He stood no chance at all, in fact, winning never crossed his mind, he only sought an opportunity to make her come to her senses and accept his help. All he could do was wait for a miracle to happen.

But would a miracle really happen in that situation? And if it did, would it be in his favor; to whom, no matter how you look at it, is being selfish?

Overcoming adversity, achieving something with the fruits of effort, even if it is not necessarily with your own strength, but someone else's lending; Aiden always called that a true miracle.

It's not something that happens for no reason, someone has to create them; that's what he believed, and that miracle had happened.

Seeing all of Maika's determination to not involve him inspired him to be strong, to fight for a place by her side.

Gripping the piece of paper, he had picked up, Aiden thought: If I had the necessary strength, I could use it to protect her.

On the other hand, there was Maika, while pulling the trigger, she thought of how arrogant she was to think she had enough strength to keep the rest of the world away and protect them from danger; her strength, after all, was not proven by protecting, but by hunting.

The paper that Aiden was holding in his hand had drawn on it a circle with quite complicated symbols, that unique type of magic circle is also called an alchemical circle.

He knew nothing about alchemy, not even its basic rule: to transmute. He was unaware of the counting and molecular structure of concrete as to transmute the ground into a wall to cover himself, but if he had a command.

Protect me! Protect me from the explosion! He shouted inside with all his strength.

A thin shrike laid in his ears, like a cloud of wasps in the distance, as the collision occurred. A wall of fire instantly ignited the oxygen in a part of the hallway. On the other side of the wall of fire, a dense black mass resisted the pressure and flames, keeping Aiden safe.

Just as Maika pulled the trigger, the black smoke gathered as a shield between them, absorbed the impact, and even after that, protected Aiden from the wall of fire.

Nothing supernatural could pass through the dark wall, anything that touched it was repelled. Rather, the flames upon contact with the black smoke were not extinguished, they were devoured, and only what was not devoured was reflected by the force of the explosion that couldn't pass through the wall that Aiden created.

—But what? —Aiden was the first to speak.

The wall of flames dispersed a few seconds later, in its place everything on the other side was now covered in the fire that couldn't be devoured. Maika, having received the blast wave at centimeters from her, was unconscious.

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«I hope she doesn't have internal bleeding or that any of her organs fail. No, before, she said she would just knock me out. I hope that's the case» Aiden thought.

Fortunately, she wasn't directly affected by the fire, she would probably have first- or second-degree burns, but all the damage was superficial. The only real danger was that everything around her was covered in flames. Aiden rushed to rescue her, but a strange sensation traveled through his body.

—Ugh!… BAH! —A ball of blood was spit out of his mouth, he felt as if he were regurgitating organs.

He looked incredulously at the blood, but he could feel that there was more damage in his body than he was aware of. However, he couldn't stop much longer, if he did, not only Maika, he would die incinerated as well. His body took strength from where there was none and held the pain until he got both of them out of the flames to one of the classrooms and then out of the building through a window.

The flames spread so much that they could clearly be seen from outside and continued to increase. The nearest fire extinguishers didn't even have a chance to act, as they had been damaged by the explosion almost immediately.

The firemen, police, and teachers would soon be there too, how exactly was he going to explain what happened? No matter what lie he told, he would still be suspected of causing the fire, and there was no way to prove otherwise. Of course, explaining what really happened was not an option.

He had to hide and quickly. He couldn't go back to his dormitory, they would find him on the way, and he was unable to carry her for that long. The only option left was to hide in the school grounds until he had a chance and sneak into the dormitories.

—Co-Coughf! —Another ball of blood and what looked like pieces of meat from who knows what part was spat out by Aiden—. Damn… This i…s hard… How much it hurts…

He remembered a particular incident from his first year in this city, a simple prank with horrifying consequences: fire, broken glass, a never-ending corridor, a race against time. It was very similar to the current situation; of course, back then he had been very lucky and wasn't injured like he was now, but that didn't matter. The current situation brought a landslide of fragments he thought forgotten and a palette of unpleasant emotions that he could taste the bitterness of.

Instead of giving up, motivated by the past's sour taste of defeat, Aiden stubbornly decided to go all out until the end this time. He couldn't afford to lose consciousness and be found by the authorities, just like that one time during his first year.

His teary eyes, his throat dry from smoke, his staggering limbs; everything that was Aiden was in a pitiful state. Despite the unbearable pain running from the tip of his toes, through his spine, limbs, and most of all, the maddening headache, he held on until he brought Maika inside one of the many structures around campus.

Fortunately for them, the spot he chose to stop at evoked the feeling of a small, but dense forest filled with trees, bushes, and flowers. It was, in fact, a bio-greenhouse.

«This would be a good place to hide», manage to thought Aiden, in a haze of consciousness and barely standing.

He lay the unconscious girl down against a tree and headed to the control room, where he, fortunately, found a small manual next to the control board.

As everything was automated, within a button or two, inserting a couple of commands into the computer was easy work. All the transparent walls of the greenhouse darkened, and the entrance was blocked.

When the police come, they will think that the security mode was activated by the fire, and even if they suspect something, it would take them some time to unlock the doors to the greenhouse. During that time, he would think of something, or so he hoped, but staying conscious for longer was impossible. As soon as the place was sealed, Aiden collapsed on the floor.