At night after talking to David, Soma went back to the boys' dorm where he is living at the moment, his residence at the dorm has two bedrooms, a simple kitchen, and a restroom, and in there Marina was waiting for him with a bundle of papers in her hand.

“So? How did it go?”(Soma)

“I did as you told me and looked through all of the names of people ‘affiliated with the Academy’ and was able to get an idea about how many people you’ll have to protect!”(Marina)

“How many were they? The more the better, since the more people I have to protect the bigger my influence is”(Soma)

“Glad to hear you say that! Since it’s everyone in Akud!”(Marina)

“Hoh! I expected them to be a lot, but not everyone!...... so all the people of Akud are related to the Academy some way or the other……I see, that Leona is quite the cunning woman”(Soma)

“Family members and relatives of the students and teachers, businesses that the Academy is contracted with and their family members and relatives, the slums people who are employed to do manual labor and their family members and relatives, and finally, soldiers, hunters, and mercenaries and their family members and relatives….that sums up everyone in Akud, why did she not tell you the full truth and told you just ‘everyone affiliated with the Academy’?”(Marina)

“Where did you get all of this information?”(Soma)

“From her directly”(Marina)

“I see, if so please don’t think badly about her, what she did is perfect, I don’t think that everyone knows that everyone in Akud is affiliated with the Academy, and if so, we will have more and more chances at punishing wrongdoers, because even when I say ‘It’s my job as Law Enforcer to protect everyone affiliated with the Academy’ there will be those who would still cause problems outside the Academy thinking that I can’t do anything against them there”(Soma)

“…I see, so it’s a trick to anger the nobles behind it all by having you stand in their way everywhere they go”(Marina)

“Well, that’s the gist of it. Now, we have to wake up early tomorrow, it’s time to go to sleep”(Soma)

“Yes~!”(Marina)

Marina went to the door and closed it, but she is still inside Soma’s room. “Your room is over there!” “No-!” saying that Soma used Forced Teleportation and sent her to the other side of the door, Marina expected that and never let go of the key leading to it being teleported with her, and so she used the key to open the door only to find her way blocked by a black barrier that had “Dark Barrier! Nice try but not good enough” written on it in white.

The next morning, Soma went to the class and once the second bell sounded and everyone was already seated, he started the class.

“Good morning! As I said yesterday, today our lesson will be on the hunting grounds. I hope you are all prepared! But before we go, Marina will give each of you two items, those items have the appearance of armbands, and they are used like ones. The left band has a red “0” on it and its job is to count the number of times you are hit and the number of times your attacks miss their marks. And the right band has a blue “0” on it and its job is to count the number of times you make a successful attack. Wear them wherever you want on your arms but make sure they don’t get on your way”(Soma)

“Oi Oi Oi! Do I really have to wear such ugly and suspicious things?! This GREAT me of all people wearing these things? Impossible! Right, T-ea-ch-er?”(Greed)

“If you are planning to participate in my class then, yes, you have to wear those whatever you like it or not. And the next time you talk without permission, I’ll kick you out of class. Keep that in mind! Now, wear your bands and let’s go”(Soma)

Ignoring the glaring Greed, Soma prompted the students to wear the bands and then led them outside. Even from the Academy, the whole town could be seen due to its unique and beautiful layout. The space in the middle of the Five Great Mountains is small and it wasn’t enough to fit the ever-expanding town in the past. That’s why the people who built Akud cut the stone making the mountains’ sides in the shape of wide steps all the way up to the summit giving the sides of the Five Great Mountains that are facing the town the shape of humongous staircases, and all of those steps were connected by normal staircases.

Most of the town is built on the steps and the Academy is in the center on the ground. Up to the third steps is used for buildings such as homes, shops, workshops, Guilds’ buildings, and warehouses. The fourth and fifth steps are used as farmlands, leaving more than twenty more steps up to the summit on all five mountains alone for hundreds of years now which led to forests and overgrown areas to form and snowy areas near the summits, and all of those unused areas are occupied by monsters which makes them the perfect hunting grounds, but the problem is that the higher you go the stronger the monsters are and at the moment the hunters and mercenaries are able to go up to the ninth steps, and the steps managed by the nobles as if they are their own hunting grounds are the sixth and seventh steps, which are known to be full of weak monsters like the Horned Rabbits and Red Sheep, and Soma’s destination is one of the sixth steps.

Once reaching their destination, some of the students started feeling fearful since the place that their teacher wants them to hunt in belongs to the nobles, but Soma’s next words made them forget about it right away.

“Now, I’ll be dividing you into groups based on your skills and affinity with each other, and then you would start hunting Horned Rabbits, and I’ll evaluate you all based on the numbers on your bands. And as for what you hunt, every team gets to keep what they hunted. Now as for the teams, (Rimi, Alice, Emma) are team number one, (Zac, David, Anolan, Nad) are team number two, (Greed, Las, Mino) are team number three, (Taylor, Bigge, Walter, Nash, Zeek) are team number four”(Soma)

Each team went on their separate ways and started hunting for the Horned Rabbits, Soma and Marina kept an eye on them to make sure that no one is gravely injured, and they had to intervene from time to time to heal and to save some of the students, and when it became afternoon, Soma called for them all and started looking at the results.

“Team one has 5 red points and 20 blue points and were able to hunt 11 Horned Rabbits, Team two has 20 red points and 10 blue points and were able to hunt 5 Horned Rabbits, Team three has 50 red points and 15 blue points and were able to hunt 10 Horned Rabbits, Team four has 25 red points and 13 blue points and were able to hunt 7 Horned Rabbits! And looking at these results I conclude that your performance is ranked (Team one, Team four, Team two, Team three) from best to worst, tomorrow we will analyze those results and will point out all of the mistakes and bad moves of all of you, for today we will drain the blood from these Horned Rabbits and after that, each team will divide their own Horned Rabbits among themselves”(Soma)

“What’s the meaning of this?! Me? This GREAT me in last place?! I will never accept that no matter what!!”(Greed)

“Of course you are last place, your performance can’t be called hunting at all! All you did was to hide behind those two and would only land the finishing blow on the Horned Rabbits after they ran out of energy. If those two were doing the job of a Tank, blocking and parrying the attacks, then you would have placed first place, but all they did was to block the Horned Rabbits’ attacks with their bodies and getting injured in your place, you three had no coordination at all, all you did was use Las and Mino as meat shields leading to them being injured each time they blocked an attack. If this was an actual battle against a large group of bandits, you three would have been nothing but a burden on everyone else”(Soma)

“Kuh….”(Greed)

After reaching the Academy, Soma went directly to the Magic Item Creation class and taught them about the basic control Magic Circles, and how to train their Mana Control. The Four Brothers kept falling asleep and every time they did, Soma would smack them on the head with the Book in his hand.