When Damion stepped through the portal and felt nothing beneath him, he was more confused than anything else. Phil took to the air from his shoulder imdiately, not understanding why Damion did not simply fly too. After all the Snow Hawk had seen its companion fly plenty of tis before, so it knew he could.
Once Damion’s mind processed that he was falling, he quickly thought of a plan. The first thing he did was cast Ice Sword. When his sword appeared in his hand, he held on tightly as he willed the sword to fly. Damion’s decent slowed and then he stopped in midair.
After hanging in midair for a mont while Phil flew circles around him, Damion started to lower himself to the ground. Internally, he was cursing Professor Klein, but luckily, he spotted a reconnaissance drone flying not too far away and held his tongue. As much as he wanted to, he knew it was not the best idea to insult one of his Professors while he was being watched.
Professor Moretti had not said anything about the recon drones, but their presence did not surprise Damion. The wilderness survival excursion was a class exercise, it only made sense the professors would want to observe the students. However, Damion suspected there was more to it than just watching to grade the students’ performance. By secretly watching, the school could spot students that showed dangerous psychological tendencies and also possibly find out if students had been trading magical seals behind the school’s back.
Damion made a ntal note to not use any of the spells he was not supposed to know. He had already dodged a bullet with Ice Wall in the labyrinth a few months back. Mage Blythe had been the only one to survive after witnessing his use of the spell. As a noncombatant mage, Blythe had not known what the spell was that Damion used to make their safe haven and later ice hamster ball. During their interrogation, the Justiciar had been more concerned with his Health Potion than the spellcasting, so no one had questioned him about the spells he used.
Once Damion touched down on the ground, Phil fluttered down and landed on his shoulder. Releasing his Ice Sword, Damion took a look around at his surroundings. When he was in the air, he had a good look at the landscape. The area he was dropped in was surrounded by mountains on all sides. He spotted a few small lakes through the tree canopy and decided that was the best place to head if he wanted to find Ferocious Beasts to fight.
On Earth people in survival situations followed the rules of threes and sevens. Three minutes without air, three hours without shelter in harsh conditions, three days without water and three weeks without food. Seven seconds to make a decision, seven minutes to secure safety, seven hours to establish shelter, and seven days to build stability. Nerotath may have been a world with magic, but these simple rules still held true, even if not all of them were imdiately relevant.
With two months’ worth of rations and an artifact that automatically refilled his canteen to full whenever he took a sip, Damion was not worried about food or water. He did need to establish a shelter, sowhere that he could rest safely at night or use to stay out of any weather that might crop up, but that could wait until he found a good location.
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Given that he wanted to hunt the Ferocious Beasts in the area, it was possible that Damion would want to keep moving around and not settle in one place for the two-week excursion. If that was the case, he had his tent, which had, in addition to other enchantnts, ones for concealnt, and beast warding. He could, if he wanted, just set up the tent and wait out the two weeks since he doubted any of the creatures in the area were strong enough to overco his tent’s enchantnts that kept them away.
“Go take a look around, see if you can find anything worth fighting,” Damion told Phil.
The Snow Hawk chirped and flew off his shoulder and back into the sky. Since this test area was ant for young mages, Damion doubted there would be any beasts stronger than D Rank. A C Rank Ferocious Beast could easily overpower all the other students. It was possible there was one, as he felt the school would want to give the students a real sense of danger, but he did not think there would be too many.
Not finding anything of interest on the ground, Damion cast Ice Sword and climbed onto his flying sword to join Phil in the air. The two began flying around the area in search of Ferocious Beasts, the problem was, Phil was a C Rank Ferocious Beast and all the weaker beasts in the area fled as soon as they sensed the Snow Hawk.
Damion was also at C Rank, but with Concealed Aura having reached C Rank in mastery, his aura was hidden from all creatures C Rank and below. After a fruitless afternoon of trying to hunt down a Ferocious Beast, Damion flew down to a small clearing near a lake.
Taking out his Earth affinity bracelet, Damion pretended to use it to cast Earth Prison around his chosen campsite. In a radius of five ters around him, Damion created ter high Earth Prisons one at a ti until he was entirely surrounded. The small cages would not stop Ferocious Beasts, but they ford a makeshift fence that would slow them down, as well as any students that wandered into the area he had claid.
‘Food.’ Phil sent through their bond, prompting Damion to take out a ration pack of dried at for the Snow Hawk.
Damion continued to set up camp while Phil ate its al. When he was finished, his campsite had a firepit, with a fire burning, his tent set up, a pit dug for a latrine and a table and chair set up for him to work and eat at. If there were no challenging creatures for him to fight, Damion thought it was about ti he got to work on his artifact.
He could not bring out his tablet while in the open, because of the recon drones spying on him, but that did not an he could not work out the enchantnts with pen and paper.
‘More,’ ca a ssage from Phil after it finished eating.
“Go hunt,” Damion told the Ferocious Beast. “Just don’t hurt any of the students.”
After a brief mont of contemplation, Phil took off from the camp to look for food and Damion sat down at his table and began to sketch out glyphs for his artifact.
Damion worked well into the evening. Once the sun started setting beneath the edge of the mountain peaks, he went and gathered another batch of firewood for the night, using his spatha to cut branches as well as to pretend it was its fire attack glyph that started the blaze and not a Fireball spell. When Damion climbed into his tent to rest for the night he briefly wondered how the other students were doing but put it out of his mind fairly quickly since none of them had sought an alliance with him, he felt no obligation towards any of them.
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