It was Friday, the final day of the school week.

  Today, Mikayla's class had their first all-day session, the weekly Combat Exercise. Their first hint that something was different about today was that, instead of a teacher coming to supervise the morning workout, they were left to do it alone. Consulting their schedules told them that they were expected to meet their teacher at the train station that would take them to the Hunting Grounds.

  Unfortunately, when they got there, there was no sign of their mysterious teacher.

  "This is unacceptable," Geum, as usual, was the first to complain. "This man has the nerve to expect punctuality from us and then fails to come and collect us? I had believed that Cloudscraper Academy was the best of the best!"

  "Calm down. I'm sure that, whoever our teacher is, they just got held up," Nya interrupted.

  "No, I'm with Geum," Sendo squared off with her rival. "How can we trust Cloudscraper Academy to make us the best if they themselves are not the best?"

  "Though the fields may overflow with grain, as precious as gold, pestilence inevitably taints the soil. Harvest what you can, but do not mourn when you must prune that which has become diseased," Kaizen serenely interjected.

  If Mikayla didn't know any better, she'd have thought that he was spouting gibberish on purpose to distract everyone from the argument by getting them to wonder what exactly he was talking about.

  A distant rumble distracted them, drawing the class' attention to the tunnel.

  "Something's coming," Sendo observed unnecessarily.

  One moment, there was nothing. The next, a glowing Train Core had blown into the station without slowing down at all. The third, the Train had disappeared without a trace, leaving a man standing on the rails.

  All twelve students openly gaped at him.

  "He must have split-second timing," Nya gasped.

  "Nevermind the timing! Did you see that Mana control? His Train vanished in the blink of an eye!" Banki applauded, grinning.

  "Are you our teacher?" Geum was doing his best to look unimpressed. He didn't quite succeed.

  The man leapt up to the edge of the platform in a single step. He was clad in dark blue leather armour, with a Core Glove wrapped around his left hand, made from some dark material that seemed to absorb light. There was a mottled green hood and cloak wrapped around his shoulders and covering most of his face, save for a greying goatee. Dark eyes raked over the students, and he opened his mouth to speak.

  <=====}—o

  Sixty years ago, there was a man. His name was Antonio Bryce, and he had once been a young good-for-nothing living in his parents' basement and trying without success to get a job as a male model. All that had changed when, one morning, he had woken up not in his bed, but in a forest full of monsters.

  A faerie had appeared and explained to him that he was Stranded, in a world that seemed more like a videogame than reality. She had offered to send him home, and he had refused. Because this new world was an opportunity unlike anything he'd ever been offered before.

  He had gone to school. Learned to fight. Had a long and illustrious career out in the Kaiju Coast. Grown into a man, and become known as the Huntsman. With age settling into his weary bones, he had returned to school, this time to teach. Almost two decades later, he was pushing eighty, but still supernaturally strong and spry.

  And yet he had never quite escaped the feeling that he didn't belong in this world. That no matter how much he achieved, it could all slip away. That if he made the slightest mistake, his fellow faculty - who, unlike him, were real Guardsmen - would see him for the sham he was and exile him from the grounds of Cloudscraper.

  He'd thought these insecurities long since squashed. He was level 90. He had a well-cultivated reputation as The Huntsman. Sure, he was no Dean Wujing, and could only aspire to the heights of fear that Doctor Fresco cultivated in the student body, but his was a name worthy of respect.

  But then he'd heard about her. Mikayla Aiadon. Stranded. Just like he'd been. She would recognise him. She could expose him. She would surely destroy everything he had worked for without even trying if he gave her the slightest reason.

  Some might have said that at the age of eighty-one, after a decades-long career of ambushing and being ambushed, he was getting a bit paranoid. But it wasn't paranoia when every animal in the world wanted to get him!

  So this time, Antonio had to be perfect. More perfect than he'd ever been before. He'd spent hours practicing his dramatic entrance, getting the timing down to the nanosecond. He'd taken just as long to prepare his script, practicing poses in the bathroom mirror. "Now, what am I going to say to them?" He threw his arms out. "Good morning, students - no, that's too personal," His palms turned upwards. "What took you so long? Good, but only works if I've been waiting, and that would wreck the dramatic entrance. I could do the seemingly incompetent mentor bit? I've got the beard for it these days, after all - no, I've been cultivating my terrifying reputation for this long, I can't screw it up now,"

  Antonio glanced at the clock and blanched. "Wait! Crap! I was supposed to be there to supervise the morning workout! I lost track of time! Damnit damnit damnit . . that's okay. I'll just claim I was . . testing their self-sufficiency. Or something,"

  He paced, thinking. "Maybe I just need to minimise interaction. I could go like this, with the Train," he gestured to a pair of imaginary doors, "and say,"

  <=====}—o

  "Well? What are you all waiting for?" the Huntsman asked, gesturing.

  The twelve students followed his arms, but couldn't see what he was pointing at. He was just gesturing in the vague direction of the top of the tunnel he'd emerged from. "The Train?" Mikayla slowly answered.

  If anyone had been privy to the thoughts of Antonio Bryce, they would have heard; 'Hegemon damnit, I forgot to summon the train back after my dramatic entrance!'

  Instead, what he said was, "In this class, riding a Train is a privilege that is earned, not given. You all will travel to the Hunting Grounds on foot,"

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  "What? But walking that far will take more than an hour!" Sekki protested.

  "Then you'd better run," the Huntsman scoffed, dropping back onto the rails and running back the way he'd come.

