They continued walking through blood-soaked fields for hours. There was blood on their shoes, blood on their hands and blood on their feet. They smelled like death and if one’s nose could endure the smell long enough, liquid exhaustion.

Their invisible assailants continued pestering them from all angles. Though they rarely appeared and were quickly disposed of, every time they did would be followed by a period of paranoia. Especially the one time they dug out from the ground left many of them wary for hours, sapping their energies further.

Fortunately, the children only had to march. Put one foot in front of the other. Stare straight ahead. Ignore the beasts appearing out of nowhere.

There was nothing to break up the monotony. No fights. Perhaps a few words exchanged here and there, but the mood quickly killed any conversations off before they could properly start.

An almost tangible feeling of powerlessness pervaded the air. John may have had a suit of armour covering his body and a halberd in his hands, but a glimpse at the bloody ground instantly reminded him of his place in this battle.

He and everyone else in his group was forced to rely on their teachers to not let anything too powerful slip through, lest they all be turned into some beast’s lunch.

Perhaps wishing to preserve fairness in case a battle arose, the teachers made John and the others regularly switch places with those standing at the edge of the formation. They also made the stronger and bigger children stand guard at the edge more often, which John didn’t quite know what to think about.

On the one hand, they were the most equipped to deal with beasts should they appear. On the other hand, the strength difference between most of them was so negligible that it hardly made a difference in the face of any beast mightier than a wolf.

He wondered, for the first time in quite a while now that he thought about it, what his old friend would have done in his teachers’ stead.

‘Most likely the same,’ he concluded. “Only the most capable ones shall take the lead. Everyone else has fuck all to do at the peak of any organisation,” he blurted out, immediately snapping out of his reminiscence afterwards.

What was he doing? No matter how bored and tired he was, this was no time to be immersed in memories!

He looked around. Judging by the stony faces of the unfamiliar children around him, it seemed like no one had paid attention to-

“Really? Is this really the time for this?” a clear voice said from beside him. John turned his head and saw an unfamiliar child’s plain brown eyes track him whilst they marched. It was someone from the other two groups, and not anybody he had paid attention to before.

John did the adult thing and ignored the brat in favour of scanning his surroundings for threats. He was not going to get into a senseless argument when his life was at stake. Especially when the other party had a point.

Though the unnamed child seemed annoyed by John’s blatant disregard, they didn’t blow up. The stakes were simply too high to risk any sort of internal turmoil.

Just at that time, loud, animalistic panting and the sound of branches breaking reached the children’s ears. The loose marching formation instantly fell into chaos as children pushed and shoved their way in- and outwards in a bid to assemble into a fighting formation.

Though the marble had warned John, he knew he had no way to convince his comrades about the beasts’ appearance unless he wished to come under quite some scrutiny. As such, he was merely at the outermost line of their formation at the time, having prepared himself for an assault long ago. He and most of the other polearm-wielders in his position stood their ground and pointed their weapons towards the incoming threat.

The shieldbearers, of which he recognised almost none, pushed their way through the front and formed a rudimentary battle line. The ones with shorter weapons such as swords scrambled through the lines as they bolstered both ranks of the formation.

They were barely ready by the time three bloody boars pushed through the treeline. The beasts, each bigger than any of the assembled children. wasted no time rushing towards their formation.

John pumped as much aether as he could into his body. His breathing was controlled, focused. Their enemies were just boars – nothing they hadn’t slain before.

His halberd was steady, the shaft going between two children’s shoulders and pointing towards the closest approaching beast. In front of him, the shieldbearers were bracing for impact with all their might.

John expected the beast to dodge, or perhaps slow down and simply avoid their assembly of spears once it got close. It didn’t.

Instead, the red and brown blur simply rammed into their polearms at full speed, eliciting a collective grunt as all seven of them were pushed back from the impact. In John’s case, the shaft slipped through his grip and was only stopped by his breastplate.

He was forced to take a step back even as he felt his speartip sinking into the beast’s body. Three separate high-pitched screams filled the area they were in as the beasts’ charges were stopped cold.

John gasped and grunted as he readjusted his grip, now steadily pushing against the berserk beast. He felt his palms burning – most likely a result from the shaft slipping through earlier – but that wasn’t nearly enough to stop him.

His comrades didn’t let this opportunity slip by and encircled the beast, which was still squealing and thrashing from having seven weapons stuck in its body.

Those movements caused it to quickly rip free of John’s halberd, which only worsened its wounds on its way out. Now free to attack again, the boy took a step forward and sunk his weapon into the beast once more, this time hitting its sides. His strike was deflected by its ribs but still managed to gouge another bloody wound into the beast.

Meanwhile, Ronnie, Jessica and ten others tore into the trapped beast with opportunistic strikes, striking whenever it exposed its side to them. The polearm-wielders continued to keep it at bay, preventing the berserk beast from focusing on any one of them.

