Will excused himself from Sarah and Grace to practice magic. In the courtyard, Will cast the spell [golem], one of the three spells Elder Thaddeus and Will tirelessly worked on for the past four months.
Suddenly, in a small section of the courtyard, the ground began to rumble, as dirt and rock compressed to form feet, legs, torso, arms, and then a head. Will had still not perfected the spell [golem] but he advanced far from his first casting the sad snowman-looking pile of boulders.
Will fed mana into the three-meter-tall golem. The golem's eyes opened, and looked at his hands, and body. The spell [golem] created a rock version of an ogre. Ogres were three-meter tall, ugly, fat, drooling, carnivorous brutes, who punished anything in their way before devouring it. Will's golem resembled a more playful ogre, but it was still enough to scare the soldiers in the fort.
After practicing for four months, Will had greatly reduced the amount of mana the [golem] for mundane tasks. However, if the golem fought or performed strenuous activity, the mana need was substantially more.
"Hello Rocky," Will said to the golem, you nodded his head. Will could speak telepathically to the golem but decided he would speak out loud to assure the soldiers, and fort lieutenant, who came out to observe the golem.
"Rocky can you please stack the wagons, so we have more room in the courtyard," Will asked because 35 uncovered wagons, crowded the courtyard and Will wanted more room for the cadets to drill. Rocky slowly moved and began staking the wagons on top of each other. Seeing Rocky move and begin stacking the wagons, Will decided to meditate and cycle his mana. After eight months of practice, Will's mana whirlpool was like a raging river rapid. His mana cycled around thousands of times per second, and his mana recovered faster and faster after each month of practice. During mediation, Will would send his mana throughout his body, filling every part of his body with mana. As Will meditated, he was unaware of the trouble the first-year students were facing.
On the march to the prairie, Vincent, and a group of almost 40 nobles made a pact to disobey Mark and Chloe's commands making them look like ineffective leaders to the instructors, adventures, and soldiers. During the final exam, if a leader was judged ineffective, it could hurt their chances of being offered a command after graduation and a loss of points on the end-of-term exam.
This was a frequent complaint among commoner commanders, the disobedience of their noble knights, yet the crown never disciplined knights of noble birth. Noble families had many connections and intermarital family relationships, it was easier to replace a commander from common birth than admonish a knight of noble background. Only on rare occasions, when a behavior was too extreme would the king discipline at noble knight. Mark and Chloe knew the instructors would be unsympathetic to their complaints about Vincent and the other nobles. Almost all the instructors were noble themselves and would chastise Mark and Chloe for being prepared for this certainty.
In the grasslands, the first years fought low-level apprentice beasts such as horned rabbits, armored mule deers, meter-tall flesh-eating warthogs with elephant-sized tusks, and steel-clawed raptor hawks.
Even against an apprentice armored mule deer or flesh-eating warthog, it took groups of 50 students to bring down one animal. Vincent and the other nobles formed their group, and killed beasts a random, often killing other groups' beasts.
No matter what Mark said, Vincent and his group would immediately reject Mark and constantly mocked his decision-making out loud.
Mark would yell out defensive positions, but Vincent and his gang would not participate. Once when facing the steeled-clawed apprentice raptor hawk, Mark yelled at Vincent's group to participate in attacking the raptor hawk, but Vincent fraudulent claimed they were recovering from the last fight. Several students were hurt, by the hawks swooping attacks. Finally, Mark was able to kill the hawk, but it took a toll on his stamina.
Mark would shout march right, and Vincent's group would shout march left. On and on, this continued, day after day. By the second week, many first-year students wondered if they should have chosen a noble commander, to end the division.
Thanks to Mark's cautious deliberate approach, novice and apprentice beasts were handled with care, however, the number of beasts killed numbered under 10 a day. However, Vincent's barbarian group rampaged through the savanna slaughtering over 20 animals. Many people admired Vincent's group's brutal method of killing beasts and the number of kills. Cadets knew greater kills increased their end-of-term score.
Unfortunately for Mark, during the second week, noble cadets began to desert him for Vincent's gang. As Vincent's gang grew the greater the rampage and recklessness. They would storm the prairie killing everything in their path. They would gamble on killing the beast, and use their most destructive move to kill the smallest of animals. They burned the prairie, laughed at the death screams of beasts, and even attacked the commoner knights.
