Kyrion tried to get up, but his body refused to listen to him. He felt energized, yet it was as though his body wasn’t his own. Kyrion remembered the mushroom walking towards him and began to panic. He was held down by various restraints, and he still felt numb.

Kyrion entered his center to see if everything was fine, but inside he was met with chaos. The mana in his body was all going into a mushroom-like creature filling past the point it would burst, destroying it through the seams. The mushroom became more and more inflated, leaking more and more mana which went into what amounted to nurturing his core.

He felt gaps in his mana pool. Inconsistencies, bubbles that needed to be popped. Kyrion began to compress his mana further and further removing the holes as he did. It was easier than it should have been, passing the size of a grape in a matter of moments and going further. Kyrion made it smaller and smaller, to the point in which it was an apple seed. Still, he pushed and pushed until he used up all the energy given to him by the mushroom. He fed the new quality to his spirits, feeling a massive jump in understanding his power.

The sprout became a small tree. Soon after, small blue fruits began to grow from it. They resembled a pomegranate, and Kyrion had a feeling that they could heal. Jala had grown in size as well, and she also seemed a bit cranky. Issac was as calm as ever, slightly bigger but still resembling a chick. Kyrion began to understand what the swan had done to him. First, it made his balance uncanny, he should have fallen off that tree when the beast charged, but he didn’t budge. The second thing was his improved appearance. Which he would have traded for anything useful. Kyrion felt a new quality to the elements he had control over. It seems that both water and wind had the power to heal.

Kyrion exited his center and began to look around again. This time he felt enough control over his body to speak. “Hello? I seem to be in a pickle. I never liked pickles very much. Please can you let me go? I have totally unsuspicious fruits to give you all.”

Everest looked at his friend crossing his arms. “I call bull.”

“Fair enough. It seems I am gonna rot here forever. Did we lose? Are we outside the forest?” Kyrion seemed to be happy at the possibility.

“No, you’ve been asleep for two hours. The fight shouldn’t have been that hard. I suspect that we beat a practitioner rank monster. Still, it did something to you as you killed it. Care to elaborate?” Damian asked, eying his friend with suspicion.

“Short answer, I hit rank three and everything fixed itself. Long answer, I really don’t understand the details. Can I go now? I has healing magics.” Kyrion said in a hurry.

“Fine, but we’re watching you.” Damian stated stoically

“Just let him go already!” Asela flared up before putting her head in her tiny hands.

Kyrion released from his binds, and he felt feeling return to his body. Kyrion stood up, stretched, and called forth the fruits of his labor. Five of the blue pomegranates appeared in front of him and began to fall to the ground. Kyrion managed to catch three of them before the other two hit the ground.

“Pomegranates, blue ones at that. What do they do?” Wura asked.

“I think they heal when eaten. Not sure how you eat them though. It’s one of those fruits I’ve seen but never eaten.” Kyrion took a bite out of one and winced.

“You just eat the seeds.” Wura had to hold it in to keep from laughing.

Kyrion ripped it open from where he took a bite, revealing beautiful blue seeds. He popped one in his mouth and found that it tasted pretty good. “Much better. Who’s the first victim?” Kyrion approached Noah first. “You seem to be the least injured. Try eating the seeds one by one. I have no idea how it works. I just know I can’t make any more right now.” Kyrion hands it to his friend, watching him very closely.

Noah took a pretty big handful and began to eat them one by one. Struggling at first as the thick seeds were deceptively hard to chew. Noah grinned as the tart taste and sweet undertones filled his mouth. Cuts sealed, and bruises went from black to blue, pink, and finally nothing. Not even a scar was left behind. He was fully healed by roughly a fourth of the pomegranate.

“I feel great! Like I can run for hours.” Finally, Noah stood up, and the pain from earlier had faded.

Damian had a light in his eyes. “If this works we may be able to continue.” Hope was in their leader’s voice.

“Kiara is in the worst shape and she can’t take solids in her condition. If the berries could be crushed into a juice or paste then we may be able to feed it to her. There is a gash on the back of her head along with a few cuts from where she fell. Possibly a concussion of some sort as well.” Everest put down a familiar-looking book that looked like it was in Nico’s possession earlier.

Kyrion handed the seeds to Wura, who crushed them into some sort of juice. The blue liquid visibly radiated mana as it was brought over to Kiara and slowly fed to her. Unlike Noah’s injuries, these seemed to take longer to show signs of working as the mixture seemed to rapidly lose potency. But it worked enough the gash and minor cuts were healed, leaving no scar behind.

Kiara woke up, panicked, immediately summoning her bow and knocking an arrow. Training it straight ahead of her. Which happens to be where Kyrion was standing at the moment.

“You’re a bit late, your highness.” Kyrion said with a smirk and bow. “We already beat whatever that thing was.”

