The entire first year student body was arrayed in front of the Puumets forest. Over two hundred students decked out in armor and sporting weapons. A total of ten instructors accompanied them, along with several upperclassmen.

Hugo shifted uncomfortably. He was wearing a set of resin armor on loan from the academy. It didn’t fit. Obviously designed for someone with a smaller chest and arms, the armor dug into him uncomfortably. And he didn’t dare loosen it. Hanna had already beat another boy for daring to take his breastplate off on the drive over here.

Promising himself to make better armor as soon as he could, Hugo walked forward to join the group of students. He kept stealing glances behind himself.

The mana carts that brought them out to the forest had been a revelation to Hugo. He had sat close enough to the front of the open trailer to see the mana cart pulling them along. The engine was so small and compact. The engine that drove the cart, and pulled a trailer full of students, was only four foot wide. The driver who held the rudder at the back of the cart could probably pick up the engine by himself, it was so small. As long as the driver had soulmarked strength, that is. Hugo wanted to read a book on their design, but he knew the library wouldn’t have one. The carts were of a strictly controlled proprietary design.

The fleet of mana carts left them behind, promising to return before nightfall. In addition to weapons and armor, every student brought along a small bag with bandages and some trail rations. If their whole group ranked up early, they were promised a nice dinner back at their meeting spot.

“Alright everyone, let’s get this show on the road,” Hanna said. She was in charge today, “I talked to the forest ranger, and he guaranteed me that there is enough low leveled spawn in Puumets forest for everyone to rank up today. We are all shooting for rank eight. If you listened to half of what I taught, you will be fine.”

She made sure everyone was paying attention, then shouted, “Everyone split into twenty culling parties, life domain students are the captains. Ten people tops! Each party can have no more than two of the same domain. Go!” As the students scrambled to form parties, Hanna shouted, “Hurry, hurry! Anyone without a party has to walk home alone!”

Hugo looked around for the black armbands that denoted the healers. He raced over to the closest life student, joining his team. In a few moments, a pair of barrier students joined him. A ritual and rune student joined the group next. A pair of alchemy students joined next, followed by a light student. The last one to join was a formation student. Hugo hadn’t ever talked to any of these students before, even though one of them was a classmate. He found it interesting how easy they all were to tell apart, each one prepared to use their domain. They had plenty of shields, a few spears and maces. One each of a sword, bow, and crossbow. Hugo was holding the last one, of course.

“Good enough, let’s get moving,” Hanna said. She assigned a teacher or upperclassman to each culling party, and sent them into a different part of the forest with a map of possible monster nests.

While he waited for his group to get a chaperone, Hugo calculated how many points he would have to gain today. He would need at least 2008 Points to get to rank eight. Which really wasn’t too many points, he knew that most of his fellow students were still on rank four and would need more points than him to finish up the day.

“And this is Milena,” Hanna said, “She thinks she is a Light Mage, but she is still just a student.

Melina stuck out her tongue at Hanna and joined Hugo’s group. She was a tall riese with dull green hair tied up in a ponytail. She wore brown leather armor and carried a spear.

She was making Hugo seriously consider adding more points to perception. She was an upperclasswoman at his school and this was the first time he was seeing her. He didn’t even know there were any non-human students at their school. She wasn’t in any of his classes, but still. She towered over the tallest human in his group, and he hadn’t ever seen her walking around campus.

He definitely needed better perception.

Before they headed into the forest, Melina organized them into a fighting formation. She had the close combat people up front, including the barrier students of course. Right behind them were the spear wielders. The life student was in the middle, with the students with ranged weapons taking up the rear. Melina followed behind, making sure they wouldn’t get snuck up on.

They headed into the forest, aiming for their assigned hunting grounds. Hugo was grateful to have it already scouted out for him. Part of his tuition paid for the service. If he was a harvester, it might be weeks before he was able to level up as much as he would be able to do today in a few hours.

Fresh air and a gentle breeze greeted them as they hiked. Hugo took big breaths and admitted to himself that city life didn’t have a monopoly on nice things. Tall trees surrounded them, gently swaying. He had no idea what type of tree they were. They had big arrow shaped leaves, so he knew they weren’t pine trees, but that was the extent of his knowledge.

Their party crested a hill and Melina directed them into a small valley and then into a ravine to the west. The trees around them were tall and thick, blocking out most of the sun. Up until now they had been clanking along, not trying to stay quiet. But now that they were in a darker part of the forest, they slowed down and tried not to attract attention.

They walked along for another half hour, Melina only occasionally directing them where to go. Their ravine turned into a gorge. It was damp and even darker. There was a low lying fog spread out across the bottom, slightly green tinged.

Up at the front of the formation, the barrier students started coughing. Hugo’s nose wrinkled. It stunk down here. As far as he knew, monsters didn’t stink. Since they were made of mana, they didn’t have most of the bodily functions normal animals had. Something else must be creating that acrid smell.

“What’s all this?” Melina said from the back of the formation. She walked forward and took a look at the fog. “Oh shit, back up, everyone back up.”

They raced back up the gorge, but she stopped them after a few hundred feet. “Sorry about that folks, I wasn’t paying attention. This is where we want to set up. Go ahead and pop your barriers and get out your arrows.”

They quickly got ready, staring into the fog.

Silently waiting, they stood at the ready. After ten minutes, they stood at the slightly less ready. Another twenty minutes, they were fairly bored. Melina wouldn’t let anyone sit down, and insisted that they were in the right place.

Then a shape slowly walked out of the green fog.

It was an ankheg. It looked almost like an insect, but wasn’t. From what Hugo remembered from the cryptozoology book, the monster was one of the original nox monsters. It had appeared before humans were brought here so it couldn’t be an insect. Ankheg had a segmented exoskeleton with six legs ending in sharp claws. It had a long horn jutting out of its forehead and two sharp mandibles. The tail section was slowly seeping out a green gas, obviously the source of the fog in the hollow.

