Chapter 144: Chapter 144—Medical center
Chapter 135— Medical center
The journey to the wilderness was especially quiet, as most students had nervousness written all across their faces.
The silence, though, was very useful for Ernest as it allowed him to relax and calmly think of various reactions he would have to various situations, if he found himself there.
While they were still in the armored car in the city, most of the students couldn’t even be bothered to open their eyes as they were all very familiar with the city.
The moment they got outside the city, multiple students could be seen standing up a little from their seat, as they were very curious about what the outside of the city was like.
The peeping students were disappointed to see that they were completely surrounded by trees and bushes, with nothing spectacular going on.
They soon sat down again after getting bored of looking at trees.
Disappointment written all across their faces.Seeing their reaction a nice officer then explained "This region of the wilderness is mostly free of Potion beast as it is so close to the city walls but as we move deeper we will start seeing or hearing signs of Potion beast".
Hearing this, the look of disappointment vanished off the face of the students and it was replaced with expectancy.
"Is it really something we should be expecting?" Ernest thought, looking at his classmates.
"But I can’t hide the excitement in my heart for the battles that lay ahead" He smiled slyly.
They continued to progress through the wilderness smoothly for a while with nothing special happening.
"It has been a peaceful journey so far" Ernest thought.
Just then, the car suddenly vibrated harshly.
"What was that?" the students asked, fear evident on their faces.
The same officer replied again "It is just the roar of a powerful Potion beast deep in the wilderness, you have nothing to worry about".
"How far away?" a student asked, fear still lingering on his face.
"Uhmmm, If we kept travelling in this car for a day we probably won’t get there" Another officer replied this time.
"Ohh, that’s quite far" he said relaxed.
The officer looked at the student, a sly smile evident on his face.
"You all seem to understand how fast powerful Potion beasts and Devourers are, they could easily outrun this car by 3 times" Ernest thought, shaking his head at his classmates’ ignorance.
The rest of the journey went without a hitch, and soon they arrived at a camp-like location, as they could see various officers strolling around and doing different things.
The students holding all of their equipment were told to get down from the car as they arrived at their location.
The students were then led to a clearing, where a man was waiting for them with a stern face.
"You all are welcome to the forest region outpost" He said, still not smiling.
"You are now considered cadets of the military and your first mission will be to become Devourers".
"We will try to help you as much as we can along the way".
"Together with the already handed out equipment, you all will be provided with an already prepared map of the surrounding area which will help find your way back and a distress option that will allow us get to you as soon as possible".
"The map will be sent to your digital watches now".
The moment he finished speaking, notification sounds could be heard from all around the clearing as the maps were sent to the students.
"I am not your teacher, so I won’t be giving you lectures, all I am going to say is, be careful and try your best not to die, The wilderness is a dangerous place".
"You all are dismissed".
"Begin your hunt" He said in a loud voice wanting to rile up the students.
The students dispersed one by one towards different directions with heavy steps as there were chances not all of them would return safely.
Ernest, being the calm and cautious person he always was, moved towards the edge of the outpost and pulled up his map to check his specific direction.
"ohh okay, Golden-haired monkeys have been seen in this particular spot on a regular basis, that will be my destination then"he said while looking at the map.
The spot Ernest was looking at on the map was quite far away from the outpost and will take almost a day to get to by Walking.
After setting his destination Ernest started to move towards the wilderness alone as he was not willing to team up with people he didn’t trust.
Slowly but surely Ernest’s silhouette disappeared into the tall trees of the wilderness.
Ernest moved through the wilderness slowly and steadily trying his best to be as quiet as possible making almost no sounds at all.
"I wonder what direction that girl called Sophie went in" Ernest said as he moved through the forest after relaxing a bit.
He relaxed slightly after not encountering any beast since he had entered the forest (a big mistake he will soon come to realize).
The moment that thought entered his mind, it started spiraling into a lot of random thoughts making him completely distracted.
His distraction didn’t make him notice the faint scurrying sound that has been resounded around him for a while.
He was still lost in thought when a fast blur jumped straight at him from the side. Ernest caught sight of it from the corner of his eye but due to how unprepared he was, he couldn’t respond well enough.
The blur lunged at him with Ernest only being able to dodge slightly but not fully which caused to him feel a stinging pain on his forearm, he looked down to see it was blood tricking out from his wound.
"Damn" he cursed out loudly as he looked around to see the source of the attack but couldn’t see anything.
He waited patiently and soon enough the blur pounced at him again but this time Ernest was prepared as he raised his dual swords he already unsheathed to block.
He could only blame his lack of skill as he couldn’t block tight enough and the blur still ended up giving him a cut on his other arm.
Though this time the blur couldn’t hide and Ernest was finally able to see it in its entirety.
It was a small cat light beast that had brown strips running all along its back. It had a black coat completely all over except the part with strips.
"You bastard," Ernest cursed loudly.
They both had a stare off for a while before the cat-like beast pounced at Ernest again with ferociousness.
Luckily Ernest was able to block quite well this time and successfully parried the beast.
Due to the successful parry the beast wasn’t able to coordinate his movement well and seeing this opportunity Ernest rushed straight at it trying to catch it off guard.
He was able to successfully catch it off guard and directed a sword strike at it. The beast wanted to escape but due to Ernest’s large size advantage it wasn’t able to.
It suffered a fairly wide injury to the abdomen.If not for Ernest’s lack of experience with the dual short sword the beast should already be dead.
The injury made the beast more feral and it started lunging at Ernest ferociously, not caring for its life.
This continued for quite a while with Ernest trying his best not to get injured.
Finally Ernest was able to neutralize the beast after being forced to exchange injuries with it.
"Sighhhh, The wilderness is really dangerous" he said in a tired voice.
"Since I am a mage class I don’t need to think too much about the type of potion beast I kill as long as it has the plant control as it ability then it is perfect for me". he thought in his head.
"Plant control has two directions for development, some may steer more towards healing like Madame Clarice while some might steer more towards the offensive side".
"Which side should I choose?" Zack raised the question in his mind.
"Our team is probably going to have powerful offensive fighters like Lihanna and Ernest though I am not too sure about Ernest, so being offensive isn’t actually the best right now" he thought.
"But I also don’t want to be a burden that is only capable of healing the team"
"This is a really tough choicee to make" he said out loud.
While he was thinking he was sure he heard a faint whisper suddenly " Why not choose both then".
Hearing this he immediately jolted up, "who is there, who is there" , he continued to ask as he moved around to room to check for anyone but he didn’t find a thing.
He finally settled back in bed and started skimming through his digital watch ready to put his thoughts into action.
