Chapter 698: Teaching Assistant Wanted Notice
Ninglan Realm.
In a dense forest far from Ninglan New City.
“I told you not to run so far. This place doesn’t look like there’s any hunting targets at all!”
“Hey, stop complaining. We specifically came this far to put some distance between us and those people. If there are too many people, there’s no prey; with fewer people, we’ll have a chance.”
At this moment, the three of them were making their way through the forest—one complaining, another comforting, and the third lazily following behind without saying anything. Yet, despite their differences, they formed a team, which can’t be said to have come together without some fate.
“Wait! There’s movement! Look, an opportunity has come!” They suddenly heard a noise and instantly became excited.
So they hurried forward to investigate.
“Hey! Be careful! What if you scare the target away?” The person beside them grabbed the overly excited teammate to educate her.
“Sorry, sorry… almost forgot.”
“I see you completely forgot the hunting skills you learned at Aphhemia Academy, huh?”
“Come on, I just want to see what’s going on. That sound doesn’t seem like a large mutated beast.”
The three exchanged glances for a second and ultimately agreed to this reasoning, preparing to move forward.
At that moment, one was on guard, another was protecting, and the third was moving ahead to investigate.
Suddenly, a muffled sound erupted, as if a heavy object had slammed down, and a figure fell directly to the ground.
“Who! What’s happening!”
Hearing the commotion, the person on guard quickly turned around and saw a bloody corner of a book, and spell ceremonies blossomed right before her eyes. The exquisite and swift casting ceremony momentarily captivated her attention—this was her first time experiencing the beauty of a spell ceremony up close, along with its heat!
Boom——!
With the explosion of a heat wave, the person who had gone to investigate stood frozen.
Whether it was the “corpse” she found before her with a nearly-empty health bar above its head, or the screams, explosions, and heat from behind…
The events that erupted in that instant far exceeded her brain’s processing capacity!
Coming to her senses from the shock, she instinctively turned to run but fell to the ground.
Then she saw two figures lying in a pool of bl**d, along with a figure holding a book not far behind her.
“Y-Yang Yuelan?!”
“You know me? But knowing me won’t exempt you from d*ath.” I looked at the unfamiliar girl before me, not recalling her at all. “Don’t worry, it won’t hurt; you’ll be resurrected in Ninglan New City. Experiencing d*ath and rebirth is a rare life experience.”
After saying this, I directly cast Fireball Spell to give her the most dignified “d*ath.”
Otherwise, dying from having your head smashed by the Box of Books would indeed be quite painful.
I shook the Box of Books lightly, brushing off the bloodstains from earlier, and then I saw a mentor appear beside me, the same one as before.
It seems every teaching assistant has a fixed mentor keeping an eye on their resurrection, or perhaps resurrecting the candidates they’ve killed.
However, the resurrected candidates need to return to their “spawn point,” which is the city they arrived from; for example, the Witch Academy is Ninglan New City, and Aphhemia Academy is the Third Shelter, and so forth.
Otherwise, during the resurrection period, they can’t hunt to score points.
The reason I chatted for a moment with the last one was that I had just unlocked the second skill after killing two people.
Ice Shield Spell.
This defensive skill was slightly faster to read than Fireball Spell; with my reaction time combined with the speed of the Fireball Spell, I had enough time to deploy the Ice Shield.
“Are you sure you’re not going to k*ll her?” At this point, the mentor asked.
“No, she’s still alive and well. Her greatest utility is dying in an accident.” I walked into the bushes and lifted the nearly-dead teaching assistant.
“You’re a qualified bait. I apologize for my earlier hasty conclusion; at least you are particularly useful when tempting targets beyond me.”
“You demon… hurry… k*ll… me…”
“Hmm? Is that last bit of your self-healing ability just for repairing your voice and speech processing areas? Don’t feel wronged; I know every teaching assistant targeting me is guilty, one and all.”
I lightly snorted, not intending to keep engaging with her and instead focused on other matters.
After killing the first candidate, I noticed my status was now “Wanted.”
The wanted status would prompt in the Knowledge Seed vision of other candidates, marking my real-time location.
