Yue and Viktor walked around town, essentially using insight on practically everyone to see who had a good core.

“I mean a Wood core isn’t terrible..” Yue murmured noting how other than paper/dirt cores everyone in town only had Wood Cores. Wood cores were the second weakest cores.

“Teaching them attack spells might end with something on fire though..” Viktor murmured, looking around.

Yue suddenly gasped and pulled Viktor’s arm, pointing at a girl with short bob length blonde hair who had a basket of herbs in her hands. She seems to be only around 12-13 years old and was clearly surprised when Yue pointed at her so suddenly with such an excited look. She also looked shocked as she saw Yue was essentially holding Viktor’s arm against his chest.

“Silver!” Yue said with a bright smile. He looked at Viktor and noticed how instead of looking at the girl he was looking at him. Yue didn’t know why Viktor had such an odd look on his face and he didn’t really care, he dragged Viktor over, holding his hand as they went toward the girl.

“Hello, I am Yue,” Yue said in German with a smile. He then looked at Viktor to essentially say the rest for him since he didn’t know how to explain in German.

“My name is Viktor Ivanov...We wanted to know if you want to learn how to use magic?” Viktor said after clearing his throat a bit.

Yue realized that he didn’t introduce himself with his ‘full name’ as he probably should’ve. He had gotten too excited and caught up in the town’s home-y vibe. He decided that it probably didn’t matter and that no one was going to figure anything out just from that.

“Magic?” The little girl asked, her eyes gleaming a bit.

“You have a core type that will allow you to learn magic, in order to help the town we’re offering to teach people,” Viktor explained and smiled.

“Would you like to learn?”

The girl nodded profusely and Yue smiled softly, he figured that they had come to an agreement. Viktor told the little girl that they’d start the next day and asked for her name.

“My name is Frida!” The girl said with a smile.

Frida waved at them as they went their separate ways, she had to bring the herbs she had harvested home and Viktor and Yue had to see if they could find anyone else with a good enough core. They looked for a while but they didn’t actually end up finding anyone else.

“I guess we’re just going to be teaching Frida…” Yue sighed as they started walking to the inn where the class was staying.

The boys were all staying in two of the rooms and the girls were staying in one room. Yue and Viktor had their own separate rooms. Usually, the leaders stayed in the same room but since Yue was a ‘girl’, they ended up in separate rooms.

Yue and Viktor had to go around the rooms and tell them to go to sleep even though the sun wasn’t even down. They could only sleep for a limited amount of time before sunset because the werewolves would come out at night. Yue felt bad for the girls who were already trying to sleep, it was obvious that they felt uncomfortable sleeping partially in uniform.

“Sleep well..” Yue whispered before closing the door and walking over to his own room.

“Don’t oversleep.” Viktor chuckled as he walked past Yue to get to his own room. Yue blushed and rolled his eyes as he entered his room.

“My sleep schedule is gonna be so messed up after this expedition..” Yue murmured as he took his hairpin out so he could sleep more easily. He set his swords down on the bedside table and took off his jacket and boots before letting himself fall down on the bed.

He stared up at the ceiling for a while. Being in a small town like this reminded him of his childhood a bit. His master usually avoided big towns when they were traveling so places like these felt more like home than most. Yue sighed and closed his eyes, trying to avoid thinking about the past and things that would make him sad.

—

After only sleeping around 2 hours, Yue woke up and immediately got ready as he saw the sun was beginning to set. He yawned as he put his hair up into a ponytail, his hairpin was still inserted into his hair. After getting his swords he left the room, stretching a bit.

He had been secretly hoping that he made it before Viktor did but the two of them opened their bedroom doors at the same time. Viktor looked the same as he did before their nap except his hair was tied back in a loose ponytail. Yue sighed whilst Viktor just smiled and they both went on to knock on the doors of their classmates to call them out.

It took some time but everyone woke up and went to their patrol positions. Viktor and Yue were standing at the forest entrance as the sun started to show its last little bit of light.

“There’s going to be a lot of them..” Yue murmured, there was an ominous feeling washing over the town as the sun showed its last little bit of light.

“We wouldn’t be on an expedition here if there weren't a lot of them...The regular classes can deal with werewolves, there’s probably something more to this..” Viktor said and unsheathed his sword.

Yue sighed and quietly closed his eyes, he took a deep breath and started using night vision. He unsheathed his rapier and braced himself. This would probably be a very long night