"In two weeks, the Academy's adventuring students will be sent out on a subjugation expedition into the Forest lasting 7 days," Arwen said, for once looking at them seriously. "From now until the expedition, all of you have been excused from all non-practical classes and we will be focused on training to prepare."

  Jun groaned as she lay in bed that evening, too sore to move. It'd been strange, like Arwen had been replaced by the Sergeant as she pushed all of them into intensive physical training far beyond what they'd been doing the past 3 months. They'd alternated between conditioning and sparring with Arwen individually and as a team, with few opportunities to rest and recover. Michael's mana had been kept practically drained the entire time as he was forced to provide constant low-level healing so that Arwen could push them even harder.

  Only Shiori escaped training as Arwen seemed to do his best to ignore her outside of when they sparred, and even then he did his best to ignore her. Shiori for her part seemed to delight in simply tripping him and tearing his clothes, and by the end of class Arwen's clothes were dirty and ripped, the enchantments on them clearly struggling to repair the damage.

  It had the feeling of last minute cramming for a surprise exam. Intellectually Jun knew that the end of the term was coming up, but she'd lost track of time during the two weeks she'd spent suspended and training just with Shiori.

  Other than her Master, the only people she'd regularly seen in that time had been her friends and Lane's father, though rarely. Sara, Cecilia, Lane, Gareth, and Corin kept disappearing for days at a time during the trial, with her roommates usually coming home late at night and leaving early in the morning. The few times she'd managed to catch them, Sara and Cecilia remained tightlipped about what they'd been up to, only saying that she shouldn't worry, though it'd been hard to do so as they always left wearing their full combat kits and often returned dirty and covered in blood. During one of the hearing days where they showed up to support her, Shiori noted that they'd gotten substantially stronger, all five now firmly in the Silver ranks.

  Her teammates were all kept too busy to visit, and even her spell trainings with Aya had to be canceled as Jun was banned from the Academy's spell ranges during her suspension. Instead, Aya and her teammates had extra training and bounties that ate up all of their free time, leaving Jun largely isolated.

  Thanks to Shiori's training though, she was still able to keep up.

  As if Arwen's sudden focus on intense training was a switch being flipped, every single one of Jun's classes changed.

  The Sergeant's fitness class remained, but if anything he pushed them even harder, as if Arwen's training was a walk in the park in comparison. Jun finally learned what the strange pressure she kept feeling from Arwen was. Aura, the pressure of the soul and mana. Each general level gained, each extra stat point slightly bolstered one's soul, and at a certain point it became strong enough to consciously use as a tool. The Sergeant's workouts were intense as he pressed down on them with his aura, pushing them until they broke, then the healers would come in and get them moving again and they would repeat.

  Jun saw Michael amongst the healers and learned that they endured their own form of hellish training as they were forced to heal the other students while constantly under the aura pressure of their professors.

  The most surprising thing about this was that even the non-adventurer students were forced through this training, the complaints of young nobles ignored as they struggled through the same treatment. For once, the commoners and adventuring students had it easier simply because they'd already learned to endure harsh training.

  Combat Skills was worse, replacing all of their morning classes and Jun's hard earned free time. The Sergeant forced the students to fight in different situations, sometimes a team of students against an instructor, other times teams against teams or even a single student against a full team. Each time a student lost they were forced to go on a run around the Academy campus where professors would randomly ambush them with aura pressure, spells, or physical attacks. Other students were encouraged to get involved, tripping them, throwing things, even chasing after the students. A healer would always appear if someone got injured to the point they couldn't move, but the healing provided was minimal, just enough to get them moving again.

  Jun soon learned to keep faintly visible barriers active over her vital spots, especially her face after a group of smirking non-combat students threw steaming cups of tea in her face as she ran past the cafeteria. Her stats had kept her from getting too burned, but a healing professor had to arrive and fix her eyes before she could continue. Once her vision returned Jun gritted her teeth as the group of girls stood watching her with predatory smiles and continued running, though not before she surrounded herself with several weak barriers to the approving nod of the healing professor.

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  The idea proved it's worth just a minute later when a professor cast a water spell at her and she was able to move a barrier to block it, turning a firehouse of water into a hard rain that she kept out of her eyes with another plate of defensive magic. After just a single run, Jun learned to keep her head on a swivel and she started to take alternate routes to avoid as many ambushes as she could or block attacks with her magic when she couldn't.

