All Girls Dormitory
In the back of the Sacred Fire Academy, an all girls dormitory had been settup that held women from the youngest grade to the oldest grade.
Since Sacred Fire Academy had the most talented people in the entire Premair planet, this included thousands of beautiful women that all lived in the same premises.
Some of these women had gotten well past the age of puberty, and a few occasionally broke the rules and tried to sneak in their boyfriends. However, being caught with a guy on the premises usually didn't only mean expulsion, it meant losing resources for cultivation.
For that reason, when a girl wanted to date a man, they normally went to obscure places like the woods. Some even built houses that they rented out to other students in exchange for resources.
In a log cabin, however, two small individuals looked down at a umbra wolf that had a massive injury across its abdomen. It had been tossed by the black fire bear into a sharp tree branch that had cut open its stomach.
Dalilia looked at the fox with extreme fear while opening and closing her eyes several times. She wanted nothing more than to scream at the top of her lungs for her father to come rushing towards her. However, encroachment beasts, like the opposite sex, were not allowed to be kept in the school!
Even tending to an encroachment beast could get you in trouble because of their viscous nature! Nearly all encroachment beasts had extremely feral and wicked natures which made the umbra wolf all the more precious!
She cried and looked down at Grassley as he used his torn sleeve to try and stop the bleeding. The umbra wolf wimpered and seemed to appreciate the effort while letting out bated breaths. It looked over at the window, and the setting sun, like it had made peace with the idea of dying.
"Dalilia, please run to the girls dormitory, and get me some five year old sacred water! My father taught me how to heal injuries, but you better be quick."
"How-how did we survive. We should be-be… dead…" Delilia shivered in place while looking at Grassley with tears coming down her eyes. "If not for this umbra wolf, we would've died right. You told me on the way back that it protected us right?"
"I'm not omniscient! Just go get the sacred water! This creature is my friend! I must save it!"
"Ugh, fine, but you better explain more to me when I get back!" Dalilia rushed out of the cabin and ran towards the girls dormitory at her fastest speed.
A few students could be heard gossiping about two senior students that had gotten ripped to shreds by the black fire bears.
One girl sat on a man's lap in front of a large cabin, crying after hearing that her brother had been torn to shreds. What made it even worse was that a little brat named Grassley had survived, and had even been invited to the sword league.
The sword league recruited only the strongest students, and the fact that a little brat had benefited after her brothers death made the girl Amber supremely mad and saddened at the same time. She looked at the boy toy she'd spent the last month wooing, and gently brushed back his hair before whispering his name.
"I heard a child name Grassley is getting famous over my brother's dead body. You worked really hard to give my brother resources for me, and for that I'll always love you."
Amber pushed her hands into Samuel's best friend Lancin's chest, and gently nibbled on his ear. "However, if you really want to win my heart, make that little boy Grassley suffer when he tries to go to sword village. I might even make it worth your while."
"Amber, you know I can't mess with a child." Lancin laughed as Amber gently pushed him onto the grass. He looked up at her standing with her arms akimbo and sighed before pointing into her beautiful eyes.
"Fine, I promise to do my best. Maybe the kid can die in a ditch or something!"
"Excuse me!" Dalilia rushed passed the cabins and into the dormitory at her fastest speed. She couldn't help but get angry at herself for trying to take advantage of Grassley. If it wasn't for him, she'd be dead right now, and she could see that bear's claw inches from her face.
At that moment, everything went black and she ended up in Grassley's arms.
She sighed, and wondered how someone who couldn't lift a hundred kilograms, managed to outrun a black fire bear with her in his arms!
Her rage began to consume her, and caused her to barely miss her dorm room while a few students gathered in the hallways.
Back at the cabin,
Grassley reached into his shoe's hidden compartment and pulled out a storage ring that he gently slipped on his finger. Storage rings had a spatial compartment that could hold objects. These objects could be anything from rare tonics and potions to even the most powerful of weapons.
However, all Grassley had on him that could heal a umbra wolf had been taken out of the ring in exchange for valuable resources.
He could only try and develop a healing technique by himself using one of the manuals that his father had left him in his spatial ring. He took out the book called the will of the sacred flower, and placed it to his right before putting the ring safely back in his shoes.
He whimpered and opened up the first page of the book while keeping his hand on the umbra wolfs chest. A warm energy gathered around his hand as he quickly read through the manual of the sacred flower.
This technique was considered a level 5 technique, meaning that someone had to be able to understand five principles of cultivation to be able to understand it.
If someone wished to learn a destructive technique, one must learn five principles before mastering it.
Students at Grassley's age, normally only learned level 1 techniques, and many seniors would struggle learning level 3 techniques. However, Grassley, out of all things, had a huge aptitude for anything involving organic matter.
He rapidly turned through the book and tried to learn everything in the book as quick as possible.
'Come on! Just make something up Grassley!'
Grassley had understood the first concept of the manual of the sacred flower a long time ago, but he had never fully understood the second. The five concepts of the sacred flower had to do with healing, blood, scale, matter, and anatomy. Even though he understood the laws of blood really well, he couldn't figure out any of the other concepts no matter how hard he tried!
Cultivation required years and years of hardwork in order to understand it, and even people as gifted as Grassley couldn't skip ahead.
Wiping a tear from his eyes as he stared down at the wolf, he suddenly felt a cold breeze appear behind him.
"Son, give me the wolf," A man with long white hair smiled down at Grassley as he looked down in turmoil at the Umbra Wolf. "I'll bring him back to the asteroid. However, you better never tell your mothers that I visited you here!"
Aran leaned down and tapped the Umbra wolf, instantly causing it to heal. It's wound shut instantly before its body suddenly floated off the ground and landed in Aran's arms.
"However, I just wanted to tell you son.You will find out about your first mission tomorrow, and not only that, I expect you to take out your sacred heart every night and cultivate to the peak of your ability."
"Thank you father!" Grassley whimpered as he heard footsteps nearing the door. "However, when can I see you again?"
"Come visit me after you're strong enough to lift a mountain! Haha, who am I kidding! I'll probably visit you again in a year or two! I just couldn't take to see this little guy die in your arms!"
Grassley wiped the tears from his eyes before running towards his father's arms for a hug. However, without expecting it, his father disappeared and he just happened to reach out while Dalilia ran into the space.
Tripping over her, he looked out and saw what appeared to be an umbra wolf rushing off into the distance.
The wofl turned back and seemed to smile, causing Grassley to try to adjust his eyes while the little beast cranked its back and howled towards the moon!
"Ow! You're hands are on my face." Dalilia looked up at Grassley and blushed. "Now get off of me before I tell my father. We're too young to be kissing or anything like that!"
"The umbra wolf is fine. It just healed miraculously." Grassley looked into the bushes at where the umbra wolf had disappeared and wiped his eyes. "I-I don't know if we'll ever see that little guy again."
"You're still on me! Get off!" Dalilia pushed Grassley to the side and looked down at where the fox had been while she once again heard Ambers' voice in the distance. "Anyways, we got to go Grassley. It seems our teacher is looking for us, and he's extremely angry."
"You mean Master Jerick? What did we do!"
"It's what we didn't do! We were supposed to get three encroachment hearts each and turn them in before school ended! We barely got two for the both of us! If we don't get back in an hour, a student in the dorm told me we were going to get expelled!"
"Let's go get four more hearts!" Grassley grabbed Dalilia's hand and rushed towards the woods! "I didn't get into the top class just to get kicked out!"