A group of examinees sat by a shallow river, resting with their backs against the rocks and trees.
Behind them lay several dead beasts, each with a neat hole in its chest where the cores had been dug out.
One boy sat on a boulder, tossing a beast core up and down in his hand. The core glowed faintly, giving off a soft light.
"Not bad," he said proudly. "Two Tier 1 beasts and one Tier 2. If this keeps up, we might squeeze into the A class."
"Of course." Another boy lay on the grass with his hands as a pillow. "With our cooperation who could beat us?"
The girl sitting nearby rolled her eyes.
"You just shouted 'attack together' and 'watch out' the whole time," she said. "What command?"
The boys laughed.
The forest wind blew gently across the water surface. Birds occasionally flew past in the distance.
After a while, one of them suddenly lowered his voice.
"Hey, did you all hear the rumor?" he asked. "About the sandal monster?"
The other two looked at him.
"Sandal monster?" the girl repeated. "What kind of ridiculous name is that?"
The boy who spoke sat up and looked serious.
"I am not joking," he said.
"You know that group near the west side of the forest? Three of them got knocked out.
When they woke up, all their beast cores were gone, their prey was dead, and every body had a red sandal mark on their face."
The boy on the grass snorted.
"So it is just a thief," he said. "What monster?"
"I don't know." the first boy said.
"But I heard it's because his action is worse than a beast."
The girl shivered slightly.
"I saw one of the victims," she said. "That girl from Baron Kessler's territory. Before this, she was pretty. After that… that red mark covered her forehead and nose."
She frowned as she remembered.
"She tried to wash it off," the girl continued.
"Used water, herbs, even scrubbed until her skin turned red. The mark did not fade at all. It looked like it had been printed directly into her soul."
The two boys fell silent.
"That bad?" the one with the core asked.
The girl nodded.
"She said if she finds whoever did it, she will use them as monster bait," she said coldly. "And that is just her. Imagine what her parents will say when they see their daughter's face."
The three of them looked at one another.
For a moment, the peaceful riverside felt a little colder.
"Anyway," the first boy coughed.
"From what I heard, that sandal monster just appears out of nowhere, slaps people, knocks them out, steals their beast cores, then disappears. It is better if we do not meet him."
The boy who had been playing with the beast core quickly stuffed it into his pocket. The three of them glanced around the forest, suddenly feeling uneasy.
Up on a thick branch above them, Oliver lay flat on his stomach, peeking down through the leaves.
"Senior Ethan," Oliver whispered. "They are joking, right?"
A bad feeling was crawling up his spine.
His own palm started to sweat.
Below, the examinees continued to talk.
"I also heard," the girl said, "that the mark is very clear. You can even see the strap pattern. Every time she touches her face, she looks like she wants to cry."
"It really does not wash off?" one boy asked.
"Not at all," she replied. "Do you think she will pain her face like that just to lie to me? And I see it with my own eyes, it doesn't go away no mater how many time she wash it."
Oliver felt his heart stop.
He suddenly imagined that girl sitting in front of a mirror, crying and scrubbing her face, sandal print still bright red on her forehead.
Even he knew that for a girl, her face was important.
And if her parents found out who left a sandal mark on it…
He swallowed.
His imagination went out of control at once.
'What if they find me? What if all the parents of the victims gather together? What if they drag me to their estates and say "take responsibility"?'
One scene after another flashed before his eyes.
A furious noble father slamming the table.
"Marry my daughter!"
Another father.
"You dared leave a mark on her face, you dare not deny her now!"
Another one.
"From today on, you will be my son-in-law. Take these wedding documents."
Oliver's face went pale.
He thought about how many times he had used Ethan today.
The Tier 2 bear, a Tier 1 snake, a Tier 1 rat, a Tier 1 boar.
The list went on. In total, he had ambushed more than ten groups.
'If every mark really cannot be cleaned…'
His scalp tingled.
Inside the bag, Ethan listened to his thoughts and almost choked.
'Marry all their daughters?' he thought. 'Where did that even come from? It will already be good if they do not burn you alive. But… is the mark really impossible to erase?'
The truth was, he had no idea why the sandal mark was like that.
He did not know how to erase it either, but out loud, Ethan kept his tone calm.
"Do not panic so quickly," he said. "The mark will fade after twenty four hours. If for some reason it does not, I have a way to erase it."
Oliver stared down at the group by the river, then lifted his head slightly.
"Senior, you can really erase it?" he whispered. His eyes lit up.
"If that is true, we can sell the service. We print the marks, then charge money to remove them. It is a complete business!"
"No way! Just what's wrong with your brain?" Ethan said on the spot.
"If you think people outside do not know who the culprit is, think again."
Oliver deflated a little.
What Ethan say make sense, after all they were now observed by sorcerer from the academy.
Every single of their action will be judged and scored.
But oliver is not worried, despite taking their beast core, he always come out when they were defeated, so he already plan to argue they're helping them, and for the beast core it's payment for his help.
Ethan honestly doubted that reason would be useful, but he did not feel it would become a huge problem.
