I’d seen beast charges before. I’d even baited one or two into them, usually while yelling sothing inspirational like, "Run faster or you’ll die." But nothing quite prepares you for six muscle-bound pigs with the temperant of berserkers and tusks sharp enough to disembowel a wyvern.
Julien went in first—because of course he did—flashing that cocky grin like we were in a duel and not an open field of screaming death.
"Co on, you walking ham sandwich!"
The lead boar barreled toward him. He dodged, barely, and the impact shattered a tree behind him.
"I am never eating bacon again!" Leo cried, flinging a weak firebolt that singed a boar’s backside and only made it angrier.
"Congratulations," I muttered, slicing across one beast’s flank as it lunged at Wallace. "You’ve given it a reason to hate us personally."
Wallace had sohow rigged together a tripwire trap using vines, a broken crossbow, and Felix’s belt. It worked—barely. One boar stumbled, faceplanted, and took Garrick’s full-body tackle straight to the ribs.
"Stay down!" Garrick yelled.
"I think it’s unconscious!" Mira shouted.
"Nope, just embarrassed," I replied, watching it twitch with rage.
Felix tried to use a stunning rune, but sohow it backfired and shocked himself. He shrieked, rolled backward, and crashed into Leo.
"Felix!" Leo yelled. "Why are you like this?!"
"It’s not my fault I was born unlucky!"
"Yes it is!"
"NO IT’S—wait, what?!"
The largest boar—clearly the alpha—snorted and charged right for them both.
"Oh no," I sighed.
I appeared between them in an instant, drawing on everything I had left. Mana surged to the blade in my hand, and fire licked across the tal.
"Ignition Sword: Third Trigger."
The blade flared like a miniature sun. Heat surged, the air shimred—and I brought it down in a single arc.
The alpha shrieked, flas erupting across its side as the impact knocked it off course. It tumbled, crashed through a stump, and didn’t get back up.
Silence followed.
Then Felix whispered, "That was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen."
I turned slowly toward him.
"You’re cleaning the boar guts off my coat tonight."
"...Worth it."
Half an hour later, the field was a ss of broken branches, soot, and very dead pigs.
Class C looked like they’d survived a war. Julien had a cut across his cheek, Mira was bandaging Wallace’s arm, and Garrick had a boar tooth stuck in his shoulder plate like a trophy.
Felix? Sohow perfectly fine.
"I think I’ve discovered my power," he said. "It’s called: not dying through sheer dumb luck."
"It’s called being a cockroach with a rune fetish," I muttered.
We packed up the remains, recorded the kill counts, and began dragging the bodies back to town with the help of summoned platforms and complaints. Many, many complaints.
Tomorrow, they’d be sore.
Tonight, they were alive.
And as I watched them argue over who got to keep the tusks, I almost felt sothing dangerously close to pride.
Almost.
We returned to town just past dusk—sweaty, blood-sared, and dragging enough boar at to feed a battalion. The local outpost guards didn’t even blink. One of them looked up from his post, saw us hauling six mutilated Razorboar corpses behind a group of battered academy students, and muttered, "Academy brats again, huh."
"Class C," I said. "We don’t die. We fail dramatically, survive, then pretend we ant to do it all along."
"Sure you do," he replied with a half-hearted salute.
Inside the mission hall, things were less welcoming. The clerk at the desk, a man with more wrinkles than hair and an expression that scread underpaid and unimpressed, took one look at the boar tusks on the table and pinched the bridge of his nose.
"Please tell you have a signed approval slip, properly stamped, and that none of you set anything on fire."
"No buildings," I offered. "Just a field. And a tree. And maybe the back of a student’s robes."
The old man sighed like I’d just confessed to murdering his cat.
"Fine. Forms first. Then carcass registration. Then paynt slips. Then damage reports, if any."
"Wallace fell into a pit," Felix chid in helpfully.
"Not relevant, I didn’t report the pit," Wallace mumbled.
Julien slapped the tusks down with a grin. "We want hazard bonuses. Those things nearly turned Garrick into a kebab."
