“How very curious.” The knight said, tilting his head slightly. Then he left.


    I blinked, and he was already a hundred feet away, moving away before I could even figure out what I should do.


    What?


    Why would he just up and leave?


    The answer was not immediately apparent. Perhaps he had already accomplished what he had come to do. Perhaps he was too surprised. I did not know. There was too much I did not know.


    I was getting tired of not knowing.


    “Are you okay?” Elena asked, running up to me.


    “I am fine.” I replied, still looking where the knight had disappeared. “The knight decided to leave.”


    “What did he want?”


    I shrugged. “I couldn’t figure it out. But I’m sure we’ll find out soon enough.”


    That did not calm her down. In fact, it just made her more worried. And it should. The royal knights, well, they had their own goals. Even the weakest of them was a Rank 5. If they left the organization, they could easily gain a noble title somewhere.


    But the resources they offered were also great. The organization held nearly all the hunting grounds in the world. If a person wanted to reach beyond Rank 6, they would need them. But that also meant that a number of the royal knights had…complicated loyalties.


    “The fish came.” Elena said, interrupting my thoughts.


    I raised an eyebrow. “The Fast Fish?”


    “Yes.” she nodded. “Connor and Alice are trying to hunt them now. But it is not going too well.”


    I could see that. The mine came back into view, and with it the school of fish we were here to hunt.


    Connor danced among their number, his sword slicing through the fish with an accuracy that I could hardly believe. Alice was conjuring fireballs to kill the fish. One at a time.


    “There are hundreds of them.” I noted. “Are they really going to kill them one at a time?”


    “Connor did say it is a better idea.”


    That was true. And they probably did have experience. So I conjured a bolt of darkness and shot a fish. The fish died. Then I conjured another. And another.


    I was bored by the time I had conjured the fifth bolt. The fish didn’t fight back. Heck, they just floated around minding their own business. If they were doing something, I could not see it. That did make me feel a bit…guilty. Well, I suppose we were here to stop them from doing something. The fish were here to eat, one of the main resources the planet had.


    At the end of the day, this was little different from killing a bunch of insects because they were eating the crops. But the work remained.


    There was next to no danger. There were just hundreds of fish we had to kill. If we went about killing them like this, it would take days. Well, maybe not days, but at least a few hours.


    Perhaps I could try something.


    I conjured a blade of darkness, not dissimilar to the wind blades the rabbit had conjured. Then I made it as fast as I could before letting it fly towards the fish. The thing was faster than them.


    The fish managed to avoid it anyway. Three still died. But their small bodies allowed them to move out of the blades'' way just by moving their bodies a little.


    Connor had been right. But I wasn’t out of ideas.


    “Connor, Alice, move away.” I asked, conjuring mana. I had to target the entire area. Perhaps with an explosion of some -


    “That isn’t allowed.” Alice interrupted my thoughts.


    “What?”


    “Targeting large areas near the mines. The mana can get into the mine and damage it.” she answered, conjuring another fireball and shoving it towards a fish.


    I stared at her open-mouthed.


    “There really isn’t any method other than targeting them one by one.” she said. “That’s why this pays so much.”


    I wasn’t convinced. But I also didn’t have any good ideas at the moment. So I went back to targeting the fish.


    “Perhaps you can practice your sword.” Alice offered. “There isn’t much space for multiple people to fight in there…but we are going to have to take turns anyway. This is too boring for one person.”


    Connor took the opportunity to stop and look at me with a smile on his face.


    “I can go,” he said, walking away. I glared at him. The guy was taking the opportunity to escape from the boring work.


    “The fish should start splitting soon.” Alice said. “That will allow more of us to kill them.”


    This book''s true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.


    “How soon?”


    “After another hundred or so die.” she said.


    I groaned. But I did take out my sword and swing. The fish escaped me. Of course, they did. I called on my mana, sending it into the sword.


    There was a noticeable difference. The mana that responded this time was not Darkness mana, it was Blade mana. But I did not receive any instructions on how to use it.


    Of course not. That would be too easy. But I did know what to do now. I had already done it once with Darkness mana. And I even knew what emotions to use.


    I closed my eyes and used my mana sense. The fish appeared before my senses. A feeling of power appeared around me, like a cloak—I blinked, a thought pulling me out of my mind. Was that my mana cloak?


    I tried it again, but the feeling was no longer there. I could sense something if I tried very hard to, but that could easily just be my imagination. But either way, it was time to try it out. Blade mana and Darkness mana both responded to a person’s desire to kill.


    But they did it differently. Darkness was more about taking revenge for wrongs done against a person. Blade was more about duty. And will. Even the way the emotions were expressed was different.


    Darkness was about thinking it. Blade was not. Connor had told me that it was more about the actions. Even though he did not use emotion based mana shaping, he was still aware of how mana responded to things.


