This was a young man, with the name of Eric Partizan, whose major was Xen magic, just like the famous Josephine Wong, and with a minor in the study of Flow Magic, with the properties of “Force”. And at this time, it was a conventional late night at the Grant Academy.

He tried to avoid any contact with the students or the faculty members of the academy, even though he was here as a research student and would have ample reason to be out and about in the campus, especially near the grocery stores on campus and the places where licensed merchants could be, as the dates and rules for the next Firework Festival had just been announced, and a lot of students were reasonably excited and active.

“Pss!” at a dark corner, a tall blonde young man in dark and form-fitting leather armor and a young girl with brown hair wearing a metallic grey half face mask covering only the upper half of her face waved at him: “Here!”

These two were Igor Vankov, a knight in training in the academy, and Ailyn Shrier, a relatively rare bow mage with specialty in ice and wind magic. They were Eric’s teammates who had been with him since the day he arrived at the academy. Others just thought they were simply close friends, in actuality, they were also his cohorts in his operational role here at the Grant Academy, arranged by a yet publicly unknown group. The purpose of their operation? Bribe the dirty rangers, reserve the rangers’ time and resources or even dedicated spots of cultivation and harvesting, extract valuable materials and find a way to bring them out of the academy and to their handler, who went by the name Mason.

“We have a problem.” Ailyn Shrier said to Eric Partizan: “I was just told by the rangers that the harvest from our designated slot was not ready.”

“But it should be. It was already given more time than needed.” Eric Partizan said with a heavy frown on his face: “Are they trying to skim us?”

“No, but I just heard from people familiar with Rush and Cage, it sounded like they were planning on a new shipment out of nowhere, to impress their employer.” Igor Vankov said with his arms crossed: “They’re not skimming us, they’re selling our reserve to a higher bidder.”

“Fuck these scum.” Eric Partizan huffed and paced around for around half a minute to calm his boiling blood and raging thoughts, then he asked with a slightly shaky voice: “We can’t take this, we’ve gotta show them we’re not to be messed with. We’ve gotta get it back and teach them a fucking lesson. When is this shipment of this you said?”

“In a few hours.” Igor Vankov said: “As far as I can tell, no one’s entered into our lot yet, so the harvest is still there. But if they’re gonna get it, they’re gonna do it sometime very soon.”

“So that’s why you told me to be armed.” Eric Partizan nodded and said: “Let’s go to the entrance of the hunting ground. Whenever they come out, we take it back.”

Igor Vankov nodded and started heading towards the student hunting ground. Eric Partizan cast his signature obscuration spell on the whole team, cloaking all of them in a thin layer of shadowy energy, which made all of them invisible to the naked eye, and at the same time masking the majority of the team’s energy signature. Thus while under the cloak of this spell, they would be invisible and unnoticeable to almost everyone, unless there was a high level power wielder nearby.

“What are you gonna tell Mason?” Ailyn Shrier asked: “If we go into an armed conflict with the underlings of an assistant professor and Lady Vyn, there would be consequences not only from them but from Mason.”

“I’m gonna tell him exactly what happened. We didn’t start this shit. They’ve crossed the fucking line when they started taking our shit.” Eric Partizan said, “And I don’t think he’d disapprove. If the higher ups don’t want conflicts with Lady Vyn, then they wouldn’t put us here treading on her territory.”

“Mason did not tell us not to engage.” Igor Vankov said: “We’d just have to be careful.”

“Okay, so what’s the plan?” Ailyn Shrier sighed and asked: “Can’t say we’re careful if we don’t even have a plan.”

“I have my portable confusion array scrolls with me. We can put that to good use.” Eric Partizan said as the team slowed down because they had reached the entrance of the student hunting ground.

“Okay, but there will still be ways for them to know that it is us that take their shipment. By plan, I don’t mean we just go and grab it and forget about the rest.” Ailyn Shrier said in a low voice: “Mason is not the one stationed here, nor does he handle the day to day conflicts and battles. He’s just our handler, and he would throw us under the bus if he needs to.”

“Let’s - let’s just plan for the part where we take back our shipment.”

Everything in front of Eric Partizan’s eyes, or in this case, in front of Professor Barnes’ eyes started to get blurry - per Professor Barnes’ knowledge and experience, this was mostly because the original owner of this very piece of memory got emotional when recollecting this part of the memory.

“Okay, bad plan, my dude.” Professor Barnes put down the scroll from Professor Dorothea Clarkson, took a gulp from his alcohol bottle, then he started reading through the piece of memory recorded in the scroll again: “Bad plan.”