“So, after gathering the information, your team will eliminate the targets in the most effective and silent way, search their bodies for more clues and then return to the camp afterwards. After the briefing in the morning, you will have a bit of rest, then after lunch you will go for another round.”

“What if there is a larger force than we can deal with?” One of the youths asked.

“Good question.” Nick nodded, “According to my analysis, there should not be any situation like that. In the worst case there will be groups of four, maximum six Qi masters and you should be able to eliminate them easily in one attack. But in case there is a larger force – you will not engage the enemy and all of you will return to this base together to report. Remember, your safety is main priority and there is no reason for any acts of heroism!”

“Now, the last part. This is a real combat training, but still a training, therefore you will receive appropriate rewards. The group that will provide us with the most valuable intelligence, will receive a high quality Qi replenishment potion each. The group that will kill the most Holy Order’s members will receive same reward, but if there is a group that will manage to eliminate elder, it will receive a rank five beast core!” Nick grinned at the excited faces.

“Excuse me, but how do we know that the number others claim to have killed is correct?” One of youths asked and several others nodded. Indeed, what if some just sat in jungle and then returned with a random number?

“Where is your pride now?” Nick sighed, “I offered a small stimulus for you to have a friendly competition even though we have a national emergency here. If I can’t trust you this much, how can the Sword sect and our kingdom trust you? This brings us to the next point – punishment. If a member of the team gets injured, the whole team will be punished by reduction of their ‘kill points’. Since you probably already have internal punishment of your sect in case someone dies, we won’t add a new one. Be as it may, this system will teach you a better teamwork and how to rely on each other.”

Seeing the faces around him turn gloomy all of sudden, Nick clapped his hands and shouted, “Alright, pull yourselves together! I want groups to be ready in five minutes and you have to choose your leader as well. Go!”

Nick and the both cousins retreated to the side and watched how disciples were trying to organize the groups. YunYun smiled while recollecting how imposing Nick was just a few moments ago, while Zia pouted.

“Why do they have to get to do all the fun stuff? I also want to kill some bastards from the Holy Order!”

“Who told you that you will stay here and cook?” Nick laughed. His old friend was sometimes too silly, “Obviously we will go as well.”

Four and a half minutes later five neat groups stood separately with their new leader in front. Elder Jerold obviously let his smaller group to be led by one of his disciples, because he, in all honesty, also wanted to take part in this exercise as a simple disciple. The atmosphere around the camp made his blood boil and he felt as if he had returned to his younger self over forty years ago.

“Good. These groups will stay like this till the end of exercise and remember, if you have arguments – you can solve them back in the sect. Even holding back your anger and disagreement is also form of the practice! Every step you take is training!” Nick was actually impressed by how fast and orderly these disciples arranged themselves. Earlier he regretted them giving only five minutes, but it turned out to be more than enough. Disciples, on the other hand, suddenly remembered what their elder said about Nick – his favorite thing in life was to practice and now they understood how he did it! He basically didn’t do anything else but practice!

“Team leaders, gather here.” Nick took out his map, “These are five regions you will scout tomorrow. My group will take this part here.”

He pointed at the map and randomly distributed areas, except he kept the largest one for himself and the two girls.

“But, how can we scout such large sectors?” On of team leaders looked at the map with furrowed brows.

“That I will teach you now.” Nick smiled back, “Alright, scouting areas have been set. Now, for the practical part …”

For the next fifteen minutes Nick explained three basic formations the units will have to keep while on the move, spying and combat. This information wasn’t anything new to any of the disciples, but it’s practical application was. Then under the stunned eyes of the fellow disciples Zia demonstrated her newly acquired ‘monkeyrun’ technique while Nick explained how to remain in formation while running and jumping through the trees.

Sun was already setting, while youths in their small groups practiced moving through trees silently. Even elder Jerold was together with his group, although they were the only ones practicing the arrow formation. Of course, he figured out Nick’s way to move around jungle already earlier, but his idea from the beginning of this expedition was to let his students to practice their sword moves while clearing the way through the thick vegetation. Even Nick would agree it was a good plan, but for now they had to change their priorities.

After dark everyone sat around the campfire and silently shared their recent experience and planned for tomorrow until one of disciples came over to Nick.

“Could you please share how the two of you dealt with those thirty people from the Holy Order?” He asked expectantly.

Nick looked at YunYun lightly startled. He didn’t really want to tell how two rank six beasts did the most job with one of them even playing improvised ‘bowling’. Seeing YunYun looking back at him with complicated gaze as well, he shook his head.

