"Is this also part of the training?" It was one of the few nobles accompanying us who asked while pointing at the snow gradually falling stronger and stronger.
"It might be, after all the timing for this training seems to always be at the same time of the year. Maybe the beasts here are getting stronger in the snow or something like that making this the perfect training spot, but only at this time of the year. It could also be random and have nothing to do with the weather. If anyone notices something strange than we can think about it more, but for now we should concentrate on just following the path."
He already started to appear more and more of a leader. Ren was definitely not simple, from my fellow students he was the hardest one to read and he also had skill and talent.
Is he supposed to be the real protagonist of this world? I mean he fits all the characteristics, he's handsome, has great talent and seems to have the talent to become a great leading figure in the future. He fits the characteristics so far.
But well that theory is just a vague guess. After all the Katsumi's talent is a lot higher and wasn't it always supposed to be either a love or hate relationship between the main character and the beautiful princess he'll 'coincidentally' meet everytime?
I mean they don't seem to have any kind of feelings for each other. Just acceptance I guess, maybe he's impressed by her strength or something, but I can't really seem to notice anything else. Well I can't even say what's possible and what not after living like the frog at the bottom of the well not realizing that my previous world indeed wasn't the only one.
After actually switching between worlds I wouldn't be surprised if I would actually find another place as special as this world in the future, or maybe this Kingdom also is nothing special and my future lies somewhere else.
Ah, it's giving me a headache just thinking about these things.
But why am I even thinking about that I should observe this new area and to figure out the safest path for now, afterwards we can always just try to find stronger beasts, but I wouldn't like having to fight against a really strong beast right of the bat.
I looked the path in front of us, into the distance and of course concentrated on all of my senses to find out anything, which could give me information about a safe path.
And after a few minutes I had noticed a few things, which had changed since leaving the academy.
One of the biggest problems was actually the snow slowly falling down onto the ground. It made it really hard to find any footprints, which could tell something about the size of the monsters here.
When looking at the snow my thoughts drifted away and I was able to see Katsumi's hair perfectly fitting the area at this exact point in time.
She looked even more beautiful than normal and I had to try really hard not to get distracted by her at that time. After all, not focusing on my surroundings could completely erase the biggest advantage our team had in comparison to the other team.
Although nobody knew about it being able to hear, smell and feel the surroundings a lot better was an incredible advantage and could be used to avoid meeting beasts too strong as well as enable us to approach beasts we could defeat. Subtle hints should be enough to lead my team into the best possible direction and it also shouldn't reveal my capabilities just yet.
Well, if it really was necessary I would just have to say that it was an effect of my darkness magic. It was after all my go to excuse in case I have to explain some of my abilities.
And I managed to lead them into certain directions by saying things like:
"I think I just heard something from the left, maybe we shouldn't go there for now."
or
"I feel like I just saw a shadow behind us move, my darkness magic makes me more sensitive to any kind of darkness, so maybe we should speed up a bit."
And because nobody else had any clues or could notice the things I was able to they mostly just acted at these hints not really questioning me at all. They were mostly too tense to wonder about it and Ren, who seemed to also be experienced would surely no it was better not to put me one the spot so unnecessarily.
And everything went perfectly fine until I smelled some kind of beast silently approaching us. My sense of smell alone wasn't able to make me notice things in a range further than 50 meters, so I immediately got alerted.
"Behind us, I just saw something!"
Everybody immediately turned around and it wasn't a moment too late, because right then at that moment you could see a snow white rabbit the, size of the bears I had previously encountered leap right at us with terrifying speed.
I also managed to get a glimpse of an orange light glowing up in the distance behind the rabbit. I knew what it was, but if he would really help us right now it would be his fault for not noticing us already getting ready to fight the beast.
Luckily he didn't do anything for now, but the light still didn't disappear, ready to kill the beast the second he would notice one of us coming close to dying.
"Everybody evade and attack it in mid air if possible." Ren shouted out as soon as he saw the rabbit jumping at us.
I was already doing exactly that and I could see Katsumi also approaching it from the other side getting ready to slice of one of the rabbits legs. As I was already ready to execute the same motion, even though probably quite a bit slower I remembered that I had to hold back for now.
