44 - Last Day 3

"Good morning." Noah greeted them before sitting down and taking the food offered by Mira.

"Where is Chris?" Ling asked Noah, as both Noah and Chris shared a tent together.

"Oh? He's still asleep, I can go and wake him up for you." Noah paused from eating his food to answer.

"Yes if you could that would be great, we don't have much time today, so we can't waste anytime." Ling smiled at him in in appreciation, as they grouped both Noah and Chris together as Chris was just too annoying.

"Alright I got it." Noah smiled before putting his food down and entering his tent to wake up Chris.

"I've never thought I would be so grateful that I would never need to see someone again that wasn't Chang Heng." Mira sighed out in exhaustion.

"Well don't worry it's only another 8 hours, so let's stay positive." Lidia comforted Mira as she gave her a hug.

"Thanks." Mira's face warmed as a smile spread on her face.

While Lidia was a short petite cute girl with bright green hair tied into a ponytail, Mira was a tall tomboy with sort red hair.

As she was raised by just her father, she was called unladylike all the time which was quite true.

She never saw it as a insult but instead one of her strengths, although deep down she was a little unsecure until she became friends with Ling.

All three of them were beautiful and great friends.

"Why are you waking me up!" Ling turned to her left over to the boys tent when she heard yelling.

Chris was clearly upset at being woken up, by Noah.

"But we need to go, after all we don't have much time left." Noah said unsure as too why Chris was upset.

"I don't care, how am I supposed to fight monsters when I don't get enough sleep." Chris complained with a haughty tone.

"I'm sorry, I-I didn't know." Noah apologised, feeling like he had done something wrong.

"Just get out of my way." Chris pushed Noah out of the way before exiting the tent.

Ling frowned at the sight of him as he wasn't wearing any of his equipment, instead he was just wearing shorts and shoes.

Chris smiled when he saw the girls looking over at him, as he couldn't help but flex his unimpressive body.

He wasn't fat or anything it's just he thought he looked sexy with a muscular physique when... He didn't really have any muscles or anything that could be considered nice looking.

Before he was a quiet kid that was pleasant and kind with others but after he obtained the Epic class Iron First Monk.

He did a complete 180 in terms of attitude, at first Ling didn't know about this abrupt change and when she found out it was already too late.

Chris sat down next to Ling and took his breakfast before eating, but the whole time he was looking at her.

"Now we have to have everything packed up in ten minutes, as we have some distance to travel." Ling gave instructions to everyone after Noah rejoined them.

"Huh? Why are we in a hurry?" Chris dismissed Ling's orders.

"Well we only have a limited time left to accumulate as many points as possible." Mira explained unhappily.

"Let's pack it up, we are on a tight schedule." Ling interrupted the potential argument.

Chris thinking that Long was backing him up smiled before hurrying to finish his breakfast.

After everything was packed up it was stored in Ling's Enchanted item a Space Pouch, that was tied to her belt.

After making sure they had gotten everything and was ready, they started their journey through the forest.

It took the about half hour to reach their destination, within this area there is meant to be a huge amount of wondering monsters.

And almost immediately they could see the difference, as if before they came across about 10 monsters every 30 to 40 meters, then here there was two to three times the amount in the same space.

But the difference between this area of the forest and the rest is the monsters found here.

If the rest of the forest was full of different animal and miner monsters, this area only had one type of monster.

It was full of Poison Slugs, which didn't sound all that dangerous as, they were the same size as normal large Slugs.

The only difference is that while one is a normal pest 900 years ago, these ones are monsters that release a poisonous mist and are covered in a venomous slime.

Alone they aren't much of an issue as line as you didn't breath in the poison mist or touch them with your skin.

That combined with the fact they're incredibly slow and don't have defence or other attacks.

The issue is that is when there's only one, so Poison Slugs group up together inorder to make up for their huge weaknesses.

When together the Poison Mist strength and area is increased dramatically, so when there a huge number of them they become a massive deadly threat.

Luckily with the use of certain Potions and Pills, you can navigate or cure the Mist affects on you.

The problem for the Monsters in this forest is that there isn't any natural predators for them outside of slimes, that combined with the fact they breed incredibly fast.

But luckily the slugs never left this certain area of the forest without a reason.

