16: Canon is about to start.

When they had finished eliminating most of the monsters, an elasmotherium bigger than all the others they had killed and with a giant elegant horn on the top of its skull appeared at the end of the bridge and looked extremely angry, surely its anger had to do with the huge wound on its chest, the large long-haired animal took off running and rammed its giant horn towards them.

Tom who saw the very angry animal realized right away that this was the evolving warrior-level monster that Ai Jiang Tu had had to deal with to get the plant and apparently the wound on its chest had been made by Ai Jiang Tu himself.

"Looks like you managed to piss him off brother," Tom said as he prepared to defend himself from the onslaught.

"Well, maybe brother Tom, the monster didn't like me stealing the plant outside his cave, or maybe my sudden surprise attack when he was resting angered him, who knows" Ai Jiang Tu scoffed at the obviousness of the situation.

"Oh it must be that, no one likes to be suddenly woken up from their nap, I understand" smiled Tom.

"He had already slept a lot, I thought it was only right to help him wake up with a slightly rougher method," said Ai Jiang Tu playing along with Tom.

"He doesn't seem to appreciate your gesture very much. Oh also remind me to never ask you to wake me up brother Jiang Tu" said Tom as he prepared his Earth and Plant Domain.

"No promises," said Ai Jiang Tu as he also prepared his spatial magic to deal with the monster's onslaught.

The monster rushed past the bridge, knocking down everything in front of it in its path, the mines only scratching it, while the few other surviving monsters on the bridge were one by one pushed off the bridge by the onslaught of the evolving warrior monster that didn't even care about its fellow monsters and threw them away as if they were little.

"Dominion, infernal jungle" Tom held out his hands and quickly summoned the dominion created by his two elements earth and plant.

"Space projectiles" Ai Jiang Tu who also saw the monster rapidly approaching without caring about what was in front of him, quickly formed several invisible projectiles with his space element to hit the wound he had made on the monster with his curse element while it was sleeping.

As Tom focused on his domain, Ai Jiang Tu began to throw his projectiles at the monster's wound, provoking the monster's anger and causing the monster's onslaught to accelerate.

When the monster was approaching them, Tom reacted quickly the moment the monster touched his domain and shouted "Hellish muddy earth! Hellish earth spikes! Hellish vines!"

Tom managed to slow the monster's onslaught by focusing all his magic on holding it back, but the monster wasn't affected for long so he decided to use another method.

"Infernal Prison" Tom took advantage of the moment when the monster was breaking free of its bonds to enclose it in a huge dome of plants that acted like vines entwining around the monster and locking it inside until the inner temperature of the infernal dome burned it out.

The infernal prison held the monster captive for quite a while, but to the bad luck of both of them, the monster now wounded and burned all over its body managed to stick its bighorn into the dome and pierced through it, thus gradually breaking the dome.

Ai Jiang Tu who saw this wasted no time and returned to hurling projectile after projectile at the monster to distract it and prevent it from leaving the dome that held it in Tom's domain.

Tom on the other hand focused on holding the monster back, he used as much magical energy from his plant element system to regenerate the plants that the monster cut from the dome with his horn, thus making it an endless cycle of cutting and regeneration, but Tom was not going to last long like this, as his plant element system was going to be exhausted in no time, causing his dominion to break and leaving them both in great danger from this evolving warrior level monster. Because of this, they both had to kill the monster now before its dominance ran out and left them unprotected.

Luckily the monster seemed to be slowly losing its strength, it could be seen that the wound on its stomach along with the many burns all over its body were tiring it out.

"Jiang Tu!!!, I'm going to release the infernal prison, if I continue like this for a few more moments I won't be able to retain dominance, I'm going to release it and then annoy it with my earth element to get its attention, while I do this I want you to prepare your curse element spell at maximum power, use every ounce of magic in your system in a single attack, if with that it doesn't die it should at least stop moving long enough for us to rest a bit" Tom said while sweating and breathing heavily from the immense amount of magic he was using.

"I understand Tom, just be very careful with his attacks, if he gets to hit you just once don't expect to end up alive after that" he agreed and warned an Ai Jiang Tu who was also breathing heavily having almost drained the magic from his space element.

"Relax, I still don't plan to die" Tom smiled cheekily at him.

That was how Tom undid the prison that held the monster inside, causing it to finally escape.

Quickly Tom created several earthen spikes that embedded against the wound on the monster's stomach, thus successfully drawing the monster's attention to him. Ai Jiang Tu who saw the action smiled and stepped back to gather his curse element magic while Tom distracted it, then made the final attack on the monster, it was a strategy they used to use when hunting fairly strong monsters, Tom would hold them off and he would give them the final attack with his most powerful curse element spell which was incredibly effective at taking down monsters in general, but also incredibly slow in magic build up and general spell preparation, thus the two made an excellent team as defense and offense.

Tom used his domain to the fullest to constantly attack and dodge the monster, he focused on creating earthen walls where he was so the monster wouldn't see him behind it and thus would have to break through them to find him, but when the monster rammed the walls he would have already used his other spell "change" which allowed him to move position quickly within his domain, thus leaving the monster bewildered every time it rammed the walls and he disappeared from behind them.

