Dong Fang Yue Chu was yelling as he sprinted toward me, but I was already gone, swept away by the howling blizzard and vanis.h.i.+ng into the distance.

"Yue Chu! Stop!"

Lily managed to grab hold of him and yank him back before he could run through the Holy Barrier that Harrison had set up.

"But…! Richard, he…!"

"He's gone." Theodore was staring at the blizzard dumbly, unable to believe what he had just witnessed. "The blizzard took him."

"d.a.m.n it!" Yue Chu slammed a fist against the ice. "We've to go down and save him!"

"How?" Bu Fan asked bluntly. "Do you know where the blizzard blew him off to? Are you going to jump into the blizzard and let it blow you away as well?"

"You…!" Yue Chu growled, but Craig and Cody held him back.

"Bu Fan has a point," Cody said quietly. "You'll only get sucked into the blizzard and blown off if you jump in now. Then we'll have to look for not just Richard but you too."

"And we have no idea where Richard would be blown off to. The valley is so huge…it's possible he was blown to the Den of Dragons." Craig sighed in frustration. "As much as I hate to admit it, we'll only be walking to our deaths if we try to search the Den for Richard."

"We'll have to contact the tournament staff and request them to send a request team." Sheila was looking over the edge and staring bleakly at the rampaging blizzard.

"Actually…about that…"

While everyone was busily stopping Yue Chu and reasoning, Harrison had fallen into deep contemplation for a while now. He watched the blizzard for a few moments and then hardened his gaze.

"It's Richard we're talking about here. If anyone can survive, it'll be him. He's a lot more resourceful than we give him credit for."

"That's true," Theodore agreed. "A year ago, no one would have thought it possible for him to rise to the top of our school. With summoning magic, no les."

"And he has those nuke spells if things go south for him," Yue Chu added, feeling a lot calmer now. Craig chuckled at that.

"Additionally…" Harrison was staring deep into the valley, as if he had noticed something. "We probably don't even have to call in a rescue team."

"Huh? Why not?" Pearl gaped at him. "I don't care if our team has to forfeit the qualifiers! None of us do! It's meaningless if we lose a member!"

"No, that's not what I'm worried about. I would forfeit the qualifiers to call in a rescue squad, but I think someone is already en route to help him." Harrison didn't take his gaze from the valley at all, his blue eyes seeming to pierce the thick, white veil of the howling blizzard. "Do you remember the green-haired girl from before? Richard's, uh, friend?"

"More like his girlfriend," Craig chuckled cheekily. That got a few laughs from the rest of the team, and the mood gradually lightened.

"Maybe," Harrison conceded with a smile. "Whoever she is, she has most likely gone after Richard. I think it's safe to leave him to her. If Richard does need rescuing, a skilled mercenary like her should be more than capable of pulling him out of the fire. The Silver Wolves wouldn't have recruited her otherwise, if she didn't have the ability."

"That's true." Lily nodded, feeling a lot more relieved. Everyone knew the reputation of the Silver Wolves, and were personally trained by our esteemed senior, Feng Hai. They were an almost legendary existence, almost on par with my dad.

"What if you're wrong, and Richie dies?" Yue Chu asked solemnly. A deadly silence hung in the air for a few seconds before Bu Fan – unexpectedly – broke it.

"Then I'll be the new main character." Bu Fan folded his arms. "And you'll get to read about how I get into university, become the new Demon King by defeating two hundred students with summoning magic, perform a few missions with Teacher Tang Yue, save the campus from scaly parasitic monsters that take human hosts during a concert, protect a gigantic snake G.o.d from evil politicians, switch my specialization from summoning magic back to fire magic and defeat the whole division of fire mage students."

Everyone stared at him blankly.

"…huh?" was all Sheila managed to say.

"You're in the wrong story, mate," Theodore finally managed to speak up.

"If that's what will happen, why don't you get everyone to read Versatile Mage instead?" Craig snapped, annoyed.

"That's my goal," Bu Fan replied smugly. "I'm trying to force readers away from this trash of a story and read Versatile Mage instead. It's so much better, and it's more worth it to spend your Spirit Stones on Verstaile Mage. A lot of readers are complaining about how rubbish this story is, and demanding that Webnovel stop making it premium. A few of them are also demanding that Webnovel takes down and deletes the story, and ban the writer from the site because they think he's the worst to have ever existed in history."

"I'm…kind of lost now." Cody was looking utterly confused.

"Go read the comments on the right, or the Discord server. You'll understand what I mean."

Everyone exchanged glances, and then started to ignore Bu Fan from then on. No matter how much he gestured wildly toward the comments section or point them toward Discord, they didn't bother. They had more important things to do.

"Everyone, stay away from the edge. Keep a safe distance from the blizzard," Harrison instructed. Having seen what happened to me, they obeyed. None of them wanted to be blown off like I was. And yeah, I was going to use first person perspective. Let's just say Yue Chu told me everything that had happened after I was blown off, and I was recording down in what was clearly my memoirs. No reason to break out of first person perspective just because I wasn't around. I was at least present in spirit, even if I wasn't physically.

