As the groups were all searching for Lucian's clones, Raufon's group was trying to find their way out from the middle of the thick forest. Somehow, after being teleported in, they were lost in a dark, lightless space, where the trees were blocking out all the sunlight with their thick canopies.
"Any idea where we are?" A girl named Louise asked, belonging to Sion's group of misfits and the one who was also named as his successor after he left the Academy. Her magical, floating balls of light were their only light source besides the holographic map projected from Raufon's bracelet.
"No idea." He shrugged, watching the fuzzy, constantly distorting image.
"I don't think that is natural." A boy interjected, whose name was Marc, and he was one of Aurora's lieutenants. "I have the distant feeling that we are in some kind of formation. Or under the influence of a spell. Probably the work of the Headmaster."
"Could you try and feel it out? Point us to its source?" Raufon asked him, and after a short pause, he sat down, starting to meditate.
The rest of the group kept their guard up, mostly not wanting to be ambushed by another group. In the end, they stood there for half an hour before he reopened his eyes, looking up, feeling a bit dazed.
"We are in a formation. Straight in a closed-off space!"
"Are you sure?" Raufon asked, but he didn't doubt him, especially seeing his eyes.
"Yeah! I am fairly good with traps, and this is one we studied before!" He stood up. Being a 3rd-year student, their whole year was filled with spells, tactics, and history lessons from the Dark Ages. They were being taught everything to face an Undead, and this was one of those spells. "This is a prison spell designed to cordon off an area and imprison the Undead until proper forces can come and finish them off!"
"Great…" Louise groaned, recalling which formation he was speaking about. "Is it the Shadow Realm spell?"
"Yeah." Marc replied, "I am fairly sure it is that!"
"Explain," Raufon said, signaling everyone to come close and listen.
"It is a spell that can be based on any element. It creates different prisons called realms! The only criterion is that the one who casts it has to be familiar with No-Space. As the spell utilizes the same principles and separates part of reality when it is laid down!" Marc hurriedly explained, trying to condense it to the most essential parts, "Because Headmaster is most proficient with the element of darkness, his realm can be called a Shadow Realm."
"That is why there is no light in here!" Louise added, "We are literally lost in a forest, and we could walk around for days; we couldn't find our way out! We are going to simply walk in circles…."
"Is there a way to break it?" Raufon asked, remaining calm.
"Multiple." Marc answered, "But the question is if we are strong enough to do so. The simplest way is to overpower the formation with force, coming from its opposite element." He said, looking at Loiuse.
"I can try, but… being the Headmaster who put it in place…." She groaned, biting her lips.
"The spell itself is relatively weak. It was designed to trap Undead of the lowest kind. An intelligent one could break out of it." Marc murmured, walking up and down while thinking. "If we are not capable of overpowering it, we need to find one of its anchor points."
"I assume it is something physical?" Raufon asked, but Marc shook his head.
"Not necessarily. Laying it down when marking its borders requires drawing a straight line between two fixed points. Those points are the so-called anchor points. They can be physical. An artifact, for example."
"But someone at the Headmaster's level could simply condense his mana and leave it behind."
"If he did that, I can find it." Marc nodded, forming a small smile, "And I think I already did."
Leading them forward this time, they felt less lost in the dark forest. A little later, arriving at a conjunction, where a thick oak tree was pushing out multiple, smaller trees from its vicinity, they felt that the air was different… carrying traces of mana in it.
"I doubt that the Headmaster would do it so blatantly…." Louise murmured, echoing Raufon's first thought too.
"In a dangerous live setting, I would agree." Marc countered, watching the tree, scanning it with his eyes and his inner senses. "But this is a competition, a test."
"I have to agree," Raufon spoke again, blinking his eyes slowly. "Where is it?"
"In the tree." Marc pointed at it. "I am sure of it.
"Is it enough if we destroy one anchor?" He walked forward, touching the tree, feeling something weird when doing so.
"It won't disable the whole formation." Louise replied, "But we don't need that anyway. We just have to have an opening from where we can leave!"