This wasn't the kind of opponent, which it was necessary to show my skill against.
So rather than using my full speed to cut off one of his legs I ducked down, touched the ground and focused my darkness magic on the spot it would land at and turned it into pitch black darkness hoping it would have the expected effect.
*screech*
Before it was even able to land one of it's legs had been cut off by Katsumi and it let out a painful cry.
Already being caught off guard the giant rabbit was completely confused as heck and the pain was affecting his senses. And when it landed it got even more confused. It didn't land on the expected white snow, but felt like it would fall down an endless abyss every moment.
In that time frame everyone attacked it and the finishing blow to the head was dealt by Ren, who swiftly uses his sword and accurately stabbed it right through his eyes deep into the head.
*gasp*
The only one, who hadn't been caught off guard was me and that also only, because I was able to smell it just a moment earlier than everyone else saw it. Now that it was up close I could measure the rabbit to be 3.5 meters (11.48 feet) from head to the back legs. It's ears alone were massive, after all it seemed like it was a normal rabbit if you don't think about the proportions and the blood lust.
They alone were 1 meter (3.2 feet) long, which made the whole rabbit look extremely unnatural and creepy.
"There are beasts like this in this plane?"
Now that she saw it up close one of the nobles who had come with us cowered in fear and the other nobles also began to do the same, some had stronger reactions than others', but the only ones who were able to remain calm and look at the overall situation were Ren, Katsumi and me.
I could kind of understand Ren, because he was mysterious and nobody knew anything about him at all, but Katsumi also stood there unfazed, which was quite a surprise to me. At moments like these I really can't help, but wonder about her past and what made her, a princess become this ruthless at certain times.
Well that's not what's important right now, the most scary thing of all, which I only realized just now and what should've been pretty obvious was that I couldn't make full use of my senses, especially my sense of hearing got nerfed a lot.
The snow falling down was already quite annoying, but the snow on the ground also made their movements more silent. I could've already guessed that, but I was so focused on simply hearing the beasts that I didn't even notice that fact, which normally should've concerned me as soon as I saw the snow falling down.
Am I getting nervous? I don't really feel like it, but then why am I getting so cautious that I even miss such important details?
"Good teamwork there, especially from the princess and Yori."
Ren tried to up the mood and let the nobles get their nerves together, but he also genuinely seemed like he was content with the outcome of this fight. He was a way better leader then I could've been. I didn't even think about praising our teamwork to lighten up the mood. I was just in my own thoughts and didn't even think about the rest of our group.
"This beast is really big, but only Yori managed to notice it before it could reach us. How did you do it? Without you telling us beforehand we would've surely not noticed it until it was too late."
Well I knew this had to come, so I guess it's time to use my go to excuse!
"Well, it's actually because of my darkness magic. I didn't want to bother everyone and to be honest I didn't plan on revealing it, but I can use my magic to sharpen my senses up to a certain point. I normally don't do it, because it drains my magic, but in this area I decided that I had to use it."
I also added a little bit more information to make them believe me and if it would come down to a fight they would know my ability, but underestimate it thinking that I needed magic to use my enhanced senses. Feigning honesty and naivety by telling them more than needed could at least turn this situation a bit more into my favour.
And if in the near future anyone would know about this ability I would just need to torture them until they spilled, who gave them that information and then kill that bastard. It would gain me their trust right now and only reveal part of my real ability to them in return.
They also wouldn't know about my real strength yet and would probably think my sword skills and physical abilities were weak and that I only got accepted into the lion class, because of my connections to the princess and my magic.
Spreading this false information will let my enemies think they know everything about me and then, when they carelessly attack me I'll just tell them about their stupidity and ignorance right before taking their life.
In the end it gave me quite a few advantages for the future though I would've of course preferred not to have to reveal anything, but that would've just affected the team negatively and made them feel like they couldn't trust me, which also doesn't seem good considering the next two months I would have to spend with them if everything works out.
And in the future I would maybe even be able to have good connections to the people who will lead the kingdom.
"Well that's really helpful for the future, but we should still not get too comfortable and everyone needs to be on alert in case something like this happens to attack us again."
