Blood and viscera splattered across Yuriko’s body, held fast from staining her clothes and skin through her condensed aura. Not that she couldn’t feel the slimy ickiness, quite the contrary, rather. She could feel and even taste every particle as they sloughed towards the ground, and it was only the fact that she was able to mute the sensations that prevented her from getting sick right then and there. Of course, she could isolate the senses her Anima emulated, but the default was always everything at once. 

She pulled back her sense of smell and taste, and with a bit of hesitation, her sense of touch. Then she flared her Anima and increased the concentration of Radiant energy to burn away the filth. 

She normally would not have minded getting showered in viscera and gore, especially considering how her Anima insulated her from such things in the first place. But the elemental goat’s blood and flesh just had a disgusting component to it and she couldn’t help but ick out on it. 

Ick.

Smoke rose around her as the viscera began to boil, then burst to flame. The goat had scattered its body parts across a wide radius, roughly a dozen or so paces around their combat point. Yuriko wrinkled her nose at how the blood died the golden wheat brackish red, and the stench was horrific. It penetrated past her deadened Anima and straight into her nostrils. She took a couple of steps back and realised that her sabre was similarly coated with blood. She burned it off with an extension of her Anima, then sheathed it. She latched the scabbard onto her belt and sighed. 

The amount of effort she used to fight the elemental goat wasn’t equivalent to what a student would be able to use. Her initial spell, a one-circle Bolt spell, deflected off the creature’s fur, and she had no idea how many circles a spell would need to penetrate. Part of her duties was to scout, though she was sure the Golden Fields had been around for centuries. Shouldn’t the Republic have more accurate scouting reports by now? 

She had not been able to finish reading the report, so she didn’t know, but she might as well continue her initial foray. And she needed to ascertain how much of a challenge these goats would give her students. 

The Bolt spell defaulted to Radiant energy simply because it was the most abundant elemental energy around her, but a two-circle Bolt had a specific elemental aspect and also had the advantage of gathering more of the elemental energy than the one-circle version. She should begin with that. The problem was that the two-circle elemental boll variants had a similar range, five to ten paces. The goats were at least that long. It wasn’t a good spell to use in that case, if the students wanted standoff capabilities. Ah, she hadn’t bothered to inscribe longer-ranged spells, but she had a three-circle elemental blast template in her spellbook. She fished it out and reviewed the spell. 

Fire Blast wouldn’t be a good fit, considering the goats were fire elemental beasts. Wind blast? No, the Wind elemental version was a Wind Blade, not a blast. Earth blast conjured a cone of stones that mimicked the blast of a shotgun, or perhaps it was the other way around? She might have read that firearms were a relatively new weapon. Or was she conflating things with Irvalla? 

The Water Blast shot out a thin stream of high-pressure water that could serve as a blade. Probably. Well, she could test all four Blast spells, couldn’t she? 

She hovered above the wheat field. The blast zone left by the dead goat was really noticeable, and the stench wasn’t abating with the wind. She spotted another elemental goat nearly a longstride away, and she could see it sniffing around warily. 

She flew closer, angled away from its view. The Blast spells had a longer range at twenty-five paces. It wasn’t much better considering the goats were fast. Still, if she approached them from an angle they couldn’t see…

Ah, she should walk, not fly. 

She dropped to the ground and stalked the goat. It was well within her perception range by now, and she could also cast spells through runescript formations already. Ah, not the elemental blast spells as she hadn’t converted them yet, but she could try pummeling the goat with the one-circle spell to check if it was really immune to Radiant energy. Hmmm. Alright, that was a good plan. 

Yuriko formed the Bolt spell right above the goat, a couple of paces away. She activated the runescript formation and easily channelled the Elemental energies into the circle. The Radiant Bolt slammed into the wary goat, and it simply shattered the spell, spilling the thin Radiant energy into its face. The goat shook its head, which flung the energies away. The metallic fur did not look any worse for wear, even when another bolt slammed into it. It only served to anger the beast, and it groaned and pawed the ground, shifting around in search of its attacker. It also angled its horns to intercept the bolts. When it was the horns that struck the spell structure, the bolt simply fell apart and scattered the energies away from the creature. 

“So not that way,” Yuriko muttered. Or perhaps the one-circle spell simply wasn’t effective. The structure wasn’t robust enough. 

She quickly converted the two-circle spell, Stone Bullet, into pure runescript components. It wasn’t that hard since most of the components were shared by the Bolt spell as well as the Tremorsense spell. She had it within a couple of minutes and was able to form the spell circle within her Anima.  

The goat was still searching. It trampled a dozen or so square paces of the wheat, but since Yuriko stopped casting, it settled down and went back to chewing the grains. 

“Stone Bullet,” Yuriko muttered as she created the spell circle five paces to the goat’s left flank. The spell circle drew in the Earth Elemental energies needed in a couple of seconds while each component lit up in quick succession. A dense spherical pebble, roughly a quarter of an inch across, formed in the middle of the spell circles, then shot straight into the goat’s flank. 