    I followed his advice, crouching as I readied myself to strike. I tensed my muscles, gripping the sword with as much strength as I could. Then I raised it into the air. The Fast Fish moved away from me, but I moved faster. The blade swiped down, cutting through a fish before it managed to run away.


    Then I did the mistake of looking up. There were hundreds more of those things. The fish didn’t even seem bothered that one of them had died. And it would apparently take a lot more for them to even notice.


    I wonder what they were even doing.


    “Do not stop.” Connor said. I jumped. The voice had come from right behind me.


    “There plenty fish.” he continued.


    I stared at him. “Why are they even doing this?”


    Connor looked at me with a puzzled expression on his face.


    “The Fast Fish. Why are they just waiting around here?”


    “Not waiting. Casting.” he responded. I looked at him in surprise. I had not noticed the fish use mana.


    “Don’t know how.” he continued, apparently having expected my questions. “The mine protected. But they break protection. Then go in.”


    I froze, looking at the mine with my mana sense. There was indeed a very thin layer of mana around the mine. I would not have noticed it if I hadn’t been looking at it. The thing looked like it could break apart at any second. Even as I watched, it got thinner. Not by much. A barely noticeable amount really.


    But it was getting weaker.


    “I suppose we should start killing these things, shouldn’t we?” I said, picking up my sword.


    “Yes.” Connor nodded.


    I sighed and got back to work. This was gonna take a while.


    sc


    “I’m done.” I declared. The Fast Fish still hadn’t split. I had been at it an hour, and they were still waiting around. I knew that I had killed a number of them, but the effect had just been so slow.


    There had been hundreds of fish when we started. There were still hundreds of them.


    “That’s a good idea.” Alice said. The woman had been throwing fireballs the entire time. I had to give it to her. That was hard work. The fish had to be aimed at carefully, or they would escape. Spending too much mana wasn’t good either, or we would run out of mana before we ran out of fish.


    I was already tired of it.


    “The fish aren’t far from splitting now.” she said. “Elena should practice while they are still like this.”


    I looked at the crowd of Rank 1s we had brought with us. I almost asked if they were even going to do anything. Then I remembered that they probably couldn’t. The fish, as they were right now, were too fast for a Rank 1 to target. Mana was needed to attack them.


    Perhaps when they split they got slower. Or maybe Connor had brought them along just so they could get some money. That was possible.


    Elena disappeared from my vision, appearing a second later with her knife cutting through a fish. Then she turned it around, swiping at another fish without stopping for a second. That fish escaped.


    With an angry look on her face she made her knife disappear as she attacked another fish. And then another. The knife did not reappear, but the fish kept getting cut in two. Elena did not have to stop her spell. That was…probably faster than I had killed them. The fish couldn''t see her knife. They couldn’t dodge it either.


    I watched, my eyes widening as I looked at her kill the fish. And then it stopped. The fish were not dying any longer.


    “The fish learn.” Connor said. “The thing sense Darkness mana in spell. Have to be faster.”


    Elena groaned, but seemed to follow his advice. The fish started dying again. I began to count how much mana I had left.


    If the school really was going to split soon, I should have some mana remaining. In theory, we were only supposed to make sure the school didn’t remain around the mine anymore. Splitting the school was enough.


    But the mine’s protections were getting weak. I did not know what they were, but I could imagine what they did. And if it was some kind of shield spell, then it was about to have holes in it.


    As if conjured by my thoughts, a small hole appeared within the mana that stood in front of the mine. I was not the first to notice. The fish were. I conjured a shield to prevent them from moving into the mine, stopping them in their tracks.


    “Oh fuck.” Alice said. “Elena get out of there.”


    The former maid disappeared as Alice sent a wave of mana towards the fish. I, on the other hand, was occupied with stopping the fish.


    The spell was far more difficult to keep than I had expected. The amount of mana it took was two, no three times greater than what I had used to stop the poison fish. But that was not all. The attack was not coming from the Fast Fish.


    I suspected that they weren’t even involved. My shield was being attacked by something on the inside of the mine. I was no longer surprised that the royal knight’s protections had failed.


    Alice’s spell caused a large explosion among the school of fish. The fire crashed against my shield along with hundreds of fish that died with it. The fire died. The shield did not break.


    But it was a near thing. The power on the inside had multiplied when it sensed Alice’s power of fire. A hundred bolts worth of mana had shot at it. A push greater than I had faced before. A push that had yet to stop.


    A second later my shield failed before the power.


    I waited for something to come out from the inside. Mana did move out. Air mana, in quantities I could barely believe. But there was no other effect.


    “I love it when they make a run for it.” Alice grinned. “The knights allow us to use large attacks if the fish are about to get into the mines. And the air mana here lets me actually blow shit up.”


    I just stared at the mine, wondering what was inside. And if I should go take a look.