The Winter Hunt grounds were laid out like a gigantic purple onion, with clearly distinct layers from the inside out.
The innermost hunting grounds were located on campus and assigned to lower-year students and some students with "self-awareness." The school released simple, common prey into this area, such as boggarts, kappa, Fire Ash Snakes, and Red-banded Snakes. There was no doubt that winter hunting in these zones was absolutely safe.
Like an onion, its core was not as pungent, but instead carried a faint sweetness. Of course, the "onion" itself tasted the blandest in this area.
The farther one peeled outward, the thinner the onion skin became and the stronger its pungency grew.
The middle layer lay between the school and the Silent Forest, encompassing Beta Town and some laboratories established near the school by professors. Thanks to the wizards' years of development, monsters from Deep within the Silent Forest were rarely seen in this area. The creatures that appeared most often were species that dealt frequently with wizards, such as ghouls, Huo Dou, Vengeful Spirits, and Gargoyles. Relatively speaking, this area was less safe, but because most of it lay at the edge of the School Guardian Formation's coverage, the danger remained quite low.
The outermost layer lay completely beyond the School Guardian Formation, past the safety line of the Silent River and deep into the fringe regions of the Silent Forest—some powerful hunting teams with an understanding with the school even had temporary permission to explore deeper into the Silent Forest. In these hunting grounds, anything could happen: from fire dragons to giants, from unicorns to Chimeras, from Dark Wizards living in seclusion deep in the forest to lone bounty hunters.
Every year during the Winter Hunt, only hunting teams approved by the school could take part in