The next day.

Kai woke up only to see Ayaka still reading articles for her new skill. He could even see the bags under her eyes. Even so, her eyes were still very energetic.

Even after reading for so long, she was too absorbed that she didn’t even realize he had woken up. He shook his head and smiled while looking at this hard-working girl. He checked the clock, and it looked like they still had a few minutes before the meeting.

He didn’t disturb her until the time they needed to gather for the morning briefing came.

…

A few minutes later.

All the students gathered in front of the commander, as well as the teachers.

“I’m sure that you didn’t have a pleasant sleep yesterday, whether it’s because of the hard ground or the lack of sleep since you have things to do… Don’t worry, it could only be worse than now. After all, you might get one tent for each group, but whether you can have a good place to set up your tent all depends on you.

“You might need to sleep on the uneven ground, or you might get lucky and find a cave. You can just lean on the wall and sleep. Anyway, you won’t be able to come back here for three days. The teachers here will keep watching you to make sure that you do your work properly. And you might even meet some soldiers patrolling around.

“Anyway, you need to kill every magical beast in sight. I can’t assure you only low-rank magical beasts will appear, but if it’s a powerful magical beast, you need to retreat immediately and go back to this place to inform us. Good luck.”

Kai and Ayaka met up with Chitose and Carmina. They followed the other groups that had been moving toward the woods.

All of them were carrying a big backpack. Of course, Kai was carrying the biggest one since he was bringing their tent. Luckily, Kai was stronger than normal people, so he could bring all this stuff easily.

A few minutes after entering the mountain area, Ayaka went toward Kai. She also understood why Kai didn’t bring his noise-canceling headphones. It would be a foolish decision because it would only restrict his extraordinary hearing. Ayaka looked at him and asked, “Did you find anything?”

When she asked that, Chitose and Carmina also turned to look at him in curiosity. They thought a scout would go ahead in this situation and lead them. However, Kai only stayed beside them and walked casually. They couldn’t understand, but Ayaka said that Kai would be able to ‘detect’ all the nearby magical beasts without even needing to go ahead.

Kai also understood their confusion, so when Ayaka asked him this, he raised his hand a bit as a magic circle appeared on his hand.

“Echolocation.”

The magic circle became a green screen and showed them dots with three colors. “The blue ones signifies humans, which is us. The center blue dots are us, while the ones on the sides are the other groups.

“The yellow ones are low-ranking magical beasts that can be ignored. They shouldn’t have any fighting capability. As for the red ones, they’re magical beasts that we’ll need to hunt. Well, we can also hunt the yellow ones if you want to. By the way, the range for this skill is one kilometer,” he explained while pointing at the dots.

He classified the low-ranking magical beasts with their rank of vitality. A proper and dangerous magical beast would have a strong vitality that could be heard by his ears. Kai said they could hunt the yellow ones because he knew all magical beasts needed to be killed.

He remembered that after they killed all the bats, the teachers wanted to kill the yellow dots too. And Kai could understand that it was because it wouldn’t be good to leave any magical beasts alive there. Kai just differentiated them so that they would know which one needed to be prioritized.

Of course, it didn’t mean they could just nonchalantly rush to the yellow dots and kill them. After all, the bats’ incident might repeat and cause them trouble. So even after knowing them, they needed to be careful.

All three girls were shocked by this skill, including Ayaka. They immediately realized how convenient this skill was. However, Chitose realized this took the concept of sonar, and Kai needed to explain it to them once again.

After that, they decided to kill the nearest red dots. The first magical beast was a deer. It was like a normal deer, but when they approached it sneakily, they could see that the deer had fierce red eyes.

“Chitose will stop the deer’s movement for a bit. Carmina will restrict it with her plant. After that, both Chitose and I will kill that beast. As for Kai, you’ll need to make sure no magical beasts are nearby, and you might need to support us if something goes wrong,” Ayaka immediately gave everyone their roles.

