Yue and Viktor only woke up at noon because they had to eat, they would’ve continued sleeping together comfortably otherwise. Yue felt awkward as he got ready to leave the tent. Everyone probably thought badly of him for hurting Viktor and for being so emotional.  They probably wouldn’t follow his orders like they used to.

“Y-You should—” Yue was gonna tell Viktor that he should be the main person giving orders and leading the group instead of him but Viktor cut him off with a peck on the lips.

“It’s fine. Everyone knows it was an accident.” Viktor said and kissed Yue’s cheek before pulling him along out of the tent.

They went to eat lunch with their usual group but noticed that Mai and Marianne were missing.

“Where are they?” Yue asked, he meant to ask the whole group but he was quiet and only Viktor ended up hearing and he clearly didn’t know either.

“Mai and Marianne are sparring,” Alexius explained, he figured that was what Yue had asked.

“Oh...They should still eat though…” Yue mumbled.

“They’ll probably eat when they’re done,” Viktor said and handed Yue some food. Yue decided to just eat and go find them later on if they didn’t return when he was finished.

—

After eating Yue was going to go look for Mai and Marianne who had yet to return but he was stopped by Mr. Wagner, who walked up to both him and Viktor and asked to talk to them in their tent. 

“The raid in Scotland has finished and they confirmed that there is a second dungeon in England.” Mr. Wagner explained and sighed.

“...Your mother coerced the mage association into speeding things up with the next raid so a survey team from Belarus will be sent to look for the dungeon within the next 24 hours.” Mr. Wagner said and looked toward Viktor.

Viktor was a bit worried about the survey team because of the conditions outside the barrier but if they were from Belarus they would be fine. Belarus’ conditions in terms of mana density and temperature were equal to,  if not worse in some parts than England’s. It had been less than 6 months since England started to become Ruined so it was a given that it couldn’t match Belarus’ conditions. Belarus had been ruined for 3 ½ years before its dungeon was cleared and because of it, the whole country can only be entered by mages of certain core levels. It had been almost 15 years since the country was ruined but the situation still remained the same. The Survey team would be fine out there.

“We need to set up a teleport pad 200 meters outside the barrier for them. It would be best to expand the barrier as well but I know you two are tired and probably don’t have enough mana for that so it can wait.” Mr. Wagner said and marked up where the teleport pad should be on the map.

“How long do you think we have left of the expedition?” Yue asked, setting up a teleport pad within 24 hours was a difficult task but going 200 meters out of the barrier was even more difficult because of the temperature. 

“I had thought that this expedition might carry over into November a lot more but it seems that it won’t. The Ivanovs are giving their full support for the next mission so it will likely finish by the end of next week if the dungeon is another Abyss. If it’s in the sky, however… It will probably take until the end of the month.” Mr. Wagner responded.

“Full support?... Wait, are the Ivanovs giving their full support, or is Belarus giving their full support?” Viktor asked. 

At surface level ‘The Ivanovs’ and ‘Belarus’ seemed interchangeable because the Ivanovs are the government of Belarus but ‘support’ made them two different things. Support from Belarus meant the Belarusian Council and the 5 Lords. Support from the Ivanovs on the other hand meant support from the direct members of the Ivanov family.

“Belarus’ 5 lords and your father will be coming.” 

Yue smiled a bit as he saw the exaggerated expression Viktor had when he heard his father was coming.

“So far all of the students have survived but things can still go wrong and I still think that we’re going to lose a few students...So keep your guard up.” Mr. Wagner said and left Yue and Viktor’s tent.

“...Well...We have work to do.” Yue murmured. He was amused by how annoyed Viktor was that his father was coming to London but he knew they didn’t really have time to waste.

Viktor sighed and stopped silently complaining and followed Yue out of the tent so they could get started with preparing the teleport pad.

“Oh, there they are,” Yue said and pointed to Mai and Marianne who were just then sitting down to eat. He didn’t walk up to them and just let them eat. He was fine just seeing that they were back and looked uninjured. He went off to get the supplies for the teleport pad with Viktor without any worries.

—

“That should be fine…” Yue murmured as he looked at the completed teleport pad.

