The end of semester exam was trivial to Wolf, just like every other one. More importantly, the rest of the gang found it surprisingly easy.

As the noble faction ceased their attempts to suppress Wolf through end of semester exams, all elite class’s students could now breathe easy. The fate of Jai Kailasa, who was kicked out after Wolf’s first semestral exam, was an excellent motivation for everyone to study hard and work on staying in the elite class. And sharing the same class with this commoner youth felt like a curse to those who Wolf didn’t privately tutor.

As for those he tutored, the party of five left Silver City, heading out for their missions.

Wolf acted very differently compared to last time. On their first mission, the youth insisted on camping and spending time in the wilderness. Now, however, he zigzagged from town to town, looking for comfortable inns for them to spend the night.

Anna associated this odd behavior and Wolf not making any passes at her as his form of apology for the trip the two of them took together. She had no idea what the situation really was about.

Wayde and the girls spent their nights in private rooms of fancy inns. Wolf also checked in, but sneaked out in search of brothels and ladies of the night as soon as people quieted down. His only regret was that the Soul Force he harvested wasn’t amplified by South’s wine.

For a normal person, Wolf’s lifestyle would’ve made them collapse in a week. He drank two cups of wine in the morning, traveled with his friends, sometimes killing a group of bandits along the way. In the evening he’d drink two more cups. If the group had reached a settlement he’d sneak out and go whoring the whole night, if not he’d rest and meditate, carving the ninth column.

Despite such a lifestyle, nobody suspected a thing. By burning an insignificant amount of Internal Energy Wolf washed away his fatigue, maintaining perfect health.

Everyone noticed the change of pace. Anna was especially happy with Wolf’s gentlemanly behavior. Just as she’d expected, things sorted themselves out, and there was no need for her to panic, or to have a fight with Wolf over nothing.

***

Three weeks after leaving Silver City, in the middle of nowhere, Wolf abruptly halted.

“Guys, I’ve been thinking about something,” Wolf said, gazing towards a certain bush some two dozen meters away. “I’ve been hunting down bandits on my own all this time. I think you need some practice with manlings for your mission. Come. Follow me.”

Wolf suddenly dashed towards the bush he’d been eyeing. A moment later his four friends ran after with confused expressions. Their unexpected action startled a group of ten-odd bandits.

The bandits overlooked the road from a safe distance, waiting for easy pickings to run into them. A group of youths wearing fancy robes was generally something you ignored, unless you were a complete rookie.

You leave Mages alone and don’t provoke a calamity. These bandits never would’ve guessed they’d doomed themselves just by watching these five youngsters.

Seeing a fearless and a very confident youth charging towards them confused the bandits for a moment. While the newer members processed what was going on, the veterans already got up, turning to flee.

Ben was a veteran bandit. His head was the first one to carelessly get above the bushes, as he turned around to hightail it.

*Twang!*

Screaming through the air, a crossbow bolt pierced through the man’s skull like an egg, killing him immediately.

“Great shot, Matilda,” Wolf exclaimed as he jumped into a chaotic melee, trampling the bushes.

*Twang!*

Another crossbow sounded, but this time Wolf felt danger. He pivoted and hacked at the bolt which was headed straight for his butt.

He glanced back towards his group and saw Barbara holding an empty crossbow, while Anna chanted and Wayde rushed to help in melee.

Did she aim for my crotch? Wolf wondered, but let go of the thought after seeing the young Countess’s awkward expression.

A couple of moments later the bandits were dead on the ground. The last survivor begged to be spared, but Matilda shot him dead.

Wolf looked at her, cocking his eyebrow.

“What?” Matilda asked in a hushed tone. “He was a villain.”

“It’s not that. I would’ve killed him,” Wolf explained. “I just didn’t expect you to finish him.”

The woman shrugged with an expression that seemed to ask ‘he was dead anyway, does it matter who did the deed?’

Matilda and Wayde showed no signs of remorse after killing. Anna was so-so. Two corpses had holes blasted in their heads from Magic Darts.

As for Barbara, the Count’s daughter was puking her guts out after burning a hole through a man’s chest with Inferno Ray.

“You did good,” Wolf said while looting the weapons and still whole pieces of armor. “Much better than the last time we fought.”

“Thanks,” Anna said with a smile caught somewhere between confused unease and disgust. “Do you mind telling me why you’re picking up those cheap pieces of equipment?”

And really, Wolf was taking the bloody clothes off the still warm bodies like a random battlefield scavenger.

“I never asked and wondered about that myself for the longest time,” Wolf said, only further confusing everyone. “But I think you should do it because if you leave weapons and armor lying around you’re basically just leaving starting kits for the next batch of bandits.”

Matilda wanted to say that free equipment people stumbled upon wasn’t the reason why they picked up banditry, but held her peace. Barbara would’ve said something much snider, if only she wasn’t busy, having a breakdown over the partially cremated corpse she’d turned a man into.

