“What are you doing? Our task is to go hunt for monsters, you know…”(Shiho)

“We have the whole day to accomplish our task, and that’s why we are going to spend the morning time stripping those monsters of materials and meat, and we will also use the time to learn as much as possible about their bodies looking for their weak points so that when we go hunt for them, we will be able to target those weak points to finish them as fast as we can”(Rimi)

“……Is this something that you always do?”(Dalis)

“It’s what we learned from Teacher, first we have to collect as much information as possible about our opponent before fighting them, and what we are doing now is studying the bodily structure of those monsters to figure out their physical limits. And yes, doing this will not give us all the answers we want, but it will give us something we can work on”(Nad)

“That’s interesting indeed!... but somehow it goes against the image I have of knights and warriors…”(Dalis)

“You are talking about the ‘Fighting fair and square’ and ‘Fighting head-on’ things, right? If that’s the case, then we are deviating from the way knights and warriors normally act…”(Alice)

“…I-Is that a-alright?”(Shiho)

“Of course! We are even proud of ourselves for doing this!”(Nad)

“Just thinking about it for a little bit should give everyone the right answer, is what this one thinks”(Anolan)

“…The right answer?”(Dalis)

“Why do knights and warriors exist? The knights’ job is to ensure the safety of the people of their country. The way many people think of being the honorable way to fight, by going head-on with their enemy without using any underhanded methods, is nothing but bullshit in my opinion. Do you know why? It’s because it has the biggest possibility of failure amongst all other ways to fight. And when it fails and the knight is killed by his enemy, everyone will see it as him dying an honorable death doing his job….. But no one will look at the casualties caused by his way of fighting”(Zeek)

“…C-Casualties?”(Shiho)

“The enemy that the knight was fighting is a monster, a bandit, or a soldier from an invading country, right? And once the knight dies what will the enemy do? The enemy will go and attack those the knight was protecting but this time with no one to protect them”(Emma)

“Even though, the knight did his best to protect them-!”(Dalis)

“Can you say the same after having your wife raped, killed, and then eaten in front of your eyes?”(Rimi)

“…”(Dalis)

“We are living in a world where these things happen all the time, and now you said that the knight did his best… but is that really the case? Let’s just say that the knight used some of his time studying his enemies and collecting information about them, and when the time to fight came, the knight lured his enemy to a place that gives him an advantage over his enemy. And when they finally started to fight, the knight evaded all the enemies attacks as if seeing the future and after tiring the enemy out he killed it without even suffering a single injury. Knowing that the knight could have fought the enemy this way and would have won, would you be able to say the same thing about the knight doing his best when he clearly didn’t after seeing your wife or anyone you hold dear raped, killed, and eaten in front of your eyes? I absolutely will not be able to say that”(Zac)

“Especially in this world, where you can level up and become stronger by just killing your enemy, that means your enemy will become stronger by killing you and would use that power on those you were trying to protect. And if fighting smartly will help me save my loved ones then I’ll do my best learning how to fight that way”(David)

“…I see…. It’s certainly as you guys said”(Dalis)

“When a knight fights it’s to protect the people. And when a warrior fights, it’s to hunt for food and materials for himself or to sell them for money to provide for his family, or to fight in order to protect someone he holds dear in his heart or to protect someone that is paying for his protection. In summary, they fight to protect and not to have fun. That’s why as long as your target of protection is safe then you win, that’s all there to it”(The Four Brothers)

After that, Shiho and the students from the Magic Class who are working with the Actual Combat Class became motivated to learn more about what Zac, Rimi, and their friends are doing, and even Dalis was doing the same thing.

After eating lunch, the Actual Combat students went looking for the monsters they were tasked with hunting. Rimi’s team went after the Giant Orcs and Zac’s team went after the Dash Bisons. Both teams started by tracking down the monsters’ footprints, and the team to first find their prey was Rimi’s team. They found a Giant Orc walking through the forest alone, Anolan was the one who moved first with his greatsword and used it to attack the hand holding the weapon of the Giant Orc to slow him down, and from behind him Taylor and Bigge dashed at the Giant Orc running in a low posture and suddenly they jumped up causing the Giant Orc to swing its other hand at them. But they suddenly started doing double and triple jumps by kicking the air and were able to get behind the Giant Orc and cut the elbow tendons on the outstretched arms of the Giant Orc with their daggers rendering them useless, and when the Giant Orc started screaming in pain, two arrows fired by Alice came from atop one of the trees and nailed the Giant Orc’s feet to the ground. Using that as their signal, Rimi and David came running from behind Anolan and each one of them landed a finishing blow at a fatal point of the Giant Orc’s body, Rimi stabbed the Giant Orc in the heart and David used Water Magic to fill the Giant Orc’s lungs with water through its mouth finally killing it. After taking the corpse of the Giant Orc back to the campsite, they went looking for a second Giant Orc. On the other side of the forest, the second team did a good job as well, and they were done hunting the Dash Bisons at the same time the first team was done hunting the Giant Orcs.

At night, after Soma was done giving a Magic Item Creation lecture to the four brothers, he went and sat around the fire with Dalis and Milin, and after some time Zeek and Nad came from the tents’ area and joined the teachers.

“Teacher! I’m here to have you tell me about the Blue Lightning magic you used before!”(Zeek)

“Well, I did promise to tell you during the trip…. That Blue Lightning is a Great Magic spell called Lightning Dragon, and the reason for its blue color is me overcharging it with mana, and I do that to control it in order to reduce its effects”(Soma)

“Will not overcharging it lead to making it stronger?…”(Nad)

“Not if the caster is able to control his mana perfectly. So Teacher, you are overcharging that spell with your mana to suppress its strength with brute force, right?”(Zeek)

“Yeah, and that enables me to use such a spell for many things other than annihilating a whole town or country as it was intended for the spell”(Soma)

“Interesting…”(Zeek)

“Teacher, I have something to ask as well!”(Nad)

“Go ahead”(Soma)

“The way you fight… Why do you always kill your enemy by severing their limbs along with their heads? Severing their heads should be enough to kill them….”(Nad)

“That’s of the way I taught myself to fight”(Soma)

“You taught yourself to fight like that?”(Nad)

“Yeah, before going to Elk, I was in a place that was teeming with strong monsters, and among those monsters, there were a lot of mutants. Mutants are monsters that spawn with abilities and treats they shouldn’t have. For example having regeneration abilities even though they shouldn’t have it, or having two heads when they should only have one, or having multiple hearts when they should have only one heart and so on. When I fight I target the arms to prevent my enemy from attacking, and then I go after the legs to prevent them from escaping or using the legs to attack, and after that, I cut the head off to kill them. I never go after the heart just in case they are a mutant and have more than one, and I always cut off the limbs and then the head very quickly to avoid giving them time to regenerate fast enough to counter-attack me, and cutting their limbs off helps with giving me enough time to retreat in case cutting the head off is not enough to kill them. At that place, I had to learn to fight this way to be able to kill my enemies in the most efficient way”(Soma)