For the next several days, Yuriko’s schedule changed. Her morning training only included her morning jog: a truncated version of her strength-building regimen alternated with a similarly truncated agility and flexibility training. This was followed by a short sword dance, which incorporated all three in one go. However, she spent the rest of the morning until noon with the circulation pattern running around in her Anima.

The first time she tried it, she could barely hang on for thirty minutes. She had clearly been able to maintain the dance during her foray into the tunnels but now it was difficult. She was beset by the urge to move even when she was seated in class and that was the problem. She realised that she could barely control other Animus techniques when she used the sword dances, especially the three-Intent braided technique.

She could clearly feel her Anima straining. Her mind, too, for that matter. After persisting for several hours, she had a pounding migraine and had to head to the infirmary instead of History class.

The medic, a young man in his early twenties, applied some oil on her forehead, made her sniff it then massaged her scalp and shoulders while she lay back on a chair. His strong fingers managed to find knots along her shoulder blade which he then proceeded to knead, press, and massage, making her moan inadvertently in relief and pressure. By the time she left the infirmary, she felt much better. The medic, slightly red-faced, admonished her to ease up on her training.

She caught the tag end of the class and borrowed Ella-Mai’s notes. Master Alfein hadn’t been present in class either, letting an assistant instructor give them a list of books they were to study. That afternoon was spent catching up on what she missed, memorising runescript words from the Essential Runscript, and hunting down the books they were told to read in the library.

Most of Animus Manipulation class’ readings were on the varied theories on what Animus was, what Chaos was, and its variances. It turned out that a plane’s ambient Chaos was the tamest of the lot. Coupled with the light of the Radiant Sun, it was what was needed to allow life to flourish.

It also turned out that recovering her Animus reserve had much to do with the level of ambient Chaos that she breathed in. It was filtered in her body and the usable particles were deposited in her Animus core and converted to Animus.

A book described a breathing technique to increase the efficacy of Animus recovery. Long deep breaths, followed by a couple of short ones. Keep the heartbeat steady and slow to allow the body to filter as much of the good ambient Chaos as it could before expelling the rest. It reminded Yuriko of Da’s breathing technique for marksmanship. For that one, she had to slow her heartbeat enough that she should pull the trigger between beats. The body moved however slightly while breathing, which may spoil her aim. It wouldn’t matter if the target was only a dozen paces away but it would very much so when shooting longstride ranges.

Still, when she practised the breathing exercise, she didn’t notice much change in her Animus recovery. The best was still a good night’s rest. Then, she always recovered to full no matter how drained her core had been.

This went on for about a week. She’d strain her Anima until cracks had formed on it, visible when she meditated. Then she’d spend the next training schedule distilling Chaos to repair the damage. The cycle went about every three days. By the time it was Sixthday and her Anima had completed the second round of training recovery, she had noticed some improvement.

She still couldn’t advance but she felt frustratingly close. But no matter what, she just couldn’t cross that border. Damien hadn’t spoken since his rather crude remark on her having multiple husbands, and quite frankly, she wasn’t sure if she wanted to hear from him right now. The female version of the Golden Silhouette started modelling the breathing exercises. Aside from the breath patterns, she was supposed to circulate braided strands of Pure Animus around her lungs and move them to her core.

She still didn’t see much improvement in recovery speed though. Still, it was another set of exercises she could do, and improvement was an improvement, no matter how slight.

That morning on Sixthday, after their physical training, all of the cadets were gathered in the clearing in front of Vinze Hall. Yuriko saw gaps in the lines, and she worried that the missing students had been captured by the Chaos Lords. She saw Danazzo and Ifra though. He hovered near her cloyingly and from the long-suffering expression on Ifra’s face, this had been going on for a while.

Krystal, Heron, and Mikel waved at her from their squad. All three of them looked well, even though Yuriko hadn’t seen her friends last week. Krystal just wasn’t in her room, and her answers to the messenger cranes Yuriko sent were terse.

