Mal hit the dirt with a thud. He groaned and mentally chastised himself.

  Seriously? How did I not see that coming a mile away?!

  Mal pushed himself off of the ground and looked around himself to see that the rest of the class had been teleported, too. None of them were looking much better than him.

  Rolam groaned and pressed his hand against his forehead. "That was not honorable."

  "It was definitely effective, though," Mal muttered.

  He pushed himself off the ground and did a quick check of who came with him. Rolam, Philo, and Nima.

  No seperation. Good. In case the scenario got too dangerous, he'd be able to use them as distractions.

  The sound of boots stepping across the ground caught Mal's attention. He turned his head to see Vigil in the same position as before, hands clasped behind his back.

  Behind him, however, were vast red canyons to the left and to the right as far as the eye can see.

  "Welcome to The Farm," Vigil said. "A monument to the folly of wizards. This whole area was used as a part of a vast engineering plan to forcibly extract mana from the leyline below. The plan was to store it and ship it out across the world to make wizardry easier."

  Vigil chuckled. "Whether or not this was a noble goal or not is something that can be debated. What can't be debated is the effects. At first, the only thing that was dying was the plant life, but the engineers didn't care. As long as the mana was extracted, what did it matter?"

  Mal could tell where this was going. He'd dabbled in extracting mana from leylines, he knew that doing so had a number of unfortunate side effects.

  "Turns out that mana is a lot more important to the structural integrity of the planet than we realize. The entire ground collapsed. A massive sinkhole. It ate the entire facility alive, along with all of the staff. Now this whole place is a dead zone. It's almost impossible to use magic due to the lack of ambient mana in the air. The creatures here have learned to take advantage of that fact and figure out ways around it. I would advise staying away from any magical beasts you see. They’re only grade 3s, but still.”

  "Wait!" A student yelled from the back. "What exactly are we supposed to do?"

  "Exodi is five miles south, directly behind me," Vigil said. "It's simple. You just have to get out of here." He smiled, the expression cold as ice. "And you will be graded for your performance."

  "What if we die because we can't use spells!?" Another student said.

  "I suppose you'll have to be extra careful."

  Something roared in the distance. It was deep and loud, the sound being amplified by the canyon.

  "Good luck.”

  He teleported away in a flash of blue.

  "Is he insane? The idea of willingly throwing students into a highly dangerous area with unknown monsters of unknown magical capabilities —"

  "You're overthinking things. We just have to charge through honorably and we'll be fine." Rolam reached into his pocket and pulled out a knife. “Besides, we’re not totally defenseless.”

  “Are you kidding? You're going to use a knife? A KNIFE?!”

  Mal scratched the back of his head. The conversation had been going in loops for the past five minutes, Philo ranting about the madness of the situation while Rolam seemingly did everything in his power to push Philo's buttons. Nima looked at Mal with a pleading expression, as if asking him to put a stop to things.

  Mal did not care enough to do that.

  He let out a sigh and tried to review what he knew about this area. Unfortunately, it was an extremely tiny amount. Basically what Vigil had said prior to leaving.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  He did vaguely recall that magical beasts were capable of adapting to places with low mana.

  This was problematic. Mal really didn't want to fight a magical beast while the rest of his circle was functionally useless. He was fairly confident that he would be able to take on whatever was here if he were on his own. But if he had a bunch of whining and screaming children who were completely without combat potential, that would be an issue.

  Mal adjusted the wooden bracelet on his wrist. He had no qualms about using his new tool in a pinch, but he'd rather avoid having to deal with Philo's questions about how he was pulling it off. Especially since Mal didn't fully understand the mechanics of what was happening, either. Besides, with so little mana in the air, would his bracelet even work? Mal didn't think he saw any plants at all, the canyon seemed to be completely deserted.

  But Mal didn't have a lot of options. What was he supposed to do, just stand here? The implication from Vigil seemed to be that they had to work together as a team, so he couldn't go off on his own.

