The group falls into silence, all of their focus on the corpse of the giant frog slowly dissolving into nothingness. No one says a word until their silent surprise is disturbed by Oscar speaking again in a hushed whisper.

  “As you see, from the moment I activated the training mode we have to be incredibly cautious, like we’re already in The Gde. There are still a few core differences between this and the actual envirohat you should keep in mind. First, it may be raining, but that’s not simuted because of the amount of extra mana draw it would require from The Dome. Sed, the space we use, while distorted by the spatial entments in the room, is still limited. That means, all the beasts in here will be within a limited range a to sound even faster. Finally, the uability of The Gde ’t be replicated. No matter how well we do in this simution, never drop yuard once we’re in there for real.” His words send a ripple of uanding through the group, the quibat enter w to drive home his points. “Now, treat this as the real deal a’s get moving.”

  Finished giving his speech, ives Emily a light nod and begins silently marg forward. Drawing in her exposed bde with a small burst of maa, Emily follows his example and slowly begins pushing forwards through the loose foliage. The gathered group quietly do the same, no one daring to stray too far from the pack.

  As they quietly move forward for a few minutes, Emily’s eyes never leave her surroundings. She carefully observes the crowded shrubs and pnts filling the lower level, and occasionally casts her gaze up towards the sheltering opy above. The dense blend of green and brown along with the light humid haze seems to cause objects to blur together into an indistinguishable mass only a few metres away from her.

  Her focused observation soon bears fruit, as she spots a flicker of movement in a yer of branches far above. Silently, she raises her hand while ing to a plete stop. A low murmur spreads through the group as people notice her gesture and cautiously follow her unspoken and. Silence falls over the gathering again as everyone waits with bated breath while looking around in fear and agitation.

  Ign the panicked reas of most of the es, Emily keeps her gaze high above while signing a request to Ivor.

  “S for enemies.”

  She notices a couple of branches shaking unnaturally oher side of their group and slowly reaches down for her revolver while waiting for Ivor’s respoen seds and three more noticeable movements ter, Emily hears a light thud and gnces over to Ivor.

  “Unknown number, above.”

  Damn, vibrations don’t help enough with enemies above. I o finish a vision spell before the expedition.

  With a light nod, calm determinatioles over Emily as she quietly alerts the group.

  “An unknown number of enemies above, prepare your barriers.”

  The moment they hear her words, Mia, Bel, and in ting in hushed tones. Ign them, Emily unclips her revolver and slowly raises it to face the sky. Watg ily, she waits with her finger origger. The instant she sees a flicker of movement, her hand whips into position, squeezing the trigger and sending a maa-charged bullet spiralling into the opy above. The crack of gunfire is soon followed by a pained screed a shape falling into the bushes a few metres away from her.

  Before Emily has time to celebrate nding her shot, fry cries ring out in harmony, alertio the positions of their ambushers. She moves her gun to aim at another beast, but fged dark brown spikes fall fast from above and her vision is quickly impaired by the thin barriers of water and turbulent wind that form to protect her. The moment the barriers cover every group member pletely, several fast-murmured ts break out as the others finally feel safe enough to ter-attack.

  Frowning slightly, Emily drops her hand, holstering her gun before silently casting two spells.

  No one will notice double-casting if I cast one spell internally and another externally!

  A shimmering silver magic circle appears above her hands, with a small, wide bde taking shape in the middle. The bde stretches to a few inches long, and a ring twists into being, in pce of the ha the same time, a long, thin steel wire forms that she deftly weaves through the bde's ring using her innate trol over the f spells.

  With her makeshift on jured ihan two seds, she looks upwards, fog on one of the faint shapes dartiween branches high above, raining sharp objects down on the group. The magic circle around the bde fades, starting a one miimer till the bde and wire vanish due to a ana. With the wire held firm in her left hand, she holds the bde in her right and draws her arm back to full extension while internally casting a third spell.

  Her arm arcs forward, sending the bde sailing through the protective barriers and up towards their overhead attackers. Her third spell finishes and a pulse of lightniers the wire in her hand. The bde sails past her target, mid-jump, but the creature collides with the wire, and is fried by electricity. It tumbles untrolbly to the ground on the left fnk of the group. Emily pulls hard on the cable, drawing the bde ba while Ivor moves to front the fallen enemy.

  Not sparing him a gnce, Emily repeats her attack with aunning touch spell, dropping another assaint to the ground on the right of the group. Before she try for a third, Dante sends a flurry of fmials into the sky, hitting the st two enemies and dropping them to the front.

  Emily turns her focus to the grounded foes awo small brown monkeys, covered in several smoking burn marks, rising to meet her with savage expressions as they hiss, revealing their sharp fangs. Taking a deep breath to calm her uled nerves, Emily dismisses her metallijuration and raises her hands before her.

  With surprising grad coordination, the two monkeys leap forward to front her, one swiping for her legs and the other her head. Emily steps forward, dug under oack while bringing her leg up to meet the other with a kick. With a small pulse of mana into her boots, a dull brown glow surrounds her l as it impacts the ining cwed hand with devastating force. The monkey’s hand is flung out of the way as Emily’s foot tinues past to smash into its unprotected head.

  The monkey crumples to the ground, unmoving, as Emily deactivates her boot’s weight trol and springs backwards to correct her stance before leaping towards her remaining fused foe. The mories to fight back, but Emily slips past its wild swipes with practised ease and delivers a decisive blow to its heart with an outstretched Cw.

