Chương 225: Wilderness Survival Exam Part 5

With two people in their group, Inara decided it might be worth it to set up a campsite. Last night, she had climbed a tree to sleep in after not finding a suitable area to pitch her tent. She had scouted out several locations as possible campsites, but each had multiple Ferocious Beasts nearby, so Inara had elected to catch a few hours of sleep in a tree, instead of setting up a camp that might get overrun.

"Keep up," Inara snarled at Ronald as he lagged behind. The Dark mage was setting a harsh pace through the underbrush and Ronald, being exhausted from his flight from the Wind Earth Snake, was struggling to keep up.

"Can't we slow down a little," Ronald huffed.

"You are welcome to go it alone," Inara told him as she pushed ahead. The two walked for about half an hour before Inara arrived at the place she had set up her traps for the Shadow Web Spiders. After Damion had 'helped' her, she had hunted down and killed the remaining Ferocious Beasts and meticulously extracted their web sacks. Before heading out to hunt for more points, she had buried the sacks and set fire to the remaining portions of the spiders.

On returning to the area, the spider carcasses had mostly been burnt to ash and she was thinking this would be a decent place to make their camp. She had already cleared most of the Ferocious Beasts out of the immediate area and the smell of burnt spider had mostly faded.

"We'll set up camp here," Inara told Ronald.

"I've buried a spatial stretching bag with some beast materials. Unbury it and add the heads." Inara pointed to an area of disturbed dirt and Ronald got to work digging up the bag. Once he was done and the Wind Earth Snake's heads were added to the bag of spoils, he was left wondering what he should do.

"Set up your tent. Then, we'll set some traps around camp to catch anything or anyone trying to sneak in."

"I don't have a tent," Ronald confessed. It was not that he was unprepared for the wilderness excursion, it was just that he had hung his spatial stretching bag on the tree he was going to spend his first night in, which happened to have a beehive in it. And after he was driven away by the bees he'd been attacked by the first snake Ferocious Beast, and he never had a chance to find that tree again.

"Well, you aren't sharing mine," Inara stated firmly.

"I lost all my gear. Bee filled tree," Ronald began to explain, but the confused look on Inara's face told him she did not understand.

"I tried to make a tree house to camp in last night. But the tree had a beehive in it. I got chased into a pond, which is when I ran into a big serpent Ferocious Beast and was rescued by Wells' pet."

"Phil." A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

"What?"

"The Snow Hawk's name is Phil."

"Oh. But I never went back to that tree to get my bag that had all my gear in it."

"Why not?" Inara asked. To her, a few bees would not keep her from getting her gear. Not when such gear could be the difference between life and death.

"I… I forgot where it was," Ronald confessed.

"You carry my bag. We'll head in the direction of your pond. If Phil killed the only Ferocious Beast in the pond, then that might be a better place to make camp than here." Inara headed out, not letting Ronald disagree with her decision. Not wanting to be left behind, Ronald hurried after her. Inara moved through the forest quickly, she wanted to find the pond and set up their camp as soon as possible.

If they had the light, they might search for Ronald's bag before nightfall, but otherwise they could search in the morning. It did not take long for Inara to find where Ronald had fought the first Ferocious Beast. The area was not that far from where he had encountered his second Ferocious Beast. Ronald, having a hard time keeping up with Inara, caught up to her when she stopped at the edge of the clearing with Ronald's pond. In middle of the clearing was something neither of them had been face to face with before.

They had heard stories, read books and reports, studied everything known about them, but now here in front of them was a Realm Breach. The shimmering portal looked less sinister than they had imagined it. The rippling of the portal reminded them of the surface of water. If the body of water was standing up right. The longer they looked the more they felt something was wrong. Finally, it was Inara that spoke up.

"This Breach was not here when you were at this pond before, right?"

"I would have mentioned that. Besides, if it was, don't you think Mage Wells would have come over and gone in. He's been in dungeons, even labyrinths before."

"We have no way to know how strong the Breach is. Or if it is an Unstable, Semi-stable or Stable Breach."

"It could even be a Growth type!" Ronald added excitedly.

"Don't be dense. Only three labyrinths have ever been discovered. Neither one of us are going to be the ones to discover the fourth."

"Should we try and go in and, uh, clear it?"

"Are you stupid?" Inara glared at him.

"It is an unknown Breach. We need to report this to the school. They can investigate. If we are lucky, we might qualify to join a team to go in since we discovered it."

"But if it is an Unstable or Semi-stable, wouldn't that mean it could spit out Demonic Beasts?" Ronald asked, suddenly feeling quite nervous since they were so close to the Breach.

"I was wondering about that myself. I don't see any signs of a bunch of Demonic Beasts moving through the area."

"Maybe that means it is Stable Breach, a dungeon. It may not be a labyrinth, but we can get a hefty finder's fee, right?"

"Depends on the Rank. If it is C Rank or above yes. Below that, unless the dungeon has valuable resources, the Mage Association usually permanently collapses low Rank dungeons."

"Wait, you can do that?"

"Did you even pay attention in any of your magic theory classes? Yes. Stable Breaches have a fake core, which is what you destroy to clear it and doing so sends you out of the dungeon. But there is also a hidden true core. If you destroy that, you destroy the dungeon for good."

"Why would anyone want to destroy a dungeon?"

"It could be too hard to clear regularly, not enough valuable resources in it. Or maybe, it's the four millionth F Rank dungeon to appear around a village and they don't have enough F Rank people to clear all the dungeons they keep finding."

"Oh. I hadn't thought about that."

"Clearly," Inara said dryly.

"You said that Phil saved you around here right?"

"Yeah."

"Then maybe, Mage Wells is in this area. I encountered him back where we were going to make camp. These two places aren't that far apart, at least not as far as the test area is concerned. Maybe he made his camp near here."

"Why are you looking for his camp?"

"Because if anyone is dumb enough to go into an unknown Breach, it is going to be him."