"Exactly. Better they keep grinding rodents and other small beasts—pile up points that way. Chasing a Saw-Beaked Vulture is aiming too high for kids," other instructors echoed.

Professor Moses said coldly, "You're just afraid we'll wipe out the small beasts and leave you nothing. Large ones you don't dare touch—so you can only catch mice."

Silence. None of the escort instructors expected her to be that vicious; faces darkened at once.

"Professor Moses, that sharp tongue of yours is… unbecoming. Men don't like women who are too cutting," the Pengjato Academy instructor lectured.

"I'm more afraid of drawing a swarm of flies to disgust me," Moses sneered.

A muscle jumped in the Pengjato instructor's cheek. "Look at you, Eudora—too long among Siria's commoners and you've gone coarse. A pity."

Moses: "People? Sorry—I just hear a fly buzzing in my ear. So annoying. Don't you agree, Fly?"

The Pengjato instructor was about to erupt when someone shouted, "Butterfly, look—your team's also heading toward the Saw-Beaked Vulture!"

Butterfly's face changed. He whipped toward the Magic Mirror showing Pengjato's junior squad—his students were sprinting in one direction, two enraged medium magic beasts chasing behind.

"What happened? Didn't they cut off both Three-Headed Fierce Tapir heads already?"

"They cut the wrong part! They mistook the tapirs' pointy rumps for heads and chopped those off!"

The Three-Headed Fierce Tapir looked deceptively complex: a long trunk-like nose in front; a short thick tail behind; long black-and-white striped fur; identical human-face markings on head and tail; a hump mid-back bearing another human-face pattern. In truth it had only one real head, hidden amid the fur—needed careful scrutiny to find.

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It could even walk backward, making head and tail still harder to tell apart.

Pengjato's squad, careless, hacked the wrong spot and never noticed. Laughing, they went to collect the "nose," and the "dead" tapir exploded up, tossing them—two swords went flying—so they panicked and fled toward the river valley.

Just their luck: they ran straight toward where Siria's squad had culled the Needle-Spined Rodents—and the Saw-Beaked Vulture was headed there too.

Hearing the chain of mishaps, Butterfly went dizzy. Pengjato ranked fourth among the Ten Academies; if they got eliminated first match for careless sloppiness—where would the academy's face go?

"Huh? Why's the Divine College team heading over too?"

"They are?"

"Yeah—saw the vulture in the sky and chased from the west."

"With Divine College in, Siria's got no chance!"

"Hahaha—don't say that. Can't kill large beasts, look down on small ones—maybe Siria ends up with no way to score at all."

That barb was aimed squarely at Moses to avenge earlier humiliation.

Moses, never one to swallow an insult, let her full red lips curl. "No way to score? Didn't Pengjato just gift us forty points?"

A medium beast was twenty; two made forty.

Butterfly clutched his chest. He hadn't provoked her just now—yet she still sprinkled salt. Both in their seventies—was this necessary?

Inside the arena, Luo Wei's group crept near the small river slope.

The Saw-Beaked Vulture was feeding—its sharp serrated beak pierced a Needle-Spined Rodent's belly, tearing off a broad flap of flesh and gulping it down in a few bites.

"Got its weak point?" Luo Wei whispered.

Hol, whose true body was a tree and most familiar with birds, had volunteered to pinpoint a weakness so they could claim the fifty points.

Of course Luo Wei knew his real incentive—a bottle of vulture blood worth fifty silver coins, and a tiny vial of its stomach acid worth a full gold coin.

Vulture blood was a potent antidote: it neutralized any poison from magic beasts below the intermediate tier—an ingredient in advanced healing potions.

Its stomach acid was a powerful corrosive—pricy alchemy auxiliary.

Hol reluctantly dragged his eyes off the vulture's gut, scanning the rest. "Weak point should be the neck. If we can slice the trachea it'll stop breathing."

"'Should'? 'If'?" Axina frowned. "Can you be sure or not?"

"Sorry—I can't be sure," Hol said, a thin cool smile. "Why not give it a try yourself, Miss Axina?"

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