“Attention!” Commandant yelled from the front, a girl in her fifth year, Yuriko thought. “The aftermath of the Chaos storm is more than debris and property destruction. Rodents and other pests have also been affected, changing as their bodies and minds are inundated by Primordial Chaos. They infest the tunnels and left alone, they make their way out and are a danger to the Empire’s citizens. There is not enough manpower from the Legion, the militia, and the constables to hunt these pests down, and it falls to you, student cadets, to do so. You will form squads to hunt these creatures down. There is no need to go into the tunnels, as those are only for the more powerful amongst us. Instead, you will go to the fields at the base of the city. Every head you bring back will be a merit. With enough merits, you may exchange for anything on the bounty list that will be posted along the notice boards. You may form your own squads, but each must be no less than five. Dismissed!”

So their day of what Yuriko thought would have been spent on lectures had been changed to… pest extermination. Shrugging to herself, she made a beeline for her friends. Krystal gave her a tired smile while Heron stared at her face hungrily. A minute later, the Foster twins managed to find their way next to her.

“All six of us?” Yuriko asked.

“Overkill, maybe,” Mikel shrugged, “but we’re a solid team.”

“Let us join too!” Millie, Ishika, Maryn, Danika, and Zeyn, all of them from Faron’s Crossing, popped up behind Heron.

“That's eleven of us,” Yuriko observed.

“The commandant said at least five,” Zeyn said while he sidled up next to Maryn, looking surreptitiously down her cleavage for a moment before grinning at Yuriko.

Yuriko rolled her eyes. “I suppose that works. Command?”

“That should be the Agazans,” Maryn said.

“Agreed.”

“So I suppose it’s Krystal or Heron?” Yuriko asked.

“I’m in Agaza too!” Zeyn protested.

“No,” Maryn said firmly.

“Aw!”

“I vote for Krystal,” Heron piped up. With nobody protesting, other than Krystal, the position was filled.

“Oh, alright,” Krystal huffed. “I’ll report our team composition. Wait here, we’ll head out as soon as I come back.”

With that, she made her way to the front of the crowd, where there was a red banner put up for the squad leaders to congregate.

“You’ve been busy?” Yuriko asked after Krsytal left. “I haven’t seen any of you since the storm.”

“Clean up duties,” Heron said evenly. “We’ve been scouring the tunnels under the city for days, removing bodies and scrubbing off the bloodstains. He shuddered as he spoke. “The stench was terrible.”

“Oh, I’m sorry you had to go through that.”

.Amazing,” Braden said after a moment, “the rest of us were holed up in the shelters.”

“Yeah, except for Yuri, here,” Danika said with a laugh. “She went running off to help. Broke her blade on a Chaos Lord’s wrist.”

“Oh Ancestors!” Orrin exclaimed, “What happened?”

“I responded to a request for help, somehow wound up with Krystal and the others and we ran across a Chaos Lord who’d captured a squad of first-year students. We barely made it out. I don’t know if the students were rescued, but Danazzo Aralka over there managed to rescue one of the captives.”

Yuriko pointed out the slightly taller boy with his long dark hair still in dozens of braids.

“You broke your side-blade?” Braden asked.

“I have a combat knife and my Plasma Caster.” Yuriko shrugged. “My new side-blade should arrive later.”

“Ah, well, maybe pick up another sidearm at the cadet armoury?”

“No need. I’m good.” Yuriko smiled.

A few minutes later, Krystal came back with a map.

“We’re to scour the northern fields just outside the Upper Ring. Quick patrol to the River Kliss, turn east towards the planar barrier and then turn back. Most of the terrain are orchards and roads with tall hedgerows.”

“Do we have transportation to the City gate?” Orrin asked.

“No.” Krystal sighed. “That’s just over a league from here to the Northgate. We can walk it in an hour. Form up and let's go.”

She arranged them in a double-column with herself and Yuriko on the front row, Heron and Mikel just behind them. They walked out of the clearing and headed down the Academic Roundabout, followed it to Learner’s Pass and then through the campus main gate. There, they turned right and followed the Circuit Tram route along the circumferential road and then took Main Avenue which eventually meandered near the Northgate and Northroad which would take them out of the city through the perimeter wall.

They followed the paved road for another hour before turning northwest along a dirt path. Along the main road, hedgerows along the side were taller than Yuriko, hiding most of the fields beyond. The dirt road they turned to wasn’t flanked by such, instead, the hedgerows were just waist-high to most of them. Yuriko activated her Enhanced Senses and surveyed the orchard to her left. The fruit trees were widely set apart, with about three or four paces between each trunk.

