The transport carriage jolted to a halt, its mana-core whine dying to a faint hum. The door slid open, revealing Commander Brys, his broad shoulders blocking the grey light, the scar along his cropped beard pulled tight as he surveyed them. "Out. Form up on the marker."
Kael shouldered his pack, the unfamiliar weight of field gear settling against his shadowweave gambeson. Justin exited beside him, his polished armor gleaming dully in the overcast light. Behind them, Dominic moved with practical economy, Ellora nervously adjusted her spirit pouch strap, and Sophia's sharp eyes scanned the tree line with tactical assessment.
"Move it!" Brys barked, his voice like cracking stone.
They formed up with other first-years on a worn stone marker carved with fading runes. The Gloomwilds loomed before them a wall of twisted grey barked trees, their canopies woven so tightly they turned daylight into a perpetual, sickly green twilight. The air carried the scent of damp earth, rotting leaves, and something sharper beneath the faint, sweet decay of Purple Mist Grass.
Commander Brys didn't mount a platform. He stood before them, a statue of martial pragmatism. His voice, magically amplified, cut through the nervous murmurs. "First-year Field Test Seven days. Your dossiers have your quotas. Core collection from indigenous beasts. Specific resource harvesting. Location markers for bonus objectives." His steel-grey eyes swept over them, pausing on clusters of nobles, on anxious commoners. "How you achieve this is your concern. Alliances are permitted. Conflicts are not discouraged. The Gloomwilds does not care for fairness. The beasts do not care for honor."
He let the silence thicken, broken only by the distant, eerie cry of something unseen in the forest.
"For the next week," he said, each word a hammer blow, "neither do we. Your survival, your success, is your responsibility. Return with your objectives completed and your team intact, or do not return at all. Dismissed."
The finality of the words hung in the damp air. No rules. Only results.
As the crowd dissolved into chaotic motion teams huddling, maps unfurling, last-minute gear checks Kael felt the weight of a familiar, hostile gaze. Corvin Hale stood with his cohort twenty paces away three lackeys with bronze and low silver veins, their gear serviceable but unremarkable. Corvin's eyes, sharp with entitled calculation, lingered on the obvious quality of Kael's group. He noted Justin's family crest on his pauldron, the custom fit of Sophia's armor, the subtle, non standard modifications on Kael's own gear. A smirk touched his lips. He made an elaborate show of consulting his magi chart, then pointed dramatically down the widest, most trodden forest path the very route Kael's team had identified as the most direct starting point.
"He's marking us," Dominic stated flatly, not looking up from cinching a strap on his pack. "Wants us to know he's watching."
"Let him watch," Kael said, his voice low. "Daniel, you're on point. Stay in the shadows but keep visual. Everyone else, standard travel formation. Let's move."
They entered the tree line, and the world changed. Sound became muffled, absorbed by thick moss and layers of dead foliage. The greenish light dappled everything in moving patterns that tricked the eye. The path, barely more than a game trail, was soft underfoot.
They had traveled for perhaps thirty minutes when Daniel ahead, raised a closed fist. They froze. He pointed silently.
Ahead, nestled in the cradle of a giant ironwood's roots, was a cluster of Silver Blade Grass, its serrated edges catching the faint light like honed metal. A Tier-1 resource, but valuable for their alchemy credit quota.
Ellora moved forward, her movements gentle. "It's a good patch," she whispered, pulling a pair of enchanted shears from her belt. Her fox spirit materialized on her shoulder, peering at the grass with curiosity.
As her fingers carefully parted the first stalks, a sharp, piercing whistle shattered the forest's deep silence.
It came from their right. Before the echo died, the underbrush erupted with panicked snorts and the thunder of heavy bodies. Four Gloom-Tusked Boars burst into the small clearing. Their mottled grey black hides were slick, muscles corded with unnatural tension. Foamy saliva flew from their curved tusks. Their small, red eyes weren't wild with natural fear they were fixed, single minded, driven by something beyond instinct.
They charged at the sound. They charged at Ellora.
"Beast herding!" Lisa's voice was a whip crack of ice. Her hands were already moving, weaving frost in the air with terrifying speed. A wall of jagged, translucent ice crystallized into existence between Ellora and the lead boar with a sound like shattering glass.
Dominic didn't shout. He simply stepped forward, planted his boots wide, and drove his reinforced fist into the soft earth. A loyal rumble answered him. The ground in front of the charging boars didn't just rise it funneled. A ridge of soil, stone, and tangled roots erupted at an angle, not to block, but to redirect. It carved a new path through the clearing, guiding the stampede away from Ellora and the grass, sending the enraged creatures crashing into the thicker, thornier woods on the left with a cacophony of snapping branches and furious squeals.
The clearing fell into a ringing silence. Ellora stood frozen, shears in hand, her face pale. The fox spirit chittered nervously.
The air now carried a new, acrid scent beneath the loam the sharp, peppery, unmistakable odor of Crimson Mist Shoot pheromones.
Daniel materialized beside Kael as if stepping from a shadow. He held out his palm. On it lay a small, crushed clay pellet. "Thrown from upwind. A delayed sonic trigger packed around a stimulant paste. Basic alchemy. Deniable sabotage."