"Good!" Raufon grinned, his arm being surrounded in an earthly light, punching out with a roar. Before his fist could make contact, the tree lit up in an ominous, dark light, taking his attack in its entirety and dispersing the force behind it to its surroundings in a violent shockwave.
"Ouch…" Raufon hissed, waving his hand, feeling like he just cracked his knuckles.
“That… is a problem…” Louise moaned.
"No… it is just specific." Marc hummed, scratching his chin and looking at her. "It needs to be blasted by a strong spell from the opposite element. You do it!"
"That… will take time." Louise answered after a brief pause, looking at the others, "I am proficient in healing spells… my attacks are not that strong! I will have to power up multiple times if I wish to blast through something like that!"
"Then do that!" Raufon ordered, looking at the rest of the group. "Get into a defensive formation; our job is to defend her at all costs! Got it?"
"Yes!" Answered everybody while Louise started to concentrate, closing her eyes and gathering all of her mana to unleash a spell that hopefully would be strong enough.
It only took a few minutes when they noticed that the air started to change around them. From amongst the thick trees, from the darkness, crimson-colored eyes lit up, looking at them, numbering in the dozens.
"It would have been too easy…" Marc murmured, gulping.
"Keep a half circle around Louise!" Raufon roared, "Keep her safe and work her magic! Don't let any of them get close!"
By the time he finished, he was already transformed into his hairy, bulky demonic form, standing at the front, taking on the first of the appearing shadowy figures. All of them looked human enough but made out of pure blackness, looking like shades from some kind of horror story that one would tell at a gathering around a campfire.
"Luckily, they are kinda solid…." Raufon murmured under his breath as his fist smashed through one.
He felt it making contact and watched as the shadowy body of it blasted apart, killing it. He trusted his parents to defend his back, and he wasn't wrong to do so. Marc appeared behind him, fending off another shade that aimed to stab at Raufon. With his hands, covered in blackness, forming mantis-like blades, Marc cut through the 'monster' with ease, killing it.
"They are weak!" He shouted, looking around, watching the other misfits, using their own elements, fight against the oncoming horde, defending Louise.
"Their strength is in their numbers!" Raufon barked, smashing down two more, "And it doesn't seem like they want to end!"
"No, they don't…."
Soon, one of their members was overwhelmed, grabbed by three shades, leaving burning marks and deep lacerations on her body before she was teleported out by the System. Their initial eagerness very quickly turned into a struggle, and their circle was constantly shrinking against the onslaught of the never-ending horde of shades. Worse, they never talked, never let out pain or cry, and even when torn apart by their spells, more took their place, continuing to hammer at them.
"It had to be like this…" Raufon thought, watching his people, losing more and more of them. He now felt like a soldier, back in the Dark Ages, facing the Undead horde on the battlefield, knowing their doom was nearing and there was little to nothing to stop them from being overwhelmed. "Form a circle!" He shouted, starting to raise up earth-like walls while barking more orders at them.
They were digging in, altering the ground around them to halt the advance of their enemies. Those with fire spells lit up the forest, trying to block them with walls made out of hot flames, but the shades pushed through. Even if their bodies were on fire, they kept coming, ignoring the pain, aiming to kill and tear apart all of them. Raufon was doing all he could to constantly morph the ground, form deep stretches of trenches, make them fall into it, or raise walls they had to break first. They never flew over them for their luck, or they would be in even deeper trouble and massacred much more quickly.
"How long?!" Marc shouted but expected no answer from Louise, who was concentrating with sweat trickling down her forehead.
"Watch out!" Raufon shouted, shielding him from a shade that broke through a firewall just when he opened his mouth to ask it. Another misfit was already aiming at it with a wind-blade, but its hand would stab through Marc's back. Raufon only made it at the last moment, but his rock-covered arm was punctured and penetrated through completely as the shade's blade-like fingers went through it without any resistance.
"Boss!" Marc grunted, watching the shade be killed by the wind-blade, and he had to kill the two others who were coming through the curtain of flames next.
"Not good…" Raufon cursed, feeling his hand going numb. He couldn't tell if it was because of poison or not, but they were in a pinch. "Fight with all you got! Don't let them closer!" He roared, rejoining the effort with his remaining strength.
