Mel stopped the second the dirt under his feet turned pitch black; the trunks of the surrounding trees looked like they had been wrapped in deep shadows.
"Nobody has shown themselves yet! I have to go a little deeper!"
He broke into a run again; moving fast through trees that looked like a dead forest, he ran non-stop until he reached a waterfall dumping into a small lake.
The whole area changed completely once again. As the deep black faded into nothing, a riot of bright colors welcomed him.
"Human, you and the thing living inside you are not welcome in this forest!"
As Mel stood staring at the view, a voice echoed in his head; it sounded ancient, wild, and full of anger.
With a frown twisting his face, the young boy dropped his relaxed posture, taking a stance like he was ready to jump into a fight at any second. At the same time, he scanned the whole area; what kind of being could possibly talk to him like that?
"Don't waste your time looking; you will never find me. I am the Spirit of the Forest! Leave my land before you ruin anything else!"
When the exact same voice spoke a second time, Mel couldn't just ignore it.
"You're wrong! I haven't hurt anyone who didn't attack me!"
A fierce fire lit up in the young boy's eyes; because a topic he cared deeply about had been hit, his voice grew louder.
"Human, I ask you a single question: what are you looking for here?"
The Spirit of the Forest asked the question by pushing down on every syllable. A fish jumped from the middle of the waterfall and dove back into the water. After that, a silence lasting a few breaths fell over the area; the young boy fell into thought with his head looking down at the dirt.
"If you are honest with yourself, you will find you have no answer; you came here to fight and destroy living things. Not hitting those who don't hit you changes nothing; all you want is violence in a place you don't belong!"
"You crossed into our land recently; like you said, you didn't attack those who left you alone, but you showed no mercy to anyone else. You slaughtered the trees, you stole the life energy of living things. What right do you have to act like you're innocent?"
The voice of the Spirit of the Forest echoed fiercely across the waterfall; the trees bent their tops like they agreed with every word. The silence grew heavy; the howling wind and the sound of the water bouncing off the rocks felt as still as a painting.
"Are you saying this land belongs to you? Am I not allowed to be here as a human?"
The Spirit of the Forest didn't wait around like Mel had; it shot back right away.
"Thousands of years ago, the lands of this world belonged to everyone. All living things lived in peace and order. It was your kind that broke the balance; once you grabbed a power of totally unknown origins, greed completely blinded you."
"You burned, you ruined, you committed mass slaughter without caring about the balance at all; you don't belong to nature anymore. Tyrants who force the power of nature into themselves have no place among us!"
It spoke with complete and unbreakable certainty. In response, Mel threw his arms wide and yelled.
"Take all that advice you just gave me and use it yourself. I don't know what happened over the years, but you are slowly turning into the very humans you hate!"
Mel wasn't yelling in anger; he stayed as calm as if he was arguing with an old friend. When he finished talking, he sat down on a rock pounded by the waterfall and closed his eyes. It looked like he had dropped his desire for a fight, but he didn't leave the forest either.
Wrapped in the dark of night, a human stood in deep silence within the arms of nature. Even if he disappeared into the water around him, nature knew completely that he was there, resting under the waterfall.
When the dark started to lift, Mel started moving too; leaving just as fast as he came, he had a few final words for the being he had met the night before.
"My name is Malcom Drago! Even if I'm not welcome in this forest, I will come back, but I will have learned from my mistakes!"
He walked away without waiting for an answer, refusing to even look over his shoulder. The paths he took were wrapped in dead silence; he slipped through the settlement's gates easily and walked straight toward the building where the Botanical Division trials were being held.
"Shy prince, you aren't an early bird today. Did yesterday's success go to your head?"
Cantankerous Hanry welcomed him there; the middle-aged man was sitting in front of the door. He pointed to the empty spot next to him with his hand; it was obvious he had things to talk about.
"Mel, I'm going to shoot straight with you. Inside the Academy, the Botanical Division is a branch that only the alchemists give a damn about. Because we give them the raw materials for the pills they make, they're forced to show us bare-minimum respect."
The birds resting on the roof of the long building took off into the sky all at once; the two guys sitting side by side watched them fly.
"Martial cultivators have gotten crazy popular lately. Since their growth is sped up by pills, they rely on the alchemists, and because of that, the alchemists' status is slightly above ours."
There was a bitter, tired tone in his voice; even though he talked like it wasn't a big deal, it was obvious the truth really hurt him.
"Master, how do the martial cultivators think the alchemists are going to get their stuff without us?"
"They're stupid, Mel. They're so damn stupid they think as long as they have enough money, they can just buy herbs from anywhere. Ah, Academy Leader, was this really the time to lock yourself in a room for cultivation?"
Just as Hanry was on the edge of throwing a small tantrum, a few kids from the common ranks showed up first, followed by the noble kids and the commanders of the Botanical Division. While Hanry talked with the commoner kids around him, the others walked past with mocking laughs.
The setup inside the hall looked exactly like the day before, but the bright blue stones sitting on the desks were impossible to miss. Judging by how the noble group acted, it was obvious they knew exactly what these things were, but for the commoner kids, the stones were a complete mystery.
Luckily, Cantankerous Hanry saw what was happening and jumped in.
"The crystals on your desks are there to stop anyone from linking up with you mentally during the trial. Mel, I need to take the token back for a bit!"
When asked, Mel handed the token back to the Master. Even if they had suspected it, seeing this hand-off with their own eyes was going to be a huge shock for Master Louise and the girl from the Gloove lineage.
"Isn't it a bit too early to hand out a personal disciple token directly, Master Hanry?"
The Young Master spoke with his eyes locked on the Division Head, like he was trying to throw the blame onto him, but it was obvious from the old man's fake deafness that he didn't want any part of the fight.
"On the contrary, for a prodigy who shows up once in a century, my token is a completely useless reward. Once he steps inside the Academy, I'm sure he'll command the respect he deserves!"
Cantankerous Hanry was no pushover; blocking his rival's attack perfectly, he tried to drag the Division Head into the brawl too.
"Silence!"
The old man didn't fall into the trap set by his two subordinates; he roared with a power you wouldn't expect from his body.
"Let the second day of the Botanical Division Entrance Trials begin!"
At his order, Louise Gloove stood up to explain the rules of the trial, exactly like he did on the first day.
"Today's trial was built to measure the depth of the knowledge you've gathered about plants."
After his first sentence, the Young Master took a deep breath and kept going.
"As a few of you know, there are tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of different plant types in nature. The Botanical Division of the Green Shadow Academy requires you to write down exactly one hundred of them!"
A wave of loud excitement and scattered clapping broke out from the noble kids' side, while the area holding the commoner kids fell into dead silence.
"You have to write down the name of the plant, along with a single sentence explaining its main trait right under it. Every ten plants will earn you one point on your score. Your one hour starts now!"