The more and more I observe him the more I get curious about where he came from and if he really only is a commoner like I believed until now. Well maybe he's only a natural talent or something, but I feel like he is an even better leader than I could've guessed a few hours prior.
He didn't show these qualifications at all until now. Was it intentional or is he himself not aware of it yet. Either way I'll try to at least bring him to trust me to a certain extend in these next few months.
"It's good that we managed to kill the first beast here, but we can only hope that this isn't the weakest of the beasts in this plane. It wasn't too hard to defeat it, but we didn't manage to notice it at all and if we didn't have Yori we would've already failed on the first day." Ren explained while looking at the corpse.
"We managed to kill it together, but now I fully realize why teamwork is so important in this area. It's not just purely important for combat, but also for just safely moving around. We have to all keep our eyes open and look for the beasts in our surroundings.
"And if anyone hears anything, even just the slightest unnatural noise he should immediately say it, otherwise we could be taken off guard like just now if Yori didn't warn us."
While saying that Ren made sure to look at everyone and especially the nobles, who were still scared to make sure they understood.
I could especially relate to him at that moment. I wouldn't want to have to get saved just because some of our team don't concentrate on looking out for enemies. Well it wouldn't really be that much of importance, after all if anyone doesn't manage to do his job I will after all be able to do that persons job. I'll just have to get the timing right and not say anything too fast.
"Now that we killed the first beast we need to find a place to rest for the night and cook this thing to eat, so keep your eyes open for a cave or some kind of place where the snow doesn't fall and we can safely make a fire at."
And with that said we dragged the rabbit after us and looked for a nice place to stay.
At that moment I was sure that the other group would have absolutely no chance, it didn't seem like anyone had any kind of experience with a situation like this. They wouldn't even be able to survive this day without the help of the teachers...
- A few hundred meters away-
"Oh it seems like he really did have a plan... That's an interesting development, only a few first year classes ever managed to survive an attack of a snow rabbit in the first few days. Even if they were a complete team it would be hard to do that... And I feel like he is the one, who is actually responsible for their success."
The devil of fire was standing on the a branch of a tree while observing our group move away. He was sure that not one of the groups would be able to survive even the first day and would have to be saved at the first encounter with any beast.
He was pleasantly surprised by their success.
"You're still here?"
The calm stream, Mazi Saki just arrived with those words and although you couldn't see it she was quite surprised.
"They are a lot better than I thought. They just killed a snow rabbit. I was close to stepping in, but they actually managed to notice it and kill it without any injuries afterwards."
"What?! Snow rabbits are so unnoticeable in their natural habitat that even the best organized teams, who were in this plane for more than a month might not be able to take one down if it attacked them in a moment of inattention."
"I know, but look over there." He pointed directly at us and you could see a perfectly hidden corpse, which was really hard to see getting dragged behind us. You could only see it from their viewpoint because of the red blood still flowing out of the corpse and leaving a trail behind.
"How did they manage to do it?" She couldn't hide the confusion in her voice. She had never seen or even heard of any class like that, even in over a decade of teaching at the academy.
"There's different parts, which all influenced the battle. Teamwork to kill it, good leadership and most importantly noticing the beast before it was too late... It was him, the one who the principal told us to closely watch."
"So he really is special. That could be quite interesting, well if they survive for longer than 1 week we will switch keeping watch over them, okay? Maybe they are really special, after all those three are really unusual."
"Sure, teach the other team and come back with them after one week, although if they really succeed to survive out here for one week the other team will have a significant disadvantage."
"Yeah, but we can't hinder their possible experiences just because the other group isn't strong enough. In the end they will spend a few years together at this academy, so it shouldn't split them in two teams forever, but to be safe I will inform the principal."
"Ok, then take care of your group and make them train even harder than before... I have a feeling that they have to do that to keep up."
"Ok, take care, too."
And with those words the calm stream was gone and would take the other group back to the normal training grounds.
If I knew of those developments I would've probably had to laugh out loud at the mere thought of their faces, when they get told that the other group is still training and even managed to take down a beast by themselves.
This certainly did turn out to be fun, what else is going to happen in the next few days, weeks or even months? I couldn't tell but I sure as hell was excited for what was to come.