Mai had been planning to join Yue in the turret that night but Yue kicked her out to the mid-range area. She was still laughing as she was shooed away by him.

“Why are you laughing?” Walter asked as he stood beside her, on guard.

“Viktor is just amazing, He’s so shameless,” Mai said and continued to laugh.

“Huh?”

“Don’t worry about it!” Mai said and got into a proper position. She wanted to keep it to herself, she could also feel Yue staring at him from the turret.

In the turret, Yue was fiercely glaring at Mai from afar while Marianne looked confused.

“Did Miss Mai do something?” Marianne asked.

“Don’t worry about it,” Yue grumbled and sighed. 

Marianne went to sit beside him on the window sill of the turret and patted Yue’s head as a sort of comfort. She had found that Yue wasn't actually that intimidating, especially in private where not many people were watching. As much as Yue hated being thought of as a child, he tended to allow little actions like those. Marianne used magic glasses to start watching over the front lines while Yue just looked forward.

“Do you think it’ll be bad?” Marianne asked and observed the area past the barrier. The Long-range students actually had a lot of work to do. They had to kill anything that got close to the barrier but did not enter it so in a way the price for being generally safer was having to do a lot of work.

“Probably, they’re stronger than the werewolves.” Yue murmured as he watched the creatures from outside the barrier begin to move.

“Remember everyone, save your magic. Try to just hit your target, even a small injury will make it easier for the short-ranged group.” Yue said telepathically to the rest of the long-range group. He was nonchalant as he pointed his finger at a monster that got close and sent a beam of light right through it. The Barrier was specifically made so attacks going from the inside out wouldn’t harm the barrier.

The short and mid-range sections were practically sitting around for a couple of hours while the long-ranged sections shot down monsters as they made their way to the barrier. They were attempting to use as little mana as possible but after hours on end of spellcasting, they were all getting tired. 

Yue was fine but he could definitely feel Mana Exhaustion creeping up. Marianne was holding herself back from showing her exhaustion too much since Yue looked perfectly fine in her eyes. She shot at a monster but it kept moving, not even reacting to the injury.

“E-Eh?” Marianne murmured and fired another magic attack at it.

Yue noticed her slowly getting more panicked and looked over while shooting magic at some of the monsters in the area he had taken charge of. The monster was covered in a black cloak but Its beady red eyes were visible. Yue was curious and shot at it himself and noticed that once it went through the cloak nothing happened, the monster just continued moving without stopping.

“Viktor, there’s a monster in a black cloak near the— Ah!” Yue started saying through telepathy when a large glowing red magic arrow suddenly appeared in front of his eyes. 

“Yue?!” Viktor exclaimed in telepathy and turned to the turret Yue was in. Nothing seemed to be happening but he could see Yue’s shocked glowing blue eyes.

Yue realized it was a prophecy when it immediately disappeared and Marianne looked at him confused. He didn’t have the chance to look at the surrounding area and circumstances in the prophecy because of shock but he kept his eyes in the direction it came from.

“S-Sorry, please use insight on the cloaked monster near your right behind the barrier. We can’t shoot it down so in the worst-case scenario it’s a skeleton warrior .” Yue said and held his sword.

“Okay…” Viktor murmured through telepathy and turned around, the people around him were confused but they kept their stances to wait.

Viktor used insight on the monster and saw that it was in fact a skeleton warrior. He relayed that to Marianne and then told Alejandro who stood near him to back up. He condensed magic into the shape of a ball and sent it flying to the monster. The magic destroyed the skeleton completely and left nothing behind. 

Yue gulped a bit and scanned the area outside the barrier. He didn’t know what would cast the magic arrow but he worried that the dungeon boss was messing around in the outside world and would be the one who sent the arrow. He was on edge and tried not to focus too much on killing the little monsters as he pretty much waited for the arrow to appear.

“I don’t see any more of them…” Marianne murmured, looking around.

“Just one is a bad sign already.” Yue murmured.

A couple more hours passed and Yue was starting to think that it wasn’t actually going to happen today, he didn’t put down his guard though.

He observed all of the other students, the short-range students were on edge after witnessing Viktor’s attack while the mid-range students were practically falling asleep from boredom. The other long-range students were about to cough up blood from magic exhaustion after shooting monsters for so long.

Yue suddenly felt a shiver go through his spine, he almost didn’t have time to actually draw his sword. Before the arrow even appeared within his sight he heard Viktor yell his name.

“Yue!” 

Everyone was looking at Yue’s turret now and the horror on their faces when the arrow became visible was clear.

Yue was confused about how Viktor even knew it was coming but he ignored Viktor’s yell and just focused on the arrow that had finally appeared before him. Marianne didn’t even get to react when Yue jumped down off the turret, she only saw the arrow for a split second right as Yue did that.