“It’s only needed for two round trips so it should be fine with this,” Viktor murmured and stretched. The inner workings of teleport pads were hard to work with since they were so fragile so he had to stay in the same position for a long time.

“W-Wait! Don’t move your arms like that!” Yue panicked, holding Viktor’s arm still when he noticed he was stretching his arms and shoulders.

“Hm?” Viktor was confused for a second before he remembered, “Oh right my injury…” 

“What if it gets worse….”  Yue mumbled and used some healing magic on him.

‘The wound is just a bruise at this point, it’d probably just hurt a little.’ Viktor was thinking of saying that but Yue was pouting and looked so cute as he worried for him so he just hummed in agreement.

Viktor was going to lean in and kiss Yue but he was interrupted by the sound of the Teleport pad activating.

“We finished just in time…” Yue murmured and stopped healing Viktor and stopped pouting as he turned to the teleport pad.

‘I sense something annoying. I hope I’m wrong.’ Viktor thought to himself as he sighed and turned to the teleport pad. He groaned as the light from the teleport pad dissipated.

“Vitya!” 

“Ah. My father seriously hates me.” Viktor murmured and covered his eyes with his hand.

“Eh?” Yue tilted his head with a perplexed look. He was surprised that someone was calling Viktor by a diminutive and he was more surprised that Viktor was so unhappy with it.

A young man with blonde hair and turquoise-colored eyes ran up to Viktor with a bright smile and red cheeks. Yue was at first interested by the fact that the man’s eyes were a similar color to his but he then caught sight of the tension between him and Viktor and observed them for a bit. Viktor clearly looked annoyed but the young man was completely unfazed. Yue blinked a few times as he stared at them, for some reason there was an ugly feeling in his chest as he looked at them.

“Mark. Why. Are. You. Here?” Viktor said in Russian with what was clearly a glare.

Mark clearly didn’t care that Viktor was glaring as his smile was unfazed.

“This is my new job!” Mark chuckled and winked.

‘Why am I angry?’ Yue asked himself as he watched Mark and Viktor. 

“Delov. You’re making his highness angry.” The person who seemed to be the leader of the survey group said and walked up to Mark and Viktor.

“Huh? No, I’m not—hey! Let me go!” Mark exclaimed as the leader dragged him away. The survey group bowed their heads toward Viktor and Yue before silently going on their way. They went in groups of two in multiple different directions, beginning their search for the dungeon.

“Who was that…?” Yue asked Viktor. His expression looked much more annoyed than he probably intended.

“An old classmate…” Viktor answered and then turned to Yue. He was stunned as he saw Yue’s expression. 

‘Is he jealous….?’ Viktor thought and winced a little. He would’ve probably been happy if Yue was jealous because of someone like Ava but Mark was a completely different story.

‘Mark better keep his mouth shut...’ 

“Are you close?” Yue asked, pouting a bit.

“Not at all,” Viktor murmured. He took Yue’s hand and walked back to the barrier with him. Yue somehow didn’t feel very convinced.

“...Is he strong?” 

Viktor paused, he assumed that meant that Yue was in fact jealous.

“...I wouldn’t say he’s strong...but he is a Belarusian knight so he’s not necessarily weak either…” Viktor murmured, glancing at Yue’s expression.

Yue hummed in response but he did seem a bit peeved. He didn’t know why but it annoyed him that Viktor didn’t just straight up say that Mark was weak. He ended up walking in front and pulling Viktor along as they went back to camp.

—

The survey team sent a message that they had set up a place to meet up to pass the night and that they were fine and didn’t need assistance as soon as the sun started to set. Yue had already foreseen that they would have to fight monsters at the barrier so he figured the survey team would be in a similar situation.

“They can fight through the night if necessary.

Belarus has stronger monsters.” Viktor said and used a mana crystal.

Viktor’s words didn’t help the bitter feeling Yue had since he saw Mark. Yue was still asking himself why he was so upset at Mark and had yet to come up with an answer. 

“When do you think they’ll be done?” Yue murmured, he tried to phrase it like a normal question but in reality, he just wanted Mark to leave. Viktor was very aware of his intentions though.

