If you were expecting me to get sidetracked from the main training camp event for over 30 chapters, then you were going to be disappointed. What? did you really want to read about me fighting in some online arena against an opponent or two (or have a random girl nobody cared about fight some random opponent), and have an entire arc dedicated to some random girl from another city coming to visit us and asking me to be her tour guide (and she just so happened to be Miranda's cousin)?
Don't be ridiculous. I wasn't going to screw up the pacing by sidetracking into all that nonsense. And no girl other than Alicia would take interest in someone as pathetic as me. And seriously, who cares about the reactions of netizens and forum users? Do you really want me to spend several chapters going through the responses, comments and analyses of random forum goers I would never meet in reality? Oh, and how about I throw in a damned lesson out of nowhere to drop a ton of info dump on you guys?
"What are you rambling about, Richard?"
I snapped out of it when Dong Fang Yue Chu asked me a question. Glancing around, I saw that we were in the forest. That was right. Instead of wasting a few dozen chapters going all over the place (moving from training camp to OP system to the Ball Queen's visit), I decided to finish the event at hand. Until I finished the training camp arc, I wasn't going to move to the next plotline.
"About how tiring this whole thing was."
"It's only the third day." Dong Fang Yue Chu sighed heavily. Even though he agreed with me inwardly, for the purpose of morale, he couldn't give in to complaining. Otherwise everyone's mood would worsen.
"Yeah…only two days left! We've made it this far, I'm sure we can last the next two days!" taking a deep breath, I looked around the forest vigilantly. Making use of my training under Dad, I tried to stretch out my senses to see if there were any ambushes or traps in store for us. I had to do that to escape kidnappers and gangsters and criminals on my way home sometimes, and now it was paying off in this environment too.
Already we had avoided walking into the nest of monstrous Horned Hornets, escaped confrontation with a Ghost Bear, ducked away from the view of a soaring Jade Falcon, and evaded the notice of an Ice Hellion.
It wasn't just me. Craig also saw the Shadow Leopard before we walked right into it, and quickly diverted the group away. Thanks to that, we were able to avoid unnecessary conflict and survive into the third day unscathed.
Of course, there were confrontations we couldn't avoid, but these tended to be the lower-ranked monsters. We managed to dispatch Ravagers, Timber Wolves, Nova Cats and Venom Wasps without much effort. Even Craig stopped pleading for a fight after a while, becoming jaded after expending quite some mana on slaying a Mad Cat.
No, a Mad Cat is not the same as a Timber Wolf. They were different kind of monsters. Where did you get the idea they were the same thing? What? Monsters have nothing to do with battlemechs and the names had everything to do with me being utterly unoriginal.
Speaking of group, Feng Hai had told us to split ourselves into five-man groups. Obviously the Holy Saints split up into their own group, with Harrison, Cody, Lily, Terence and one other guy from another society forming a group of their own. Black Roses also had enough members, with Alicia, Miranda and the two girls forming another group, along with a fifth girl from another society. The last group constituted of me, Dong Fang Yue Chu, Craig, Theodore and Pearl.
By now, half the group had been eliminated, and there were only fifteen candidates left. By the end of the forest training, another five would be eliminated, leaving only ten left. And these ten would become the representatives for Jing Tian Academy in the national tournament.
Honestly, I was starting to think that becoming a representative wasn't worth the trouble. I was burned out, exhausted and jaded. I didn't want to bother with all this nonsense anymore. Right now, my only desire was to survive and finish the training. If I didn't become a representative, then fine. Whatever. I couldn't care less.
I just wanted to go home.
Some people might call me weak-willed and curse and criticize me, but that was what happened after you worked so hard to the point of burning yourself out. After a certain point, you just stopped caring about achieving whatever you set out to achieve, and just wanted the whole process to be done and over with. Perhaps readers couldn't relate with me, but at this point I was beyond caring what others thought of me. Fortunately, I was in a group and we were able to motivate and encourage each other, no matter how tough it got.
That was the only reason I managed to persevere. Now I truly understood the importance of teamwork. A single person couldn't possibly conquer the world by himself. He needed reliable comrades. People he could trust to watch his back, and friends he could trust and depend on. As they say, no man is an island.
Alone, we would have been picked off by the wilderness, mentally crumbling and giving in to despair. Together, we were indomitable.
"Let's take a break here," Theodore suggested, spotting a clearing. He trudged into it, and was almost surprised by a bunch of Horned Hares. The small monsters lunged at him when he trespassed into their territory, and he responded by swinging his hammer. Lightning crackled and his power field activated, disintegrating the poor Horned Hares and smashing a crater into the earth. Theodore jumped up high into the air and landed in the middle of the clearing, his Thunder Hammer pulverizing both ground and monster, grounding them into nothingness. Even though he was wearing heavy Terminator armor, he was still somehow capable of such acrobatics. Incredible.