So this area was nicknamed the Purple Slug Territory by the city's residences, it was expected that the students would enter this area, but no one expected for them to stay for too long.

As without potions it would be incredibly hard to stay within this area.

Luckily for Ling she had a ring that cleared poison within a 10 meter radius for five hours, they reason she hadn't used it before was because it was a one use enchantment.

Her father had ordered it from another city before the exam, just incase if the dungeon for the exam had poison monsters or traps.

But luckily for her it would be so much more useful used in this new exam then for the old one.

"Ok they are weak and don't give much points, but as there is such a huge amount the amount of points we can get will be more, and another plus there shouldn't be many others." Ling smiled as she gave her plan to everyone before instructing everyone of their roles.

Noah was in the front protecting them from any unforseen threat, Chris would also be in the front fighting next to Noah.

As for Mira, Lidia and Herself they would be behind Noah doing their respective jobs.

After preparing they entered the Slugs territory, at first there wasn't any Slugs but after a minute or two they started to encounter them.

[ Poison Slug (Normal) - Lvl 3 ]

Poison Slugs in this forest range from level 1 to 5, so they wouldn't be much of any trouble for them to deal with.

Especially when two if them had fire attitude attacks which the slugs were incredibly weak against.

Ling didn't activate the ring yet as the mist was manageable, Mira lifted her short bow and drew an arrow, aiming it she pulled back the string before letting the string go.

= Cinder Arrow =

"Pew" The air spilt as the arrow flew through it, the target completely unaware as it sat on a tree trunk.

The arrow hit the small target pinning it to the tree, in pain it struggle to free itself but unfortunately that was the end of the attack.

As a second later the arrow tip began to heat up before burning the slug killing the gross bug.

Seeing how weak the slug was, everyone felt more confident. So they moved deeper in search of more.

But they weren't the only ones with this plan, as other teams also did.

Chang Heng face was slightly pale as for some reason he felt that something was wrong.

For the last half hour he felt that something was wrong with his stomach, at first it wasn't noticeable but soon his stomach began to make noise.

But he couldn't focus on that right now, as he and his party had just arrived outside of the Purple Slug Territory themselves.

Chang Heng's plan was to use poison resistance cloth as masks, while the groups mage David would use wind spells to hopefully clear the thick mist.

So they made their way through clearing all slugs they came across along the way as they went deeper.

But weirdly after reaching the deepest part they didn't find more Slugs instead they found other partys who were likewise confused.

"What happened? Why isn't there any damn Slugs!" Steven yelled at the group of gathered partys.

The group of 23 people stopped before looking over to Chang Heng's party.

"You guys don't know either?" Someone stepped forwards and asked.

"No, do any of you know?" Chang Heng moved to the front of his group before asking.

However before anyone could answer another group came out from the forest.

This time it was Ling's Party that appeared and slowly got closer after seeing that they were friendly.

"Why are you all together?" Ling walked over looking around for answers.

"Well for some reason there isn't any Poison Slugs in this area, so we're trying to figure out why." This peaked both Ling's and Chang Heng's interest.

"Oh? Miss Ling I didn't expect you here." Chang Heng suddenly realised that Ling had also arrived.

"Chang Heng." Ling gave him a short nod in acknowledgement.

"So Miss Ling do you want to team up with us?" Chang Heng asked trying to get closer to her.

"Unfortunately I must refuse as it is against the rules for us to work together." Ling politely declined.

Inside she actually held quite a deal of disgust for Chang Heng, as he had lost all respect she held for him because of his actions.

She knew that Flora City wasn't seen as a proper City by the Empire but only a potential supply stop.

She had been to another city before and it was completely different, weather that be resources, wealth, population, opportunities or knowledge.

They weren't even on the base level of the rest of the Empire, so after seeing this she lost all her respect for Chang Heng who thought he was at the top of the world.

Hell there's normal common people with far more wealth than all of the Chang family assets put together.

So seeing Chang Heng walk around like he owned the world, well it wasn't the best attitude.

"Well we need to found out what has caused this change in case it affects the city in any way." Mira said with slight worry.

Upon hearing this everyone there frowned, as worry spread.

"We'll investigate together to find the source of this." Everyone agreed after so thought.

It was at that moment Mira saw movement some distance away but it wasn't another group of students, instead it was something small.

"Over there!" Mira yelled before running after it, with everyone following....