Moonlight Marsh felt like a vast rainforest, and just like on enrollment day, Rita often found herself thinking she’d stepped into a fairytale whenever she wandered through the school.
Plants that moved like they had consciousness, animal-like familiars that loved interacting with students, a praying mantis that could play the violin...
Rita had already found her life goal: after graduation, she wanted to stay and become a teacher at Moonlight Marsh. The only problem was—would the salary be enough to pay off her debt to Lightchaser?
The forest was filled with all sorts of glowing flora, so there was no lack of illumination. Still, the atmosphere remained damp and shadowy. Fortunately, the branches of the massive tree overhead shifted every day. Some would stretch outward, others would cluster inward. Whenever that happened, sunlight would pour into certain zones of Moonlight Marsh. Those sunlit areas became the classrooms for the day.
Which meant class locations were never fixed. At exactly 6 a.m., the daily classroom sites were finalized and displayed on their backpacks via some magical means.
Rita and her group ran for over half an hour before making it to the school cafeteria. She spent one gold coin on the most luxurious breakfast, then rushed off with the others to the first-grade zone for morning classes.
Morning classes were mandatory for everyone. In the afternoons, however, students could pick anything they liked—freely and without limits.
First-years could even change their elective courses daily: forging today, brewing tomorrow, perfume crafting the day after. Moonlight Marsh not only allowed this kind of trial-and-error approach—it encouraged it. The idea was to help each student explore and discover what they were passionate about or talented in.
Even if there was no talent, doing what you loved was enough.
By third year, though, students were required to lock in at least one track and maintain good grades in it. But that was still far off.
Today’s morning class was Defense.
Your divine gift type didn’t determine your future.
Everyone—regardless of their gifts—took the same classes. Healers were required to learn how to fight. Warriors were expected to know the basics of healing.
Each category of class held deep, expansive knowledge. The basic division—melee, ranged, defense, support—was just that: basic.
Healing covered not just HP restoration but also curse-breaking, detoxification, and countering control effects. Defense included evasion, prediction, anti-tracking, and dozens of other topics. And attack... well, that was a whole world on its own.
But Rita’s personal favorite was ranged combat.
She already planned to bring it up with Lightchaser during next month’s school break. Maybe she could switch her focus. Fighting from a distance just felt safer.
This year, 1,980 new students enrolled alongside Rita and Mistblade.
A sea of cubs stood together on an open field. In the distance, seven teachers either hovered or stood waiting. These were today’s instructors.
Moonlight Marsh didn’t divide students into fixed classes. It might have been incredibly selective during admission—as if anything below an A-rank divine gift wasn’t worth teaching—but once you got in, everyone was treated equally.
Every class at Moonlight Marsh was staffed with seven teachers. The first thirty minutes of each session were used for evaluation.
The top five students earned the most: three credits, and the right to train under the best teacher for that class—what students referred to as the SSS Class.
From there, the rankings descended:
SS Class took 50 students,
A and B Classes took 300 each,
And the remaining 700+ were dumped into D Class—the leftovers.
Every class used a different method of evaluation, depending on the subject.
One great result didn’t mean much. Staying in SSS Class long-term—that was the real test.
While all the teachers were technically equal in ability, the number of students they taught heavily influenced lesson quality. One day a teacher might be in charge of the SSS Class, and the next, they could be stuck with D Class. It was random. But class size always mattered.
Privately, Rita had renamed the class tiers:
SSS Class: The Royal Banquet
SS Class: Michelin Dining
S Class: Gourmet Stir-fry
A to C Classes: Buffet Line
D Class: Hope and Pray
Thanks to her experience in the arena, Rita performed exceptionally well in melee-related assessments—even though her divine gift wasn’t combat-based.
Among support- or defense-type students, she was easily the best fighter. And compared to the attack-type students, she could still heal herself.
Landing in SSS Class gave her access to stronger lessons, which she quickly absorbed and applied. The result? Another strong performance, another SSS placement. A perfect cycle.
Ranged combat, though, was her weakest.
Most of the time, she ended up in the leftovers—D Class. Occasionally, a test would line up with her strengths and she’d make it to C Class.
Defense was her second-best subject, just behind melee. She had Nebula Bubble for protection and healing. But she limited herself to using it only three times per class.
Her real limit was ten. She could make ten per day.
But in school, she pretended three was the max.
She wasn’t the naïve cub she used to be.
After working at Burrowbug Tavern and learning from her time in Junk Street, she’d realized something wasn’t quite right.
In this world, the most powerful items were rated SSS.
She’d never once heard anyone mention Divine Relics.
At least, not in any conversation she had access to.
Which meant even Lightchaser—who had definitely noticed something after witnessing Nebula Bubble and Temporal Stroll—probably didn’t know she possessed an actual Divine Relic.
Once a Relic was bound, its data became inaccessible to others.
And somehow, those two items had bound to her.
She didn’t plan to hide them completely.
Lightchaser knew. Mistblade and Fat Goose knew. There was no point pretending she didn’t have them.
So she opted for a middle ground.
She’d use Nebula Bubble at school—but make it look limited.
No matter how tempting it was, even if using a fourth bubble meant getting into SSS Class—she wouldn’t do it.
She was actually glad Temporal Stroll had such a steep requirement. When she first used it, it could only rewind to the same day.
She now suspected that entire scenario had been a test—a setup Lightchaser had prepared for her. Even the skill itself had likely been a parting gift.
If that were true, then Lightchaser knew exactly what she’d used.
And Rita wasn’t willing to test her teacher’s limits.
Not until she had the power to protect herself, that skill would remain what it was on day one—limited to the same day.