“Uh huh…” Kiara kept the bow trained and started looking around, observing her surroundings carefully.

“Moving on to Nico…” Kyrion backed away as though his teammate was a mad wolf. Setting all but one more of his blue fruits in a bag.

Wura briefed Kiara on the current situation, getting her up to speed. By the end of it, the girl had a newfound appreciation for their scout.

Nico lay on his stomach, his torso wrapped in so many bandages it was ridiculous. It was then Asela approached her brother, the tears on her face almost drying up.

“You can fix him right? It’s my fault. If I was faster I could have dodged. But… but… I wasn’t-ands-he-got hurt really bad.” The tears began to well up, and her words became incoherent.

Kyrion eyed his sister. “Everything will be fine soon. He should be fixable. Can’t let him get away with making the great Asela cry.”

Nico laughed and then winced as pain shot through him. “Not to be that guy, but can you hurry up. It still hurts quite a bit.”

“Oh didn’t know you were up. You’ve been so quiet. Can you sit up? Don’t want you to choke on these things.” Kyrion’s voice didn’t match his words as concern was apparent on his face.

Nico sat up and took his medicine. Healing much faster than Kiara with fewer seeds. Nico was back in fighting condition in a matter of moments. Nico got up, stretched, and began writing in one of his notebooks and asking to get caught up on the details. “It’s like the wound wasn’t there to begin with. Kyrion have you considered going into alchemy? I’m sure you could make a killing with healing potions made from this stuff.”

“Nope. It sounds hard and boring.” Kyrion said, disinterested.

Nico cleared his throat.” You may even learn how to make candy.” Nico said in his best sales pitch.

“Where do I sign up?” A spark of interest appeared on his face as he seriously began to consider it.

“E-...Ex-...” Damian started to say, eyes wide as he tried to get into the conversation.

“I can teach you. Once you get the numbers down it’s quite simple. So to speak, a there is still lots of trial and error along with, and safety precautions.” Nico started to go on.

“Excuse…” Damian began again, gathering what seemed to be, resolve.

“On second thought. Lets...” Kyrion began to back off before getting interrupted.

“Excuse me!” Damian bellowed.

The two ceased their discussion and looked at their leader in a mixture of surprise and embarrassment.

“Thank you. Now, we need to worry about lunch, and getting back to the plan. We spent four hours dealing with that pig. Two of those were spent in recovery however. We have four hours to deal with that rabbit and I’m afraid that it’s going to be a slog to get there. On the upside we have a way to heal. So we can afford to go all out. Just no more overly effective fireballs.” Damian stood after that, issuing his next direct orders. Making it a whole ten seconds before he started to shrink back into his shell.

The tent was broken down, and each person was given an emergency pouch with the pomegranate seeds inside. This way, they could use them when they needed them. They determined that Kyrion couldn’t make more, and he didn’t have time to figure out how a new technique would work in his arsenal.

The group got into formation and began their march towards where they thought was the rabbits territory. Engaging in small fights with the enhanced rabbit population and growing as a team after each battle.

Yulon brought his hand to his chin and began to rub it. “That’s a pretty nice healing ability. Short of anything that we are willing to allow to happen to our students, it heals cleanly. I see a bit of irony in the sense that someone whose abilities revolved around death and abominations to produce something with so much life and beauty. He looks too similar to be adopted so I guess it has to be true.”

“I can finally say that I told you so. All that remains is what the others can do. Fire manipulation is fine and all, but with that crest. I doubt that’s all she can do, things like this will take a bit of figuring out. We may need to put more effort into drawing out of her innate abilities. They were in first place for all but thirty minutes. The team led by Brion has been paving through enemies of the fledgling rank at a breakneck pace. While Milo’s team is consistent. At the rate they’re going they will push Damian down to three in a matter of hours.”

Leon looked into the pool of water. “It is what it is. Brion picked the strongest people he could recruit and kept his team small. Chances are we won’t have a full monster genocide this year, as in terms of combat power their the strongest. Milo built a balanced team with as few people as he could. He doesn’t have anyone who can heal, so they have to choose their battles carefully.” Seemed to be looking towards the other teams progress with a discerning eye.

“From my experience, teams like Brion’s tend to do really well on the first day, but fall behind as the test goes on. They have power but no real utility. Unless they hunt other teams, their pace will drop by quite a bit.” Yulon watched the children go about their test with a reminiscent expression.

Leon nodded solemnly. “While Brion’s strong for his age I can see that he skipped on his foundation. But his spirit is a powerful one from what we have seen. Such a waste had he compressed it a bit more then he may have been a true contender for my recommendation.”

Damian’s group had made their way closer to the heart of the rabbits expanding territory. Rabbits became more prominent and fought harder, but the initial shock of their power was gone. They weren’t a fledgling rank, but they were half as strong as one and came in large groups.

