With the weeks flying by and most third years living the regular outlook of studies. The first proper tests came around the corners, the written ones were easily defeated by Samuel, but the same tests that were being run for all the third years when it came to practical sense.
Was a bit different than usual, because of the many casualties of both teachers and students in the previous years, you could say the school was running a bit scared of more accidents / unfortunate incidents.
The test this year for all third years was to enter the northern part of the Rockgarden forest and find alchemical ingredients of any kind that were useful in the making of potions.
Teams of three or four were designed to keep an assistant alchemist collector safe to harvest some ingredients. While security was upped a great deal with a large amount of extra security stationed here and there.
Normally they wouldn't intervene and depending on danger they still wouldn't as students of the third year were expected to be able to handle most dangers. They were also given strict instructions to not engage if they were outmatched.
Run to live another day, Samuel instantly realized the first hurdle for him was to find a team. Otherwise he would automatically fail the test.
He realized he should just ask to join a team from his faction but before he could leave his house someone knocked on the door.
He opened it and to his surprise found, Zalbas, Vuldara & Vazmarx standing outside waiting for him. "Come on slowpoke! We have been waiting for you, we gotta sign up the team for this shit!" Vazmarx openly spoke and the other two remained quiet but seemed to silently agree.
"How did you?" Samuel began to ask.
"Well it was simple mate, you ain't got no team left and you are a bit of a loner!" Vazmarx didn't hold back any punches and kept hammering him with facts.
Samuel could only nod. "Alright, well sounds good to me!" Perhaps there was some hope after all. "Us children of mana got to stick together after all! With so few of us left!" Zalbas chimed in.
"Well it's not the same as it was hundreds of years back according to history. Now our numbers are almost in the ten thousand!" Vuldara explained and waved her hand as if to disregard the other two.
Samuel could only chuckle and nod for them to lead the way.
Together they made their way to the seventh floor in the main building where the third years were turning in their team compositions.
It was a simple form to fill out their names, the clerk looked at them in a very confused manner for a few seconds. None of them knew why but what else could they do about it.
The young half elven man excused himself for a few moments before returning with an older looking high elf man.
"Tenri here tells me you have a weird team composition! Two cloaks of the mage assembly, one red of the martial masters, and one purple representing both."
Vazmarx and Samuel both were blue because they were dedicated to the mage college, Zalbas who used his fists and legs to fight was a martial one so he donned the red color. While Vuldara used sword and shield mixed in with holy magic which granted her a purple color.
The older elf looked at the four of them before turning back to Tenri with a dissapointed look. "Do your job better! Cross teams are very much allowed, in fact cross teams are better suited to the task at hand you imbecileeeeeee!"
He took the hard back of his paper form and whacked the younger man on the forehead. "You may all leave now! All things are in order!"
The group did as instructed and after a short while of silence Zalbas blurted out. "Well that was weird! I don't know what that was all about but... yay! Go team?"
Vuldara instantly facepalmed at her old friend. "Forgive him for he..." She looked at Zalbas and turned back to the others... "For he is dumb!"
"Hey I am not dumb! I am just not very smart!" Zalbas retorted as if he had won. While the other two shrugged, "Well I certainly think I am smarter than you!" Vazmarx claimed loudly.
"Aw yeah! Two gold coins says I will do the mission better than you!" Zalbas instantly replied. "Make it four!" Vazmarx replied and they both shook hands on it.
Vuldara seemed less than impressed but let them do their own thing trying to ignore the whole thing. Samuel just smiled through the whole interaction, thinking it was hilarious.
"There is still six days left until the test begins right?" Samuel quickly asked and the others nodded. "So what is the plan in the meantime?" His next question stumped the other three.
Vuldara quickly put a hand on her chest. "Well I for one will continue my studies!" She seemed quite proud. "I will relax and sleep!" Vazmarx spoke next.
Samuel turned to Zalbas lastly who shrugged, "I will probably train! Recently they have us punching and kicking ironoak trees. Leaves us with bruises for quite some time afterwards!"
They all turned to him expectantly to see what his answer would be. Samuel couldn't help but sigh, "I will probably study a bit about alchemical plants and read up a bit on the forest we are going too! You know... so I will be prepared?"
