Castles, high walls, and spired towers.
Proposed by the Church and jointly established by various kingdoms, the Adventurer Academy was situated on a reef island.
The death toll from exploring the Labyrinth remained high year after year.
To change this status quo, they hoped to use education and standardized learning to regulate the originally disorganized and chaotic adventurer groups, thereby avoiding meaningless casualties.
For example, avoiding deaths caused by suffocation after having one’s head engulfed by certain slime individuals.
It sounded funny, but for a newcomer who knew nothing, it was a very real and fatal crisis.
The purpose of the academy’s existence was to change the fact that newcomers knew nothing.
One had to understand that being an adventurer was a lucrative profession.
The income from a single Labyrinth exploration could rival what an old farmer earned from tilling the soil for an entire year.
Such high rewards naturally made many people flock to the profession.
Furthermore, magic crystals and other produced materials had already become indispensable raw materials for various fields within a nation.
With supply struggling to keep up with demand, it was no wonder they quickly reached a consensus.
However, since there were so many adventurers, it was difficult for the faculty of a single academy to teach everyone.
Therefore, they practiced elite education, allowing those graduates to become party leaders or consultants to benefit others.
To complement this system, any party exploring the Labyrinth needed to obtain an entry qualification, and this qualification could only be held by graduates of the academy.
“This is truly…”
A blonde-haired, blue-eyed elf leaned her face on her left hand while her right hand rolled a Qualification Badge made of star crystal back and forth across the table.
Her beautiful face had weathered many years, yet it had not been ravaged by time.
Instead, it retained a special charm.
At this moment, however, her mature and dignified aura was tinged with a hint of lethargy, making her seem somewhat lonely.
“Originally there were no restrictions, yet they had to artificially add a threshold. Humans haven’t changed a bit after all these years.”
The elf could not help but chuckle, but the smile did not reach her eyes; it stopped at her lips.
Her gaze was distant, hidden within memories, as if she were not looking at the desk in front of her but rather at some dusk spent sitting around a campfire with friends.
The gray-blue seawater struck the shore in pale waves.
The sound of the rising and falling tide was rhythmic and orderly, making it relaxing to hear.
But when the door was closed, all sound was isolated outside.
“Headmaster, the first-year internships have concluded. The total scores for all teams and the students’ grades have been compiled. Additionally, one team is suspected of encountering an Area Lord. They suffered heavy casualties, and only two students survived.”
“Which team?”
The secretary could not detect any emotion in her tone, but he knew it definitely would not be good.
For the academy, which carried the hopes of various nations, to have such an accident right at the start would make the headmaster hard-pressed to escape blame.
“The Diamond-rank Mage, Blair.”
The headmaster suddenly sat up straight, her lethargy vanishing.
She asked urgently and solemnly, “What about the rescue?”
“That was an Area Lord, Madam. They had no possibility of survival. I am sorry; I will personally deliver the compensation to their families.”
He thought that going personally would demonstrate the importance placed on the accident, but he did not expect the headmaster’s anger to flare even further.
She slapped both hands on the desk and said coldly, “No, the Bloodline Link is still there. She isn’t dead yet. Or would you rather deliver the compensation to my hands, Cardiff?”
Cardiff used his sleeve to wipe his forehead, which was becoming increasingly polished due to hair loss.
The development of this accident had far exceeded his expectations.
Even with his extensive experience as a secretary, he felt himself drenched in sweat at this moment.
the Bloodline Link skill allowed one to sense the general location and status of a blood relative.
Since it was still active, it proved she was indeed alive.
Since they knew she was alive, they naturally had to organize a rescue—especially since she was the blood relative of the headmaster, a Legend to whom even kings and bishops showed great respect.
But when did she ever have a blood relative in the academy?
Why had he not heard a single word about it over the past year?
“I wouldn’t dare. Since the student is clearly alive, organizing a rescue is certainly no problem. However, there are signs of a Collapse on the Second Floor. I’m afraid no adventurer party will dare to accept the request in the short term.”
“A Collapse? Roughly how many levels will it fall?”
“The Church of Wisdom and Knowledge predicts it will fall four levels, taking the place of what was originally the sixth floor.”
“That deep…”
The elf could not help but frown upon hearing this, her index finger tapping intermittently on the tabletop.
A Collapse was a rare and abnormal change in the Mendelair Great Labyrinth, where originally fixed floors changed and fell downward in space.
During such a time, the boundary layers of mana would briefly blur, making it easy for powerful monsters far exceeding the floor’s level to appear.
Cardiff had given up on the rescue because, under such circumstances, the effort would be thankless and likely a waste of labor.
“I’m going personally.”
“No, that’s too dangerous—”
“I am Wilt Filine, the Elf Ranger, a living Legend. Watch over the academy for me. I’m leaving all affairs during this period to you, Cardiff. The capable should do more work; pull some overtime.”
Watching Wilt leave in a whirlwind after patting his shoulder, Cardiff felt deeply that his thinning hair was about to suffer even more.
[Status Window]
Race: Purple Mushroom
Level: 8
Skills: Spread Spores (Lv 4), Decomposition (Lv 3), Mana Storage (Lv 2), Luminescence (Lv 1)
Ning Lan had established a base constructed of mushrooms.
Because of the existence of the mycelium, she was better suited for a positional war of waiting for prey rather than wandering around like a guerrilla.
When the mycelium spread into a net, she gained a comprehensive field of vision.
Combined with the system panel display, every movement of every monster in the covered area was under her surveillance.
Thanks to this, after clearing out all the slimes she could see, her level finally reached Level 8.
Similarly, the panel attributes for Strength, Defense, and Intelligence had all reached 8 points.
Aside from Agility, which remained eternally at 0, her mana pool reached 10 points due to acquiring Mana Storage, becoming the only attribute in the double digits.
Gratifyingly, the mushroom’s development was finally starting to look like something.
Next was to keep up the good work and continue hunting slimes to earn skill experience.
Low-level skills were truly useless.
When she first obtained Decomposition, she thought the speed at which the mycelium decomposed cores would change significantly.
It turned out she was wrong—horribly wrong.
There was a change, certainly, but whether it was one second or two, it was ultimately not obvious enough, making it feel utterly worthless.
No wonder the first level was given so freely, allowing her to obtain the skill directly.
Afterward, the skill experience was incredibly stingy.
Even with the title effects being successful in all checks, her Decomposition had only reached Level 3.
It was like a water purifier sales tactic; the product itself was not important and was very cheap, but once you actually bought it, the cost of replacing consumables was more expensive than the unit itself.
As for Spread Spores reaching Level 4, it was entirely the result of constantly using the skill to build the mycelium network.
Using a skill could also increase skill experience; this was a conclusion she had reached through practice.
Skills that were originally useless at low levels would undergo a qualitative improvement after leveling up.
To level up her skills, she often proactively applied them to accumulate experience.
Mana Storage was a passive skill, and Ning Lan did not know how to train it.
Decomposition, however, was something she performed actively, so she had tried it on everything she could absorb.
The most common thing in the entire Gloomy Forest Layer was a plant called Glow Grass.
Because it emitted a faint light, it was like a streetlamp in the generally dark forest.
She had become so familiar with them that, having taken their existence for granted, she almost missed the fact that they possessed a skill on their panel—Luminescence.
And this skill was exactly what it sounded like: it just made things glow.