Lesser Wood Spirit

Unfortunately, as soon as I attempted to do so, an extremely strong wind current lifted me back onto the edge of the ravine, much to the relief of my companions. 

At the same time, a quiet voice said in my head, "Detected that the contestant is attempting to end the Trial. Would they like to exit?" 

I mentally responded in the negative.

"Understood. If the contestant attempts to end the Trial once more, they will exit automatically," the voice… threatened?

I wasn't sure if that was considered a threat, but it sure sounded like one. Before I could think about the purpose of those words, my two fellow students started asking me why I jumped and how I survived.

Naturally, I started saying something about how I felt a strong wind current and decided to test out its strength, which they were forced to reluctantly accept after I repeatedly answered their queries with different phrasings of the same reply.

However, I couldn't stop thinking about the strange wording of the sentence. It had sounded as though exiting the Trial was some sort of punishment. Was it just my imagination? Or was there a reason for the phrasing?

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In very little time, all of us were moving steadily along the edge of the drop. Surprisingly, my companions had managed to temporarily put aside their differences to come up with a sorry excuse for a plan. With their lacking and my utterly nonexistent knowledge of the region, we were only somewhat able to discern where we were even going. 

Aside from the fact that to one side lay an infestation of light elementals we knew nothing about our location and surroundings. Nevertheless, even this piece of information was enough to encourage us to move away from the area - although a strong presence of light elementals meant that there would be few other creatures to threaten us, if we were discovered by one of them, death would follow soon after. Therefore, we moved the other way, hoping that we would not encounter anything that we could not handle.

As we marched steadily towards the west, the boiling sun followed steadily overhead. If not for the pangs of hunger that assailed my mind, I would have stopped to take a break multiple times along the way. However, just watching my fellow students trudge on without complaint sparked a desire to not lag behind. 

So it was that we trekked on even as the sun slowly descended below the horizon, taking no more than occasional swigs of water from the containers secured safely in an inner pocket of our robes. I had not even known that these containers existed before I saw one of them reach into a nearly invisible pocket to pull out a thin hip flask of some strange, incredibly light material, before filling and drinking it.

After a moment of stupefied surprise, I had quickly taken out my one flask and filled it up with water, before downing half of it in a second. Now, it seemed like an obvious thing to have - an empty flask would be light and barely noticeable, much less cumbersome. If the need arose, one could simply fill it partially and drink until their thirst was quenched, without having to manifest a small stream of water midair and direct it down their throats. 

Of course, we still had to drink carefully. Water spells typically had quite high energy consumption rates if one was not drawing the spell from a water source. However, even if we only drank in tiny sips, it still made the journey much more bearable than before.

Nevertheless, we were all starting to reach our limits as the sun sank beneath the cracked earth. We had been walking for twelve hours, sustaining ourselves on relief spells. I started to crave the wave of refreshment that would wash over us once we cast the spell, despite knowing full well that the backlash would hit me harder than ever once the relief ended. 

In the back of my mind, it faintly registered that my current condition was a terrible one to be in. Although the stamina spells could alleviate our exhaustion, it actually did nothing for our body's ability to keep on going, rather it just numbed our ability to sense the strain. 

Moreover, the backlash of casting the spell would exacerbate the already dire situation. However, we were also unable to force ourselves to soldier on without them, much like how a smoker finds it impossible to stay away from cigarettes.

Fortunately, before I collapsed or suffered permanent damage from the overload on my body, words that weren't the familiar incantation of a relief spell brought me to a stop.

"Is that… a Lesser Wood Spirit?"

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I just realized that I accidentally took half of the previous chapter instead of posting a new one ;-;. Sorry for the mistake... it's because I write in a separate document and my lazy self happens to use the same line for indicating a jump in time and for different chapters, so I accidentally copied the wrong thing... My apologies once again for the error.