Okay, I lied. He wasn't wearing Terminator Armor. Just regular power armor…okay, okay! He wasn't wearing much armor at all, just the standard one we students were issued with.
"Sorry…as I was saying, let's take a break here."
Standing in the middle of the scorched earth, Theodore could only grin sheepishly. Pearl sighed and rolled her eyes, but she flopped down near the edge and leaned against the artificial wall.
"Thank you, Theodore."
Craig also slid down the crater and rested his spear against his shoulder as he took a seat on somewhere without much soot.
"Phew…finally."
"We still have to maintain vigilance," Dong Fang Yue Chu warned, even as he dropped into the crater.
"I'll take first watch," I told him. "The rest of you guys should grab some sleep."
"I'll take second watch then." Dong Fang Yue Chu began to prepare a spot for himself to lie down. Similarly, Pearl was already spreading out a cloth-like sheet to lie on. The girls just weren't used to sleeping in the dirt. "Wake me up."
"Sure." As much as I wanted to be a hero, I was just too exhausted to do the watch myself. Eventually I would doze off, but I wanted an uninterrupted sleep, which was why I offered to take the first shift. My mind couldn't last much longer, but a couple more hours should be fine.
The objective of the training wasn't to kill as many monsters as possible. Even Feng Hai wasn't that unreasonable. While we were actively encouraged to slay monsters, our priority was to survive. We were to collect the mission token that had been placed in strategic checkpoints in the forest, which would signify the completion of the training. Our scores would be based on how unscathed we emerged from this ordeal upon obtaining the mission token. Monsters did contribute to the score, but Feng Hai had warned us that there were middle-ranked monsters inhabiting the forest and reminded us not to be too reckless. Even if we failed, we could try again next year, or move on to other goals. It wasn't the end if we didn't become representatives for Jing Tian Academy.
However, if we died, then it would be the end. There was no coming back to life. There was no such thing as resurrection magic, after all. Death was absolute and final. It wasn't worth the risk to our lives to become representatives, not when we still had a bright future ahead and many second chances.
Rather than seeing our kill count of monsters, Feng Hai was more interested in evaluating how our groups worked together, and the synergy between its members. Our instructor was looking at the bigger picture – he wasn't just thinking about the national tournament, but further into the future. All mages and mercenaries worked together in teams to hunt and exterminate monsters. The individual ranking system wasn't very helpful in this aspect and only encouraged mages to become self-centered. Therefore Feng Hai wanted to correct that mentality and move us toward more group-orientated values and combat styles.
A single person couldn't achieve much by himself. An entire group, working in concert, was more than the sum of its parts, and could even metaphorically move the world as long as they cooperated and were in sync.
Along the way, we had already somewhat split the roles among ourselves. Theodore had the sturdiest build, so the defensive roles often fell to him. Craig was the vanguard, with his speed and skills with the spear, and he could often kill monsters with pinpoint precision and critical hits before they even knew what hit them. Dong Fang Yue Chu provided destructive power and area of effect spells with his flames. If there was a whole swarm or herd of monsters, such as the Venom Wasps from before, he would come in and bathe the whole area in flames, extinguishing the lives of the deadly monsters before they could draw near.
Pearl was our healer. Even though she was a powerful fighter with excellent combat ability, she was more inclined toward healing spells, and thus formed the rearguard along with me. I was the ranged member of the group, for some reason, because…I could summon a Constellation bow and arrows. Don't ask me why. Despite that, I felt as if I was pretty useless. I didn't do much except snipe a couple of monsters from afar, but most of the combat fell to Craig, Theodore and Dong Fang Yue Chu. The three guys often charged in to get close with the enemy – can't blame them, since that was their specialty – which rendered it difficult for me to fire upon my targets. I didn't want to accidentally hit my teammates instead.
Then again, my role wasn't to rack up the kill count, but to provide long-ranged support and snipe whatever monster the trio failed to catch sight of. In the worst case scenario, I could summon my Stellar Guardians, but so far we didn't need them. Just my regular Constellation spirits were enough to stomp the low-ranked monsters, and since we avoided the mid-ranked monsters, I ended up not summoning my big guys.
"…"
Lost in my thoughts, I almost didn't notice the movement to the left. Immediately summoning Orion, I notched a few magical arrows to my Constellation bow and took aim.
A few tense moments later, a Snow Rabbit poked its head out. It stared at me, and then hid under the bush again. There was some rustling, and then it was gone.
