Invitational Disciple Exam III: The Hunt

A few of the examinees were slow to realize that was a dismissal, but not many. Some immediately tore off into the woods, some stayed back, cowering, and others started heated negotiations with their fellows. I spoke up too, but not heated. "Ok Shok," I began, "no offense Jue Zhu, but I have a feeling pickings will be a little slim in the direction you go, so you pick a way first and we'll go in the opposite direction. That good with both of you?"

Shokoya nodded. "No offense taken," said Jue Zhu, "you're right, I don't intend to leave many for others."

"Hold on there!" Quan suddenly broke in, "Zuhui, Shokoya, please take me with you too. I know we'll need to find more beasts that way, but you know I won't get in the way."

"That's true enough," I said, "but why though?"

"Well it's because," and here he actually stammered, "I'm worried that I won't find my way back here before the deadline. Yeah, I have a bad sense of direction, happy now?!"

"You can come with us if you want," said Lun Jiaoping, "you're coming to Iron Tortoise Castle with us, right?" Of course, the rest of the Academy Inner Court had stayed close by the half I was more familiar with.

"Yeah," said Ding Qilong, "you're about even with both of us put together, so it'll be like having a party of 3 with the strength of 4. We should do fine."

"You mean it? Then I gratefully accept," said Quan.

"All right, I should get started," said Jue Zhu, taking off toward our right.

"Let's get going too," said Shokoya, and we turned left and started for the tree line.

Within moments, I slipped into gamer thought. "How best to speedrun this? We're missing too much information about the composition of the magical beast populations."

"Well first, we need to get far enough out that there aren't a bunch of other examinees around," said Shokoya, "after that we should be able to use our Aura sense to find some high-value targets, even if the composition is random."

"Right." Indeed, if I spread my Aura Sense at that moment, I could feel dozens of examinees still spreading out and quite a few magical beasts. "Yeah, I can feel one or two distant patches that should have about the right strength."

"Lead on, then."

Separating from the majority of examinees wasn't a problem. Most of them were of the 6th Realm and couldn't even use Aura Sense yet. So, they tried to stay as close to the safe zone/exit as they could while Shokoya and I were able to venture deeper. From what we could sense, the stronger magical beasts were indeed further away from the safe zone, so in order to pass with as good a time as possible we needed to venture past where most examinees were fighting anyway. "Hmm…it looks like it's an entire group of 8th Realm beasts ahead. At least a dozen if I'm not mistaken."

"Yeah, I agree," said Shokoya, "you might take 'em piecemeal, but I need to deal damage to them too. My Midnight Blade should be up to damaging them, but I'm not confident in lasting against so many. Actually, I'm not confident in lasting against more than two or three."

"Okay, okay, let's think for a second…there are 7th Realm beasts more scattered around than this group, can you sense them?"

"Yeah."

"Then let's split up for now. I'll test the waters with the group, and you go hunt the 7th Realm beasts on your own. One of those on your own will give you the same amount as an 8th Realm beast we take down together."

"Ok, but when do we meet back up?"

"Let's make it about ten minutes, unless we sense examinees coming, then we rejoin each other right away. Given that long, I should be able to probe this group enough to work out something for both of us to get points from them."

Once I actually reached the magical beast group, I concluded we were at least partially in luck. If they had been a type similar to the Lightning Marmosets, we'd probably have had to retreat, but these were clearly ground pounders, a hardy-looking type that reminded me of Komodo Dragons. I attacked from the trees, thinking at first that they wouldn't even be able to retaliate. They proved me wrong there, which is why we were only partly lucky. I'd seen enough such abilities in Dive Games that when I saw a glow coming from inside three of their wide open mouths, I immediately dove for cover. Spherical projectiles the size of soccer balls, glowing with blue light, shot out of their mouths and hit the tree where I'd just been, turning it into a pile of ash. I leaped and dodged frantically, correctly predicting that more blasts were coming, praying they wouldn't manage to successfully lead a shot at the right moment, trying to limit midair maneuvers so as to create as few such moments as possible.

If they can keep up such lethal attacks indefinitely, I'm going to need a new plan for which beasts to target. I seriously doubted they could, though. Before long, I realized the spiritual energy I was sensing from them had markedly decreased, and they weren't shooting as often, either.

After a few minutes, the blasts, which had vaporized enough trees in the area to make a clearing big enough for me to camp in, stopped entirely. Focused on catching my breath, it took me precious seconds to realize they were actually trying to run away. "Shoko! They're running! Come quick!"

A few of them had already reached the trees when Shokoya got there. He set upon one of them with devastating strikes, making sure it was one with a few arrows sticking out of them that I'd managed to shoot before they had started going all out with the blasts. Some of them noticed and turned to try to fight the newcomer, only to be met with death from above (though I made sure Shokoya at least damaged them some before using arrows to finish any. We kept going that way until they were all gone, one way or another.

"Six dead, six more scattered," I said as I shouldered my bow, "not a bad start."

"Pretty sure you tagged most of the ones that scattered, too," said Shokoya, "let's hunt 'em down."