Chapter 63: – The First Letter (63)

༺ The First Letter (63) ༻

The hunting festival posed a great danger even though the letter from the future didn’t explicitly state as such. After all, the focus of the festival was to hunt demonic beasts.

The forest would be teeming with its native demonic beasts, and additionally, beasts captured on the outside would be brought back into the forest as well. Moreover, demons were creatures that considered humans to be their enemies.

Participants couldn’t expect any special treatment just because they were students of the academy. Injuries were commonplace and there were even casualties every few years.

Nevertheless, the festival was packed with participants each year. Hundreds of people in a vast forest may be tiny specks in comparison, but it was an immense amount considering they had to put their lives on the line.

What’s more is that students from the commerce and humanities departments were prohibited from participating since the majority of the participants were from combat-related departments.

This meant that even if you excluded about half of the Academy’s students, there would still be hundreds of participants each year. This was partly due to the lavishness of the prizes, but also because of the nature of the Academy.

The Academy was both an educational and training institution. Regardless of whether you were part of the knight division or the magic department, you would have to survive intense competition amongst other students, and more often than not, you would be sent out into the field as early as your third year.

Survival in intense competition and risking one’s life were necessary to graduate, and the hunting festival was one of the comparatively safer events since it was held on academy grounds under proper supervision.

Initially, I hadn’t expected it to be difficult to gather a group to participate in the festival. Seria was an excellent swordswoman, and I had friends I could trust with my life, like Celine and Leto. I could gather 4 people easily… Or at least that was what I thought.

What was supposed to be a simple task had turned into a series of hardships. I had managed to gather four people, but the chemistry between the four of us was off, to say the least.

To begin with, Celine and Seria weren’t even on speaking terms.

Celine, who was always quick to read the situation, promptly bowed to Seria.

“I’m sorry …….”

Seria looked at Celene with visible surprise on her face as Celine sighed heavily and bowed even lower.

“I’ve said some bad things about you in the past and it might have made my friends dislike you even more. It’s all my fault, I’m really sorry.”