This would mark the first appearance of the fox spirit.

Villin, who was behind the transfigured mask, was looking at his opponents as they were looking at him. He could feel Fang’s amazed gaze set upon him as the beast fully expected to be hit by the spells.

After both parties looked at each other for a couple of seconds, Villin raised his hand. The ground to the right of the students shifted slightly, attracting the attention of the students as they were trying to figure out what kind of attack would be sent towards them.

Yet, as they were looking to the right, vines rose from the ground to the left of them. Since the students were looking at either Villin or the shifting ground to their right, they only noticed the vines when they had grown high into the sky.

And then, the fight began.

Multiple students quickly shot spells towards Villin to try and stop his casting, but every time a streak of light approached him, the earth itself rose up to protect him, all that got to him were some stone splinters that didn’t do all that damage.

The six students had a lot more difficulty defending themselves.

Twelve thick long vines had risen out of the ground already, if each student had to work against two that’d be doable but the problem was that the vines would suddenly, randomly team up together to get a certain student out of the fight.

They didn’t try to entangle anybody, instead, they smashed them on the heads, before they knew it three of them were already knocked out.

From a distance, Villin smiled. He had really only used a couple of spells in this fight. Derivative versions of ‘Vinea Tenura’ was the brunt of it mixed up with some ‘Obiectus Prohibere’ occasionally. He hadn’t even felt the need to cast ‘Reverto’ as his transfiguration was more than enough to defend himself against this unorganized bunch.

Villin felt it was somewhat sad, he expected the people here to have at least some combat experience but looking at this group, it didn’t seem very promising.

Even now, the remaining three hadn’t picked a target to focus on as they just mindlessly fired spells at whatever vine got closest to them, occasionally sending a spell Villin’s way as well.

If he were in the group, he would either have everyone focus on certain specific vines to lessen the combat power they have or altogether attack the caster.

There was only one somewhat capable fighter in the group, Villin had noticed. He used laceration spells to deal with the vines and smashing ones when firing at Villin. His main redeeming quality was that he was quick on his feet. If a vine came for him, he wouldn’t just cast spells at it, he’d physically dodge instead.

Still, it was too much for him. Villin noticed he was constantly keeping an eye on his fellow fighters, helping them out when necessary, he didn’t seem all that focused on his complete surroundings.

If Villin were to cast a couple of spells right now, they wouldn’t even see them coming.

He decided to keep it simple though and simply pointed towards the earth beneath the students’ feet.

Since they were too focused on the fight with the vines, nobody sensed the magic power, and everyone soon found themselves stuck in quicksand. 

Seeing what had happened, Max raised his hands and dropped his wand, the two remaining people under him did the same seeing as how he had surrendered.

He didn’t resist as a vine entangled him and dragged him out of the quicksand, soon, the three ‘survivors’ were lined up next to each other, unable to move.

Even though the vines were quite tight and it hurt a fair bit, Max didn’t complain, he had been here for a year already and he knew that this place had nearly no rules. There was a student in the previous year who got tortured for hours by a masked assailant.

Seeing as how their own assailant was also masked, this didn’t bode well for them.

Yet before anything, Villin turned to Fang, the beast seemed confused at first, but then licked Villin a couple of times as he wagged his tail.

Satisfied, Villin now walked over to the three captives that hadn’t been knocked out. He focused on Max specifically as, in a proper team, the boy would’ve done a lot better.

Max restrained the fear that he felt was about to show on his face, and looked at Villin straight on. A moment later, a voice entered his mind, “Well hello there. Now, who may you be and why did you attack my dear Fang?”

Max felt terrified, he had never heard of ‘Mentallage’ and so he had no idea how this person could speak into his mind. He focused himself, deciding to think about all of this later, and decided to quickly answer.

“This- I am Max, I lead a small branch of ‘The Shielding Lions’. I got a report that there was an Ice Wolf near our base and so we set out to get rid of it. We had no idea it was somebody’s mount, please excuse our obliviousness.”

As soon as he got to speak, Max used this time to try and make a good impression on this unknown person. He could see the other two conscious members of the guild looking at him in confusion since they couldn’t hear the masked man speaking in their minds but he didn’t bother with them right now.

Villin thought about what to do for a couple of moments before deciding on something.

“I’ll just take what you guys have.” 

With this, the vines around each of their necks tightened as they all started struggling at the same time, a little bit later, they had all fainted.

Villin grabbed their wands and crystal holders leaving the rest, he couldn’t take much since he didn’t have a spatial bag but a few thousand magic crystals still made it worth it. The loss of these crystals would probably hurt the development of this small branch quite severely but Villin didn’t feel bad about taking them. He had won them, after all.

Looking at the sleeping beauties with red marks on their necks, Villin figured that just leaving them there should be fine as this is a tile safe from predators. But the very fact that this could also happen at a different time had him somewhat worried. If someone got beaten down and knocked out in an unsafe tile, and they were just left behind. There would be a decent chance that a beast would come to eat them before they would wake up and since the person that knocked them out didn’t kill them, they wouldn’t get in trouble.

It was a scary thought but Villin didn’t think of it too much. Even if you could, there probably weren’t so many heartless people around. After all, the students here are all around twenty and they probably hadn’t been in many life-threatening situations. Then again, if you’ve been in this place for a couple of years, that probably changes.

Leaving these thoughts to be, Villin and Fang left the tile soon after. When Villin asked Ashera how long Fang would be under their control now, she made it clear that she didn’t know. She could figure it out by invading the beast’s mind but that could have severe consequences to it.

When moving now, Villin decided to go slower compared to previously. Fang only sprinted when it seemed necessary to circumvent a certain creature.

Since it was looking like Fang would be around for a month-or-so, Villin decided not to overwork him. It would be a shame if he died because Fang collapsed when they were escaping from a certain dangerous creature.

Just like that, they reached F6, just a single tile away from where he found Fang. It was now that things might get a bit more complicated as they may find creatures faster and stronger than Fang, but, they were also reaching the limits of the map Villin had, he wouldn’t know where the teleportation points or ‘forbidden tiles’ were.

It was the latter that he was especially hesitant about. He was confident he could take on the creatures in this area, but there would be a problem if there was a sudden difficulty spike. The forbidden tiles had either a toxic environment, this could easily be seen and Villin should be able to leave it quickly, a much stronger creature compared to normal, these would be very dangerous as the fight may be very dangerous, but there would be just as much chance that he would never encounter it. But it could also mean there was a massive pack of creatures there, that would be a problem, they would be able to attack in the dozens, leaving him and Fang helpless.

After some thought, Villin figured he could always create a hole in the ground for him and Fang to hide in and hope the opponents can’t dig.