I met Vali and Amael in one of the camp's exits, by the very basic map that was provided to the team because of the mission we chose to do, it would be very strange to give me this type of mission where I should plant these eight magic tools in, they went with poles in specific places in the forest without informing me where I should put them. But this map is really bad, I didn't even spend five minutes reading it because it only gives me the direction where the places I have to go are and I can only calculate the distance after calculating the map scale, which is very difficult because on the map basically not even a point of reference beyond the position of the camp.
If they hadn't even given the location of the camp on the map, I would have no idea how I would locate the eight places I have to go. To solve this first setback, I decided to ask Vali for help, on the map from two water formations that have a slightly different shape and seem to be far enough away that it's a waste of time to walk there, but that doesn't mean I can't ask Vali to throw herself into the air using her magic to try to locate the direction of the two lakes from afar.
Hopefully Vali will be able to identify the lakes and their direction so we can calculate the route to our first destination which seems to be close to the camp, but without the correct direction we can spend days just trying to find the place to place the first stake. After showing the map to my teammates and explaining my plan and asking if they had a better idea than mine, but in the end, we're going to use Vali as an observation tower and hopefully he has a lot of confidence in his wind magic. to make a good landing, because if we start the mission with him breaking his leg because he jumped too high, I think the examiners will give us a few hundred minus points for being idiots.
"Ready to fly like a bird? But you have to promise me you'll land right because if you crash to the ground, we'll be the biggest joker on this test and it'll haunt us for the rest of our lives. OK?"
Amael has a nervous smile on his face at my joke, but Vali isn't nervous at all, he's simply focused as he prepares to jump. I don't know if he's too focused because he's just nervous or if he's lacking in confidence.
"Hey?!"
"I'm ready! If you step back now, I'll jump."
We are screwed. Vali concentrated a lot of mana and elemental energy around him he stayed like that for a few seconds before shooting like a green figure forward, he ran forward and started climbing the trees near the camp and when he reached the end of the tree higher, he blew up the entire top of the tree with his wind element, poor tree.
The top of the tree was completely destroyed and I could only see a green spot rising. It's not that he actually managed to jump that high, he must have soared into the air more than twenty meters before creating a second momentum to climb even higher. the lakes and not become a meat paste when you land.
There were very boring moments waiting for Vali to come down, Amael was starting to sweat with nervousness. Looking up I finally see a black dot descending, it looks like Vali dissídio descends, and to my surprise he summoned a large amount of wind to roll around his body and it aimed his landing in some trees near where he had already densified a tree before.
Vali destroyed a fair number of trees in his fall, and this caught the attention of several students, but I didn't even see an examiner near us which is weird. Why would they hide themselves for us to watch?
I'm Amael we ran to the place Vali went down and found him very pale, but not a bruise and with a silly smile on his face. It seems that this experience was more fun than frightening for him in the end, but when he walked towards us, he was walking a little crookedly and Amael came forward to help him when she saw that Vali was a little dizzy.
"Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I'm fine and it's just that I spent a little more mana than I thought I would to do it."
"Did you find the lakes?"
"Yes, the first one is over there and the second one is that way." According to Vali the first lake is basically in a straight line from the gate we're at and the second is much more to the right, now just calculate a little and now I'll know and after studying the map a bit me and Amael arrived the same concussion.
Now we know which direction to go. Now it's time to wait for Vali to recover from the experience of falling for so long.
"Do you have any idea how far you've gone up?"
"No, but it was a pretty new experience. He thinks flying won't be as fun as I thought it would be, but since I'm so far away from being able to fly in the sky I don't think I have a reason to worry about it right now."
"You mine who were falling now Vali, I think flying can be a very different feeling maybe you like it."
"I hope you're right, but when I was up there, I saw something else that caught my eye. Avia a ruined temple between the two lakes would take us a day or maybe a little longer to get there."
That's interesting, among the quests I've seen there wasn't anything that looked like it involved an ancient ruin, but maybe her quest just hasn't been posted yet or she's just a bonus event or secret challenge for students to solve for more points. It might be a good destination, but to explore it I'll want a better group a shield warrior would be mandatory to explore an enclosed place like this, but we can only do that after solving our current mission.
"Is the temple easily found, or is it buried in the ground?"
"Buried, I only saw the top of the structure among several tall trees, if I hadn't been climbing so high, I wouldn't have seen the temple."
"Well, so the chances that another group will find the temple is small. If you've already recovered let's, go on our way, by my and Amael's calculations we have to travel around six hours straight at good speed to get to the mission's first aria, and don't let your guard down I wouldn't be surprised if you hear it a guardian or nest of a magical beast where we should plant these magical tools, this is a four-star mission."
The three of us started our march to the first rendezvous point, our formation consists of me leading the team and clearing the way with Amael behind me with the support of Vali's magic so he can keep up with my speed, Amael is at the center of the formation not just because he's the slower one and yes because he can sweat his magic either to protect me or Vali who's protecting the rear of the team, with his speed he wouldn't even have a problem reaching the front of the group to help me fight against a strong enemy.
I think this line-up is the best choice for a small team like ours, if we had more people, a line-up would become complicated for the wing members to help the opposite side. In larger groups a triangular formation is better because in groups of this size there are always people who need extra protection.
On our trip we only encountered a few magical animals of level one and two, not one of them was really strong as they all died with one of my arrows piercing their skulls, even the animals that are hiding waiting to make a suppression attack on an unprotected victim are not able to dodge my arrows due to some factors like i know their location and so i can position myself so that my arrow hits him in a spot that he can't see the arrow going towards him and the improvement i have had in my archery skills.
I'm obviously not using even an adaptation of Leonor Sunshine's skills as I haven't been able to study her skills in depth and they aren't exactly good for my current situation, Leonor's arrows are very flashy as the fire element is quite bright and the radiated heat from the arrows can be noticed by some types of animals and magical beasts, which are quite sensitive to high temperatures for them these arrows are flags of trouble.
I don't doubt that Leonor doesn't have other styles of arrows that can do covert shots like what I'm doing now with my wind element, but I doubt she would show this during classes or even on tests as she is being seen by a lot of people. I've been using my wind element to silence my arrows and make sure they don't cause a big haze in the air; these two things might look the same but they're completely different.
To make an arrow not cause any noise I have to create a draft around it to hold the sound and for the arrow not to cause wind I have to use an art to create two different drafts one at the tip and one at the tale of the arrow, the airflow in the arrow tale should undo the air believer that the arrowhead creates, but the hardest part of it is not letting either one of the windy streams or the interaction between them change the arrow's path.
It took me a long time to do this without any major difficulties, even now that I have to keep a good part of my focus on the arrow not to make a mistake in this elementary art it is called the phantom arrow. I have only mastered this art with the help of the examiner who has given archery classes at camp, without him I would still be training my skills to manipulate the airflow in the arrow.
But with using this art I managed to kill many magical animals without them noticing my arrows and that made our speed good, apart from lunch break we are very close to our destination, I wonder what kind of problems will show up in our way when we get there.