"Listen up you short bastards, I'm not going to repeat myself!"
A tough, well-built man with a bushy beard stared at a crowd of 14 and 15 year old kids. They were in the middle of a snowy forest, all wearing fur coats but still shivering in the bitter cold.
"This is the first of your 3 trials. If you wish to join our glorious sect, you must pass each of them. Of course, you can quit later, but... let me just say you won't get another chance. Our sect has no use for quitters."
As kids who had been born in the sect and brought up in its boarding school, everyone had already seen some of their friends taken away, never to return...
"Your first trial is this: you must escape the Frozen Forest and reach the village north of here. If you arrive with less than half the people here, you fail. If you exceed the time limit of 3 days, you fail. If you can't find the village, you obviously fail. And as you can probably guess, our sect has no use for failures. That is all."
Like a well trained group of soldiers, the children saluted and shouted in unison,
"Glory to the sect!"
The burly man gave a hint of a smile... then disappeared into thin air. This was the world of cultivators and Anima. Even a low ranking concealment-type Anima could help a cultivator disappear like this, so the children weren't too surprised.
Without wasting time, they gathered together to form a plan. However, that only turned into a massive argument.
"We need to leave now!"
"Why are you in such a rush? We should explore and get a better idea of our surroundings."
"He said the time limit is 3 days, so it probably takes a long time to reach the village. We can't waste time here!"
"So what if there's a time limit?! Spending half an hour looking around won't make us fail. Besides, we need to look for signs of animals or Wild Beasts. It'll be dangerous if we wander into their territory."
In the end, they decided to quickly search the surroundings. They fanned out and everybody inspected a different area.
Isaac Dahl was exploring quite far away from the clearing they started in. The trees were thick and he could easily get lost so sometimes he drew arrows in the snow to show which direction he came from.
He had snow-white skin like most residents of the continent of Northern Tundra. It complimented his sharp facial features and pale blue eyes which looked like two marbles made of ice. He was also very thin - it looked like he was malnourished.
As he was searching, he found a small burrow at the bottom of a tree. After that, he found tiny footprints in the snow and a few other signs of arctic hares living nearby. In his memory, hares were the prey of wolves, arctic foxes, peregrine falcons and some of the weaker Rank 1 Wild Beasts. Any of those could pose a danger to the group, but Isaac couldn't find signs of any of them so he just returned to the clearing.
When everyone gathered back at the clearing, they reported their findings.
"There were definitely signs of hares."
"Yeah, I noticed that too."
"I saw a hare dart back into its burrow."
"I spotted claw marks on a lot of trees, the bark was completely scratched off. I think bigger animals live north of here."
"Claw marks? If the bark's been scratched off, it's probably not foxes."
"Its definitely wolves. We should avoid them."
"What about the time limit? We can't waste time going around the territory."
"She's right! Besides, the village is north of here. If we go too far east or west we could miss it."
Despite Isaac and a few others disagreeing, the large majority quickly decided to go through the wolves' territory. There was no point splitting up, since they would still fail if less than 50 people made it to the village.
They all set off, and Isaac moved towards the back of the group so he could run if things got dangerous. A pack of 10 to 15 wolves didn't frighten the group of youths. However, that all changed if the pack was led by a Rank 1 Wild Beast. Even though it was the lowest rank, a Wild Beast wasn't something commoners could fight. Only Rank 1 and above cultivators could take on the ferocious might of a Wild Beast.
Isaac looked around and spotted many others hanging near the back. They obviously had similar ideas to him and didn't want to get trapped in the middle of the group if they were attacked. As they officially entered the wolves' territory, Isaac sighed internally and prepared to meet any potential danger.
It had snowed last night so the snow beneath their feet was especially deep. It made progress slow and difficult. They had been walking for 2 hours without making much headway before the boy next to Isaac started a conversation,
"What's your name? I'm Johansen, by the way, but you can call me Johan."
Isaac stayed silent for a moment since he had no desire to make small talk. However, the snow-covered pine forest seemed to go on forever. The scenery never changed and nothing was happening despite being in wolf territory, so talking was the only thing to do.
"I am Isaac."
"What do you think about the trial? Since it's called a trial, it should be testing something."
"Survival skills and teamwork – more than half of us have to pass through a forest filled with wolves."
"Mm-hmm" Johan nodded in agreement and added, "I think decision making is a also a key point of the test. Do we search our starting area or not? Do we go around the wolves' territory or through it? We don't know how far the village is, so how fast should we go to get there on time but without exhausting ourselves?"
"... "
Isaac paused for a moment and didn't speak.
He and most of the other trialees grew up in an area of the sect known as the 'farm'. However, Johan's behaviour had been uncharacteristic of someone who'd lived there. For example, he looked unnatural when saluting the instructor, a mistake that would've been beaten out of you after a week in the farm. His speech was also friendly and informal, which was unusual in the farm.
People who grew up outside the farm usually had powerful parents and some form of background, so Isaac tried to probe for Johan's family name,
"I wouldn't mind making friends with somebody as smart as you. Whenever I make a new friend, I always like to reintroduce myself to them: my full name is Isaac Dahl, what's yours?"
"Haha, I said you can just call me Johan."
"If I don't know your full name, we might not be proper friends though..."
"I think the opposite's true: if we only call each other by our first names, we'll be a lot closer."
"I guess there's some truth to that. I'll just call you Johan from now on."
"Then I hope we can get on well, Isaac."
Since Isaac couldn't get Johan to reveal his surname, the conversation ended there. Their exchange wasn't entirely useless though, since Isaac had told the truth by saying he wouldn't mind being Johan's friend. Being on good terms with somebody with a strong background was almost always beneficial.
However, Johan's background wouldn't help with walking through the forest, so Isaac put it to the back of his mind and focused on what he was doing: simply placing one foot in front of the other whilst keeping a vigilant eye out for wolves.
Eventually, the group stopped walking and took a break. They'd been using the sun to navigate, keeping it to their right so they were always walking north. However, now it was midday and the sun was directly above them.
They stopped for some time and ate snow to hydrate themselves while they waited for the sun to start setting in the west. A couple of curious trialees took a look around and discovered more signs of wolves – white fur, scent marking and scratches left on trees.
It seemed they were near the centre of the wolves' territory.