The shieldbearers hindered the beast from advancing any further, stopping any charges before they could begin with their combined might and taking the brunt of the attention of the beast. They were a very welcome surprise to John and his group, who weren’t used to so many shields blunting the opponent’s attacks.

Still, the beast was tenacious, even as wounded as it was. It almost gouged those within range of its tusks multiple times when it suddenly swung its head around. Fortunately, no one was significantly wounded by those attacks, with the worst wounds being bruises and cuts where the tusks had brushed past them.

Albeit young and uncoordinated as a group, the children were all somewhat experienced hunters now. It slowed as more wounds were inflicted and its lifeblood continued dripping onto the ground. Then, Jessica managed to break one of its knees with a wild swing.

The boar squealed even louder than before and collapsed for a second, the pain having been inflicted this time seeming to be too great to ignore. The children capitalised on that and broke more joints, and soon it could do no more than lay on the ground and wait for its death.

The beast died with a wet, gurgling shudder and bloody foam around its mouth. Its lungs had been pierced by cracked ribs long ago, further accelerating its death.

Once it did, the panting children wasted no time assisting their comrades with the other two beasts, which were already on the brink of death. They, too, quickly fell under a barrage of weapons from all sides.

When the last boar finally died, the children gathered in front of their corpses. John, Ronnie, Jessica, Logan, Lydia and the others watched the fallen beasts in silence before erupting in cheers.

That cheer didn’t last long, however, due to the sobering fact that the danger was far from being over. They were still in hostile territory, and John quickly suspected that it was no accident for exactly those beasts to have slipped through the net.

After all, these beasts had already been wounded beforehand, and were just at the right level of danger to seriously threaten, but far from outright killing a mob of almost sixty children.

John sucked his halberd into his core once more with a grimace. He stared at his bloody and raw hands for a moment before turning his attention to his comrades. During the battle, he had been too busy keeping the beast at bay to pay attention to them.

Jessica was clumsily helping Ronnie bandage a long bleeding gash across his sword arm. The armour had borne the brunt of the attack. Only a fraction of the power had reached the affected limb. That was the reason Ronnie only had a gash and not a broken or punctured arm.

Logan sat on the ground, gasping for breath after having screamed his lungs out during the fight. Any fights with beasts seemed to rile him up to a rather exaggerated extent. Lydia, for her part, seemed to have been the least affected of them all. She was looking at her dirt-crusted braids in dismay, though it didn’t seem to bother her too much.

His gaze briefly stopped at the eerily familiar black-haired girl, who was cutting the corpse up. Perhaps she was planning on extracting the boar’s core. Whatever she was planning, though, John doubted that she would have enough to complete it before they had to set off again.

After another cursory look confirmed that, indeed, no one was seriously hurt or unable to walk anymore, John carefully bandaged his hands before going over to help Jessica. He dissolved what must have been Jessica’s tenth bandage and replaced it with one his first-aid trainers in the army would have been proud of.

Unfortunately, Ronnie didn’t seem to care about the marvellous bandage now adorning his arm. He was eerily calm for a child that had a bleeding wound stretching across its entire forearm, shallow as it might have been.

When asked how he felt, he replied with, “I’m fine. I’ve survived worse than this without medical attention.”

Not too long after that, Franziska arrived and gave each of them a quick check-up. Confirming the same thing John had not too long ago, she congratulated them on their victory and ordered them to resume their march.

John could hear the black-haired girl complaining about the fact that the cores would go to waste to Franziska. The broad-chested woman simply gave her an unimpressed stare and told her to get her priorities straight.

When the children got into formation and started walking again, they were considerably more cheerful than before the battle. Most of their pent-up feelings had been vented in that brief battle against those beasts. It also made them feel like they were more than just children to be protected.

When darkness started taking over and light became increasingly scarce, they lit torches to light the way. It certainly didn’t help them escape the pursuit of the beasts, but it was a necessary evil to avoid having the children stumble around in the dark.

Not that anyone cared about avoiding the beasts anymore, since it seemed like they had locked onto their position rather precisely. They had been marching for hours at this point – a feat the three groups of children only managed due to well-timed uses of aether and their strengthened bodies – and it didn’t seem like the unrelenting charge of beasts would ever let up.

Finally, some of them couldn’t take it anymore and started slowing down. The formation immediately sputtered and slowed down considerably due to the sudden change of pace.

The fitter children quickly came to the help of their less physically able comrades. Mostly, they took over and luggage or simply started dragging them along. Many did so in a notably inefficient and ineffective manner, having never learned how to do so before.

The proud infantryman in John almost wanted to step in and teach them how to do things correctly. Almost.

Due to the increased burden some took on, they tired themselves out even more quickly, forming a vicious circle that none could escape from. Even John, whose body contained a surprising amount of power despite his constant complaints, was eventually worn out to the point of total exhaustion. He periodically drew on his core to bolster his strength with aether, effectively enabling him to have short breaks despite carrying something some random kid’s luggage.

