I came out of my house and looked around. This place was deserted as usual. I wasn’t able to see any mages from our hall except two. I shook my head and headed toward the main hall. I was hoping to meet Julia once again as I needed her to help me select a suitable mission once again.

I reached the hall and luckily Senior Julia was already present at that place. She was fidgeting with her communication watch. I headed toward her and greeted her,

‘’Hello Senior Julia.’’

Senior Julia laughed with joy after seeing me, ‘’Alex, you’re here early today. I thought you were going to rest in your house for a few more days after your first mission.’’

I smiled hearing her and told her my reason for coming here today. Just as I had expected, she gave me a surprised look and then shook her head, saying,

‘’No, no. You only came back yesterday after staying in the dimension for three full days. You should take rest and cultivate properly first. Going on a mission every day isn’t good for you. You’re only a Rank 1 Mage. There’s no need to hurry in completing the missions.’’

As usual, she started giving her long lecture. She didn’t want me to face any danger. She was just trying to protect me, though she was way too overprotective sometimes. Not that I hated her for that. It felt nice being cared for like that. Jay and his parents were the only ones who felt the same way for me before coming here.

I smiled bitterly going through her lecture once again. She didn’t know that, along with academy points, I needed to kill a lot of monsters to level up. I insisted for a bit long then she finally gave up. But, she agreed only on one condition that I will only do gathering missions for now.

I was thinking about some other missions at first but after thinking for a moment, I decided to go with her choice. Even though, I was leveling up pretty fast but I was still a Rank 1 Mage which was far from being powerful enough. I needed to get more powerful to freely travel alone and accept more different missions than just gathering herbs.

Senior Julia clicked on the desk and soon a hologram appeared in front of our eyes. Whenever I looked at the advancement of technology, I was amazed to the core. In my past life, this hologram technology was far from being complete, much less the Virtual World where we can enter with our consciousness.

There were a number of missions on the screen and I started to check them one by one. Just as I was checking them, I came across a unique mission which was offering hefty rewards on completion. I looked at the mission and clicked on it to see its full details.

Soon the screen changed and the details of the mission were shown on it.

[ Special Mission: Gathering ]

[ Requirement: Dragon Grass ]

[ Location: Dragon grass is found in the special realm which is under the control of the Academy ]

[ Rewards: 1 pellet/ 500 academy points ]

I was shocked to see the high amount of academy points for just 1 pellet of the supposed Dragon Grass. There was a picture below it which showed the dragon grass. Just as I was reading the mission details, I heard the sound of Senior Julia beside me,

‘’You should forget about that mission for a long time. In your current powers you will never be able to gather the required things written in the mission description.’’

I looked toward her and stared at her doubtfully. I could already guess that the location of the dragon grass was pretty dangerous. Otherwise, the reward would not have been so high for just a single pellet.

But still, I was thinking about giving it a try because I had a spatial teleportation spell with me. I could just run away from that place if it was going to be pretty dangerous for me. It looked like Senior could read my thoughts so she explained further,

‘’As mentioned in the mission description, the place of the dragon grass is a special realm under the control of our academy. But-‘’

She paused for a second and looked at me seriously and then continued,

‘’..that dimension has high restrictions. Only a Rank 1 Mage and Rank 2 Mage can enter via teleportation circle. What’s more dangerous is the actual location of the grass inside. The grass is located in the volcano where Rank 5 monsters Half-Draconic monsters live.’’

Her face turned more solemn after that and she said,

‘’All the monsters in the volcano are Rank 5 and they are evolved monsters from the snakes. When you’re in the volcano you can’t even use the spatial bracelet to teleport back, in the past many genius Rank 2 Mages tried to go there but all of them died under the assault of those monsters. That’s why no one has completed this mission for a long time.’’

She stopped for a moment and turned her head to the other side,

‘’One of the genius mages was a friend of mine. We both had enrolled here at the same time. He had higher talent than mine but he could have reached Rank 7 or 8 Mage by now. But he was insistent on going there but never returned.’’

I could feel her voice was a bit shaky. I didn’t know how to console her so, I stayed silent for a moment. After some time, she turned her head toward me with the same smile and cheery face. But I could see the sadness in her eyes.

I decided not to think about the mission any further and started to find other missions which could suit my need for points and also increase my level along the way. But I had already marked that mission in my to-do-list. When I reach level 20, I was going to try for that mission.

But before that, I needed some other spells from the library and to do that, I needed a lot of academy points. I shook my head from those thoughts and focused back on the hologram to choose a mission and leave to complete it as fast as I can.