This went on for a while until Tom felt his earth element was running low and his domain was beginning to falter, apparently his earth and plant element systems were already at their limit.

"Brother Jiang Tu, I don't want to rush you, but if you finish it fast with your spell I'm likely to end up dead on this side!" shouted Tom to Ai Jiang Tu who was preparing his spell.

"Wait a minute," said Ai Jiang Tu while holding his hands outstretched, his hands gave off a flash of black color with a reddish hue that illuminated his surroundings.

"You..., you better kill him with that move or else I'll kill you if I don't die first" grumbled Tom who was already extremely exhausted, he had pushed his body and magic to the limit.

After one more onslaught of the monster against his earthen walls that ended in failure, Tom decided to undo his dominance, as he had almost no magic left in his systems, thus causing the jungle around him to begin to disappear and return to normal earth.

Shortly after the infernal jungle disappeared, the monster, already tired and irritated by the constant attacks against him and the human mage in front of him who always escaped his onslaught, realized that the mysterious jungle had disappeared and thought it was his chance to kill the human mage who had been dodging him all this time, so he prepared for a devastating attack against the mage.

Tom, on the other hand, saw that the monster was preparing to charge at him again, but with more force than before, his magic was almost exhausted and he could only escape from this last attack.

"Brother Jiang Tu, you still not finished?" asked Tom.

"Almost done, a few more seconds" replied Ai Jiang Tu.

At the same moment, the monster rammed into Tom.

"Shit!. Hurry up!" exclaimed Tom.

Tom managed to use his "Changed" earth magic spell in time to narrowly dodge the monster, but this time there was no wall, so the monster quickly spotted Tom and charged towards him again, giving him no time to do anything.

"Ready, Evil Spider's Trap level 3 full power" shouted Ai Jiang Tu just as the monster was ramming towards Tom.

Luckily for Tom, the web created by Ai Jiang Tu's curse restrained the monster before it could ram into him.

The monster struggled for a while in the web, but luckily for Ai Jiang Tu, he was already exhausted both physically and spiritually by the previous fight, the wound in his stomach, and the many burns he had, had exhausted him to the extreme, so the giant spider projected by the curse managed to suck the monster's soul, leaving him lifeless after a few moments when he stopped resisting.

Keep in mind that with cursing magic the higher the level, the greater the restriction it generates on the monsters or targets and also the percentage of permanently damaging the soul of the target or killing it depending on the state of the target when the curse is applied. If the target is extremely exhausted and wounded the spiritual fight will be less, so the chances of damaging its soul are higher, this is why you usually damage and exhaust the monster before applying a curse to kill it, although curses are also used to damage the targets if you need to kill them.

"Phew, about time, I almost died in there" Tom complained as he sighed and saw the fallen monster in front of him that had almost rammed him.

"Uffff, you're still alive aren't you, no complaints then" replied a tired Ai Jiang Tu.

Tom didn't worry about it anymore and instead of continuing to talk to him, he took a breath, took a deep breath, calmed down a bit, and went to collect the horns from the monsters to already finish the task once and for all.

"Come on, I don't want to waste any more time in this place, let's better collect everything of value from these monsters and go back to the academy," Tom said as he stretched his body and started to lift horns from monsters.

"Yes, it's the best thing to do, lest another monster appears because of our delay" agreed Ai Jiang Tu.

After collecting all the horns and other important or valuable parts from the monsters, they both headed back to the academy.

Once at the academy, Ai Jiang Tu took the report of their completed task to the academy director, then talked with Tom for a while and said goodbye to him, as he had to return to the Ai family to deliver the plant to the inner circle elder.

Fortunately for both of them, the school year was coming to an end and the military academy allowed both of them to take a break after the end of the assignment, even though the vacation was still a month away.

So Ai Jiang Tu went to the northern part of China where the Ai family residence was located and Tom went to his residence in the Imperial Capital to have a well-deserved vacation.

When Tom arrived at the Imperial Capital the first thing he noticed was the enthusiasm of the people, which caught his attention, even though the Imperial Capital used to have a lot of tourism and civilian movement, it was not common to see people so excited, so he asked what all the fuss was about.

"Excuse me, is there a celebration of some kind or something?" asked Tom to one of the many civilians lining the streets.

"Oh well, this is because today is a special day for all the civilian families that have children that are about to turn 16 since today the classes of the young people that can become the new generation of wizards end today, and it is normal that there is so much excitement, everyone wants to be a wizard nowadays and being able to awaken an element qualifies them for great things in the future, but for that, they must enter a good school that awakens their first element and not everyone has that privilege" answered the nice civilian very excited with the idea of the new generation of wizards.

"Oh, I see... Thank you and sorry for the inconvenience" thanked Tom while thinking about other things.

"You're welcome young man" replied the civilian who continued on his way.

"So we are already on that date, time passed very fast, so it seems that Mo Fan must have already transmigrated and is currently taking the exam to then be able to enter a school where they awaken his elements, but according to the canon he should not be able to pass the exam and enter the school since he comes from a modern world without magic, only after his father humiliates himself with the Mu family and sells his family house will he be able to enter the school for magical awakening. Mmmmm, I might see about stopping by Bo City, I have enough time to make the most of it, besides, it's been a long time since I've seen my old classmates" Tom thought to himself with a smile.