Chapter 75: Incompetence

The Trials for today were over and the class was gathering together behind the Academy. Soon, they would embark on a hunt.

Ciaran didn't like the fact he had to leave his spider behind, but he told himself to suck it up.

'It's for her own good Ciaran, Ari wants to grow stronger too.'

He decided to distract himself by leading the hunt. The students weren't worried at all. After all, they had two Rank One Warriors and this was a Tier, Zero Zone. There was no way, they would get killed here.

"All right, how many of you have experience in hunting." He asked, and most kids raised their hands.

He looked pleased. He thought the group would have to babysit the whole class, but maybe there was a chance to have some real fun here after all.

"How many of those hunts were for Rank Zero?" This time only five hands were raised. Two belonged to Clara and Sunny, one to Mille, and the other two belonged to two boys.

'It couldn't be easy for once could it?'

"Right. Did you five hunt alone or did you have help?"

They looked at him like he was insane.

"How can we hunt animals when alone when they are stronger or faster than us, obviously we had help," Mille said in outrage.

He didn't say anything, he just gestured for them to watch. He then walked casually towards the forest. There were a few horned rabbits casually enjoying their meal there. They never even registered that the boy was there, he just walked up to one of them, picked it up by the thought, and before the animal could even react he twisted.

Then just as casually as he went, he came back and tossed it her feet.

"Like that. Twenty-four more of these and I am done. I can finish it all in a few hours if I am lucky. Now, you guys on the other hand will need some time to learn. Who wants to go first?" He asked them.

Clara and Sunny were ready to go, but he just shook his head. It was pointless to overwhelm the animals with the pure advantage of a higher Rank.

Mille gritted her teeth and went on ahead. She tried to mimic Ciaran, casually walking to another group of rabbits, but before she was even halfway to them they all stared at her. They didn't run when she chose to go a bit closer to them.

She thought, even if she couldn't catch them off guard, she could kill a few rabbits. As she got closer and closer, some of the rabbits started to hiss at her.

She found the fear of the little creatures cute and charged at them. Before she even got close to them they charged as well, and they were faster, much faster than she ever gave them credit for.

Even Ciaran was a little surprised at their speed, and at the fact, they chose to fight and not to run.

One of them slammed its head in her right tight and she bellowed in pain. Clara and Sunny charged and chased the other bunnies away. While Ciaran stopped the others from helping Mille out.

She was tossing and turning on the ground, the rabbit firmly stuck in her foot. She slammed her foot into the ground along with the dirty animal. Each slam caused her pain, and each movement was accompanied by a scream.

After fifteen minutes of this, the rabbit was finally dead, and Ciaran allowed the others to help her. The girl was in tears. There was a large hole in her foot, and she had lost a lot of blood.

It was a serious injury, but nothing the medics wouldn't be able to fix.

"Lesson number one, everything here will be able to kill you. We will keep you alive, but we will not spare you the pain. If you want an easy hunt, group up on animals and share the profits."

"Lesson number two, stealth is important. As you saw it can make hunting very easy. Learn to use it, and how to protect yourselves from it. I assume you don't want to end up like my rabbit, yes?" He laughed.

They all went pale and understood why their teacher was reluctant to allow them to come. They thought she was underestimating them, but they were wrong. The forest was dangerous, even here, and now they were on their own.

Seeing them consider backing off, he decided to employ the carrot, seeing as how the stick had done its job.

"Ok, let's bring Mille to the medical wing and later I will show you how to hunt. No pain, no danger this time, I promise." He flashed them a smile.

An hour later they were back. It only took them ten minutes to go back to the Academy, but the bulk of the time was spent explaining why a student had a hole in her leg.

The nurses were not pleased with all, and went to complain about the extra work they would be having to the headmaster, but that was not one of Ciaran's problems.

This time he organized a group of over thirty students.

The fast ones would chase the rabbit, and as a group of five, the slow ones would spread out and cut off its escape. The other rabbits were offered an easy escape and they took it.

Now that it was twenty-nine against one the fight went much smother. They just took turns kicking it until it passed out.

"Ok, now finish the job please, we don't have all day," Ciaran said in annoyance.

No one moved, and he didn't even understand why. They did the hard part, it was incapacitated and defenseless, they just had to stomp on its head one last time.

"No one here has taken a life dufus, not one of us," Clara told him.

"And? What has that got to do with anything, just kill it? Is it an achievement or what?" The confusion in his voice creeped them out more than the earlier sight of him just casually killing a creature.

Even Sunny was slightly taken aback. She liked to torment her opponents because she found it funny. Yet even she never saw their lives as something cheap. The boy however didn't seem to hold such values at all. He didn't even understand their current plight.

"Taking a life is a sin, Rony," Clara told him, knowing full well he would cringe at that.

"We all have to eat. Today we just caught ourselves some fresh meat. Even if we don't eat meat, plants have souls too. This whole thing is a pointless charade. Who will do me the honors?" he asked, but no one moved.

Not Clara, not Sunny, and not the rest. The little creature was scary before, but now that it was unconscious it just looked like one of the pets they used to play with back in Year One, just slightly bigger.

Eddy gritted his teeth and stepped in. He fell to his knees and placed both hands on the rabbit's throat. He squeezed and the rabbit's life faded bit by bit. As tears were rolling down his eyes, Eddy had completed his first kill.

Most of the children were shaking, even Clara and Sunny weren't ok with what had just happened. Ciaran was just done with all of them. He wanted to be done with at least ten similar hunts today, but seeing everyone like that ruined his plans.

"At this rate, we would only be able to complete one or two more hunts today. How sheltered could you guys be?" Without Ariadne, his bad habit of thinking out loud was back.

He was pissed they couldn't even handle this much. He had never had an issue with taking a life, because he understood it was necessary, did they never think about where the food they ate even came from.

The more he thought the angrier he got, so he announced an hour-long break and sat down to meditate.

'I wish Ari was here. I need at least one reliable partner to watch my back, and as it turns out, I have none here.'

As the boy was emptying his mind the two girls looked at a pack of rabbits nearby. They could guess what Ciaran was thinking, and as much as it pained them, he was right.

They were soft. They never had to take a life, so they hadn't.

"Ok. I will do it damn it." Cursing out. Clara engulfed her whole body in light and she charged at the rabbits.

She caught one and with lethal precision, she cut his head off. Her light acted as a blade and it chopped it clean off.

Sunny just did what Ciaran did but with less stealth and a lot more speed. She grabbed one and twisted. A nice clean, painless kill, completely not her style.

"Damn, Clara and I thought I was bloodthirsty." She laughed at her now blood-covert friend.