42 Forest Expedition

The next morning, Myra and Aaron got up early to make breakfast. They still had to make some food, get dressed, help Rae get dressed, bring Rae to the nanny who would take care of the younger children while they were at the academy, as well as prepare the documents for the classes.

It would be another busy day as usual, with no breaks in sight, especially with the weekend coming up when they wanted to visit Myra's parents. When Myra wanted to wake up Rae, she found a black cat curled up next to the little girl.

It was obviously still a kitten, even though that kitten already had the size of a fully grown large housecat. It had soft shiny black fur with the paws a bit lighter colored and some shiny silver colored slightly glowing markings on its head.

Obviously displeased by the interruption of its sleep, it growled at Myra it a cute way, as if telling her to go away and let it sleep.

With Myra's unusual way of perception she could clearly interpret the feelings and emotions and pictures as 'Stealing my human is not allowed!'

"If you don't want breakfast I won't stop you from sleeping, but don't ask for it later." she said as much to the little girl as to the cat. It was easy enough to translate her words in a way that would make the phantom cat understand.

Slowly, the still drowsy and a bit tired little girl finally got out of bed and with Myra's help quickly got dressed and ready to face the world.

Channelling a bit of power from her spirit directly and just releasing it to her surroundings, she also 'made breakfast' for all the phantom cats who might still be hiding.

As for the little kitten Rae was picking up and bringing along to the dining room, she quickly taught the girl how she could give the cat some power as well. Rae would simply use her own power through their link, but as it was channelled through the girl, the cat would get used to Rae's power and not the power of Myra instead.

"They said Brightpaws can come with me!" Rae told her mother excitedly before doing her best to imitate Myra and decimating the food that was on the breakfast table.

"The kitten has lighter colored paws, so the name is fitting." Aaron just commented, but didn't really worry about whether the name of Rae's phantom cat made any sense as long as she liked it.

Even the cat itself could not use human language and would just listen to the sound of it anyways, not exactly knowing the meaning, unless Rae did try to convey this meaning in other ways than human language.

Brightpaws let Rae pet it and enjoyed the magical power that was offered.

When their breakfast was done and everyone was ready, it was time for them to leave. While Rae was rather reluctant to see them go, in the end she still behaved like a good kid and simply waved goodbye without causing any trouble.

A quick kiss on her head, a hug from her parents as well as a promise that they would return as soon as they could, helped a lot to alleviate the child's fears. The soft fur of the cat in her arms might also had its part in quickly letting Rae forget about her worries and focus on playing with the other kids.

--

When they arrived at the academy, there was still a little bit of time before classes started. Myra usually used this time, to catch up with Zora and Dhalia, making sure her pupil in name and the priestess did get along well.

While she initially planned to teach Zora herself, it quickly became obvious that it might be better to just guide Dhalia in magic and let the more experienced woman teach this magic theory to Zora.

The two could understand each other on a level that Myra would never achieve. She might be powerful, but the personality of a chaos aligned mage was not easy to fathom, even for her.

They seemed to approach things very differently, in a very random and chaotic way. Now who would have guessed these things about someone with a chaos bloodline and a priestess of a chaos goddess? Right, pretty much everyone else but Myra!

She might as well have shouted 'I'm a dummy' to the world instead of trying to compete with the two when it came to understanding each other.

'Well, it's not bad that they like the arrangements and Dhalia took over the role of her teacher. I likely wouldn't be able to offer Zora the same amount of time as a teacher anyways, seeing how much time it already takes to look after Rae.'

Myra thought that it wasn't a bad thing for the two people to meet.

'At least I don't have to feel guilty and she is not just left to her own devices without any guidance.'

It seemed like their busy schedule and their workload would not really reduce though. The academy soon announced a field trip to the northern border and the forests there.

Unlike Luminos, the city states of Aenweidh had no real standing army. They were more organized like a militia would be. Far better trained than any militia Luminos had, this group of forest dwellers was still mostly made up of people who had a different job or profession and were not just soldiers throughout their lives.

Compared to the troops Luminos could provide, these city states could not compete in the quality of their average soldiers, but other than Luminos their whole population, from the simple farmers and hunters to the highly esteemed oracles, were used to wielding and using weapons.

Without a standing army though, those city states were reluctant to send a large number of forces if there was some problem that didn't directly affect them.

As both Luminos and their forest neighbours had a good relationship, it was an unwritten rule, that dangers and threats that did not directly affect the city states would be ignored by them.