  Leaving its corpse alone, she quickly finishes off the other unscious enemy before turning to watch her group deal with the others. As she does, she starts elliheion with her sed core food measure. She sees Ivor standing silently above the disiing corpse of a monkey with its skull pulverised, a heavy-looking rock lyio it, dripping with blood.

  The final monkey is battling Erin and Callum. One of its arms is missing, sliced off by a bde of water from Erin, but it stands strong, challenging Callum’s approach with its other arm outstretched. A shimmering purple magic circle surrounds Callum as he moves in, shaking in sync with his ting, and his raised sword swipes swiftly towards his oppo.

  The monkey seems to s him in defiance as its instincts judge the sword ssh to be too shallow to reach, but Callum ig and its to his attack. A fra of a sed before his bde misses, the glowing purple magic circle stretches out before Callum and stutters to life. Emily blinks once, and Callum’s bde cuts through the monkey’s throat, sending its head flying off.

  Incredible! The space between them shrank the moment he cast his spell. What a useful element, I definitely o spend some time looking at it when this is over.

  She pulls her gaze away from her groupmates and looks towards a bush where her eartheion spell keeps inf her of small vibrations. Moving towards the bush, she gazes in at the monkey crawling towards her despite the hole through its stomad both its legs hanging limply behind it.

  Wait, these are rocky howlers! I don’t think they would be this driven to keep fighting. Aren’t they meant to be cowards?

  Shaking off her s about the training's accuracy, she fi off before returning to the group.

  “Pause training,” Oscar calls out into the room, receiving a loud beep iurn and causing the forest around them to fall silent. “Good job everyohat was an acceptable first enter. Does anybody have any feedback gestions to give?”

  ac raises his hand, grabbing everyone’s attention before turning his cold gaze on Emily and speaking out.

  “Yun is too noisy. Are you stupid? Why do you think we don’t send armed squads into The Gde already?”

  Oscar quickly gowards Emily with a flicted frow on his face.

  “You’re right, it was too loud,” Emily easily agrees to his venom-filled pint, surprising Oscar and Ivreatly. “Let me fix that.”

  Pulling her revolver from its holster, Emily pops out the der and drops the bullets into her palm. Popping open a few pouches on her belt, she puts away the standard ammunition and pulls out six rounds with a small wind symbol carved onto the sides of the gs. Deftly loading the six new bullets, Emily flicks the der ba, pulls back the priming hammer, and raises the pistol to aim beside ac’s head.

  Before he react, she pulls the trigger and a low ps out sending the bullet silently past ac’s cheek, to nd in a nearby tree with a low thump.

  “There we go, that should be quiet enough,” Emily smirks at his stunned silence as she slips her pistol bato its resting pce.

  ac’s shocked tenance slowly morphs into that e as he processes what she just did. Before he start an argument, Oscar silences him with a scowling gnce.

  “Enough of that, are there any other pieces of helpful feedback we give?” he asks, casting a pointed g Emily and emphasising the word helpful.

  “I have something,” Emily replies calmly, ign his silent reproach. “We should possibly work out some hand signals or something so we alert everyoo problems without making muoise. It would also be helpful for situations like that if someone else could uand Ivor’s dete reports and say them out loud without me having to look away from the enemies I’ve spotted.”

  Most of the group nod and voice their agreement, while a few of the noble mages begrudgingly look on in silence.

  “Good idea, I’ll work on a full set of hand signals and write them out for everyone before week's training. I expect you all to memorise them and I will be testing you before we leave for the expedition. Anything else?” Oscar looks around, waiting a few seds for a response. After hearing nothing, he restarts the training simution.

  They tinue moving forward in their formation, pausing every few mio allow Ivor time to s their surroundings for threats. After half an hour, and half a dozen bat enters, the group walks into ay clearing with traces of exhaustion evident on their faces. Emily oher hand guides them with a rexed gait, appearing fresh and alert. She g her mana and maa as her sed aintains aheion spell in the background.

  ˉˉˉˉˉ

  [Mana:] 2856/3420

  [Maa:] 3414/3420

  _____

  My resources are barely falling with the repeated use of first circle spells. Though keepiheion up for so long has definitely made a dent…

  Her thoughts are interrupted by a ping in the back of her mind from her sed core. Instantly, she raises a hand to halt the group as she drops into a bat-ready stance while reag for her pistol. Bringing her dete spell to the forefront of her mind, she focuses on the feedbad feels several dozen points of vibratioering her dete range, surrounding the group, and slowly encroag on their position.

  “Tsk,” Emily clicks her tongue in irritation before inf the group. “We’re surrouhere are at least twenty enemies.”

  The sound of ting soon fills the clearing as everybody prepares for battle. The air hangs heavy over the group as the fog grows denser, rolling in and blog their view of their surroundings.

  Shit, I ’t shoot in this.

  Emily quickly holsters her gun before bringing her hands together in front of her.

  This is as good a time as any to test out my new spell.

  With aed grin, she begins building a magic circle in the air before her, ign the glistening sky-blue ruhat dao life and fog on a point twenty metres away where she feels clustered footfall moving closer. The air arouarts crag with power and the hairs on the back of her neck raise in anticipation.

  As the closest vibrations reach teres away, the pulsing spell is prepared. Unleashing her creation upon the world, she proudly decres her first sed circle attack spell’s name.

  “Bolt!”