The fruit trees’ leaves had already turned completely yellow, with some falling every time a strong breeze blew.

“What are we looking for?” she asked Krystal.

“Any creature that looks bigger than it should.”

“Like that giant frog over there?” Yuriko pointed.

“Eh?” Krystal squinted while focusing on enhancing her eyes. “No, that’s just a big frog.”

“It looks as big as my head.”

“It's not moving though. Awakened beasts wouldn’t just sit there.”

“Well, it’s hopping this way. Also, I don’t think we have a species of frog that big in Rumiga.”

“Oh, why don’t you just shoot it?” Maryn yelled from behind them. “If it's a target then good, and if not, well, too bad.”

“Oh, all right.” Yuriko huffed.

The frog was leaping in long bounds that ate up the paces and maybe looking quite aggressive. She aimed with her Plasma Caster, steadied her breathing and pulled the trigger just as the frog was in mid-hop, aiming just in front of its nose. The superheated plasma bolt vaporized the upper half of its body, and the sharp rise in temperature caused its fluids to come to a boil. A reddish-white cloud of steam puffed out as its half charred remains fell on the grass.

“Heron, can you go retrieve the remains?” Krystal said.

“Urk, why me?”

“Cause you’re big and strong?” Zeyn piped in with a mocking tone.

“Shut it!” Heron grumbled but complied. The carcass was about a hundred paces away. He had a sack to bring in their kills though Yuriko still wasn’t sure if the huge frog was a changed beast. Anyway, she continued to keep an eye on their surroundings.

Heron came back holding the sack gingerly in front of him and they resumed their patrol. For the next hour or so, she shot at huge squirrels, rabbits, and more frogs, each larger than usual. She wasn’t the only one who took shots though. Millie was a pretty good shot herself, though she only used a Plasma Lancet.

Maryn used her Heritage to create sharp gusts of wind to knock down flying squirrels and sparrows the size of a hawk. Ishika used her Facet to create small figures of light that made the creatures irritable and more likely to break cover. Zeyn, the twins, and Danika, along with Heron, mainly kept pace with the group, their skills more useful in close quarters.

The Kliss River was nearly a hundred paces across when they eventually came to its banks. A barge floated downriver towards the City, its crew of shirtless sailors waved at them and whistled. They followed the banks for a good while before looping back along a different dirt road that would eventually lead them back to North road, and back to the Upper Ring.

Yuriko’s tummy growled savagely at this point, and she didn’t have any ration bars with her. Well, it was an hour past noon by the time they returned to Agaza, their prizes in tow. They handed off the sacks to the instructors, who tagged them and tossed them into a pile. Yuriko thought that it should have reeked, and she spotted a metal platform underneath the bags, with runescript engraved along the edges. She recognized a cold calling sequence, along with what she thought was an isolation barrier, most likely for the smells.

Yuriko and the girls returned to the Willow, Krystal and Danika with shoulders slumped in exhaustion.

“Oh, I just want to sleep for a week,” Krystal moaned.

“Same here but I want to eat a dozen honey cakes first.” Danika yawned.

The Golden Willow’s entrance hall looked a bit more crowded than usual, and once the six of them entered the lounge, Yuriko saw what the bustle was about.

“Yuri. About time you came back.” Marron said while seated on an armchair, his uniform was neatly pressed and looked fresh for what must have been a long and tedious journey. There was a large package by his feet and from the sudden feeling of intimacy, she knew what was in there.

“Maru!” she squealed, leaping straight into his arms and managed to lift and twirl him around.

“Cut it out, silly!” he yelped, smacking her forehead with the edge of his palm. Yuriko stuck her tongue out at him.

“I missed you,” Yuriko said, her eyes welling up.

“So did I. Now,” he grunted, “let’s go somewhere private.” Marron gave a short bow to the Dorm mistress, Jillian Aine, who returned a short nod. “To your suite?”

“Of course.”

“Good. Go pick that up. I nearly threw my back out carrying that thing.”

“Ehehehe,” Yuriko chuckled and complied. Her friends looked at her from down the hallway, but she gestured for them to go ahead without her. After they left, she led Marron to the second floor and into her home in the big city.