  Arcana Theory was replaced with more Practical Spellcasting with Sam doing special sessions for the few adventurer students in his session. Instead of the sedate practice games and casting spells against target dummies that they'd done for the past few months, instead Sam taught them spellcasting tactics under pressure. Moving while casting, casting while in pain, how to read incoming spells and counter them with opposing mana types.

  By the end of her first day of the new training regimen, Jun and the rest of her classmates were jumpy, their eyes constantly scanning for threats, and she wasn't the only one who kept magic active. A few even moved around with weapons and shields held ready to protect themselves, inspiring Jun to pull out her shield and do the same. It turned out the random ambushes weren't limited to the Combat Skills class hours as Jun learned after her Practical Spellcasting class with Sam on First Day.

  She and Aya had both started to relax as they left the spell range for the cafeteria as Jun debated letting her barriers drop so that her mana could recover faster when she flinched and her spells moved, intercepting a series of padded arrows as the two walked past a stand of trees outside one of the buildings. Aya immediately conjured a ball of fire and moved to retaliate when several students screamed, dropping their bows as they sprinted out of cover and into the nearest building. Before Jun or Aya could do anything more than exchange concerned glances a massive gust of wind buffeted them from behind, sending them sprawling into the snow covering the ground.

  "Be more aware of your surroundings girls," a female professor chided them as she strolled past with a smile on her face. "There could always be ambushes within ambushes."

  Brushing the wet mud and bits of snow from their clothes, Jun and Aya were far more cautious after that, looking at every person that came near them suspiciously. The cafeteria was a chaotic mess of students tripping each other and throwing food, although conspicuously there were clear areas of peace around students who wore gold medallions. Getting food turned out to be easy enough for the two girls though as they slipped through the half riot of students, Jun using her barriers to push a path through the crowd as more than a few students yelped and pulled their legs out of the way, hurriedly patting at the small flames Aya threw at their feet until they reached one of the booths and got some food. Sustenance secured, they beat a hasty retreat and ate in Jun's room before splitting up for the night.

  Second Day was much the same, with intense exercises, fights, and random ambushes throughout the day, but made worse as the students' advisors joined in on the fun. Jun had thought the random ambushes and surprise attacks from professors, staff, and other students were bad enough, but Arwen took things to another level, laughing hysterically as he appeared and flung small Bronze ranked bugs and mice at her while pressuring her with his aura. She soon started keeping a set of snares active to swat away the pests since Arwen always seemed to get them through the gaps in her barriers, further straining her mind and mana channels.

  She'd heard from the rest of her team that Arwen had even taken to sneaking bugs and mice into everyone else's rooms, though luckily her sleep remained undisturbed. Still, she would snap awake at the slightest noises while she slept, already pumping mana into her spells as she scanned her room for threats. Shiori seemed to find the whole thing hilarious, and Jun started to hear rumors of a black streak that would appear around campus and randomly harass people before vanishing.

  On Sixth Day of Jun's first week back, Arwen gave their team the day off to relax, though they didn't do so. Jun and her team took the opportunity to buy more supplies and gear, each of her team members now owning some sort of expanded storage device that they stuffed anything they could think of needing for the upcoming expedition from tents and climbing gear to spare weapons and trail rations. They'd even each gotten a couple of the healing pills Sara and Cecilia carried, though the alchemical items were extremely expensive, rivalling the cost of a cheap storage device. Still, if for some reason Michael was unable to heal them, the pills would save their lives, well worth the cost. By the end of the weekend, much of the tension that had built up over the chaotic week had left and Jun had started to relax again. That proved to be a mistake.

  The next week was somehow worse than the first as Arwen and the other advisors escalated their pranks against their teams. Arwen in particular seemed to delight in trying to steal the team's food when they went to the cafeteria, though they managed to eat by smuggling food out in their storage bags. Finally, it was Sixth Day again and the campus settled down into peace. In one of the rare moments of peace the night before, Arwen had left each of Jun's team members a note telling them to meet at the main gate between the city and the Forest. It was time for the expedition to begin.

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