  There's nothing for it, then.

  "Let's get moving," Mal said. "We're burning daylight."

  Philo paused in one of his rants and gave a hesitant nod. "You're right. The longer we spend out here, the higher the likelihood that some kind of creature picked up our scent. We should try to get back as quickly as possible."

  Rolam snorted. "By honor, you're quite the coward, draconid. I expected better from you, given your strength."

  "It's called caution, half-elf. Not something that Philo would expect you to understand with your below-average intelligence."

  Rolam's ears turned red and his fists clenched. Mal rolled his eyes and stepped between the two.

  "I think we have more important things to take care of," Mal said.

  Rolam pursed his lips, then nodded stiffly.

  "Let's just go already."

  They had been among the last to start moving, the other students having already left them in the dust. If Mal squinted, he could see a few groups in the distance, shambling figures poking out as dark shadows against the sun.

  Mal glanced back at Philo and Rolam. The two seemed to be making a stubborn effort to pretend that the other didn't exist.

  Mal was a bit concerned. That level of open hostility wasn't something that he'd seen between the two except for maybe when they first moved into the dorm. Later on, they had been at least able to put up with each other. Now, it seemed like things were getting worse and worse.

  Normally, Mal wouldn't have cared. If this were his personal army, he would've separated the two. If it was absolutely essential that they work together, he would've told them to get over themselves or get kicked out.

  But that wasn't exactly an option here.

  Yeah, he wanted his circle to collapse—he was planning to leave it, after all—but not while he was still in it.

  Hopefully they would last until he'd managed to leave.

  The faint smell of concentrated mana entered his nose. He looked over toward that direction to see Philo trying to summon an arcane sphere in his hand.

  He breathed hard, his forked tongue flicking out at random intervals. The spell seemed to sputter and die like a mistimed piston.

  Finally, the spell died out and Philo groaned.

  Rolam snorted. "Were you expecting something different? The professor already told us that the mana has been sucked dry from this whole area."

  “Philo’s aware. He just wanted to test it for himself and perhaps get an idea of the properties that are at work here."

  Rolam opened his mouth to respond, but seemingly thought better of it and shut his mouth.

  Mal looked around from left to right. Still no magical beasts. Maybe they got lucky and they were all asleep or something?

  He noticed the pain in his legs and clicked his tongue. He'd already worn out his body earlier this morning doing those exercises. A five-mile hike wasn't exactly what he needed.

  To distract himself from the discomfort, he thought about the progression of his plans with the Shattercore potion.

  It had been slow going. He was having to dry and prepare the ingredients, and that took time. There was no way to skip over it.

  Part of it, however, was due to the fact that he still felt hesitant about going through with it. There would be no getting his core back, not without an obscene amount of effort and probably using dark means.

  No matter how much he tried to rationalize to himself that this was a calculated gamble, that his theory of resonance had merit to it, that clearly the witches were onto something —

  A flicker of doubt continued to nestle deep inside of his heart.

  Mal supposed that it was a perfectly reasonable reaction for most people. It wasn't much different than ripping off your own arm in order to get a prosthetic. That was the same kind of insanity that Mal was considering.

  But Mal wasn't a normal person. Mal had abandoned ideas like self-preservation and his own well-being long, long ago.

  When I get back, he thought to himself. When we get back to school, I'll skip lunch and pick up the last ingredient.

  Just as he had done so many times in the past, he extinguished the fear and focused on his next goal.

  The ground rumbled.

  Mal stopped and the rest of the group did so as well.

  Rolam glanced from left to right. "My honor is tingling."

  Philo looked over at him. "Sorry, your what?"

  The ground ruptured and a long, ridged worm poked its head out of the ground. It was the width of a crate, its length easily two or three men high. Its mouth was full of sharp, needlelike teeth.

  Mal took a single step back.

  The ground rumbled again. He looked behind himself and in that moment, a second worm slithered out of the ground and into the air.