Song He had walked in to see the final match between Pearl Institute and Imperial College and knew the moment he had lost this round to Dean Xiao.
"Dean, I didn't think I mean.. it's my fault that we lost please don't blame the team"
"Indeed you weren't good enough this time, you let them get ahead and then lost your cool, but it's not all your fault. Don't loose the next time".
Song He had been the principal of Imperial College for three decades now, he knew how to deal with almost anything. He admonished Professor Xu before half vindicating him, the guy would work three times hard to ensure a victory the next year.
"Now students of Pearl and Imperial Colleges, as the exchange battle is concluded we move on to the next agenda, your practical training"
" Great mages aren't born by practicing your magic in safe zone, you have to move outside the city and fight actual monsters with killing intent instead to see your strengths and weaknesses.
I have just the assignment for you guys, but unlike the past years you will be going to less a dangerous area and therefore I have decided to increase the difficulty for you guys.
The two college teams will compete for the practical training as well.
In the plains of Inner Mongolia there is a rare equine monster species called Hollow Bones Mare, they are Warrior level at adulthood. They have low fertility rates and don't bother humans much at all.
The military thinks they would be the ideal mounts for the area and wants to tame them. Your objective is to capture a young or ideally infant of Hollow Bones Mares and bring them back.
The ones you do bring back can be given back to you guys after they have been tamed successfully. If they can't be trained sucessfully there won't any additional rewards.
Now the team that brings back the most of these creatures win, any questions?" Song He finished his explanation.
"Can these beasts be trained and what level have we accomplished?" Zhao Jing was the first to question the principal.
"So far we have had a 6% chance in taming these beasts up to six stars. As for the military they are indecisive on what to do next. They wish to try one last round of spells before they move on to the procedure".
There were two mainstream taming methods, the first is directly taming captured infants of monsters. However, monsters tend to be violent and therefore untameable hence the second method letting the captured monsters breed in captivity for a few generations and trying again only with each generation they would apply Psychic spells to mellow the creatures out.
The second method was obviously far more expensive than the first let alone the time intensive nature of it. Private companies preferred to move on to a different species and try from step one rather than use the second method.
Only the military would try the second. If they wanted to proceed with the beasts then they had some exceptional qualities.
Cao Guang believed the military would proceed regardless of the result of their attempt. So other than giving them practical experience in the wild, the secondary goal was to allow anyone with enough patience and resources to gain a suitable land Mount.
Rather than saying it was a team competition, it could also be an individual competition. Only the rewards were masked. Cao Guang was familiar with the military's Modus Operandi.
"Now you guys will travel to Ordos City tommorow morning by flight and from there you will figure it out on your own" said Song He as he left the training arena.
"What to do you guys think?" Yao Nan was the first to speak.
"The assignment is straightforward, capture beasts and bring them back, since we only need the young ones, we could just do it with stealth and not head forward" Bai Hong.
"I don't think that's what he was talking about" Cao Guang added.
"Yep, he was asking about who should be the leader, I don't plan on being under anyone's command" Zhao Jing spoke.
"Me neither" Lu Zhangtian added.
The problem with sending young wannabe privileged mages outside the safe zone was the chain of command. Arrogant young masters and mistresses don't want to be told what to do. One of the reasons why the captain was almost always from the military during the world college tournament.