Yue raised his sword and imbued it with magic in the second he jumped off. He pushed his sword through the magic arrow silently hoping it wouldn’t break for the sake of his ribs and his sanity. The sword met some resistance but Yue still managed to cut the arrow in half and make it shatter in only a few seconds before starting to fall.

For a second of falling he was still appalled that his sword managed to cut the arrow, the arrow was from an ember level skill and he was only Platinum level. He quickly got back to reality when he realized he had been falling. He was about to imbue his boots with magic to soften his landing but he found that they were already full of magic.

“Huh?” Yue murmured as he landed. He dug his heels into the ground to stop his momentum so he landed in between the mid-range area and the short-range area. He held his side a bit, the landing hurt a bit but not as much as he had expected it to hurt when he was still on the turret thinking of how he’d deal with the arrow.

The 1st tier students weren’t surprised that Yue was fine or that he managed to destroy the arrow, they were just on edge at the thought that there might be more arrows coming toward them. The 2nd tier students were astounded, even those who were in Yue’s group didn’t expect much fighting power from him.

“Stay on guard,” Yue said to Ava whom he ended up right next to.

“Y-Yes ma'am!” Ava quickly said and even saluted, feeling a bit intimidated by Yue.

Yue looked at her with a confused look. A bit weirded out by being called “Ma’am”. He was going to tell her not to call him that but Mai and Viktor rushed up to him.

“What in the world was that?” Mai asked 

“Did you hurt yourself?” Viktor asked, his face was calm and composed since everyone was watching them but Yue could see the worry in his eyes. Yue let go of his side, he didn’t want Viktor to worry about it.

“I’m fine...we should deal with that first though…” Yue murmured and pointed at the hole in the barrier where the negative energy was beginning to seep in.

Yue wasn’t sure of what to do about the barrier. The only way he knew to fix it would definitely make him seem suspicious because of the scales that would appear around his eyes since the spell was an ‘azure dragon exclusive’ of sorts. 

Viktor summoned a grimoire into his hand and opened it, quickly casting a spell to fix the barrier along with a purification spell to clear the air of negative energy. Yue looked at the grimoire Viktor had summoned and noted that it wasn’t the new grimoire made from his hair but rather the one that he saw in Viktor’s academy city Manor. He wanted to ask about the new grimoire, and what kind of spells were on both grimoires but he decided against it.

“Where could that arrow have come from?” Mai asked, nervous about what dangerous things could be out there.

“Either a mage…or a dungeon boss.” Yue murmured, he shivered at the thought of “that organization” pulling the strings behind the whole situation here in London. They had ties to the government in China and so it wasn’t unlikely that they had people in the United Kingdom.

“Can a mage actually survive over there though…?” Mai murmured, looking over the barrier. There was a large building a couple of hundred meters outside of the Barrier that marked where the negative energy was so strong that a normal person would die in seconds.

“The negative energy isn’t at its peak over there...A peak platinum level mage could go over there and survive around a week of exposure.” Viktor said and closed his grimoire before sending it away.

Viktor was using insight so that statistic was most likely accurate. Yue was curious after hearing that.

“Then couldn’t we expand the barrier all the way to Northampton by just purifying and expanding as we go? That would be pretty easy wouldn’t it?” Yue said and pointed at himself and Viktor.

Viktor and Mai had slightly amused looks after hearing Yue’s suggestion.

“Yue, Northampton is over 100 kilometers away, as in 200 Li¹Traditional Chinese unit of distance, equal to 0.5 km, 0.311 miles…” Mai murmured and raised an eyebrow.

“And?” Yue asked, “That’s not that far.”

“That would take almost 24 hours on foot…” Viktor murmured.

“Eh? Is there a large mountain on the way?” Yue asked, pulling a folded map from his blazer pocket. He signaled for the long-range people to continue their task as he did so.

“No..?”

“Then why would it take so long? 200 Li should take us at most 6 hours²This is how long it would take you to ride a bike from London to Northampton if we’re taking our time,” Yue asked, genuinely confused. He remembered traveling around 500 Li in less than a day while chasing a monster through Greater Hinggan³ Mountain range in the Inner Mongolia region of northeast China, 1200km/750 miles long during a hunt.

Viktor almost laughed, “Well...For us, I guess it’s definitely possible but we’d drop dead from Mana exhaustion before too long.”

“Area purification, barrier expansion, and personal purification spells would be difficult to cast even once consecutively so...casting them multiple times in one day…”

Yue felt a bit silly for suggesting that now, and his cheeks were tinted red.

“I mean instead of expanding the whole barrier, you could just make a new barrier and set it up so we can slowly make our way to the new barrier when expanding later on...like a waypoint of sorts,” Mai suggested.

“That would work but only Yue and I would be able to go…” Viktor murmured, tilting his head a bit.

“That’s not a problem is it though?” Mai said with a smirk. 

Yue blushed and glared while Viktor just chuckled.