  'Okay, good save. Now I need to figure out a justification for why I made these guys walk when I took all the other classes on my Train, in case anyone asks. Uhhhhhh. Can I just bluff that it's about testing Mikayla as a fellow Stranded? That'd probably work, it sounds anime-ish and being anime-ish has never steered me wrong in this world,'

  Mikayla blinked as the Huntsman left. ". . Huh,"

  "Something wrong?" Nya glanced at her as they dropped onto the tracks.

  "Was that guy doing the Naruto run?" Mikayla blinked a bit. ". . It's probably some advanced running Technique that just happens to look like a weird thing from my world," she dismissed it. "Let's go,"

  <=====}—o

  It wasn't long before the class was gathered at the edge of the small complex that was the Huntsman's abode, overlooking the Hunting Grounds.

  "Alright, kids. This is our weekly Practical Exercise. This is not a class, rather it is an opportunity for you to put into practice what you have learned in your classes," the Huntsman explained. "We decided to give you an easy mission to start off with, to show us what you can do. I have released a captured specimen of Kaiju into the Eastern Hunting Grounds, called a Moon Rabbit. It's not very strong, but its breed has a focus on gravity magic, so don't get cocky,"

  He snapped his fingers, and a floating image appeared in mid-air of a rabbit levitating through the undergrowth, with pale and dusty grey fur and milky white eyes. "I want you to hunt it down and kill it. Easy, right?"

  "Twelve on one?" Sekki grinned. "We'll be done in time for lunch,"

  "Hold your horses, bucko. Who said you'll all be working together?" the Huntsman snorted.

  Mikayla's lips pursed. That did complicate things.

  "You'll be split into teams of four and competing to bring me the kill notification of the Moon Rabbit," he explained. "And, as a bit of extra motivation, whoever lands the kill has the right to strip and sell the corpse,"

  "Is that worth fussing over?" Mikayla asked.

  "Kaijus that use gravity magic are rare. Selling that corpse to someone trying to cultivate a gravity-themed Neidan could be very lucrative. To say nothing of its Pearl," Nya explained.

  "Team One is Geum, Sekki, Keldryn and Kaizen," the teacher continued.

  "Seriously?" Geum whined, and Sekki flicked him.

  Keldryn regarded him coolly, refraining from saying anything, leaving Kaizen to pipe up with, "The pebbles of Guili and the stones of Hedrang may yet find themselves at peace within the same garden,"

  Ignoring Kaizen's latest bout of cryptic poetry, the Huntsman continued. "Team Two will be Sendo, Banki, Treft and Geri,"

  "Sweetness! Get over here, new besties!" Banki grabbed at Geri's arm and pulled him closer to her. The scrawny yaoguai flushed, stammering, "U-um, hi,"

  "If you slow me down, you're dead," Sendo hissed, and Geri flinched. Treft joined them, remaining silent as ever.

  "And those of you with two brain cells to rub together can guess that Team Three will be Mikayla, Han, Irin and Lydia,"

  "Wonderful," Irin groaned, casting Nya a sidelong glare. Nya turned her nose up in the air.

  Mikayla watched their reactions to each other, and muttered, "Great," It looked like it was going to fall on her shoulders to get the team to work together.

  At the very least, she'd already somewhat hit it off with Lydia, and, turning to the cloaked woman, it seemed that she had the same idea. "So, uh, hey again,"

  "Hey," Lydia smiled somewhat awkwardly. "So, we should talk strategy,"

  "We should. Nya, over here," Nya leant in, and Irin followed suit, her face devoid of emotion.

  "Right, so, Irin and I are both Moonlight Rose users, assault specialists. Mikayla is a bulky defender. I can't imagine we'd be put on a team for a mission like this without at least one mobility specialist, so I assume that's you," Nya gestured at Lydia.

  "That's right. Aerial reconnaissance is my game," Lydia confirmed.

  "Aerial? Wonderful," Nya grinned. "If it's a rabbit, it probably won't be very aggressive. Which means our best strategy is to split up and search for it. Does anyone here not have a Conveyance Core?"

  "Of course I have a Conveyance Core," Irin folded her arms. "But I don't see why you're so certain. We don't know anything about this Moon Rabbit Kaiju. It might be too strong a foe for us to take on individually. We should stick together,"

  "The Huntsman said it was weak," Mikayla reasoned.

  "And he's Level 90. I don't trust his judgement on that matter," the yaoguai retorted.

  Nya raised her eyebrows. "Moon Rabbit Kaiju. Tends to display powers around gravity manipulation. Known for its valuable pelt. Hunts by creating gravity traps for its prey, suspending them in midair and then attacking them while they're helpless. Tends to be cowardly and will retreat if its target demonstrates the ability to escape the gravity trap,"

  Irin blinked. "You can recite all that off the top of your head,"

  "Naturally. Just part and parcel of being the best," Once again, Mikayla was taken aback by how matter-of-fact Nya was about proclaiming her own superiority. To her, it was simply a fact of life.

  To Irin, though, it was a slap in the face. She opened her mouth, hesitated, then just shook her head and growled something under her breath.

  "Well, I have some good news," Lydia offered the group. "Seeing how we're hunting a rabbit," She raised her arm, revealing a Core Controller unlike any that Mikayla had ever seen before. Every other bracer or gauntlet or glove had been made of metal and leather, but Lydia's seemed to be carved from petrified wood. Further, the Cores within it all glowed an odd sandy colour that wasn't quite like any type of Core she'd seen before.

  Grey lines spilled out of Lydia's glove, forming a wireframe that was filled in with sand-coloured light.

  Mikayla couldn't help but smile as she realised what Lydia had deployed. "Oh, yeah. We've got this in the bag,"