The fratricide by Vincent's gang only segregated the first years further. Nobles who marched with Mark were bullied and ostracized. Many nobles joined Vincent, to relieve themselves of the pressure. Even worse, the second- and third-year Guardian students rallied behind Vincent, and belittled Mark's command. Each morning at breakfast and night at dinner, the first-year's daily division spread through the great hall of the fort as a great source of entertainment.
In the evening, Will, Grace, and Sarah would join the first years for dinner and hear about the gossip first-hand from both commoners and nobles. As Quartermaster Will was separated from the infantry, and in truth several first-year cadets asked Marshall Rolf if they could join the Quartermaster Command Post. Will was seen as neutral by both Mark's and Vincent's groups, and that peace appealed to many first-year students.
On the fourth day of the second week, the first students marched further from the river and closer to the western edge of the valley where a large mountain stood resolute. Vincent's gang continued to recklessly slaughter novice and apprentice beasts, burn the grassland, and mutilate beasts for fun. The loud laughter and destruction forced the novice and apprentice beast to find sanctuary in the territory of the stronger beast.
After almost two weeks thousands of novice, apprentice, and journeymen-level monsters found sanctuary by the western mountain cliffs. Suddenly a deafening roar rang out from a mountain cave, a giant black panther jumped down from his cave roaring its discontent at the number of beasts invading its territory. The giant panther was as black as midnight, with dark red leopard patterns on his coat. His retractable claws were sharp daggers and had long fangs that resembled a saber tooth tiger. Dire beasts were magical animals that had mana cores, rather than mana pools like humans. A dire beast was equivalent to a master mage, however, some much stronger beasts, such as dragons, griffons, chimeras, and manticores fell into that group.
The behemoth dire beasts dropped from his cave and chased the animals from his territory causing the beast to stampede to the first-year cadets. Thousands of beasts rushed out from the mountains, the sound of thousands of feet was thunderous. Vincent and his gang were the first to realize the stampede and began to run, Vincent choked on his saliva when he first saw the cloud of dirt in the distance.
Vincent's signaled the fort, to report the stampede and each member of the gang requested aid. When the first adventurer came to help, he spit blood at the beast wave and cursed Vincent and his gang. The adventurers, instructors, and soldiers each grabbed a cadet and then employed their fastest speed technique. The soldiers signaled the impending beast wave to the second and third-year students, who rushed to the river to provide support. Regretfully, they were deep in the endless forest, and it would take several hours to exit.
When the first-year instructors, adventurers, and soldiers heard that two-thirds of their forces were unable to provide backup, they relayed the stampede to the fort outside the valley. Apologetically, the signal commander responded an army incursion into Death Valley could preemptively trigger a war, and it would take time for the army to send an envoy to the Albanians before they could send a support company.
Back at the fort, Will, Grace, and Sarah were inventorying the amount of fodder, rations, weapons, and armor, for the return trip to Guidon; when a soldier came running shouting about the beast wave and the possibility of the fort being overrun.
As Will learned more it sounded doubtful the first-year students would make it across the bridge. The lieutenant had asked every soldier to provide help to the retreating students, at the cost of their lives. The soldier speaking with Will was visibly shaking. The lieutenant asked, Will, Grace, and Sarah to escape the fort now and run to the fort outside the valley.
"I'll come with you," Will responded.
"No we will come with you," Chloe responded holding Sarah's hand, who looked unwell.
Will, Grace, and Sarah ran to the river. At the riverbank, Will, Grace, Sarah, the lieutenant, three signal soldiers, and less than twenty infantry soldiers stood ready to attack the beast. The first speck that came into view was Vincent's gang being carried by experienced adventures. Followed by Mark's group who was just two kilometers ahead of the stampede and continued to lose ground. No one would guess whether Mark's group would make it across the river first or die in the rampage.
"Run Will! What are you doing here? Leave now!" shouted a silver bearded adventurer, covered in iron-clad armor with grizzly leather underneath. Behind the bristle, Will could see tiny green eyes staring at him.
"Marcus?" Will asked unexpectedly.
"Yes moron, now run away! I will stay behind to give you enough time to escape. Father and mother do not need two dead sons," Marcus said, accepting the impending death.