Battle Against the Ape-Rat

"Fan Mo, fall back — we'll handle this beast!" Captain Xu Dahuang and Feishi arrived together in a rush.

The two of them moved as though standing on a high-speed moving walkway — not a single deliberate step taken, yet their bodies glided smoothly along the ground and arrived on the spot, rivaling that legendary monk from *The God of Cookery*.

Mo Fan recognized it immediately: Earth Wave, a basic-tier Earth Element skill.

Earth Wave was a movement skill — by manipulating the ground's surface, the user could rapidly shift position. Wang Sanpang knew this technique too, though his execution was nowhere near as polished as Feishi's.

"This is a Giant-Eyed Ape-Rat," Vice-Captain Guo Caitang rattled off quickly. "Lives underground long-term, expert tunnel-digger, prefers spots even city sewer workers can't reach. Its neck can extend, and its eye Releases a crimson piercing beam. Reproduces as fast as common rats and just as hard to kill — any city's underground tunnels and landfill soil will have a few hiding out. Normally scavenges human scraps; it only attacks people when it's starved to a critical point. Cowardly yet omnipresent — that's your Demon-Beast."

*A Giant-Eyed Ape-Rat??*

*He vaguely remembered a few Demon-Beast Studies lessons dedicated to this thing — the undisputed excavation champion of the Demon-Beast world, a born specialist in underground living and tunnel-digging.*

*Weren't these things supposed to wet themselves and bolt the moment they spotted a mage? So why had this one decided to attack him?*

"This one's clearly in a frenzy — must be starving to its limits, desperate for food and energy. Lucky we found it when we did!" Feishi said with a goofy grin.

Unlike students who dissolved into panic at their first encounter with a Demon-Beast, the squad — Captain Xu Dahuang, Xiao Ke, the wind mage, Guo Caitang, and the older Feishi — faced the Giant-Eyed Ape-Rat with an entirely different bearing.

They fanned into a loose formation, maintaining distances close enough to provide mutual support.

They held an attack-ready stance while ensuring they could fall back the instant danger shifted.

Mo Fan alone — the newest recruit — was planted in a supremely awkward position. From the outside it looked as though he'd declared "Stand back, all of you; this beast is mine," yet in reality he was inching step by step toward the back of his squadmates, silently cursing Feishi for not sliding him an Earth Wave.

**Grrk — grrk — grrk!**

The Giant-Eyed Ape-Rat was every bit as feral as advertised. Far from fleeing at the sight of more people, it locked that massive eye immediately onto the nearest target: wind mage Li Wenjie.

The crimson piercing beam was charging. This creature — built to lurk in the darkest corners of the human city — looked ready to blast straight through every living thing in the area, its shrill cry slicing through the dark campus like a drawn blade.

"You want a piece of me?" Li Wenjie said, utterly unhurried.

Mo Fan barely noticed him make any deliberate effort to link his Star Trails — a pale cyan wind-trail was simply there, circling Li Wenjie, billowing his white dress shirt in rhythmic gusts.

**Snap!**

The crimson beam lanced forward — but Li Wenjie was already five meters away, leaving nothing behind but a swirl of churning air. Words couldn't do the coolness justice.

"Idiot." Li Wenjie paused at the ping-pong table, a cold smile on his face as he addressed the Ape-Rat. "With moves like that, you have no business preying on anyone."

Enraged that its beam had failed against this agile human, the Giant-Eyed Ape-Rat flew into a blind fury and launched itself forward on those razor-sharp limbs.

Bizarre neck, bizarre head and all, it was somehow even faster than any Gloom Wolf Beast Mo Fan had previously encountered. At that speed, it could close the distance to a student before they finished their Star Trail — and even a perfectly calm student would have no time left to Release anything.

Most students needed roughly four seconds to complete a Release. This creature covered forty meters in under two, sweeping a savage claw directly toward Li Wenjie's face.

Ice shot down Mo Fan's spine — he was convinced Li Wenjie was finished.

He glanced around: Xiao Ke with her Water Element, Feishi with his Earth — neither of them had any intention of intervening.

"Wind Trail · Flash Step!" Li Wenjie's eyes held not a trace of panic. He tracked the charging Ape-Rat with ice-cold calm and spoke the skill's name.

**Whoosh—!**

Li Wenjie's silhouette vanished. The Ape-Rat's claw crashed down on the stone ping-pong table and shattered it into a spray of fragments.

The beast found nothing but air and immediately wheeled in pursuit.

**Whoosh—!**

One step — and Li Wenjie was gone again, leaving a rising column of dust as he reappeared twenty meters away.

**Whoosh—!!**

He paused a split second beneath a kapok tree, then blinked out of Mo Fan's sight entirely.

An instant later, a crimson beam hammered into the exact spot Li Wenjie had just vacated, punching a clean hole straight through the kapok tree. Kapok blossoms cascaded down in thick, drifting sheets.

*Wind Trail · Flash Step!!*

Mo Fan stared in open-mouthed awe.

Back at school, every Wind Element student learned Wind Trail: Rapid Rush — a skill that funneled you along a single traceable wind-channel, blasting you forward at high speed. Fast, yes — but it locked you to one direction. Nothing like Li Wenjie's Flash Step, which snapped him to a completely new position in an instant.

*If Zhang Xiaohou had mastered Flash Step back during that expedition, he could have run that Gloom Wolf Beast in circles — he never would have been chased all the way down to the bottom of that cave.*

Both were basic-tier Wind Trail skills, and yet the gap in effectiveness was staggering. The Giant-Eyed Ape-Rat was even more agile than a Gloom Wolf Beast, and still it couldn't touch so much as the hem of Li Wenjie's shirt.

*As expected — school only took you so far. It was only in environments like this, through constant real combat, that you could truly push your strength higher.*

*Joining the hunt had been the right call without question. Only by fighting alongside hunter-mages who could stare down Demon-Beasts without flinching would he grow at speed. Staying with classmates who wet themselves at the first sight of a monster — that path led nowhere.*

It wasn't that Mo Fan harbored a grudge against his classmates. It was that the Gloom Wolf Beast encounter had cracked something open in him.

Chasing assessments, chasing grades, chasing target-practice scores, attending Demon-Beast Studies, dissecting combat techniques in the classroom — none of it was worth a damn when you actually stood in front of one. Real combat was all that mattered. Nothing but constant, unrelenting exposure to real Demon-Beasts.

"Time to taste some fire!"

Captain Xu Dahuang practically radiated confidence, a roaring ball of flame already cradled between his palms — blazing with searing heat. The firelight painted the corners of the big man's upturned mouth a deep crimson, a grin edged with contempt.