“Kyrion. I need you to map stuff out from above. We should be close. Wura, Noah, our group will continue to advance. Nico and Asela, will follow much further behind. Kiara and Evevrest will wait for Kyrion to come down before advancing.” Damian had a resolved tone on this plan.

Usually, splitting up would be a bad idea. However, in a group of eight, there was room to do so when necessary. The rabbits also seemed to have a sense of incoming numbers. When they engaged the rabbits previously, they began to show cowardness when overwhelmed or outnumbered.

Kyrion made his way up another tree. Making a mental note not to tell the next group he’s in that he could do so. He looked down from the top of his chosen tree; ahead, he could see a giant rabbit around the size of a boulder. In its hands was a crude shield made from wood and an extra sharp-looking carrot. At its command was a small group of even smaller rabbits wielding smaller versions of the sharp carrots.

“What in the abyss is that?” Kyrion asked no one in particular. Kyrion then summoned Jala.

Jala appeared in a puff of smoke. “What do you want, my great benevolent master.” Yawning it all out and rubbing her face with her paw.

“Do you know what that is?” Kyrion asked his partner. “I have other questions but mostly the first. The second being I can’t get my wind to cut the rabbits.”

“I see, you’re having problems performing in a group. I hear it’s not an uncommon issue. We can work through it together. As for the rabbits I don’t really know.”

“I see. About my wind performance issues. It doesn’t cut when I want it two but it does send the rabbits flying but doesn’t leave a cut.” Kyrion stated his problem thoughtfully. He was bothered by it. Sure he could heal now, but that wasn’t enough if his power couldn’t help in a fight.

“I see, those performance issues may prove to be a bigger problem than I thought. We can talk about this later. I’m tired.” Jala yawned before fading out of sight.

Kyrion proceeded to write everything he saw down on his map. He had one giant rabbit down, but it seems that there had been more than one special rabbit. There appeared to be a giant rabbit that resembled a pugilist, a rabbit with a wooden stick, and finally a rabbit with a lance that seemed to be riding a more feral rabbit.

From below, Kiara and Everest were waiting for their scout to come back down. But, instead, they watched as he had a one-sided conversation with a fox.

“Do you think our friend is a few apples away from an orchard?” Everest asked jokingly.

“I don’t see what you mean.” Kiara looked puzzled by the question.

“Nevermind. Sometimes I wonder.” Everest leans against the tree, looking ahead.

“Wonder what?” Kiara seemed annoyed.

“Oh it’s nothing special.” Everest had a mischievous gleam in his eyes as the conversation continued.

Nico and Asela had been walking for a few minutes, the former holding a book in his hand and had a frustrated look on his face.

“How’s your back?” Asela asked.

“I said I’m fine.” Nico answered bluntly.

“Are you sure?” Asela had a worried look on her face.

“Yes.” Nico turned the page and pretended to focus on his book.

“I know I just feel bad about it. Had I been stronger...” Asela started.

“That was just a miscalculation. We didn’t know that the combustion would be that powerful. Live and learn. From what I could tell the creature was in the practitioner rank of monsters, a parasite type to be precise. While physically weak on its own, the creature it leeches off of dies but the host becomes much stronger. From what I could tell the creature had just entered that tier recently. As it had the raw power but lacked the control to use it. If the rabbit’s ruler had gotten ahold of it then we really would have been in trouble.” Nico looks up to a lost Asela.

“So you’re not mad at me. Got it.” Asela nodded in understanding. “I do need to get stronger though.”

“You’re fine. Fire is easy to use but hard to master. When you figure out how your spirit actually works then you should get a lot stronger. We have a lot of people with room to improve.” Nico stops walking.

“What is it?” Asela was now worried for a different reason.

“It seems like our friends have lured in quite a few rabbits. We’re gonna need to tread carefully. It won’t help them if they turn around towards us. We’re gonna try to block their exits. Most animals won’t willingly jump through fire if they can help it.” Nico began scribbling symbols in the dirt with a wooden stick.

“What are you doing?” Asela asked.

“It’s a secret for now. Let’s just say it will help us make that wall more solid.” Nico put a finger in front of his mouth.

“You and your secrets.” Asela sighed.

The leading group had spent ten minutes traveling forward, purposely luring in groups of rabbits who followed further behind.

Damian’s group had stopped advancing the moment a giant rabbit was added to their map. “We shouldn’t go any further for now.” Damian brandished his sword and entered an offensive stance. “We have enough enemies to fight right now.”

Wura formed her spear and shield, with her ability as she took a defensive stance. “Think we bit off more than we can chew?” Wura poured power into her spear, making it longer and sharper.

“Don’t kill too many, whatever your weapon does to them makes the meat smell funny. I’d like to keep a few for dinner later. If we don’t eat one then it kinda feels like a waste.” Noah transformed into his lion form, armor changing along with him.

“Engage!” Damian commanded.