With that brief speech, Inari set off into the Forest while Shiori looked at their students expectantly. Sara was the first to react, immediately setting off after the foxkin, with Gareth, Cecilia, and the rest of the older Silver ranked students close behind, leaving Shiori, Kora, and the Iron rankers alone. Jun and the other Iron rankers hesitated for a few seconds, glancing from Shiori to each other and then to where Inari and her other friends were quickly vanishing into the Forest. Shrugging, Keira was the first to make a decision, the scout quickly darting off after the others, her brother close behind her.

Like a dam breaking, the rest of the Iron rankers chased after the others, with Jun the last to move. Looking at Shiori who still hadn't moved, her mother raised an eyebrow at her. "If you don't keep up with your team, they'll leave you behind kitten," Shiori said with a smile.

Feeling a sense of impending doom, Jun took the hint and rushed off, diving into the dark Forest after her teammates. The Forest quickly grew dark but a modified [Purging Missile] created a sphere of light above her head that lit her way, though the steady moving light caused strange shadows that left her feeling unsettled as she moved.

Falling into her usual running speed, she immediately noticed that it took barely more effort than a brisk walk for her to maintain. It wasn't long before she caught sight of Aya and Michael in front of her, with Keira and Cian further ahead following someone just out of sight. As Jun started to catch up with them, the twins put on a new burst of speed with Aya and Michael doing the same half a second later. As the gap widened, Jun sped up, moving from a fast run into what used to be a sprint for her, but still only felt like a jog for the amount of effort it took. Every time she started to close the gap between herself and her spread out team, the pace increased again and Jun automatically adjusted, her breathing remaining even as the intensive training they'd undergone for the past three weeks made itself known.

The weeks of intense training under the influence of Inari's magic made her muscles dense and rock hard, melting away what little body fat she had and leaving behind toned flesh. Jun could feel the power in her muscles as they ran, each step propelling her faster than even the fastest Olympic sprinter on Earth, though she didn't realize it at first.

Not until she felt a root buckle as her foot slammed down on it, the sudden give sending her into a high speed stumble. The world blurred around her as she fell and she instinctively coated herself in barriers, preventing her from braining herself on a stray rock or root in the dark. Her mana drained precipitously as she rolled, until with one final slam that drained nearly a tenth of her mana pool at once, she came to a rest against the trunk of a tree. Groaning at the aches and pains in her body, Jun took stock of where she was. A trail of destruction led through the underbrush until it vanished into the gloom of the ice-capped Forest, marking her path from where she fell. It reminded her of the time a few years ago that she went with her father one evening to help with a car wreck. It was the first time she saw a dead body.

A drunk driver thought it smart to race along the forested highway that ran past their small town late at night, right up until they saw something in the road and swerved, losing control and going off the road. He'd been doing at least 70 miles per hour, tearing through the saplings and brush for a hundred feet before he slammed into the trunk of an old oak tree. The airbags hadn't stopped him from getting thrown through the windshield, but somehow the man survived.

His friend in the passenger seat didn't. The crash had turned the man's chest into little more than bloody mush. Jun and her father had to hike down a torn trail that looked much like the one she stared at now to hook up the wreck and drag it out. It made her realize how fast she'd been running trying to keep up with the group, but that was cold comfort next to the knowledge that without her barriers, she'd be heavily injured at best, dead at worst.

Carefully picking herself back up, Jun followed the trail of destruction back to the start: a single splintered root with an indentation about the size of her foot. A vague quote from a high school science class from some long dead scientist came to mind as she stared at the footprint. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

The superhuman strength and speed that came with high stats meant that every movement had an impact on the surrounding area, and the world didn't simply let people run as fast as cars without consequence. She hadn't noticed it before, but the evidence in front of her was clear. While her stats let her do superhuman feats like running faster than a car, they also didn't protect her from physics.

"Congratulations kitten," a voice said as something appeared in the gloom from behind a nearby tree.

Jun yelped and jumped back, her barriers already forming around her before her thoughts caught up with her and recognized her mother's voice. "Shiori! You scared me!"

"Good reaction time, though your awareness needs work. You didn't hear me until I got too close. Walk with me." Without waiting for Jun to respond, Shiori walked past her, her mother's tail playfully brushing against her as she moved past.

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Releasing her held breath, Jun fell in beside her mother as the cat in her catkin form walked sedately. "What did you mean 'congratulations'?"

Shiori walked in silence for a bit before she answered. "You were the first of your friends to discover the danger of high stats, though not the only one," Shiori said, pointing out another trail of destruction just a minute later.