“Into formation!” Melina yelled. It was only one monster, but apparently she didn’t want to take any chances.

The bowman standing next to Hugo took a shot at the monster, but his arrow just glanced off the carapace. The monster shrieked and ran straight at the group of humans. It was about four feet tall, and bounced off the shields of the defenders standing in front. A spear quickly made the monster dissolve into blue sparkles.

Then they heard a sound coming from the fog. Something was skittering along the gravel riverbed along the bottom of the gorge. Several somethings.

All at once, a dozen monsters burst out of the fog. The swarm of ankheg screeched and raced towards the humans. The defenders up front lowered their stance and prepared for impact.

Hugo quickly pulled his crossbow to his shoulder, determined to get a shot off this time. He shot an ankheg straight through the head, a puff of blue marking his success. The remaining eleven monsters slammed into the shields in front of the formation. Hugo quickly grabbed his goat’s foot and reloaded his crossbow. He fumbled it at first, dropping the quarrel.

By the time he was ready to shoot again, he looked up to see the last monster explode into a blue cloud. That was quick. Apparently his group had been paying attention in Hanna’s class.

Hugo pulled up his screen to check real quick how many points that had given him. 42. That wasn’t a lot. They were all going to be here for a while.

It wasn’t long before another group of monsters burst out of the fog, more ankheg. This must be near a spawn point for the creepy bugs. This was a bigger group than the last one, twenty ankheg ran at their party. Hugo was able to kill two of them before the monsters were all gone. The final kill went to a runic student who had a spear that exploded on contact. Hugo was impressed.

They stayed here for a bit and culled monsters that attacked their party. Melina collected the mana stones that occasionally dropped, and made sure they stayed out of the encroaching fog. The monsters attached in waves, mostly easy to handle. There was one swarm of forty that had Hugo worried, but the barrier students kept them at bay, and the alchemist took out ten of them with one potion bottle. After that the monsters were easier to handle.

Between every attack the life domain guy did a quick round, checking to make sure everyone was uninjured, and that their lungs weren’t too damaged by the acid cloud the monsters had been spewing. Despite most of them developing persistent coughs, he insisted the damage wasn’t great enough for him to need to heal anyone. Every so often the whole group would move to a new spot when they had killed all the monsters there.

Four hours later, Melina called for a break. As they sat and relaxed she kept watch and said, “Everyone that has enough points to rank up to eight, raise their hands.”

Eight of the students held their hands high. Only the life student and one of the ritual students didn’t have enough points yet. The ritual student only needed a few points, but the life student wasn’t even close. He had been stationed at the back of the formation, but didn’t have a ranged weapon. The only reason he had gotten any points at all was that he had been shooting an occasional mana dart into the fray.

“Alright, here is what we are going to do. We are going to help our beautiful healer here,” Melina said as he blushed, “Barrier students make a funnel, the rest interlock your shields and angle them towards the middle. No one but the life student can attack, we aren’t spreading points around anymore. Formation guy, hand over your crossbow. Our guy is going to use it until they get close. Then he will use rune lady’s exploding spear to take out the ankheg. Really neat spear, by the way.” The rune student smiled at the praise.

Hugo handed over his crossbow, but kept the goat’s foot. It would be easier if he just reloaded it for the life student. He felt kind of silly not knowing anyone’s name, but it was too late to ask now.

The next group of ankheg were larger than normal, some of them reaching six feet tall. The life student was able to kill two with the crossbow before he swapped out for the exploding spear. He wasn’t skilled with it though, and was only able to kill two more before he was overrun. Melina wouldn’t let him run though, just pushing the ankheg back and handing him the spear again. By the time the eight monsters were dissolved, the life student was cut and bleeding all over. They worked together to bandage him up.

The life student looked up to the alchemist, “Do you have a health potion I could use?”

“Nah, they won’t teach us how to do three ingredient potions until next year,” she said.

“Healer, heal thyself,” Melina joked.

“It doesn’t work that way,” he said, “I can’t heal myself.”

“I know, it was a joke. There is a reason we all bring the first aid kit along,” Melina said, “I have an emergency potion, but you aren't...”

The ground shook slightly and interrupted their conversation. Melina peered into the fog, trying to see what was coming.

“Whelp, time to go. We need to run everyone,” she said and slung the life student over her shoulder.

Before they could get far, a head lifted up out of the poison fog. It was another ankheg. But this one was at least twenty feet tall. It must be a mother ankheg. They all ran as the high ranked monster pursued. Each step was an explosion of dirt and stone. It didn’t move fast, but the monster was so big that each step ate up the distance between them.

Just as the enormous beast was about to catch up with them, Melina turned and pointed at the monster. A tight beam of light burst from her hand, piercing one of it’s four eyes. The monster stopped and screeched, attempting to cover its face.

As soon as it stopped, Melina said, “Go, go, go. We can’t possibly take this thing on.” They all renewed their run. Hugo found himself glad for Hanna’s insistence that they run almost every day. That and their experience on the obstacle courses meant that their party didn’t have any problem escaping over the uneven terrain. If anyone fell, the monster would have attacked right away. Thankfully, no one did and they pulled away. They soon left the overranked monster behind.

When they got back to the group, Hanna was giving a speech to the students that had ranked up. Their party was one of the last to arrive.

“Congratulations on passing the first rank barrier,” Hanna said, “Now that you are all at least rank eight, you will no longer gain points from killing anything lower than rank eight. The fights only get harder from here.”

That didn’t seem like something to celebrate, Hugo thought to himself. That fight didn’t seem easy to him, and they would have all died if that momma monster had caught up to them. He shivered. He needed a better weapon.