Fortunately, Pearl didn't need to conjure her barrier. Before two hours were up, the blizzard exhausted itself to nothingness and abated. Or rather than abate, it blew over the team's position and traveled up the mountain, completely pa.s.sing over them.

"Phew…"

Raising a hand to his eyes, Harrison watched the tail of the blizzard whip across the mountain peaks, searching for new victims to torment and freeze. The hailstones had vanished along with its parent, leaving mild drifts of snow that lazily settled over their encampment.

"The blizzard is finally gone. The horde of Horned Boariceratops have also run off somewhere as well, and I don't think they will be coming back. I think we're safe for now."

"I hope you're right about Richard, Harrison." Yue Chu glanced at the Den of Dragons, which was slightly more visible than before, now that the dense blizzard was gone. "I honestly still think we should call for rescue…"

"Uuu…it's all my fault." Pearl was sobbing. "If only my magic was strong enough to endure the onslaught of the blizzard earlier, then…"

"Uh, wasn't it Richard, and then Harrison who were conjuring the barrier before the accident?" Bu Fan was blint as usual. "I mean no offense, but you only summoned your Guardian Sphere for the first few minutes before Richard took over. Nothing you did would have made any difference."

Sheila smacked him, and Lily kicked him. Bu Fan staggered and whirled around to glare at the two girls.

"Hey! What's that for?!"

"For not showing any delicacy to a girl!"

"For not showing any tact at all!"

"Huh? But I was just telling the truth…!" he then glanced at Harrison worriedly. "The person who is feeling the guiltiest right now should be our captain."

"Oh, wow…" Yue Chu's jaw dropped as he stared at Bu Fan in amazement. "I never thought I would hear that from you. You're actually being considerate of someone?"

"Hey!" Bu Fan snapped. "What do you take me for?!"

Harrison ignored the banter between the two and placed a hand on Pearl's shoulder, offering some comfort.

"Pearl, please don't blame yourself. You did your best under the circ.u.mstances. If anything, I'm the one who should a.s.sume responsibility."

"No!" Pearl squeezed his hand tightly, looking stricken. "You did your best too! No one could have known that would have happened!"

"Yeah, Captain!" Craig agreed wholeheartedly. "This isn't anyone's fault!"

"Given Richard's abilities and resourcefulness, I'm sure he'll survive even if he somehow ends up in a Den of Dragons." Theodore looked thoughtful. "In fact, I won't be surprised if he gets a new summoned beast, or some treasure, or some new skill when he escapes from there and rejoins us."

"Just like the typical main character of a Chinese web novel, huh?" Yue Chu chuckled with a shake of his head. "That figures. Richie's always reading those."

"I still think we should request for help, even if we have to forfeit the qualifiers." Pearl raised a trembling hand, trying to stifle the quiver in her voice. "Without Richard, we wouldn't have made it this far."

"I agree," Cody said quietly.

"Me too!" Yue Chu growled forcefully.

"Actually…" Harrison raised the blue badge that the tournament staff handed to him at the beginning of the qualifiers. The squarish device projected a blue-tinted holographic screen above. "I already did that. I contacted the tournament staff using the emergency hotline, right after the blizzard blew past us. That was the first thing I did the moment I regained a signal."

"Eh?!" everyone stared at him in shock. Harrison could only shrug sheepishly.

"Sorry for not telling you guys. But I thought that Richard's life was more important than reaching a consensus."

"That's true," Craig agreed with a nod. "We're not some murderous b.a.s.t.a.r.ds who abandon our comrade to the wild like…Bei Pan Zhe and those girls."

By the way, the teammates who deserted me during my first mission, because they wanted me to die during an "accident" after getting jealous of me being close to Alicia, were currently imprisoned. They wouldn't be getting out of jail for another twenty or thirty years. Ten at the minimum, if they get released on parole.

By then I would be so far out of their lives it wouldn't matter. And their own lives had been ruined by their criminal record. n.o.body would hire them to be mages.

"So are they sending a rescue squad for Richard?" Pearl asked eagerly.

"Well…" Harrison began to replay the conversation for them to hear. As they exchanged glances of astonishment, he nodded. "Yeah, they told us to resume the trek, and reminded me that as long as at least half of us reach the destination, we will qualify for the next round. As for Richard, there is already someone looking after him, so they told me not to worry about him. He's in good hands." He took a deep breath and stared at the holographic screen. "As you heard, they told me to trust them."

"I trust them," Yue Chu said simply.

"I bet that someone is that green-haired girl from earlier," Craig remarked cheekily. "He get to be alone with her in such a barren place…we need to grill him for details when he returns!"

"Yeah!" Lily was giggling.

"We want to hear all about it." Sheila was nodding. Girls and their love for romance gossip. Ugh.

"Anyway, we should continue to move on. We'll head to Olympus City and wait for Richard there." Harrison straightened up, switched off the holographic screen and put the blue badge back into the pocket of his winter coat. "Let's get ready to move out! We have a lot of ground to cover and not much time left! And we sure as h.e.l.l don't want to arrive in Olympus City after Richard has already reached there!"

"Yeah!"

With a roar of approval, everyone began to enthusiastically break camp and prepared for the remainder of the journey.