. She had no chance of completing a spell.

*This isn't the moment for class president heroics. Save whoever you can.*

Mo Fan ran with Zhou Min slung over his shoulder, his ears flayed by the raw tangle of crying and screaming all around him.

*Damn it. No wonder the veterans at the waystation laughed at us. Back at school, practicing against training dummies, we thought we were something. But the moment a real Demon-Beast is standing right in front of you, we're nothing — not one person got off a spell, and our first instinct was to run. Except running just means getting picked off one by one. The pass is the only way out, and we only made it here by rope in the first place. At most we can make it back to the gorge edge. There's only one rope, and barely anyone will have time to cross.*

Mo Fan's thoughts churned. He was fighting to force himself calm, but the sheer terror of a real Demon-Beast had already exceeded anything he had imagined.

It was like watching a horror film. With the sound off, it was almost bearable.

Turn the volume up, and the fear jumped an entire level.

But this wasn't just watching a film. This was the monster crawling out of the screen and planting itself right in front of your eyes — close enough to see the blood seeping from its gaze.

In a situation like that, no one could stay calm.

Mo Fan ran fast. Once he had carried Zhou Min clear of the cave and out to the gorge pass, she found that her legs had stopped working entirely.

This was too much. All of this was too much — more vivid and more horrifying than any nightmare any of them had ever had, a hundred times over.

"Oh god, where's the rope?!"

"No — no, I don't want to die here!!"

"What's going on??" Even Mu Bai and Xu Zhaoting, who had held on to more composure than most, looked thoroughly disheveled — and neither of them had managed to cast a single spell.

At least ten students had fainted inside the cave. The twenty-odd who had made it out all lunged for the rope, only to find —

It was gone.

Unless they wanted to jump.

"Are we all going to die here?" Zhao Kunsan shook from head to toe.

And indeed, beyond the stench of the One-Eyed Demon Wolf's breath already hanging in the air, a sharp reek of urine now permeated everything. Students with soaked trousers were everywhere.

"The One-Eyed Demon Wolf is coming out after us. I'd rather die from the fall than get eaten alive," said a Water Element boy.

"Damn it — there are plenty of people passed out in the cave. Why isn't it eating them instead of chasing us?" Zhao Kunsan muttered.

Zhou Min and Xu Zhaoting both shot him a withering glare, fear and all.

"Running is pointless. We have to fight it together."

"Fight it how? I can't even remember what element I am."

Three hundred meters from the pass, a stone ledge jutted out from the cliff face.

On that ledge stood Chief Instructor Zhankong, Instructor Luo Yunbo, Pan Lijun, and the summoner Baiyang — all watching from their elevated vantage as the students remained trapped at the gorge edge below.

Baiyang had long since given up fighting his laughter and was now doubled over clutching his stomach. From his angle he had a perfect view of one student who had wet themselves and collapsed on the ground.

Chief Instructor Zhankong stared at the group — not a single spell Released among all of them — and slowly shook his head.

Deeply disappointing.

He had thought this year's cohort from Tianlan Magic High School might have something to offer. Instead, not one student had managed a Release.

People always said students were nothing but armchair mages. Turned out, it was completely true. The school poured resources into cultivating them, and yet when they finally stood face to face with a real Demon-Beast, this was the result.

Zhang Jianguo, Xue Musheng, and Chen Weiliang stood nearby with visibly uncomfortable expressions.

They knew exactly what their students were made of. Schools generally chased cultivation scores because that made the reports look good. The practical side of things was usually left to sort itself out.

Combat experience had to be earned through real combat. There was no way to teach it in a classroom.

"Wait —" Luo Yunbo's sharp eyes caught something. "Someone just Released a spell. There's a white light flickering over at the pass."

"Ice Element — that looks like Mu Bai!" Xue Musheng's face broke into a smile.

Chen Weiliang and Zhang Jianguo both looked over at once. Sure enough, the first student to Release a spell was Mu Bai.

White frost aura swirled around his position. The frost sprites surged forward like charging soldiers, rapidly coiling around the limbs of the Gloom Wolf Beast as it stepped clear of the cave entrance.

"Noted." Chief Instructor Zhankong said.

"He's from the Mu Clan," Xue Musheng added quickly. "Raised under the family's influence from birth — that gives him a composure and adaptability the other students simply don't have."

A clan-bred mage was a clan-bred mage. While the others were still falling apart, Mu Bai had steadied himself and Released his Ice Element skill — Ice Vine.

Managing to execute a spell under this level of fear had already earned Mu Bai an A grade.

Now the only question was whether anyone else could pull themselves together.