The trail was larger than the one she'd left behind, the earth ripped up with scorch marks on several of the trees.

They passed several more trails with various signs of destruction before they came to snow covered clearing, the watery light of a winter afternoon streaming in and banishing the gloom. Kora turned and looked at Shiori with a disapproving frown as she led Jun to where the other students were sprawled in a rough group around Inari. Corin and Michael moved from person to person, carefully healing scrapes and bruises from their short but fast run through the Forest.

"Go join your friends kitten," Shiori said as turned to join Inari.

Nodding to her mother's back, Jun moved to sit in the snow next to Sara, the elf the only one who didn't seem injured from the run. As she sat in the cold snow, Corin raised a hand up towards her and a wave of warmth ran through her body, soothing the aches from her headlong tumble.

"Enjoy the run?" Sara asked with a twinkle in her eyes, clearly the only student enjoying the outing so far.

Jun shook her head. "I didn't think just a hard step was enough to destroy a tree root like that. If it weren't for my barriers, I'd have probably broken my neck."

Aya, sitting nearby, turned to glare at Sara. "Why didn't they warn us this could happen? I've never seen any high rankers fall or damaging the ground from running too fast! My guards..ian, guardian never said anything about that being a thing! We could've been killed!"

"We're fine. I've done this training before. I didn't expect we would be doing this lesson so soon, but with mother around we shouldn't have to worry about permanent harm," Sara shrugged, dismissing Aya's complaints. "She's a powerful healer after all. She just believes pain and experience are more effective teachers than coddling. And honestly, she's right. Look how far we've come in just a short time." Sara's nonchalance only seemed to anger the battlemage more.

Aya's face started to turn red and Jun wasn't sure what to do. The last thing she wanted was the two of them to fight. But Aya's anger made sense. She wished Shiori had said something about what Inari planned, and though Inari was a strong healer, she hadn't been anywhere near Jun when she fell. None of the healers had. Still, this was their mothers Aya was talking about.

"I think Sara's right, not that you're wrong either. I just think—"

"Of course you're siding with her!" Aya exploded, turning her anger on Jun. "We know you have a crush on her, even though two women—"

"Two women what?" Sara said, her eyes narrowing at Aya. Jun's eyes darted between her two friends, her cheeks warm and her heart pounding, though she wasn't sure if it was embarrassment at being outed, or anger at the judgmental look Aya had in her eyes. She didn't expect to see that look again. A look she'd last seen on Ash's face after… Jun crushed the memory away, viciously shoving it back into the dark corner she'd locked it up in as she rounded on her friend.

"I—" Jun began to speak, only for a loud explosion to rock the clearing, sending a wave of heat billowing out as portions of the ice capped canopy crashed down around them.

"Enough." Shiori's voice filled the air with a hiss that threatened violence if anyone dared speak. Jun's mother stood a step between the students and Inari and the Guild Guide, a bright blue ball of flame hovering above her hand. Waves of heat came off the spell, melting the snow in the clearing and even baking the soil until there was nothing left but cracked, dry soil.

"You are passionate children. Young and willing to learn. That passion is good when it is tempered and channeled to serve you. But when you let that passion rule you, it is only a collar about your neck that drags you about at its whim. Learn this lesson well and take a step further to adulthood, or ignore it and let your passion drag you to an early death."

The catkin met each student's eyes one at a time, daring anyone to refute her. No one tried. One by one, each of the students looked down at the ground, bowing their heads in shame. Shiori stared at the students for a few seconds before she nodded at Inari and stepped back, the fire spell vanishing to let winter's chill assert its dominance once more.

The foxkin stepped forward, her tails swishing. "My daughter has already experienced this lesson, and much like you were unprepared, she was unprepared as well. If she had warned any of you, it would have only stolen a critical lesson from you, one that most do not learn until they are in the heat of battle, and most do not survive as a result," she said, pausing to let her words sink in.

"As you grow stronger, your strength becomes another weakness to be aware of. Weapons shatter in the grip of unprepared warriors, leaving them unarmed against a dangerous foe. Your footing gives way as you step, leaving you stumbling and open to attack. A thousand warriors have fallen to this truth when they were pushed to the limits of their strength, beyond what they'd ever needed before, and found the weapon they needed, only for it to stab them as they reached for it. Harnessing that strength properly so that you can move through the world without destroying everything around you is a practice in restraint and control of your aura. The totality of who you are."

Shiori came to Inari's side again. "Now that you have learned this lesson and felt the price of failure, you are ready to learn proper control. Let us begin."

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