Raia was not happy to be woken up in the middle of the night by the guy who was in the turn before her, but she knew she had to so she did.
She placed herself near the campfire at the center of the clearing and waited for the guy that woke her up to get her companion up and running for guarding duty, when he did he returned to sleep.
After her companion, whose name she learned was Ario the night before, and the first of guarding duty arrived, she acknowledged his existence and then returned to training.
She wasn't that interested in actually guarding anything when she knew Ario had cast an illusion on the outside of their camp and the guard who was accompanying them was awake and was always keeping control of the situation.
If he detected monsters he would move to prepare for a fight.
In case she and Ario sensed monsters they were told to wake him up first, and then he would wake up the rest of the camp.
The hour proceeded smoothly, nothing happened so they returned to sleep, one thing she did notice was that Ario seemed distressed, like he was waiting for something to happen but it didn't.
Raia went to wake up the girl who was in the next turn because her tent was closer to hers and then went to bed, when she did it didn't take long for her to fall asleep.
“Everyone up there are monsters incoming.”
Raia was woken up by the booming voice of the guard, it took her a second but she realised what he said so she took her sword and exited her tent.
She already knew where the monsters were so she beelined towards them, from her perception they seemed a wolf tipe monster.
They were not that big of a monster, only 1 and a half meters in length and about half a meter in height, there were about 20 of them.
She instantly tried to gauge their strength like her teacher thought her to.
“To gauge a monster's strength you have to check their core and the amount of mana inside of it, compare it to your own and determine the amount they have.
Monster strength rises every 1000 mana they accumulate, they pass a threshold and evolve.
To gain that mana they eat other monsters cores or human cores, that is why you always burn a body and not bury it like it was done in the past, so you don't give underground monsters any core to eat.
The rate at which they grow is not fixed, based on the level of the cores they eat; they gain more or less mana and so they evolve at different speeds.
They can't use mana in the way we do it, they use it to activate what we call racial abilities and they are for what we know fixed skills that can't grow on their own but only if the monster itself evolves.
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An example: if a monster has a racial ability that makes him move faster and that monster evolves let's say with a fire affinity thanks to having eaten a multitude of monsters that already had a fire affinity that ability may develop to leave fire where the monster passes.”
To Raia these wolves seemed particularly weak, maybe high bronze or low silver each, their strength came from numbers from what she could tell.
Unlike when she fought with the guild master, this time she actually used other spells even if they didn't suit her close range fighting style.
{Magic Repulsion}, a wave of Antimagic mana crushed against the pack of wolves, and by the nature of them having mana inside of them they were thrown back.
Some landed on their feet, mostly the ones on the back, but most crashed against trees or against one another.
She dashed in towards 2 wolves that were on top of each other and slit the throat of one of them before plunging her sword in the other wolf's skull killing them both.
Everyone had now started fighting apart from the guard that seemed okay with just watching and helping if necessary.
Raia used a second magic she knew didn't compliment her fighting style well, because it basically gave her a disadvantage and that spell was {Null}.
It basically was an area where external magic and skills didn't work, so unless she changed her eye color she was blind.
She stayed outside the spell's zone and prepared a new spell she created a while ago to help Mira complete one of her projects; she just modified it to suit her needs.
“Get out of {Null} zone” she yelled when she heard confirmation about everyone being out she activated it “{Death dome}” an earth dome came out of the ground and covered the Anti Magic zone, then all you could hear were the wolves getting pierced to death.
When the dome crumbled the entire pack was dead all pierced exactly where their hearts were supposed to be.
“The fuck was that?” asked one of the other kids.
Raia didn't respond and just returned to her tent.
When she arrived that same kid tried to grab her shoulder. “Hey you blind bitc-”
She moved out of the way and while she did that she unsheathed her sword and put the point on the kid’s throat.
“I don't owe you any explanation, now, leave me alone before I do something I might regret.”
The kid fell backwards and landed on his butt, extremely frightened and scurried away.
When Raia entered her tent she exhaled and thought about what she just did.
She never killed anyone and she surely didn't want this to be the first time, mostly because the boy wasn't trying to kill her in return but just rudely and forcefully get an answer out of her.
She most likely overreacted, but in a job where power is king, in most cases especially where she is going to be for the next year and a half she couldn't show herself to be weak.
After a while she managed to sleep again.
The next few days passed without hiccups.
She still trained and was on the verge of being able to get those 2 levels finally, but another disturbance broke her out of her concentration.
“Bandits ahead, don't use lethal methods.
They will fetch a good price if we give them to the authorities.
And if they have a bounty, that will be a big payout.”
Raia decided not to participate; she still had reserves about fighting humans; the only thing she did was use {Null} on the bandits position before the other kids engaged.
Then she just observed the battle through her senses, she concentrated on the bandits to see if they tried to cast magic that she could negate out of the {Null} zone.
Some tried, they sprinted out of the zone and tried to cast external magic but their spells fizzled because of {Negation}.
The battle was quick and uneventful, when the other kids returned to the carriage they just looked at her.
The guard was quite perplexed by the girl's behaviour; yes she pulled her weight even though she wasn't in the fight but it was strange, she was strange.
She was unusually strong for her age which he estimated to be 9 just because no one in their right mind would send someone with little to no experience to that zone.
She would definitely be at the elite schools based on her capabilities and skills.
“It's a shame her mana manipulation will be stuck to Lv8 till she reaches the Mithril badge, if she ever reaches it.” he thought.
“Why didn't you help?” asked the same boy that she threatened yesterday.
“I did, are you really that bad at detecting other people's mana or spells.” Raia responded.
“What do you mean, you did? I didn't detect anything apart from the quite obvious Anti Magic zone.”
“Did you seriously not notice that their mages didn't cast a single spell during the entire fight?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Stop for a second. Do you know the most famous Anti Magic spell right?”
“Yes it's {Negation}...
Wait, you are telling me that you negated every spell they tried to cast during the entire fight?
That is not possible.”
“Well I did.
Ask the guard yourself if you don't believe me, since I know for a fact he has a perception range higher than mine and has obviously detected everything since he didn't ask me why I didn't do anything even though it might have seemed that way.
Also, he also detected monsters far before us at night or am I wrong Mr Diamond level adventurer that is escorting us?”