All of them nodded their heads. Chitose immediately took off her necklace and channeled her magic toward the necklace. The necklace then turned to a long katana.

The others also took out their respective weapons.

Carmina then said, “I’m sorry, even though I can use a dagger, you can’t count me in melee combat. I can barely use this dagger.”

All of them nodded. Ayaka then commanded, “Go!”

Hearing that, Chitose immediately jumped forward. The deer was an E-rank magical beast. If it were Shirotsuka Sanae, that deer would have already died. However, Chitose was still a student. When she arrived in front of the deer, the deer immediately tried to charge at her with its horns. Chitose immediately used her sword to clash with that horn, and surprisingly, the horn didn’t break.

Chitose didn’t care about that as she immediately shouted, “Carmina!”

“Yes,” Carmina replied. She then put her hands on the ground as a magic circle appeared on the ground. “Rise, Dryad Bind!”

Suddenly, plants rose from the ground and entangled the deer, restricting its movement. Ayaka immediately jumped toward the deer, trying to kill it.

Although its movements had been restricted, the deer could still move its head as the deer tried to block Ayaka’s thrust with its horn. However, at this time, Chitose swung her sword once again.

“No, you won’t!” She used a strength that even surprised Kai, as he never thought that she would have that much strength in her delicate body. That swing alone knocked the deer’s head to the point of almost breaking its neck.

Ayaka then immediately went around the deer and stabbed it. The deer then fell to the ground, motionless.

Carmina and Kai walked toward them. Ayaka then said, “I think this basic strategy will work for us. We’ll keep engaging the magical beasts with this strategy unless we need another one.”

Kai also nodded his head, showing his approval. Carmina didn’t understand anything about plans or strategies, so she just followed what others said.

They then started moving around the area, killing magical beasts one after another. They could kill quite a large number of magical beasts because of Kai’s Echolocation skill. It was a very useful and practical skill.

Their group had killed strong deers, speedy foxes, and even giant squirrels. After a whole day, they finally set up their camp in a small plain. At least they were lucky to find this small, even ground in this mountain area.

The girls wanted to take a bath or at least have a shower. Sadly, they couldn’t do it because none of them were water magicians, and there was no water source around. Because of this, they could only give up. Even the food they ate was military ration.

They remembered that they could eat the meat of magical beasts since it tasted even better than normal food. But they then realized that no one in their group could cook. They sulked, thinking about how unlucky they were.

After settling everything, Carmina and Chitose decided to sleep first. Chitose was indeed sleeping, but if either Kai or Ayaka came inside, they would be able to see that she was chatting with someone. And the recipient’s name was… Katsuragi Takaki.

Kai could hear her typing, but because he respected other people’s privacy, he didn’t bother them since she might just be chatting with her family.

“You’re not going to sleep?” Kai looked at Ayaka and sat beside her.

“I’ll wait for a few hours until my shift is over. Then I’ll sleep,” she said drowsily.

Kai was leaning on a tree while warming his body with the campfire that Ayaka made with her magic.

“I can do it alone, so you don’t need to worry about it. You’ve been tirelessly researching for your new skill,” he said with an understanding smile.

“Mhmm… it’s in a good part. If I’m not tired like this, I would even complete it tonight,” Ayaka said drowsily.

“That’s good then,” Kai said as he still remembered his uneasy feeling.

“With this skill, we’ll even be able to blast those magical beasts in our practice class! Ugh… I have a feeling that I’ll dream about it if I fall asleep.”

“Just go to sleep.”

“But…”

“I”ll have you work hard tomorrow since you would have already gotten a good sleep by then,” Kai said.

“You…” She shook her head helplessly and unconsciously closed her eyes. In an instant, she fell asleep. How fast she fell asleep even surprised Kai. He looked at Ayaka, who dropped her head to his shoulder and used it as a pillow.

Kai only smiled. He just hoped that they would be able to go back as soon as possible, as his instinct was usually correct. After all, he was…