Looking at her, Wolf tried but couldn’t remember ever feeling regret over killing a man. He kind of felt sorry for people he used to practice Reforge Mind on. Up until the point when he saw them behaving worse than beasts and feeling how excited they were at the time. Then he’d just paste the memories of the women he’d helped using the spell and let them experience hell themselves.

“Can you stand?” he asked, trying to sound concerned for the woman dry heaving.

Surprisingly, Anna frowned at Wolf’s concern over Barbara. She still hadn’t forgiven the bitch for trying to steal her man.

***

Deniz and Emre stood guard, just like every other evening. Emre wondered when the gang was going to expand again. Then, the new rookies would be the ones staying up all night, warding off mosquitos and horrors of the night which never came to this gods-forsaken part of the duchy anyways.

Inwardly grumbling about being forced to stay awake at night, the man heard a mumbling from a distance.

“Who’s there?” Deniz said next to him, being careful not to be too loud, since some of the guys sometimes sneaked out at night for one reason or another.

If he were to kick up a fuss he’d be punished for raising a false alarm, and then the person caught redhanded outside the camp would hate him for days. Best to act subtly, and first check whether the one making the noise was a friend or an enemy.

His answer came immediately in the form of two glowing darts which pierced his skull and ended his life.

“You were too loud just now,” Wolf whispered to Anna as two bodies crumpled to the ground. “Even normal people could hear you.”

“If I was any quieter I would’ve fumbled the spell.” Anna whispered back in annoyance.

Wolf tried to teach them how to perform Wordless, Motionless spells, but she couldn’t get the hang of it. Even Matilda couldn’t do it, and she was a genius!

“Fine, fine,” Wolf said, brushing Anna off, annoying her even more.

“Is everyone ready to proceed?” he asked, changing the subject, further infuriating Anna.

“You’re not the leader for our mission,” Anna hissed, wanting to argue at an inappropriate moment. “Matilda gets to decide what we do.”

“It’s fine Anna,” Matilda said in her normal voice, which was considerably quieter than Anna’s angry whispers. “We’re ready to move forward.”

Five minutes later the bandit base was leveled. The destruction brought about by four Fourth Order Mages was terrifying to the point that it got Wolf thinking.

What would happen if all those people laboring at the Mage Academy suddenly went crazy or decided to turn to crime? he wondered, realizing they could probably devastate Silver City in a matter of hours.

Thinking about it for a moment, he realized that Mage Academy was a gathering place of dangerous people who voluntarily went out into the world cleaning up dangerous groups for some token rewards.

Learning magic costs a lot of money, he thought. But just doing what Dad said and researching various topics is free, assuming you have access to a library. And if you don’t rely on external means advancement really is slower, but it’s not impossible to become a high Order Mage that way, maybe even a True-Namer and it costs nothing.

The more Wolf thought about it the more he realized something was fishy about the Mage Academy. A while ago Barbara said the bar for graduation was raised and that Mages could now stay pent up in the Mage Academy until they were sixty or seventy years old.

Objectively speaking, that was just wasting time for people with poor and mediocre talents. Or maybe, waiting for the age when their ambition and passion mostly burned out.

“How do we collect the heads?” Anna asked, and Wolf barely controlled himself not to roll his eyes.

“You can take the heads of those two guards you killed,” he said as he watched the smoldering ruin where several dozen bandits used to live before a barrage of fireballs baked the land into ceramics.

Such use of over-exaggerated lethal ordinance made the young man grimace. He would’ve just plowed through them with a blade without the ensuing collateral damage.

Then, as focused as Wolf’s mind was, he wondered what would happen with the terrain if he used Meteor Shower, a Tenth Order spell of mass destruction.

“What about the rest?” Anna asked, genuinely wanting to know how they were supposed to handle the situation.

Just put some ash into a bag and hand it over, Wolf thought, however, he held back from the snarky comment about the indiscriminate barrage he’d just witnessed.

“Explain to the clerk how you handled the situation and what happened. You’re probably not the first ones to burn down all the evidence.” Wolf now regretted going to a brothel and missing the planning session where the four of them agreed on the tactic for this battle.

“Look at it this way, you really have solved the problem and exterminated the gang you were after,” he assured her. “The warehouses have Spell Formations which make it impossible to lie without getting caught, so you’ll be fine as long as you tell the truth.”

I just hope there were no collateral victims, Wolf thought, but a moment later realized he was being hypocritical. When he killed bandits near the roads, he never went to check whether they had any people shackled in their lairs. He realized his fallacy when he practiced Reforge Mind and saw that there were suffering victims still alive after he’d exterminated gangs.

It was rare, but given how many gangs Wolf wiped out without checking to make sure, he’d certainly left some innocent people to die in captivity.

Seeing the proud smiles of his friends, Wolf chose to keep this thought to himself, and not spoil their mood.

“Come on, let’s hurry,” he said with an approving smile. “I’ll just wrap up my mission and then we go and enjoy Matilda’s birthday.”

The birthday girl blushed, but the rest of the gang cheered.