Field Assignment 5

Jerod and his team followed the river until lunch time when they finally found a place they could use as a shelter. This shelter was an extremely large tree that had a large hole in the trunk. It was large enough to be considered a small cave which provided them with shelter overhead and only one path into the shelter. It wasn't too far away from the river and didn't show any signs of an animal visiting recently. The team set up camp quickly while Jerod went out to catch some small animals to cook for lunch.

"Well everyone, we have finally found a shelter. From here all we need to do is explore a radius around this tree for resources over the next 5 days to increase our rank points and we should be set to finish this test with flying colors."

"It's all thanks to you Jerod! I don't think we would have even made it a few hours without your direction let alone lasting through a week. If not for you we would probably have quit on the first night without food or water especially if we had encountered that wolf."

"Yeah Jerod, you are awesome!"

June and Rich were now huge fans of Jerod and were quick to show appreciation for his leadership while Bear and Wendy nodded in affirmation. Zuman just sat to the side pretending to rest after eating his lunch waiting for the time to arrive. He was ready to use his teleportation runestone to teleport out as soon as he received the alert from his communication runestone.

Everything was planned over the last six months. Zuman was just a fledgling magician when school started but with his young master's help he was able to learn enough to promote to an apprentice mage in just three months. However he didn't show off his prowess until it was the end of the first midyear so that he would come in as one of the lowest ranked students. His young master knew that the field test conducted for the first time would be sorted based on student rank points. Everything worked out exactly as he had planned.

Zuman would join Jerod's team and use the communication rune given to him to alert his young master of their position. His young master would then use his background to coerce and bribe his teammates to help him with a special task. If they succeeded in his plan they would be offered resources and benefits in his father's territory. Getting rid of Jerod would open up the rank one spot and with his background the young master would be able to take that position and earn the recognition of the royal family after graduation.

When Zuman figured there would only be a bit of time left before he received the signal he got up and started to walk towards the entrance of the shelter. He 'accidentally' tripped over Jerod's bag and caused the contents to spill out.

"Oh man! Sorry about that let me help you clean it up."

Zuman started to grab the things that had fallen out of the bag and put them back until he came across Jerod's teleportation runestone. He silently tucked it into his sleeve while putting everything else into the bag and then got up to walk outside. He told the team he was going to answer nature's call and he would be back in a while. Just as he stepped out of the tree he received the alert through his communication rune.

Zuman walked quickly out of the shelter and called his young master to let him know that the target was housed inside of the base of a very large tree at the last location. After another 10 minutes of waiting nearby he felt and heard the rumble of a large number of footsteps on the ground. He took out his teleportation runestone and just as his young master came running out of a nearby copse of trees followed by 5 magical beasts he used it to teleport back to the courtyard back at the academy.

Jerod and the rest of his team heard a peculiar noise and went out to check what was going on. It felt like a mini earthquake and to Jerod it sounded like the stampede of a herd of cows. Just as the team exited the trunk of the tree they notice a flash of light from a teleportation rune being activated. Then they saw another student, who was familiar to Jerod, being relentlessly followed by 5 magical beast.

"Oh no! He's in trouble what should we do?"

.....

A while earlier...

Bart Ferris woke up his teammates who were sleeping in the limbs of a large tree. After everyone climbed down and got ready to leave Bart checked the location that was sent by one of his peasants. Bart had convinced his team as soon as they started out to follow his lead. They had found a few resources and placed them in their bags along the way but were heading in a straight line towards Jerod's team. Bart hadn't explained exactly what they were going to do but the team could guess that a commoner had crossed him and that he was getting punishment.

It happened often when commoners and nobles were in the same location, a commoner could just be walking across the street and a noble take slight that his path was crossed. The commoner would then be beaten sometimes to death. Not wanting the same to happen to them and with the possibility of this noble keeping his promise of resources the team agreed to follow instructions.

After walking most of the day the first day they had acquired around 60 points in resources before they found a place to sleep in the trees. After waking up they continued to follow Bart towards his target and couldn't help but feel bad for whoever had made this noble mad. By mid morning the team was starting to get extremely hungry. They hadn't eaten anything aside from berries and grass and could only watch the noble pull cafeteria food out of his dimensional amulet before eating every bit of it.

Finally Bart came to a halt just as the team was chatting about the food they were going to order from the cafeteria when they got back. The team quietened down and Bart handed each of them a small bag.

"Don't open the bags right now. Look over in that direction, do you see that large tree over there? Each of you are going to walk in a direction opposite of that tree after opening these bags. Run in a wide circle and return to me. Don't go near the tree that you see over there. Once you return to me give me the bag and use your teleportation runestone."

The team looked at each other with confused faces. They all shrugged and nodded to Bart letting him know they understood. He told them to begin and each of them opened the bag before setting out in different directions. What they didn't know was that these bags were scent bags used to attract magical beast. As they made their way through the forest with the scent bags, one by one they each heard a rumble of something running towards them. As soon as they felt that they bee lined straight back towards Bart.

By using his teammates to attract the beasts he could gather more beasts and when they handed him the bags he would still be rested enough to run towards the tree where Jerod was. Luckily each of his teammates encountered a magical beast and returned to him at roughly the same time. The forest had many more magical beasts than the students were aware of, most of them had survived through these tests of the little humans so they tended to stay away from them. If too many little humans were eaten during these tests then there would be a culling of the woods to thin out the magical beast population. However, the scent bags used to attract magical beasts would put them into a stage of rage causing them to act against their better judgement.

And so, Bart grabbed the five scent bags from his teammates and they in turn used their teleportation runestones to get out of there. Bart after acquiring the bags ran towards the large tree in the distance. He had received a call from his peasant letting him know that Jerod was located inside the tree and that there was only one entrance and exit while the team was out gathering the magical beasts. This fit perfectly with his plan and he finally broke out of the copse of trees he was in just in time to see his peasant use his runestone to teleport out taking Jerod's only escape with him.

....

Jerod saw Bart running in the direction of their shelter and told his team to get inside and start raising some defensive walls for protection. Just as they were turning around to go back into the tree they saw two magical beasts jump out of the trees following after the student running towards them. They ran inside and listened to Jerod to set up a defense while also taking out their teleportation runestones.

The running student got near and threw something in the direction of the hole at the base of the tree before taking out a teleportation runestone and disappearing. Then another three magical beast came out of the trees running towards them.