Justin's hand was on his sword hilt, his knuckles white. "He could have gotten her gored."
"Unlikely," Dominic said, brushing dirt from his gauntlet. "The dose was calculated. Just enough to enrage and direct. A broken leg or a nasty gash would have been ideal for him. It costs us a carrier, slows us to a crawl, forces us to use healing resources. It's not about killing. It's about efficiency. Crippling the competition is more resource effective than eliminating them."
Camila was already on her knees, scanning the disturbed ground with a handheld mana resonance reader. "The pheromone trail is faint but traceable. It leads back to the main trail, then veers east. Their likely destination is the first marked crystal deposit in Mossrock Valley. They'll strip it and be gone before we can get there on the standard route."
A cold, hard clarity settled in Kael's gut. Commander Brys's words weren't just a warning; they were the new reality. This wasn't a test of strength against monsters. It was a test of survival against a world and peers that saw you as an obstacle or a resource.
He looked at his team. Justin, honor bound and furious, a knight templar without a crusade. Dominic, the unshakable realist who saw the world in costs and benefits. Ellora, kind hearted but tougher than she looked, now understanding the true shape of the danger. Lisa, whose brilliant mind was already categorizing this new threat vector. Sophia, whose noble pride burned at the idea of being hunted by a lesser house. Daniel, a lethal shadow waiting for a target. Sora's eyes darting around, Camila, already turning their enemy's tactics into solvable equations.
They weren't just students. In this green hell, they were a unit. And they were being tested.
"We don't play his game on his board," Kael said, his voice low and firm. "Daniel, you scouted an alternate route yesterday. The one you said was for 'people who enjoy pain.'"
A ghost of a smile touched Daniel's lips. "The Razorback Crevice. It's less a route, more a vertical puzzle of loose rock and poison thorn. It cuts the travel time to the valley in half, but the risk of injury is… significant."
"Perfect," Kael said. "We take it. We move fast, we move smart. Let's see if Corvin enjoys being the hunter when the prey takes a path he's too soft to follow."
They turned their backs on the main trail without a second glance. Daniel led them off the path, into a tangle of undergrowth so thick Dominic had to use short, controlled pulses of earth magic to part the thorny creepers. The air grew closer, heavier. Strange, bioluminescent fungi glowed on rotting logs, casting eldritch blue light on their determined faces.
After an hour of brutal progress, they reached the base of the crevice. It was a jagged split in a moss-covered cliff face, dripping with moisture, filled with slippery shale and veined with patches of Ash Cotton Plants their fibers could cause a nasty, numbing rash.
"Here we go," Dominic said, testing a handhold. It crumbled. "Lovely."
"Watch for the grey moss," Camila advised, pointing. "It's slick with alkaline water. Will eat through standard boot leather in an hour."
They began to climb. It was a grueling, silent exercise in trust and precision. Kael's Concord honed body found purchase where others would slip. Justin's disciplined strength hauled others over difficult ledges. Sophia used precise jabs of her spear to test rock stability. Lisa used delicate touches of frost to temporarily bind loose stones. Ellora's vine spirit proved invaluable, extending tendrils to secure ropes or retrieve dropped gear.
Halfway up, as Kael hauled Ellora onto a narrow ledge, a low, chittering noise echoed from a dark fissure above them. A pair of glowing, multi faceted eyes peered out. Stonebat Swarmers. Not powerful, but aggressive in numbers, and their bites carried a septic venom.
Before the swarm could erupt, Daniel, clinging to the rock face like a gecko, made a series of quick, intricate gestures with his free hand. The shadows around the fissure deepened, then seemed to solidify. The chittering ceased abruptly, replaced by confused scratching. He had woven a wall of silence and shadow, convincing the creatures the exit was gone.
He glanced down at Kael and gave a slight nod.
They climbed for another hour. Muscles burned, breath came in ragged gasps, but no one complained. The shared ordeal was forging something tangible between them a silent language of gestures, of knowing when to pull and when to brace.
Finally, they hauled their last member onto the broad, rocky plateau at the top. They lay there for a moment, chests heaving, sweat cooling in the dank air. They were filthy, scratched, and exhausted.
But they were ahead of schedule. And they were together.
Kael looked back the way they had come, at the treacherous crevice that would stop any group lacking their specific mix of skills and grit. A thin, hard smile touched his lips. Corvin wanted a war of attrition? Fine. But the battlefield was of Kael's choosing now.
"Rest five minutes," Kael said, pulling a waterskin from his pack. "Then we move. Mossrock Valley is just over that ridge. Let's see what's left for us to harvest."
As they drank and tended to minor scrapes, none of them noticed the solitary, hooded figure perched high in the petrified branches of a long-dead tree, observing the plateau through a monocular crystal. Princess Elara Everglade lowered the device and made a neat notation in her leather bound logbook.
*Team 7-B (Osborn/Vale). Deviated from primary ingress route immediately following attempted sabotage by Team 4-C (Hale). Employed high risk alternate terrain (Razorback Crevice) to maintain timetable. Demonstrated significant inter disciplinary coordination and resilience. Leader (Osborn) shows adaptive, decisive tactical thinking. Continued observation warranted.*
She closed the book, her expression unchanging. The test was underway. And the most interesting variables were already behaving unpredictably.