I released the breath I had been holding the entire time, and then shook my head. It was stupid to jump at shadows.
"…well, I can't let my guard down."
Honestly, I doubted there would be a foreign group coming to the forest and trying to assassinate us, either by setting a horde of mutated beasts on us or slitting our throats with their own knives. What, you think Lin Zhan Long was going to hire assassins? Where was he going to get the money from? His parents? Then what was he supposed to tell his parents? "Dad, Mom, I need some cash to hire assassins to kill a few schoolmates!"
Don't be ridiculous.
On the other hand, I was aware that they would try something, which was why I remained vigilant. While they certainly weren't going to do something as blatant and cliché as hiring criminals, assassins or murderers, they still held a grudge against us, and would definitely find a way to seek revenge. They definitely couldn't attack us directly, which meant the only recourse they had was to exploit the opportunity while we were in Sen Lin Forest to provoke high-ranked monsters into our paths to attack us, and make our deaths at its claws look like a training accident.
That was why I maintained vigilance. Unfortunately, I couldn't maintain my summoned spirits while I was asleep, or I would have just summoned a Constellation spirit and have him watch our area 24/7. Not only would the Constellation spirit disappear the moment I dozed off, fell asleep or lost consciousness, he would require me to expend a lot of mana just to maintain his existence for an extended period of time. Mana I couldn't afford to carelessly spend, not when I had to consider the possibility of combat inside Sen Lin Forest.
So I had to do this the hard way.
Fortunately, I was able to share the burden with my dependable comrades. Without them, I would never have passed the first day in the forest by myself.
While thinking that, I suddenly caught sight of something sparkling in the distance. Frowning, I squinted there, but decided not to wake up my friends. I should take note and keep track of the direction in which it was located, and tell them about it the next morning, before we set off.
Curious, I opened up the map program in my smartphone and triangulated it. The sparkling object seemed to be located in the spot that was marked as the position of the mission token.
Excitement grew in my chest. This meant we were close to achieving our objective!
"…"
However, I had to calm down. This was a training exercise. A kind of test. In other words, it wasn't going to be simple.
Feng Hai and the other instructors definitely set up traps and obstacles around the mission token. So we couldn't just charge straight in and grab it. we had to be careful…reconnoiter the area, detect whatever traps lay in the location, deactivate or avoid them, and grab the thing, and then escape from whatever traps we had yet to deactivate. Probably there was a monster or two guarding the mission token (no, the instructors didn't tame or summon the monsters – they just placed the damned token inside the monster's nest), so combat would be inevitable.
At this rate, Lin Zhan Long and his cronies didn't have to do anything…
*
"So what's the plan, boss?"
Unlike Terence, Lin Zhan Long and Adam were left back in the academy while the remaining fifteen students attended the training camp.
Lin Zhan Long gave Adam a withering stare.
"What plan?"
"You know…the plan to kill the other students!"
"SH!" Lin Zhan Long hushed him, and then glanced around worriedly. Glaring at his lackey, he scowled. "Shut up! Don't talk about that in the open!"
"Sorry, boss." Adam looked a little abashed. Lin Zhan Long sighed and shook his head.
"Anyway, I don't really have a plan. Do you think I'm a murderer or something? I just want to teach those guys a lesson. Maybe get them seriously wounded in an accident. But kill them? What the hell is wrong with you? Are you some antagonist character in a web novel or something? What kind of high school student hires assassins and tries to murder his schoolmates over a trivial schoolyard feud?! Just scare them, beat them up, and they won't dare to defy us again! Is there a need to kill them?! Are you an idiot?!"
"…sorry, boss. I wasn't thinking straight." Adam looked ashamed of himself.
"Anyway, since we aren't allowed into the training camp, we can't do anything there. Terence offered to help, but…" he shook his head. "Even for him, there's nothing much he can do. He has his own training mission to complete, and Harrison is keeping a tight leash on him." Lin Zhan Long looked bitter. "I know you're impatient to have your revenge, but endure for now. Once they return from the training camp, I'm sure we will have more opportunities."
That was a complete 180 degrees from what he discussed with his lackeys after the karaoke party a week ago, but at that time the moron was under the influence of alcohol. Now that he had sobered up, he could think through things more rationally and calmly.
"But make no mistake," Lin Zhan Long growled, giving the depressed Adam assurances. "We will still be having our revenge. It's just a matter of time." He grinned sinisterly. "All we need to do is an opportunity to create an 'accident' – and no one will suspect anything."
"You're really smart, boss!"
The two losers began laughing at what they thought was a foolproof, but in actual fact was a pathetic plan of revenge.