This ability had not been mentioned earlier; it appeared to be a traditional hidden rule.
After all, we play the role of hunted targets; if we were to hide somewhere and perform reverse hunting, that wouldn’t do at all.
As a result, after the first k*ll, I was directly marked wanted for an hour!
Killing two would stack the wanted time.
So now I had a total of three hours stacked.
At that moment, the three students were also resurrected with the help of their mentor.
It was their first time dying, and under the mentor’s guidance, they understood what they needed to do—to return to their spawn point to clock in and then set out again; otherwise, they wouldn’t even be able to score points during this period.
These three were still in a state of shock, confirming whether their bodies were intact after resurrection.
“That really was Sister Xiao Han… I didn’t expect we fell for her trick so easily…”
“Hmm? What’s this? A wanted notice? Sister Xiao Han is wanted…” At that point, some of them noticed this detail.
Having just died at my hands, only to be resurrected in an instant, these few were still somewhat dazed, but as for their emotions towards me… they hadn’t built up too much, mainly because I killed them too quickly, with no time for emotions to brew.
“Um… Sister Xiao Han?”
“Hmm? Do you have something to say? But you’re welcome to seek revenge; just remember to bring more people next time.” I looked at them and engaged with them for the rare occasion.
“Um… We definitely can’t beat you, Sister Xiao Han… um… we’re just curious about that one you’re holding…”
“Oh, she’s also a teaching assistant, playing the role of bait with me.” I kindly explained.
“Ah?”
Clearly, they found this explanation difficult to comprehend…
“She… obviously looks close to d*ath…”
“But she’s not dead yet, is she? Don’t worry~ This is just a minor conflict between teaching assistants at the start. A loser must assume the loser’s pose; besides, she failed in a sneak attack, and a bit of humiliation is entirely normal.”
“Conflict…”
Upon hearing my words, the three instinctively shivered, suddenly feeling as if their previous deaths had been quite clean and decisive?
“Want to chat some more? If the information you provide is valuable, I wouldn’t mind a trade; after all, she is also a teaching assistant. Killing her should earn you quite a few points, right?”
“Uh, sorry… we’ll take our leave now…”
“Really just leaving like this? That’s…”
“We’re not risking our lives; what if we get tricked again, huh?”
“d*ath deducts points! We’re already in the negatives! We have to play it safe!”
Aside from one person who seemed a bit interested, the other two just dragged that person away and fled.
They didn’t give me a sliver of an opportunity.
At that moment, my wanted notice also sparked a flurry of discussions among the candidate crowd.
However… this wanted notice wasn’t the first; even earlier, several unaware teaching assistants, eager to unlock their skill trees, killed candidates and triggered wanted notices. Now, it was just adding one more.
But this new addition was familiar to many.
What surprised them was that this wanted notice had a longer duration and remained in effect for three hours!
Moreover, this three hours had accumulated in a very short time, indicating that that teaching assistant had killed three candidates in a short period!
Such combat power and efficiency in killing truly frightened some, but at the same time, it excited many others!
Furthermore, this positioning would continue until noon today, so there was no way to hide from it.
And this was without causing further killings.
It could be anticipated that the joint examination hunting didn’t encourage teaching assistants to actively hunt candidates, unless they wanted to lose sleep for seven days!
At this moment, the newly arrived candidates had just left their city’s shelter, not having seen many mutated beasts, so upon seeing these wanted notices, they directly chose to accept!
After all, hunting a standard aggressive mutated beast only scored 1 point, and large mutated beasts required teamwork. Averaged out, scoring even a single point became difficult.
But looking at those wanted teaching assistants… they could score a hundred points just for one k*ll!
This was practically a moving herd of mutated beasts!
And the target was just one, with combat strength not far from their own, and they also had the advantage in numbers…
With such comparisons, why not go for the big scores?
There was no longer anything to fear; the other party merely held the status of a teaching assistant, which supposedly had an influence comparable to an instructor. Even if they had higher combat power, it wouldn’t be put to use. Even if their battle experience was richer than theirs, they could swarm and see how she escaped.