In the worst case, Oliver would just get a bad evaluation.
He had read enough novels to understand what kind of world this was.
A place where the strong ate the weak, and the weak were stepped on.
Recently he had started to think his old world was not much different.
They had laws, rules, morals, and pretty speeches, but in the end, people with power still did whatever they wanted.
What made someone truly powerful? Money, connections, backing?
Those things only mattered because there was a stronger force supporting them.
A country with a monopoly over violence, armed with massive firepower.
In a world like this, the logic was even simpler. Strength was strength.
If Oliver showed overwhelming potential and collected enough beast cores, Ethan felt sure some sorcerer in the academy would decide to protect him on their own.
As long as they survived this exam and made a name, things would turn around.
That was what he believed.
But the reality is quite different
***
Back at the academy, the light curtain above the plaza had changed.
The scenes of the forest that had been shown in real time suddenly vanished. The image flickered a few times, then became something else.
Rows of text floated in the air.
Each line showed a student's name and the total value of the beast cores they had collected so far.
The list refreshed every few breaths.
At first, the parents and guardians below were stunned.
"What happened to the images?"
"Why can we not see the forest anymore?"
"Where is my child? Show the scene again!"
The instructors standing under the light curtain had prepared for this.
One of them stepped forward and bowed.
"Everyone, please rest assured," he said.
"The real time images put a heavy burden on the Magic Array.
To avoid unstable interference, the academy has switched to result display only. All students are still under supervision. Their safety remains guaranteed."
"Heavy burden?" a parent repeated with a frown. "What does that mean?"
"It means that if we keep the scene open for too long, it will interrupt the smooth operation of the magic array," the instructor explained with a straight face.
"But don't worry. Monitoring is still ongoing on another layer.."
He spoke smoothly, like someone who had rehearsed every line.
Some guardians were still suspicious, but the shifting list of names and ranks drew their attention.
"My son is there."
"Look, she already has three cores."
"Why is my child still at zero…"
Their anger and anxiety started to spread in another direction.
Up in the main tower, in the restricted room, the atmosphere was the opposite of calm.
Helena stood before the floating image. The four senior sorcerers were beside her.
The light curtain in front of them did not show names. It showed the Forest of Beasts.
Or rather, it showed what was left of the view.
Large sections of the image were blacked out. Mana interference twisted parts of the scene into static.
Sometimes a tree appeared, then blurred into nothing.
In some regions, the view was simply gone, as if someone had taken a brush and smeared ink across the formation.
"Report," Helena said, her voice low.
"The observation layer has become unstable," the white haired sorcerer replied. "We can still receive partial images and basic data, but direct contact with several field sorcerers has been cut."
The shorter, round sorcerer scowled.
"First the assessment crystal explodes," she said, "and now the forest formation acts up in the same exam. This looks nothing like an accident."
The cold female sorcerer beside him frowned slightly.
"Do you suspect someone is targeting the academy?" she asked.
"It is too much coincidence for it to be just bad luck," she said.
Helena ignored their exchange and focused on the formation nodes at the edge of the curtain.
"Which teams did we lose contact with?" she asked.
The white haired sorcerer raised his hand. Runes flickered at his fingertips and several points lit up on a simplified map of the Forest of Beasts.
"These regions," he said. "The outer north, a part of the east, and a cluster near the west.
In those zones, the instructors' life signals are still present, but we cannot hear their voices or see directly through their sight lenses."
"That area…" she murmured. "Is that not the nesting ground of the White Tiger?"
The white haired sorcerer nodded.
"Yes," he confirmed. "Tier Five magical beast, White Tiger of the Western Grove.
We reached an agreement with it ten years ago. It requested a safe place to heal.
In return, it watches that sector as one of our external guardians."
In this world, beasts of that level already had their own mind.
They could speak. They could reason.
They were more reliable than hired mercenaries.
The Forest of Beasts was vast.
The academy had only claimed and stabilized the outer regions.
Their manpower was limited, and they could not watch every corner with their own people, so they had made deals with several high rank beasts.
It was one of the many layers of contingency that kept the area safe.
Helena watched the region for a while.
"This does not look good," she said at last. "One of you needs to go and check."
In truth, she wanted to go herself.
But if the headmaster left the tower in the middle of an entrance exam, rumors would spread through the academy within the hour.
People would know something serious had happened.
A Grand Sorcerer did not move lightly. When she did, it meant a storm was brewing.
The round female sorcerer stepped forward.
"I will go," she said. "I have visited that White Tiger more than the rest."
The others exchanged a look, then nodded.
"Fine," Helena said. "Take a relay charm. Keep the link open as long as you can. If something feels wrong, you prioritize coming back alive."
The round sorcerer gave a small smile.
"I am not at the age where I throw my life for curiosity," she said. "I will be careful."
She walked toward the exit. The heavy stone door opened for her, then closed again with a dull sound.
The room fell quiet.
Helena looked at the twisting images, suspicion growing in her eyes.
"I hope I am just overthinking," she murmured. "Because if I am not, this exam will not end peacefully."