However if it would pose a threat to the border areas of Luminos', then it would be seen as acceptable for Luminos to send armed forces into their territory and eliminate these threats as long as they would give them some advance notice and would not cause any harm to their own citizens.

Most of these threats were related to dangerous beasts and would not just be a threat, but also a chance to acquire rare materials they could not otherwise find. As they had the effort to defeating the threats, it was also well understood that all the spoils would end up in Luminos' coffers.

Such a history was also the reason why Silverspire Military Academy regularly sent out dispatches with their students and instructors, to get experience with a real fight.

This time the problem seemed to be caused by a lindwurm, a large snake like creature related to dragonkin, mostly living underground. They had no wings, but they had small arms and legs that they could move to turn and manoeuvre even above the earth.

Many of the older students and the students in the advanced classes would be sent. Looking at the instructors and students and their respective power, then it was easy to see that they would totally dominate the fight, having many times more power and numbers as they would have needed.

A normal lindwurm would usually be seen as a beast equal in danger level to a grandmaster. They might be a bit stronger than a grandmaster at the violet magic grade, but they were also not as smart and would mostly rely on frontal direct attacks.

If they could not gain an advantage and felt threatened, they would burrow into the ground and try to escape this way.

"Why are we going after some magical beast like this lindwurm?" Myra wondered and asked the instructor during one of her classes.

"I heard that this lindwurm had its soul tainted by some evil or demonic influence and is now rampaging across the area, mindlessly killing any other beast or human that crosses its path."

Myra now seemed to understand. Nearly all magical beasts would settle down in some territory and other than coming out from time to time to hunt wild game to survive or to defend their territory, they would rarely interact with anyone outside their territory.

Such beasts might be dangerous, but wouldn't justify the effort to kill it. A raging lindwurm on the other hand whose mind had been warped was a different thing altogether though.

They would not negotiate, they would just go on killing until nothing was left. This would continue until they were killed themselves.

During military strategy, they discussed in detail how they would approach the lindwurm, how they planned on dealing with its strength and making use of its weaknesses.

"We will have around 50 mages and 70 magic knights." The instructor pointed to his diagram where he marked the positions the students would take once they encountered the lindwurm.

"A few of you will act as scouts. We are going into this fight prepared, as such, the lindwurm itself will be a danger, but not the biggest risk we could face. The real problem will be any surrounding magical beasts or any other unexpected forces that might influence the outcome of the fight."

Again he showed that the area was filled with forests and woodlands, making it very hard to get a good overview of the place and visibility would be rather bad, making them all susceptible to a surprise attack of some beast they didn't expect.

"Five of the mages, will be scouting with magical means and will also place alarm triggers around the area where the fight will take place."

"We will also have fifteen knights surrounding the whole place. That should at least give us a little bit of an early warning if anything approaches that we did not plan for."

"Another 20 mages will be responsible for sealing the underground, to prevent the lindwurm from escaping through the earth. While this is not a really difficult task when it comes to control, the large area alone will require significant amounts of magical power, let alone defending against the very likely attacks of the lindwurm once it realizes there is no route of escape."

"Myra will be guarding against air attacks and will be helping with any unexpected threats. While she might not be able to really fly yet, from what we've seen during the training, she should at least be able to hover for a significant time, giving her a better visibility to warn us of any dangers early on."

Myra pouted a little bit. Not including her in the other groups and giving her a position in the air all for herself might sound like a very important position, but as they were not expecting any other dangers anyways, it was mostly a boring job of staying out of the way. Not to mention that she would hardly see any 'threats' through all the leaves of the trees.

Since the tournament even the instructors had been wary of her firepower and all of them were afraid that if she were involved in the battle directly that the backlash alone would be enough to harm the other students.

When classes were over, she used the transference array to get them back to the city. She could feel her body ache due to the pressure of all the power running through her.

'I better talk to these phantom cats soon, this really sucks.'

She stumbled out of the formation and Aaron quickly kept her from face planting into the floor.

"Maybe you shouldn't do this for a while?" he asked her with a worried look.

"Yes, a few days break should be good. Let's relax for a few days before heading to my parents. Next week will be really bothersome with that lindwurm and afterwards the shop and school will take up a lot of time too."

"Sounds good. How about you take a nap, while I pick up Rae?"

Myra couldn't really argue with this. She normally would have come along, but she was still feeling a little dizzy.

"That would be nice."