“They’ll be done by tomorrow afternoon. The actual raid team will probably be here tomorrow night.” Viktor responded and chuckled at how Yue’s expression brightened up.

“William is on “probation” by the way. If he doesn’t follow orders exactly Mr. Wagner is going to have him lose credit for the year and regardless of that he’s getting in trouble with the mage association, So feel free to boss him around.” Viktor added as he and Yue walked out of the tent. Yue didn’t really even want to think about William, it made him angry just to imagine his face but he was glad that William was getting at least some sort of consequence.

Yue and Viktor walked to their positions in the short-range area and found that William had decided to be on the short-range team, almost as if he was there just to spite them. Yue had to take a deep breath before he could turn around and face away from him. He had felt himself reach for his sword after looking at William and had to force his hand still by gripping it tightly with his other hand.

The sun quickly set and everyone braced themselves. Monsters started to appear and everyone was left confused. There were only skeletons, hundreds of them coming from far away from the barrier. Regular skeletons and the wax monsters were coming at them at full speed. Yue’s prophecy had been of him fighting one of the wax monsters but he didn’t foresee that there would only be skeletons attacking. It was unusual and confusing, why did all of the monsters disappear? Even if the dungeon disappears, the monsters in a ruined area wouldn’t disappear so where were the other monsters.

Yue was trying to think of what to do as the skeletons got closer but suddenly the skeletons that got close to the barrier burst into flames and Yue couldn’t help but relax as he turned to look at Mai who was just smiling, proud of herself for managing to cast the spell properly. Yue exhaled and rushed out of the barrier.

“Skeletons aren’t difficult anyway,” Yue murmured and drove the skeletons backward as he knocked them down with consecutive slashes.

“Mai! Don’t worry about the regular skeletons they take a lot of firepower to burn, just focus your magic on the wax monsters! Alexius, Walter, strike the cores of the wax monsters. Everyone else deal with the regular skeletons.” Viktor instructed and rushed out of the barrier to just fight anything in his way like Yue was doing.

Everyone did as they were told and they held back the skeletons for a while. Yue had found his flow and was blitzing through monsters easily. It was the first time in a while that he had felt like he was back to who he used to be. This was the style of fighting that felt most natural to him. He did feel like maybe he seemed a bit bloodthirsty for smiling as he killed monsters but he had no time to focus on something like appearances.

Yue’s flow seemed unbreakable. He was surprised when Mai was able to reach the wax skeleton he was fighting with her fire but his flow wasn’t interrupted, his smile only widened. Mai was using cultivation skills along with her spells and Yue couldn’t help but laugh.

“Gosh… How could you waste such Cultivation talent by not paying attention during lectures… You could’ve been a grandmaster by now, Mai!”  Yue said in Vietnamese and laughed as he continued to cut down skeletons.

Mai smiled slightly, she wished she could laugh with him but it actually was taking a lot of concentration and power to keep her flames in check even with cultivation techniques. She looked around and her smile disappeared. Yue and Viktor were doing pretty well but the same couldn’t be said for the rest of the group. Elizabeth was healing William and two students from the second tier class who were trying their best to keep the skeletons away despite their injuries and Ava and Anika were just barely managing to keep themselves from being surrounded by skeletons.

Alexius and Walter were definitely tired but Alejandro had yelled out to Viktor to ask for permission to help them with the wax skeletons and joined them so they were doing a bit better than the other groups.

“They’re doing a bit too well.”

Yue had a prophecy that completely knocked him out of his flow. He cut down all the monsters around him and rushed back to Mai’s side. Mai was confused when Yue suddenly appeared in front of her and pushed her down. She was going to complain but then she noticed the giant magic arrow right above her that Yue had cut through.

“... It’s that person again…” Yue mumbled and stood on guard.

“If I attack the strongest two they’ll just cut through it and if I attack the third strongest they’ll just protect her… What if I go for the fourth?”

 Yue could feel another arrow coming and braced himself but was confused when he realized it wasn’t aiming for him. He quickly turned around and looked toward William and Elizabeth.

“MOVE!” 

It was too late, however.