He relayed that “technique” to the others around him, who thanked him with grateful smiles once they realised it worked as advertised. That, however, drained their aether reserves even faster. Those who had invested less time in either meditation or cultivation soon found themselves starved of the precious resource.

Eventually, things came as they had to; Somewhere around midnight, most children had exhausted all their energy. They were forced to take a break, lest one of them collapsed for real. Once the teachers decided on taking a break, they immediately changed tracks. They split into two equally big groups, with half continuing to keep the beasts at bay whilst the other half created a camp to spend the night in.

The teachers first turned the thick shrubbery and tall trees surrounding the road into woodchips and broken branches. The students, too, were slowly chopping down some of the smaller trees whilst the teachers were busy mowing through trees as if they were grass.

Tired as he was, John didn’t question the thoughts of people who let little children with considerable power chop down trees with minimal supervision. By the time the last tree fell, he carefully set the axe aside and sat down.

He wiped the sweat off his brow and glanced at the wide clearing they had created. It would, at least, enable them to see any encroaching beasts long before they could reach them.

“Not like you need it. You have me, after all,” the marble interrupted his germinating thoughts.

Too exhausted to think, he ignored the quip and focused on getting as much rest as he could before another task inevitably came.

John barely paid attention to Greg and another teacher moving children out of the way as they conjured a massive cloth-tent out of nowhere. The unstable construction was quickly reinforced from the inside with metal bars and sheets, turning it into a miniature fort. It even had a few slits from which someone could presumably shoot arrows from, though none of the children had been trained in archery.

The children were then told that they could rest inside for a few hours before they had to resume their march.

“John,” Ronnie whispered from where he was lying on the ground. His bandage was full of dirt. They would have to change it later.

The boy in question looked at his friend. “What?”, he asked.

“I don’t have the strength to get to my feet.”

John blinked. “So…?”

“I was wondering, you know, since you seem quite energetic to me, if, perhaps, you could help me get into the tent.” The boy whose black hair was marred by strands of grass and patches of dirt grasped in the vague direction of John. “Please?”

John was tired. Though he was still quite a way off from being unable to move, the forced march had taken its toll on him, too. He doubted he had enough strength to carry another person into the tent.

Thinking this far, he straightforwardly told Ronnie, “No. I don’t have the strength to carry you after all this.”

Ronnie stared at him with puppy eyes. “You don’t need to carry me. There are more efficient ways of moving me.”

His sky-blue eyes were convincing indeed. John tried resisting, but he quickly gave in. “Such as?” he finally asked after averting his eyes.

“You could try…dragging me?”

It was a valid point. John sighed, saying, “I can try.” He grabbed the boy’s arms, straightened his spine and grunted as he felt his arms and legs buckle under the strain. He stopped once he realised that he wouldn’t be getting far without using aether.

Logan happened to walk by at that moment. The boy was shuffling along the rest of the crowd, somehow managing to stay on his feet despite looking like he would topple over any second.

“Logan!”, John shouted.

Logan perked up at the mention of his name, only to deflate when he saw the duo. “What?”, the boy asked. “Just in case, I’m not going to help Ronnie carry his lazy ass up there. If everyone else can do it, why can’t he?” He shook his head and resumed putting one deliberate foot in front of the other.

“Oh come on Logan! You still owe me for that candy bar I hid for you!” Ronnie shouted.

Logan stopped. The two boys stared at each other for a moment whilst John was massaging his aching legs. Finally, Logan snorted and walked towards the tent with a smug smile. “I know that you can walk in there yourself, asshole. Don’t drag me into this just because you’re a lazy bum.”

John watched walk away with a disapproving frown. That was no way to treat your brother in arms. Back in the day, such a display of blatant disregard of one’s comrades would have been answered with punishment, carried out by either his other comrades or the responsible officer themselves.

Unfortunately, they were not in New Pandora, and John would rather die than run to Franziska to cry about Logan’s antics.

“What an asshole,” Ronnie muttered.

“An asshole indeed,” John agreed.

John shook his head. He would like to think that he was too old for such pettiness, but that was obviously not true.

“You know, I could try rolling you on a bunch of sticks. It’s probably going to be easier.”

Ronnie put a hand to his chin, thinking for a while. Finally, he said, “Nah, you know what? Just help me get up. I think I can manage.”

Rolling his eyes, John did as he was told and helped the trembling and sweating boy to his feet. Ronnie stumbled at first, having to put a hand on John’s shoulder to stabilise himself. Quickly, he took a few slow steps before turning around and giving John a thumbs up.

“Off we go, my loyal steed!”, Ronnie said with laughter in his voice as they walked through the tent flap. John gave the impudent boy a light elbow to the ribs. Ronnie responded by pushing him playfully.

They continued like that until they reached two empty mattresses. Since their armours were relatively comfortable and they had been told to keep it on anyways, the two boys simply threw themselves onto their mattresses.

Sleep quickly overtook them.