After getting told off by the teacher I was released to do as I please. For the first day, new students like myself were encouraged to explore the academy and get used to the place. This also gave the teachers time to grade the results and assign us to specific classes.

I wasn't concerned about any of this, though. All I could think about was what had happened at the end of the practical exam. That weird feeling happened again, just like what had happened with the basilisk two years ago. But before it could completely take effect, the mana stone not only filled and began to glow, but it overcharged to the point that it blew up in my face.

Blinded and surprised, I must've blundered out of the ring like an idiot. But why did it happen? Why now after two whole years? And why did the mana stone fill up even when I wasn't focusing on it? When I did focus on it, it exploded. I had too many questions and not enough answers.

Thankfully, I was in a place that was full of answers, the Royal Magic Academy. Milena was nowhere to be found, but that was fine. I didn't feel like facing her right now with my dismal performance at the practical anyway. So I set off alone to the library.

I didn't take me long to find it. Right behind a pair of giant double doors was a massive room filled with books. They were everywhere. They were on tables, in bookshelves and on the walls all the way up to the ceiling high above. The answer I needed had to be here.

"Looking for something?" someone asked.

"Huh?" I replied stupidly.

There was a girl here. One quick look at her uniform told me she was an upperclassman. The color was bronze, so she was in the fourth rank. That also meant that she was probably three years older than me. She had her brown hair braided all the way down her back where it stopped just above her skirt. She also had a pair of large round glasses sitting on her slightly freckled nose. She was about a head taller than me, too. But none of that was the most noticeable thing about her.

To put it lightly she was... erm... well developed. Oh, who am I kidding, these things were huge! So much so that she'd be a liability in battle. Not because they hindered her in any way, but that any men on her side would be too busy staring at her chest than looking at the enemy. In short, those boobs were lethal.

"Uh, I asked if you were looking for something?" she asked again.

"Oh, right, right... I'm looking for a book about wulvari," I said.

"Wulvari? Strange subject... That would be over here, I think," she mumbled as she led me over to the bookcases. "It's this bookcase here."

"This whole bookcase?" I asked.

"Yup, the whooooole bookcase," she said with a knowing smile.

Why can't anything I want ever be easy? With no other choice, I grabbed the first few books off of the shelf and started going through them one by one.

"If you need anything else, please come and find me. My name is Marie," she said.

"Oh, right. Thank you, Marie. My name is Fen," I replied.

And so I sat down and began the tedious process of going through each and every book in that bookshelf. Unfortunately, the vast majority of those books had to do with the Great Wulvari War and very little about wulvari themselves. What I was searching for was anything about that strange condition that came over me during the practical exam and when I fought that basilisk. There's no way that they would've fought for so long without ever noticing something like that.

I had gone through the entirety of the first row of books when the school clock tower rang out signaling the end of classes for the day. I was disappointed that I hadn't found anything yet, but it's not like there was no hope. I still had five more shelves to go.

On the way back to the school gate, I found Milena and we walked home together. I was pretty sure I heard several boys cursing under their breath at me, but I ignored it. It wasn't long until I realized that there was an awkward silence going on.

"Something wrong?" I asked her.

"What? Oh, no, nothing's wrong. I was just worried that you'd be in a bad mood because you lost," she said. "So, I thought you might want to be left alone. I couldn't find you at all after that, too."

"Oh, don't worry about it. I was just in the library," I replied. "I'm not the type to sulk."

"Oh, well... then that's good!" she said with a smile on her face. "Then I guess I can tell you my good news?"

"You got promoted immediately, didn't you?" I guessed.

She smiled even brighter and said, "Yeah, that's right! I'll have to change my uniform to red tomorrow. Daddy will be proud."

"Yeah, well, I'm certain I'm still stuck at rank one. So it's still blue for me," I replied.

Once we were home, Milena immediately told her father about her achievement. He was pretty happy until he asked about my results. I won myself a whack on the head for stumbling out of the ring. But on the other hand he seemed pleased with the fact that I managed to fend off three spell attacks with just my sword. In the end it resulted in us having a dinner that was a bit more lavish than normal.

The next day we headed back to school. We received our class assignments and split up once again. It was inevitable since we were now in different ranks, but it wasn't like I never saw her. The classes were set up based entirely on each student's own individual ability, so it wasn't odd to see students from many different ranks in one class. For example, my history class had fifteen students wearing blue, six red, and 1 green.

It seemed that Milena and I managed to luck out and get a math class together. But that was the last class of the day and we wouldn't see each other until then. We could've also met during the lunch break, but I had other plans.

"Back again today, Fen?" Marie greeted me.

"Yup," I replied, then immediately headed over to that same bookcase and got to work.

It was long and tedious, but I didn't have any other choice. I only had lunch break to work with instead of the hours and hours that I had on the first day, too. Having less time each day was going to make this much harder. By the end of the fourth day, I still hadn't found anything. Thankfully, Marie offered to help and we both started looking through the books together. Without her help, it'd take me forever to go through them all. I had to be really careful what I told her, though. As far as she knew this was a project for my history class. But after a week had gone by and our eighth day of searching, we had a breakthrough.

"Is this what you're looking for?" she asked as she pointed to a page in the book she was reading.

"Well, let's see..." I said as I took the book from her.

It was account of a battle that occurred in the northern mountains. The kingdom's soldiers were locked in a heated battle in a forested area covered with fresh snow. They were tasked with taking out a group of wulvari that had fled to that area in retaliation for destroying a small fort to the south. They had gotten one of the wulvari cornered when something strange occurred. It wouldn't be a surprise for someone to fight back harder once they knew they were going to die. But this took it to an extreme.

This particular wulvari seemed to go completely berserk and fought entirely on instinct. Further, his strength, speed, and reaction time all increased dramatically. For a race where these traits were already very good, this power boost was incredible. This wulvari managed to kill all the human soldiers but one. After his report was turned in, this phenomena was called the "Frenzy".

The humans immediately went out to research all they could about this "Frenzy" but they couldn't get much. Thanks to humans discovering magic, most wulvari were usually killed before they could be put into a frenzy state. All they could get was that when a wulvari is put under a significant amount of stress, they would go into a frenzy.

"Thanks, Marie. This is what I was looking for," I said closing the book and putting it back on the shelf.

"Well, that's good. I was happy to help," she said with a smile.

I waved goodbye to her and headed back to class while doing my absolute best trying to hide how excited I was. It was really hard to focus in class, but I somehow got through it. By the time I got home, I had come up with a plan.

That book had told me two important things. First, I wasn't imagining it. Something really happened to me during that fight and it's happened to other wulvari before. Second, I now know what triggers it. And that was stress. Getting angry, frustrated or too excited; that sort of thing. The name "Frenzy" seemed kind of uninspired, but what it's called doesn't really matter. I can call it whatever I want later. After putting everything I knew together I realized I had to test it.

The theory went like this. During the fight with the basilisk and during the practical, I had reached the conditions to go into a frenzy. But the effects were more than just what that book had stated. The evidence of that was the exploding mana stone. My theory was that wulvari normally can't tap into their internal mana, but when under periods of high stress, it finally breaks free and bursts outward in massive quantities, resulting in the power boost. My plan was, if I could somehow control the frenzy, I could then have access to my mana, and finally be able to use magic.

The real trick though, was getting into a frenzy in the first place. It never occurred when I was training with Roland. Probably because I never felt that there would be anything bad happening if I lost. I needed to get myself into trouble... Big trouble.

So, that night, I changed into my normal clothes, took a dark sheet from the linen closet and one of Roland's spare swords. Then I jumped out of the window to my room, down to the grass below.

I was going monster hunting.