"I ate one of them while it was still moving," Garrick added proudly, covered in dried blood.
The clerk didn’t even look up. "Wonderful. Fill out Form 7C."
Two hours later, we were finally done. The students split into groups—so went to wash, so to eat, so just collapsed on the spot like freshly-killed livestock.
I stood alone by the mission board, sipping a cup of terrible tea one of the assistants had offered. My coat slled like death and smoke. My back hurt. And my sword needed a full re-oiling.
But still... the kids made it. And none of them cried. Not even Felix. Out loud, anyway.
They were getting stronger.
There was sothing satisfying about that.
Then I heard it.
"Professor!"
Felix again. Of course.
He skidded into the room, holding what looked like a bag of coins and a comically oversized boar tooth.
"I bartered with a rchant and got us free stew at the tavern!"
I blinked. "You... bartered?"
"I think. Or maybe I threatened him by accident. He said ’whatever gets you out of my stall.’"
"That’s fair."
So that night, we ate like kings.
Boar stew. Rough bread. Questionable ale. Laughter louder than sense.
Even I cracked a smile.
The tavern was the kind that slled like burnt onions, sour beer, and sothing faintly illegal. The kind of place that only cleaned the tables when they broke and considered splinters a seasoning.
Perfect.
We commandeered the biggest table in the back, right next to the hearth, where the fire crackled like it was trying to roast us all alive. The students crowded around, still sore from the mission but drunk on the taste of victory—and possibly the ale.
Felix was already halfway into his third bowl of stew, slurping with the desperation of a man trying to forget the taste of raw boar blood. Wallace had a stack of napkins and was writing sothing furiously—either notes or a complaint about the kitchen’s use of "steam-based at hydration." I didn’t ask.
Julien was retelling the battle with increasing exaggeration. "And then I stood atop the hill, three boars surrounding —"
"You tripped over Garrick’s foot and faceplanted into a bush," Mira corrected, sohow appearing without warning. She’d cleaned up, cloak neatly folded, eyes sharp.
"Details," Julien waved her off. "You weren’t even there."
"Exactly. I had to hear about your heroism secondhand while helping Cassandra patch up Garrick’s shoulder."
Speak of the ghost, and she appears.
Cassandra was leaning silently against the wall, arms crossed, watching the group like a cat surveying a pack of noisy puppies. When our eyes t, she gave the smallest nod.
Even she was warming up.
I took a long drink of whatever disgusting liquid the tavern owner insisted was ale. It burned like betrayal and had the aftertaste of regret. But it was warm, and that was good enough.
"You’re smiling," Mira said, sliding onto the bench beside .
"I’m not."
"You are. It’s disturbing."
I leaned back, watching the kids bicker, laugh, and demolish food like rabid wolves. "They survived. And they’re not acting like they almost died. That’s a win."
"They’re growing," she said quietly.
I glanced at her. "You worried about them?"
"No," she lied. "I’m worried about you. You looked like you were ready to gut that training ground keeper the other day."
"He touched one of mine."
Mira didn’t argue.
After a long pause, she added, "It’s going to get worse, isn’t it?"
"It always does."
She nodded again, then stood. "I’ll keep an eye on the others. You... try not to set anything on fire."
"No promises."
Later that night, once the students began to drift off to their rooms or collapse face-first onto tables, I stepped outside for so air.
The town was quiet now, wrapped in fog and flickering lantern light. I lit a cigarette—an awful habit I picked up in the academy’s worst corners—and stared at the moon.
A mission arc.
I rembered it from the ga. Sotis, it was a chance for side stories, bonding events, or power-ups. Other tis, it spiraled into death traps, betrayals, or enemy ambushes that left permanent scars on the storyline.
There was no system prompt warning this ti. No percentage risk, no "Secret Path Unlocked."
Just instinct. And that ever-gnawing unease.
Still...
I looked back through the tavern window. Felix was drooling into his bowl. Julien was asleep mid-boast. Garrick had used a chair as a blanket.
They were mine now.
And I’d burn the world before I let it take them.
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