"You did not tell us the goal for this race though," Nyx pointed out.

Yvonne nodded with a smile.

"You are searching for the dungeon core. Once it is found, everyone exits automatically and the finder receives a point erasure ticket."

The students furrowed their brows.

"A point erasure ticket clears whatever debt you owe me," Yvonne explained, reading their confusion.

"Ohh," they said together.

Some of them, Sirris and Zuriel in particular, felt something stir behind their eyes at the mention of it. They currently owed Yvonne ten soul cores each, a number that felt nearly impossible given how rare core dropping dimensional beasts were in the rift.

The students did not waste another second. In a blur of movement they flashed through the dungeon portal.

"Why does it feel like I forgot to mention something?" Yvonne wondered, leaping onto one of the nearby trees.

A screen materialized before her, displaying every student in real time, clear as daylight.

"It really never gets old watching this," Yvonne muttered to the person beside her.

"I know. This is one of my favorite parts of the whole curriculum," Aiden replied with a smile.

"Right, I forgot to tell them they would each appear in random locations," Yvonne sighed as the memory surfaced.

"It would not have changed anything," Aiden replied.

Yvonne shrugged and turned back to the screen.

Zephyr looked around.

The place nearly unsettled him entirely with how dark and oppressive the air felt.

The terrain was not helping. Lava scorched earth stretched in every direction, cracked and glowing beneath him.

"How did she even build something like this?" He muttered.

Essence coiled beneath his feet.

A sharp whistle cut through the air as he launched forward.

"This does not look too bad," Valdren muttered as he stepped onto the ground beneath him.

He did not bother drawing on essence. He had faced cold before.

Or so he thought.

His shoe began to freeze before it could fully make contact with the ice.

Outside, Aiden and Yvonne broke into laughter at the sight.

"There is always that one who trusts the ice over the lava," Yvonne said, wiping her eye.

"Honestly though, the cold terrain is objectively more dangerous. Why do they always underestimate it?" Aiden asked with a long exhale, sounding genuinely exhausted by the pattern.

"Shh, look at this one," Yvonne said, pressing a finger briefly to his lips while pointing at the screen with her other hand.

Zuriel stood on a vast desert, golden sand shimmering under the light of a false sun hanging above him.

’She really is talented,’ he thought, scanning the terrain before taking a careful step forward.

The sand beneath his feet stirred.

He did not feel it.

Boom.

The ground exploded upward and a large serpentine construct shot out from beneath, body coiling as it launched toward him.

"So this is what she placed in here," Zuriel said, already channeling essence into his legs.

The earth cracked as the serpent lunged.

Streaks of light cut through the air as Zuriel launched backward, barely avoiding the strike.

Before he could fully land, the serpent’s tail whipped forward.

He had not seen it coming but still managed to slip past it, barely.

"This might be the ceiling of what I can manage at tier two while holding back," he said quietly, letting his instincts drive him in the opposite direction.

The serpent did not stop. It gave chase, carving deep furrows through the desert behind it.

Zuriel kept moving without a word.

Outside, Yvonne burst out laughing.

"I told you," she said.

"He has never done anything like that in my class," Aiden muttered, trying to defend the point.

They let it go and returned to the screen.

Sirris was on display next.

She moved through a dense canopy, leaping from branch to branch with deliberate precision.

"She is not using essence to enhance her speed," Aiden said, watching closely. "She is using it to grip whatever surface she lands on."

"Smart. Unusual too," Yvonne replied with a shrug.

Their attention shifted to a student who had not moved from their starting position since the exercise began.

"Why has he not moved at all?" They asked at the same moment.

"Ymir mentioned he collapsed during bloodline training yesterday," Aiden said. "He might still be processing it."

"Whatever the reason, standing still costs five points," Yvonne sighed.

That was when it occurred to her. She had never told the students about the point penalty system for this dungeon either.

"That makes two things I forgot to mention."

They turned back to the screen.

Nyx cut through a swamp environment in a flicker of blue light, essence platforms forming and dissolving beneath her feet in rapid sequence.

From the swamp below, a giant frog erupted upward, mouth gaping, launching itself toward her from beneath.

She caught it in her peripheral vision before it fully cleared the surface.

Her body vaulted, a clean backflip carrying her out of reach.

Time seemed to slow for just a moment as she looked down at the creature before landing on a new platform far removed from the danger.

’I need to move faster,’ she thought.

"Enough of this one. Let us check on Azrael," Yvonne suggested.

They turned to his display.

For the first few moments neither of them spoke.

"He learned aura in two days," Yvonne said, a smile forming slowly.

"But what made you change your curriculum and start teaching aura on the first day?" She asked, facing Aiden.

Although learning aura in two days was also near impossible, there were people who had done it, so, it seemed more plausible.

But if Azrael had only learnt it in one day, Yvonne did not even know how to classify such a monster.

And her answer came from the equally shocked Aiden.

"I did not change anything, I only taught it yesterday," Aiden replied, the words coming out quietly.

Then both of them fell silent entirely, staring at the screen.

The longer they watched, the more their understanding of what should be possible began to crack at the edges.