“It’s not a problem for us, it’s a problem for the people who get left behind without their captains to protect them,” Viktor said with a jokingly haughty tone.

“I can handle it,” Mai smirked, “My power is still at its peak since it’s still technically summer.”

Yue seemed uncertain and a bit guilty. He felt it was a bit reckless to leave just Mai in charge when he knew how scared she had been to come to London and how she was probably only running on her trust for his words. He wanted to say that they should just slowly increase the barrier over time normally instead but they were interrupted.

Viktor suddenly pulled Yue to his chest and drew his sword, quickly cutting in half another magic arrow that was about to hit Yue. Everyone was frozen in shock and suspense.

“I-It’s definitely aiming for me. I thought the first one was just aimed at the turret because it's the closest to the edge of the barrier but that one…” Yue stammered, moving away from Viktor and drawing his sword again. He was a bit shaken, he wasn’t always able to foresee sudden potential dangers when they’re destroyed before causing any sort of damage to him or others, but this time was different. For a fraction of a second, he had started having a prophecy about the arrow but two strange things happened at that time. 

One is that Yue’s prophecy was too slow. Yue’s prophecies always happen before the prophecy comes true, that’s why they’re prophecies. They can happen even a nanosecond before the event takes place. In the fraction of a second that Yue was about to start his prophecy of the arrow, the arrow had already struck. Even if the prophecy had happened, it would have failed to happen before the event. The other strange thing that happened was that Viktor stopped him from having the prophecy. He would’ve had the prophecy and probably would’ve gotten hurt because of the arrow but Viktor somehow stopped him from having the prophecy completely when he pulled him.

‘What in the world is your power?’ Yue thought, staring at Viktor. He quickly focused back on the matter at hand and sheathed his sword that he had drawn from instinct because of the weird situation and interference with his ability.

“I’m going outside the barrier,” Yue said and picked up a piece of the shattered arrow. He rushed off outside the barrier, holding his free hand up to his face as he cast a spell that bound and squeezed the monsters outside the barrier until they exploded. He didn’t really care about the blood or how gruesome the scene must’ve been, he had used such spells millions of times.

He extracted the archive particles from the piece of the arrow and grinned a little, the mage who had cast the spell had gotten too cocky. He created a magic arrow as well, adding on the Archive particles from the opponent’s stroke.

‘And just to make sure you don’t miss…’ Yue hummed as he tapped the arrow, casting another spell on it before letting it zoom away. The monster who had seen him killing the other monsters and creating the arrow retreated quickly. 

Yue was standing there pleased with himself for a second and then he remembered that he was standing in an area filled with negative energy and that he had already almost exhausted his Mana before even casting those spells. Of course, these things were hard to forget when you’re about to cough up blood.

Viktor had been at the edge of the barrier, so he got a pretty clear view of Yue covering his mouth with his hand as he coughed up blood. He only knew he was coughing up blood because Yue failed to hold back a bit, he had quickly tried to hide it and rushed back to the barrier but Viktor had already noticed.

He silently stood by the barrier and waited a couple of minutes. No more arrows appeared but Yue used his eyes just to see if any attacks would come later. He saw a relatively calm afternoon and felt relieved. He silently waited for around half an hour, ignoring Viktor’s pointed stare before Mr. Wagner suggested for the mid-range students to take over long-range and for the long-range students and Yue to go rest.

Yue silently thanked him and tried not to seem like he was in a rush when he went off to the tent. He was too tired to even sense that Viktor had followed him. When he got to the tent he rushed to get a small towel from his suitcase to spit out the blood from his mouth on to. He sat on the floor near his cot and tried to collect himself and not pass out. Mana exhaustion rarely happened to him but if it did happen it was always in Autumn. He was at his peak power in Spring and his power still pretty good in Summer and Winter but Autumn was his weakest point in the year, his mana seemed to immediately disappear in Autumn.

Yue jumped a little when Viktor’s cold hand touched his face suddenly. Viktor examined his face, trying to discern whether he was being affected by negative energy. Yue was surprised but with the exhaustion in his body, it was hard to lift his head and even react.

He passed Yue a mana crystal and watched him absorb the mana silently. Yue was clearly exhausted and as bad as it was for his health to hold in the blood, he couldn’t even scold him for it. Had he spit out the blood immediately, he would have accidentally allowed negative energy inside of him. 

‘You’re so prideful…’ Viktor thought as he looked at Yue's tired eyes. He smiled a bit and kissed Yue’s forehead as he took Yue’s hair out of its ponytail, letting it drape over his shoulders in a way that he found Adorable. 

“Get some sleep,” Viktor said and removed Yue’s blazer before lifting him onto his cot and covering him with a blanket. He ignored the bony feeling of Yue’s body as he lifted him, it was too late to suggest that he have something to eat since he was already completely asleep.