“I’m sorry, there are some sensitive details I don’t want to disclose.” But seeing youth’s disappointment, he added, “But I can tell you how I disposed of some of Holy Order’s Qi masters, one of them being elder as well, while we were on the Nestri continent. In addition, I think it is more interesting, because I was still a Qi practitioner at the time.”

He didn’t expect that almost everyone was listening to what he was saying and soon under the curious eyes of twenty people Nick found himself telling somewhat unbelievable story. First he explained his practice background on how he and Zia were already running on the water at the age of ten and then, how he was practicing scaling the steep cliffs. Then he retold the event in the Holy Order’s mansion and as a small bonus, the hostage situation with the Scarlet’s cubs.

His story had an unexpected effect on these Sword sect’s disciples as they fell deep in thought trying to position themselves in Nick’s shoes while being in similar circumstances. This was elder Jerold’s technique he was continuously teaching them and it had really good results. But, while some of the students found alternate ways of solving both situations, Nick’s approach always turned out to be most effective, direct and ‘clean’.

After some discussions elder barked at everyone to go and rest, and his disciples unwillingly obeyed.

The next three days the disciples of the Sword sect found annoyingly peaceful. Of course, the movement practice was great and everyone felt their own improvement, even elder Jerold, but the initial excitement died down after not sighting their enemies for so long. In the morning of the fourth day, when elder saw everyone’s downcast expressions, he finally couldn’t hold back his anger.

“What is wrong with you? Shouldn’t you be elites of our country and Qi sword masters at that? Don’t you think that if Holy Order was so easy to find, we would’ve obliterated them long ago? Remember, everything is practice, even this situation is a training of your patience!”

Actually his disciples understood that, its just that circumstances were simply too annoying. But glancing at Nick every single one was surprised how cheerful and leisure the youth still was. Even while Zia at his side felt anxious, he didn’t care much and continued to tease her.

When one of the disciples asked for his guidance, he replied while shrugging, “I think you guys are trying to find problems where there are none. Look at the situation this way – we have a large team that is looking for evildoers that are hard to find. We will find them sooner or later, but we can use this time to train under unique conditions, don’t you agree? Your anxiousness only comes from the unreasonable goals you have set for yourselves without any logic. Remember, one of our main tasks is to investigate and we are doing it every day! Look at the map – we have searched almost the fifth of the ruins and it is an enormous area! How can anyone of you be downcast if we have such amazing results?”

“But we don’t really have results!” Another disciple argued.

“You are wrong!” Nick corrected him, “We don’t have the results you were expecting. What we do know, is that the Holy Order’s people are concentrating their efforts somewhere else and that we are closing on to them. It is only a matter of time until we find their first group!”

After hearing this explanation many had their motivation back and one morning two days later four proud faces brought back three dark red robes. They found these guys masked as hunters who were looking for treasures, but something didn’t feel right and the four stealthily approached their camp during the night. Unfortunately they heard only few sentences about these people not being able to find some entrance, when they got discovered, but with a good teamwork the three Qi masters from the Holy Order were defeated.

Everyone got excited, but elder Jerold used this opportunity to point out mistakes and teach some lessons. The biggest mistake was, of course, getting noticed, but another thing group could’ve done was to mark out the exact route of these three people so it could be analyzed further after returning to the camp.

Still, it was good to have first ‘real’ results and everyone felt elated except for Nick who was deep in thoughts.

Withing the next ten days the Sword sect’s youths managed to slay a total of fifteen members of the Holy Order in addition to six robbers who tried to assault one of their small teams as well. Unfortunately they didn’t manage to gather much more information than during the first encounter, but from bits and pieces of overheard sentences it was now clear that the Holy Order was looking for some kind of entrance to release something or someone. At this point Nick was almost hundred percent certain they were looking for a new entrance to Hell and the frequent earthquakes were considered a ‘clear’ sign of a new one opening.

Another thing that confirmed this suspicion was the latest report from one of the teams that witnessed multiple new steaming fissures forming on the ground. This was an obvious sign of a volcanic activity along with almost dozen small earthquakes they felt each day.

Nick consulted with elder Jerold and it was decided to send Sword sects disciples to prince Andrew and help him evacuate the citizens. When Nick saw the displeasure in faces of the youths, he almost got angry – these guys just wanted to play around and hunt, but couldn’t recognize how they had opportunity to save thousands of lives.

Still, he managed to find the proper words of motivation again, “While assisting prince Andrew you are to continue the previous task. Look at it as an increase of difficulty. In addition, you have to understand – we are fighting the Holy Order to save lives! And now you have opportunity to directly save lives by helping in this evacuation! Or do you just want those people to die?”