Beginning of the second half

We arrived back at the school a day before the second semester would start. Traveling with the wyvern went by just as smoothly as last time. I could swear we even took less time on the way back. Although I didn't see Mr. Black take any kind of detour. Maybe the wind benefitted us more and allowed the wyvern to travel faster.

The rest of the day was well spent on getting ourselves back to our usual lifestyle. I already feared waking up so early again. Sleeping longer might have been the relaxation I needed most. But too bad. At least tomorrow we would find out what exactly the mission for our team is. The excitement barely let me sleep.

Nevertheless the next day came by just like that and we all left for school together after having had a great breakfast again from the dorm. We had to go to the classroom and there we would get further information on the mission, most of the basics we had heard already. On the way there, Iris shared all sorts of different plans for all sort of different types of missions with us. She might have been the most enthusiastic one. The setback from the fight against Mr. Black helped her to realize what she lacked all this time. A leader wasn't meant to be the only person fighting in a team. In the end, all of us would have to fight together to become an actual strong team. Iris on her own could only get so far.

We sat down in the classroom and waited for the other students to show up. Most of them had also formed teams by now, only some weaker students were left behind. If they couldn't manage to form a team on their own, the school would throw them all together and built the teams themselves.

Mr. Black strolled inside the room with dark circles under his eyes. Instead of standing in front of class, he sat down at his table and started the class in that way.

"Welcome back to the second half or something like that, I guess", he non-enthusiastically said and continued: "Today I will give all the teams, which have formed already their missions. Those that haven't managed to form a team will get assigned one in the afternoon. You will then get your mission details tomorrow morning. Some might get harder missions than others, the difficulty is based on your skill level. It has to be a challenge for everyone after all. I will hand out these papers to the leaders of each of the teams. If any questions arise, ask the teacher written on the paper. This teacher will also be your overseer for the missions and will grade you accordingly after finishing it."

Iris got into the front to get the sheet of paper for our team. Upon looking on it, her eyes opened wide. I already feared what was to come. If Iris, who preached us all morning on different tactics she had come up with, got caught off-guard, the missions wouldn't be easy in any kind of way. The class was over already and so we walked towards the training hall, where Iris would share the paper with us. She wanted to discuss our plan right away, so having a spot for ourselves appeared to be a great idea.

We sat down in the training hall and Iris passed around the sheet of paper. On it stood the following:

Mission for Team Iris

Objective summary: Hunt monsters to obtain materials to craft celestial weapons

Material list: 3x C Grade crystal, 10X D Grade crystal, 25X E Grade crystal

More materials result in better grading for the mission and extra materials can be kept by the students.

Dungeon: Demon Beast Labyrinth dungeon (on the border to the demon nation)

All the materials have to be acquired from this dungeons, others won't count towards the mission.

"Well that sounds like it would take quite some time, but weirdly the name of our overseer isn't written here", I thought as I passed the paper to Emilia.

The grade of the crystals corresponded with the grade of the monsters themselves. C grade crystal might be a real challenge for us, the only one near C grade was Iris. But with team work it should be achievable.

Also the location sounded quite familiar, it couldn't be too far from where we spend the last week. Lisa had probably planned it like that to make us accustomed to the surroundings there. Wouldn't have fitted her to travel so far only for a small vacation. This time however, we wouldn't be able to travel with the wyvern. For the missions, carriages were available for us students to borrow. With one of these the travel should roughly take around three days. I wondered if the teacher would travel in our carriage or take one on his own.

Eventually, all of us had seen the paper and now knew what we had to aim for. Iris, of course, convinced us all to get as many materials as possible. If we farmed enough, we could be making different celestial weapons for all of us. Only Iris and I had one for now. The school also wouldn't borrow us any more for the mission. They would borrow us one if we didn't have one already which aimed to help weaker teams out. Us having two of them made our mission harder. The school tried to be as fair as possible for every skill level in that regard, just like Mr. Black told us.

In the end, the mission would certainly act as a challenge for us but it wasn't undoable. If we put enough effort in it, we would be able to get everything listed without to many problems arising. Iris had realized this as well by now, she overreacted a bit when she first took a look at the paper.

"Oh and one more thing which wasn't printed on the paper. The teacher overseeing us will be no other than Mr. Black himself….."