By now, Louise was completely oblivious to what was happening around her. She solely focused on gathering all her mana, feeding it into her building-up spell, to blast through the tree and the formation's anchor and free themselves. The sounds of battle around her were filtered out, and she could only hear her breathing and a slight buzz coming from deep within the tree.
"I'm ready!" She said, or she thought she said it; it was hard to tell at that moment.
When her eyes sprang open, a blinding light burst forth from them like two beams, hitting the tree and obliterating it in one move. They did not stop there and disappeared in the distance. The hole they left behind was expanding at a rapid pace, soon letting in the natural sunlight and pushing back the darkness around them. Louise felt like her body was drained of energy, but she turned around, smiling and proud. The scenery that welcomed her was devastating, quickly freezing the grin onto her face. Trees, alongside the earth, were turned upside down, a big portion still in a blazing fire, and she was standing there, all alone. None of her group remained there, not even Raufon. What welcomed her were not relieved faces and encouraging friends but a desolate and destroyed battleground.
"Guys?" She asked, her voice weak and dry.
"Gone. They are gone. If this were the outside world, they would have died." Arrived Lucian's voice as he appeared next to her, gently putting a hand on her shoulder, stopping her from trembling.
“But… why…”
"To protect you, of course. It was no longer about getting out or obtaining the egg. That no longer mattered. What mattered to them was to succeed, and they fought valiantly and in the end… you came through. Their sacrifice was not in vain." Lucian continued, smilingly, watching the destroyed battlefield. "Sometimes, one simply has to do everything to achieve a goal. Sometimes they must make sacrifices and welcome death with open arms so others can finish what they started." He added, placing a small, golden egg into the palm of Louise. "Good job." He patted her head as she was teleported out of the Egg Hunt along with the System's message that the Misfits of Earth obtained the 2nd Golden Egg. "Good…" As his clone slowly disintegrated, Lucian murmured, "With students like them, our next generation looks promising…."
As the groups were all searching for Lucian's clones, Raufon's group was trying to find their way out from the middle of the thick forest. Somehow, after being teleported in, they were lost in a dark, lightless space, where the trees were blocking out all the sunlight with their thick canopies.
"Any idea where we are?" A girl named Louise asked, belonging to Sion's group of misfits and the one who was also named as his successor after he left the Academy. Her magical, floating balls of light were their only light source besides the holographic map projected from Raufon's bracelet.
"No idea." He shrugged, watching the fuzzy, constantly distorting image.
"I don't think that is natural." A boy interjected, whose name was Marc, and he was one of Aurora's lieutenants. "I have the distant feeling that we are in some kind of formation. Or under the influence of a spell. Probably the work of the Headmaster."
"Could you try and feel it out? Point us to its source?" Raufon asked him, and after a short pause, he sat down, starting to meditate.
The rest of the group kept their guard up, mostly not wanting to be ambushed by another group. In the end, they stood there for half an hour before he reopened his eyes, looking up, feeling a bit dazed.
"We are in a formation. Straight in a closed-off space!"
"Are you sure?" Raufon asked, but he didn't doubt him, especially seeing his eyes.
"Yeah! I am fairly good with traps, and this is one we studied before!" He stood up. Being a 3rd-year student, their whole year was filled with spells, tactics, and history lessons from the Dark Ages. They were being taught everything to face an Undead, and this was one of those spells. "This is a prison spell designed to cordon off an area and imprison the Undead until proper forces can come and finish them off!"
"Great…" Louise groaned, recalling which formation he was speaking about. "Is it the Shadow Realm spell?"
"Yeah." Marc replied, "I am fairly sure it is that!"
"Explain," Raufon said, signaling everyone to come close and listen.
"It is a spell that can be based on any element. It creates different prisons called realms! The only criterion is that the one who casts it has to be familiar with No-Space. As the spell utilizes the same principles and separates part of reality when it is laid down!" Marc hurriedly explained, trying to condense it to the most essential parts, "Because Headmaster is most proficient with the element of darkness, his realm can be called a Shadow Realm."