All the others collectively went "Ahhh" and started speaking over eachother or muttering how that was a pretty good idea. It only made Samuel sigh again.
The group split up shortly after to go do their own thing. Samuel went ahead with getting some food made but not before fetching the books he needed from the library.
"I think those guys are crazy!" Night spoke up after a while... "But I kind of like them as well, they are nice!" She spoky shyly. "Yeah I guess I actually agree with you on that one!" Samuel had to agree.
Samuel of course found the books he was looking for and spent a little bit of time every day reading up on them. There were a lot of things to cram in, General training, training with Alsian, studying for college, studying about magic, reading about his specializations, about magical history. Now also reading a little bit of alchemy and about the area they were going to.
The Rockgarden forest wasn't like your generic forest, it was a land filled with rocky hills and forests that could live in harsh conditions. It wasn't your typical green forest, most of the time the trees were yellow and rocky with red leaves.
Didn't matter what time of year it was, these trees remained pretty much the same during any season. But the different biome also made it possible for more rare plants to grow there.
Plants that were oftentimes very useful in the making of potions. But it was also a ground for wild beasts that preferred the weird ecosystem.
Training and reading and just like that the six days had passed already and they all stood prepared in a large field near the forest, together with many others teams that were there.
It was almost like a large que to enter the forest, it was of course not the only place where students would enter, if everyone entered at the same area it would be hard to everyone to find anything, even if the forest was massive and would take several days to pass through.
"Say I wonder who our alchemist person will be?" Vazmarx wondered out loud. There were many tents set up and there were several people that looked like alchemists around that gradually seemed to get assigned to different teams.
Soon enough their turn in the que came about and they approached the small post. A few soldiers and mages were stationed around and it looked like a proper checkpoint. It only took one look at the man responsible for the teams passing through to know that he was a Praetorian Captain.
"Alright, names?" He quickly asked and looked through his papers, they stated their names and he quickly scribbled through them before finding the right paper.
He almost slammed the paper down and put down a pen on it. "Alright! Sign it and you will be on your way!" They all did as instructed.
"Say were we not supposed to be escorting some important person?" Zalbas asked openly while looking around for anyone of that status.
The captain sighed and muttered something about not having the time to babysit a bunch of kids. "Get signed and get going inside and you will join up with the person you need to escort!"
The captain took one last look at the paper and seemed to freeze up for a few moments. He then looked at the group more closely and seemed to relax a little bit.
As they passed by the checkpoint Samuel gave a quick look back and saw how the Captain gave him a nod. It was a bit odd but he didn't let his mind linger on it.
"So now what huh?" Vazmarx openly sighed as they were walking through. But Vuldara put a hand on his shoulder and motioned for him to keep moving forward.
Only a few tents further and they arrived upon a group of five instructors, that were teachers at the college. With them stood a white robed alchemist with a small basket, looking like a maid that was about to go deliver something.
She surprised them all when she turned around, she was a very dark skinned young sun elf. Sun elves were a rarity to see in Rejuanian lands, in fact they were rare to see anywhere outside of their sun citadel cities.
"Oh hi! Are you my escorts!" She almost seemed to sing as she turned around to face them, her orange vibrant hair flew in the wind, but what made all of the three young men stop up was the huge breasts that were barely kept inside her clothing.
"Huge..." Zalbas exclaimed and Vazmarx coughed while Samuel decided to purse his lips.
Zalbas found his face in the dirt after one well aimed punch from Vuldara to the back of his head.
Vuldara quickly walked forward and took both of her hands in her own. "Yes we will escort you, and I promise to protect you from all evil intentions of this world as long as you are with us!"
All the teachers remained completely dumbstruck, out of the five teachers, three were women and even they seemed to be completely distracted.
"Aww thank you! You can call me Srilla!" The Sun elven woman replied and shook Vuldara's hands. One of the teachers seemed to regain some of her compsure and coughed.
"You will be looking for different reagents that Srilla here has planned out, the journey might take you an entire day or two, so you better be prepared to camp out!"
Samuel, Zalbas and Vazmarx all nodded along and seemed to have the genius spark at the same time, they would spend a long time with such a beauty! Was this really a college test, if anything it was a blessing.
That was the thought they all shared, a blessing - but they had no idea the hardships that awaited them inside.