So the joint examination hunting began with hunting teaching assistants from the onset, while mutated beasts became mere supporting characters.
At that moment, the examination venue also initiated control, with each academy deploying special hunting creatures and opening up positioning information at various shelters.
Some more rational individuals opted for safer special creature hunting; after thorough comparison, they realized that hunting one teaching assistant with so many people wouldn’t even yield good point distribution in the end.
Moreover, if the teaching assistant decided to get serious, some unlucky candidates might be taken down. But those mutated beasts and special creatures didn’t have such strong attack mechanisms. More importantly, these monsters lacked the rich schemes and battle intuition humans possessed.
In simple terms, they only needed to deal with livestock and didn’t have to consider nearly as much as when dealing with people.
At this moment.
In a remote, undeveloped forest far from Ninglan New City.
“Strange, the positioning seems to be in this area; can’t it be any more precise?”
At this moment, a team that arrived first began searching after confirming they had reached the positioning area.
However, their leisurely demeanor yielded no results.
“Hey, everyone, perk up! We’re about to face a teaching assistant! I hear their strength is terrifying!”
“So what if it’s terrifying? We’re looking for Yang Yuelan; isn’t she about our age? The power she wields should be about the same; what’s there to fear?”
“Exactly, upperclassmen may have a strong physical constitution, but they probably don’t need skills to take us down. Do we need to fear someone our age? Hahaha—”
Just as that person was laughing, the one at the front suddenly seemed to notice something.
“Hey! Wait! Is there a person over there?”
“What? Is it Yang Yuelan?”
“Not sure, but there’s a health bar above a figure; could it really be? How does it look like she’s dying?”
They moved forward; because the sunlight was severely blocked in the dense forest, it was somewhat dark beneath the trees, with even some shrubs being short, and the damp areas around were entirely covered by ferns.
“Be careful; could someone have gotten here before us?”
But upon realizing that the figure was tied to a tree and wasn’t the Yang Yuelan they recognized, they felt confused.
Yet… they should have been terrified…
But who told them that ignorance breeds courage?
At that moment, anyone even slightly alert would have realized this was a trap.
However, “teaching assistant,” “binding,” “placement,” and “low health” were just too tempting, leading them to fail to detect my approach!
“Um… she’s also a teaching assistant, right? She’s nearly at d*ath’s door; how about we k*ll her and split the points?”
“Yeah, let’s k*ll her quickly.” Just then, a voice very unfamiliar to them joined their group.
But by the time they reacted, a crimson fireball had already completed charging.
Boom——!
Unsurprisingly, an explosion sent the group flying.
Looking at the count of kills in my ledger, perhaps this kind of foolish yet endearing candidates could only be encountered in the early phase of hunting for the joint examination.
If teaching assistants didn’t step up now and let it progress to the latter stages, it would become troublesome—
However, clearly, after killing these few, the trouble hadn’t been resolved.
Since such a team had already arrived before me, the hunting army aiming to hunt me must also be on the way, or rather… the scouts had already come, hiding in the shadows and lying in wait.
As long as I showed any intention of leaving, they would strike to hinder me.
So, the moment I revealed I wanted to leave, an arrow whistled directly toward me.
It seemed I had predicted this attack, dodging without even looking.
Clearly, it was a ranger of the elf class; perfect for scouting as a forward scout.
“Yang Yuelan, you can’t escape!”
“Looks like you can’t hide in the dark anymore, huh? Since one has come out, why hide?” With one hand holding the Box of Books, I leisurely looked at the first person who emerged, followed by several other figures descending from the trees.
Among this group, I also saw a familiar face.
Well, a familiar name at least.
Annie Stephens… if I remember correctly, she was the class leader of Class 66?
We knew each other for a period after enrollment during the competition; she was a very lucky girl.
I remembered she had good luck; however, her magic… was also quite fortunate. I didn’t expect her to choose ranger for scouting this time.
“Hi~ Long time no see, Annie. I didn’t expect to run into you again, and you’re aiming at me with arrows? This really hurts my feelings!”