"That is why there is no light in here!" Louise added, "We are literally lost in a forest, and we could walk around for days; we couldn't find our way out! We are going to simply walk in circles…."
"Is there a way to break it?" Raufon asked, remaining calm.
"Multiple." Marc answered, "But the question is if we are strong enough to do so. The simplest way is to overpower the formation with force, coming from its opposite element." He said, looking at Loiuse.
"I can try, but… being the Headmaster who put it in place…." She groaned, biting her lips.
"The spell itself is relatively weak. It was designed to trap Undead of the lowest kind. An intelligent one could break out of it." Marc murmured, walking up and down while thinking. "If we are not capable of overpowering it, we need to find one of its anchor points."
"I assume it is something physical?" Raufon asked, but Marc shook his head.
"Not necessarily. Laying it down when marking its borders requires drawing a straight line between two fixed points. Those points are the so-called anchor points. They can be physical. An artifact, for example."
"But someone at the Headmaster's level could simply condense his mana and leave it behind."
"If he did that, I can find it." Marc nodded, forming a small smile, "And I think I already did."
Leading them forward this time, they felt less lost in the dark forest. A little later, arriving at a conjunction, where a thick oak tree was pushing out multiple, smaller trees from its vicinity, they felt that the air was different… carrying traces of mana in it.
"I doubt that the Headmaster would do it so blatantly…." Louise murmured, echoing Raufon's first thought too.
"In a dangerous live setting, I would agree." Marc countered, watching the tree, scanning it with his eyes and his inner senses. "But this is a competition, a test."
"I have to agree," Raufon spoke again, blinking his eyes slowly. "Where is it?"
"In the tree." Marc pointed at it. "I am sure of it.
"Is it enough if we destroy one anchor?" He walked forward, touching the tree, feeling something weird when doing so.
"It won't disable the whole formation." Louise replied, "But we don't need that anyway. We just have to have an opening from where we can leave!"
"Good!" Raufon grinned, his arm being surrounded in an earthly light, punching out with a roar. Before his fist could make contact, the tree lit up in an ominous, dark light, taking his attack in its entirety and dispersing the force behind it to its surroundings in a violent shockwave.
"Ouch…" Raufon hissed, waving his hand, feeling like he just cracked his knuckles.
“That… is a problem…” Louise moaned.
"No… it is just specific." Marc hummed, scratching his chin and looking at her. "It needs to be blasted by a strong spell from the opposite element. You do it!"
"That… will take time." Louise answered after a brief pause, looking at the others, "I am proficient in healing spells… my attacks are not that strong! I will have to power up multiple times if I wish to blast through something like that!"
"Then do that!" Raufon ordered, looking at the rest of the group. "Get into a defensive formation; our job is to defend her at all costs! Got it?"
"Yes!" Answered everybody while Louise started to concentrate, closing her eyes and gathering all of her mana to unleash a spell that hopefully would be strong enough.
It only took a few minutes when they noticed that the air started to change around them. From amongst the thick trees, from the darkness, crimson-colored eyes lit up, looking at them, numbering in the dozens.
"It would have been too easy…" Marc murmured, gulping.
"Keep a half circle around Louise!" Raufon roared, "Keep her safe and work her magic! Don't let any of them get close!"
By the time he finished, he was already transformed into his hairy, bulky demonic form, standing at the front, taking on the first of the appearing shadowy figures. All of them looked human enough but made out of pure blackness, looking like shades from some kind of horror story that one would tell at a gathering around a campfire.
"Luckily, they are kinda solid…." Raufon murmured under his breath as his fist smashed through one.
He felt it making contact and watched as the shadowy body of it blasted apart, killing it. He trusted his parents to defend his back, and he wasn't wrong to do so. Marc appeared behind him, fending off another shade that aimed to stab at Raufon. With his hands, covered in blackness, forming mantis-like blades, Marc cut through the 'monster' with ease, killing it.
"They are weak!" He shouted, looking around, watching the other misfits, using their own elements, fight against the oncoming horde, defending Louise.