Meeeeh!

The stone bullet shattered on impact, but it did crater the fur and skin. Yuriko pursed her lips at the sight, then shot more stone bullets at the goat. After the fifth consecutive shot which hit exactly the same spot, the bullet penetrated the goat’s flesh. The fifteenth consecutive shot into the same wound caused the goat to collapse on its knees, and a moment later, the skin turned completely red. 

Baboom!

And the goat exploded, scattering blood and guts into its vicinity. Yuriko was more than a hundred paces away and was only hit by a few blood spatters on her condensed aura. The stench was still unbearable. 

“Fifteen precise shots,” Yuriko muttered as she closed her eyes and revisited her memories. Were any of her students that precise and accurate? But at least it proved that a two-circle spell was effective. All of her fifth-year students were Apprentice Magi, and two-circle spells were what they were easily capable of casting. Three-circle spells would be strenuous for them to cast, and would probably need a couple of minutes to get going. Unless the spell was mostly made up of runescript components anyway. 

She went for another goat. She tested the other three variants of the Elemental Bolt spell, Fire Bolt, Water Bolt, and Wind Cutter. 

Despite casting Fire Bolt nearly a dozen times, the goat simply ignored, and even enjoyed in the heat. “So it's a Fire Elemental beast,” Yuriko muttered. 

Water Bolt shot out a compressed arrow of water. It imparted kinetic energy but was less lethal than Stone Bullet. Unless she directed the bolt into the creature’s nasal passages anyway, the spell was inherently easier to control mid-flight than Fire Bolt or Stone Bullet, both of which could only go straight. The Water Bolt spell slammed into the goat, and it hissed and squealed in pain. Then, she directed the water into its nose and mouth, causing it to run away. She shifted to Wind Cutter which created an inch-wide blade. 

Ptang! Ptang!

The Wind Cutters weren’t able to penetrate deeply into the goat’s hide. It cut the hairs but only left a score across the skin. Repeated precise strikes eventually penetrated the hide, but it took twice as many cutters to kill the goat than Stone Bullet. This time, when the creature turned red, Yuriko immediately retreated. The burst of blood and gore did not reach her this time, much to her pleasure. 

Oh, each goat did leave a beast core the size of her thumb. She retrieved three, though if it weren’t for the fact that her Anima perception was quite thorough, she might have missed the comparatively tiny cores. 

For her final test, she found a fourth goat, nearly a couple of longstrides from the very first one she encountered, and cast a Fire Blast at it. The three-circle spell created the same result as a Fire Bolt and the goat only bathed luxuriously in the flames. 

She cast Stone Burst from ten paces of the thing, and the resulting blast of Stone Bullets knocked the goat over. A closer look showed her that the goat’s hide was peppered with holes, but not all of the bullets penetrated deep. Most were only within a couple of inches from the surface and were far from fatal. Still, the goat was stunned by the impact and was barely moving. It took it a couple of minutes to stir and struggle back to its six feet. 

Meeeeh!

It roared angrily, only for Yuriko’s Wind Blade to sever a leg. The burst of blood stunned the creature further, and its skin and fur started turning red. Yuriko pulled back, observing the injured goat, but it didn’t commit suicide just yet. She waited for a few minutes, then the stump stopped bleeding. The goat ravenously devoured the golden wheat, and Yuriko’s eyes widened at the sight of its severed stump starting to grow back. 

“Quick recovery, so any wounded beast must be killed or it will come back as good as new,” Yuriko muttered. 

She cast the last Blast spell she had, Water Blast. The thin stream of high-pressure water slammed into the goat’s flank. Instead of keeling over, the water carved into its side, prompting another roar of rage. It turned towards where the water jet came from, used its horns to defend against it, and charged. 

The water stream didn’t affect the horns at all. But since Yuriko created the spell circle far away from her body, the goat wasn’t able to find anything. Oh, it reached the spell circle and slammed into it with its horns. It disrupted the circles and broke them apart, cancelling the spell midcast. But that was it. 

“Interesting,” Yuriko muttered.

Was it able to disrupt her cast because of its horns or was that something anybody could do? Nobody had actually tried disrupting a runescript formation like that during her time in school. Well, most Magi preferred to stand at a respectable distance anyway, and most runescript formations were written with Animus and Animakinesis. 

She recast the spell from above and struck the goat’s eye. It carved into the socket but it didn’t prove fatal quite yet. Yuriko frowned uneasily. This last goat was tougher than she expected, and her tests now seemed unnecessarily cruel. It didn’t look like Water Blast was that potent against the goat anyway. 

She sent out a single sunblade. It sliced the creature from head to tail, and probably destroyed whatever it was inside it, causing it to explode. The two halves of the creature fell apart, and nothing happened. 

She approached the corpse and searched for its beast core. 

That was when she felt something enter her perception zone, rushing through it faster than she could blink.