"Their strength is in their numbers!" Raufon barked, smashing down two more, "And it doesn't seem like they want to end!"
"No, they don't…."
Soon, one of their members was overwhelmed, grabbed by three shades, leaving burning marks and deep lacerations on her body before she was teleported out by the System. Their initial eagerness very quickly turned into a struggle, and their circle was constantly shrinking against the onslaught of the never-ending horde of shades. Worse, they never talked, never let out pain or cry, and even when torn apart by their spells, more took their place, continuing to hammer at them.
"It had to be like this…" Raufon thought, watching his people, losing more and more of them. He now felt like a soldier, back in the Dark Ages, facing the Undead horde on the battlefield, knowing their doom was nearing and there was little to nothing to stop them from being overwhelmed. "Form a circle!" He shouted, starting to raise up earth-like walls while barking more orders at them.
They were digging in, altering the ground around them to halt the advance of their enemies. Those with fire spells lit up the forest, trying to block them with walls made out of hot flames, but the shades pushed through. Even if their bodies were on fire, they kept coming, ignoring the pain, aiming to kill and tear apart all of them. Raufon was doing all he could to constantly morph the ground, form deep stretches of trenches, make them fall into it, or raise walls they had to break first. They never flew over them for their luck, or they would be in even deeper trouble and massacred much more quickly.
"How long?!" Marc shouted but expected no answer from Louise, who was concentrating with sweat trickling down her forehead.
"Watch out!" Raufon shouted, shielding him from a shade that broke through a firewall just when he opened his mouth to ask it. Another misfit was already aiming at it with a wind-blade, but its hand would stab through Marc's back. Raufon only made it at the last moment, but his rock-covered arm was punctured and penetrated through completely as the shade's blade-like fingers went through it without any resistance.
"Boss!" Marc grunted, watching the shade be killed by the wind-blade, and he had to kill the two others who were coming through the curtain of flames next.
"Not good…" Raufon cursed, feeling his hand going numb. He couldn't tell if it was because of poison or not, but they were in a pinch. "Fight with all you got! Don't let them closer!" He roared, rejoining the effort with his remaining strength.
By now, Louise was completely oblivious to what was happening around her. She solely focused on gathering all her mana, feeding it into her building-up spell, to blast through the tree and the formation's anchor and free themselves. The sounds of battle around her were filtered out, and she could only hear her breathing and a slight buzz coming from deep within the tree.
"I'm ready!" She said, or she thought she said it; it was hard to tell at that moment.
When her eyes sprang open, a blinding light burst forth from them like two beams, hitting the tree and obliterating it in one move. They did not stop there and disappeared in the distance. The hole they left behind was expanding at a rapid pace, soon letting in the natural sunlight and pushing back the darkness around them. Louise felt like her body was drained of energy, but she turned around, smiling and proud. The scenery that welcomed her was devastating, quickly freezing the grin onto her face. Trees, alongside the earth, were turned upside down, a big portion still in a blazing fire, and she was standing there, all alone. None of her group remained there, not even Raufon. What welcomed her were not relieved faces and encouraging friends but a desolate and destroyed battleground.
"Guys?" She asked, her voice weak and dry.
"Gone. They are gone. If this were the outside world, they would have died." Arrived Lucian's voice as he appeared next to her, gently putting a hand on her shoulder, stopping her from trembling.
“But… why…”
"To protect you, of course. It was no longer about getting out or obtaining the egg. That no longer mattered. What mattered to them was to succeed, and they fought valiantly and in the end… you came through. Their sacrifice was not in vain." Lucian continued, smilingly, watching the destroyed battlefield. "Sometimes, one simply has to do everything to achieve a goal. Sometimes they must make sacrifices and welcome death with open arms so others can finish what they started." He added, placing a small, golden egg into the palm of Louise. "Good job." He patted her head as she was teleported out of the Egg Hunt along with the System's message that the Misfits of Earth obtained the 2nd Golden Egg. "Good…" As his clone slowly disintegrated, Lucian murmured, "With students like them, our next generation looks promising…."
