CHAPTER XXII (22)- Blood Disposal

Arclight assured Kizu and Harvey that she didn’t take requests for fights. She matched students up based on skill level, and nothing else. Still, they were both shaken when they eventually separated from the professor.

When Kizu reached his room, he immediately used his orb to look up their stats. They were surprisingly low in the combat rankings but even the lowest one was still above him by a good 100 people. They weren’t far off from Harvey, but Harvey hadn’t signed up to fight next week -he, at least, had nothing to worry about. More likely than not, the fifth year probably just wanted to scare them as payback for his brother’s embarrassment. Nothing more than that.

Mort must have felt his distress, because he hopped down from his little nest and onto Kizu’s shoulder. He didn’t bite or pull Kizu’s hair, instead curling up into a ball and offering his weight as comfort.

They relaxed while Kizu focused on reading. Needing a break from the divination book, he flipped through his actual textbooks. Most dealt nearly exclusively in theory. Due to the low-level nature of his classes, the books didn’t depict any spell formulas. While he studied the astronomy book, he wrote next to each constellation the name the crone had called it. He needed to get better at associating one with the other. When he switched his attention to his brewing textbook, he noticed several really idiotic and untrue shortcuts written in his textbook’s margins, such as “Mash toad fingers with the wartroot at the same time with two stones instead of a mortar and pestle for a more potent salve”, a statement so blatantly false that it actually angered him.

When he turned to his textbook on elemental magic, he decided it was time to try to get ahead of the class. He read ahead, searching for any sort of offensive ability. He settled on fire. Again, this book gave no clear instructions on how to perform the spells, but applying what he’d learned already, he thought he might be able to pull a few of them off.

While Harvey might not need to compete next week, Kizu was not so lucky. Fire might not be exactly what he needed in a first blood match, but it still seemed like a relatively easy spell to start out with.

He focused on the air in the palm of his hand, willing it to combust. Nothing happened.

“Mort,” he said to the monkey. “Can you help me with this spell?”

He felt his bond with the owl monkey strengthen in response. His familiar smiled at him.

This time, when Kizu willed his magic to combust, a fireball the size of a grape appeared floating in his palm. He grinned. With progress like this, he might be better off than he’d thought.

Feeling proud, he continued practicing, eventually managing to summon the small fireball without Mort’s assistance.

Exhausted from the effort, he decided to get in a quick nap before his meeting with Roba for the blood disposal. He hardly felt rested when his orb woke him up, but he still rolled out of bed and made his way over.

When he reached his destination, he found a note tacked to the sack of blood vials.

Mr. Kaga,

Please dispose of these as demonstrated last week. Remove any enchanted devices from your person and do not cast any spells while in the tunnels. I emphasize this again - DO NOT CAST SPELLS. You’ll find a spare key in the robes located in the same spot as last week. Please lock the door behind you. Stay on the main route. Do not deviate. This is a perfectly safe task so long as you follow the simple instructions above.

Roba

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Kizu felt a bit annoyed as he read the note a second time. What if someone else had stumbled on this sack of vials? It seemed so irresponsible to leave such easily abused materials lying around. The last thing he needed was one of Harvey’s new rivals finding something like this and setting up a tracking golem to strangle his friend in his sleep or casting a long-distance hex to boil the Tainted boy’s blood. Or Kizu’s, for that matter.

And her emphasis on it being a ‘safe task’ did the opposite of reassure him. But still, he had agreed to this.

Behind the stairs, he changed into the robes and set his orb on top of his folded uniform, along with the iron necklace. As he dressed, he felt the key’s weight in the inside pocket of the robes.

He heaved the sack over one shoulder and picked up the lantern. Then he started making his way down the tunnels. The sack wasn’t as heavy as it had been last week, but it wasn’t light either. The tunnel felt longer than before too, as if it had grown since last week. Honestly, Kizu wouldn’t be surprised if it had. The path had felt incredibly eerie the first time, and that feeling had only intensified now that he was walking it alone. The branching paths definitely seemed to have been altered, if nothing else. Still, Kizu kept to the main path, just as he had the week before.

When he finally reached the edge of the cliff, he peered over at the flowing river of liquid fire. The fire looked almost like mud as it slowly churned below, completely unique to anything he had ever seen before. He could feel the heat of it, even from this distance, like a massive bonfire. He set the sack down and leaned over the cliff edge, trying to get a better view. Kizu wondered what kind of magic it was, and what sort of properties the liquid fire might be useful in brewing.

“Hello,” someone said behind him. Kizu whirled around to see a heavily cloaked person approaching. No part of the person’s body was visible. Just layers and layers of wrapped cloth under the cloak.

“Hello,” Kizu said nervously. He shuffled back, but that put him right on the cliff’s edge. The heat of the flames below scalded the back of his robes.

“Ding, dong, ding. The bells called to me. Soft but clear. And I followed them to find you here with a sack of presents. For me?”

“Nope,” Kizu said, and promptly donkey-kicked the sack over the edge. Unfortunately, as the back of his heel made contact, a dozen vials slid from the bag before the sack crashed into the fire below.

The cloaked figure hissed at him, but it was still largely transfixed by the few remaining vials at Kizu’s feet.

They stood there in a standoff. Kizu wanted to snatch up the leftover vials and toss them after the sack, but he knew the moment he moved, the figure would do the same. He wished not for the first time that he knew how to jump. Then he remembered he had been warned not to use magic down here. He should have asked why. What would be the consequences? Would he explode? Throughout his childhood he had gotten so used to just blindly obeying the crone without question. He needed to learn to ask why. The figure flexed its heavily bandaged hands. Kizu could tell its patience was waning. He did the only thing he could think of, kicking the vials away from himself and diving in the opposite direction.

The creature lunged for the vials. From under its hood, its mouth came into view as it opened wider than anything natural, its jaw unhinging wider than a snake’s. In that split second, the creature exposed jagged teeth like a piranha’s.

Kizu didn’t wait around to see what the thing did with the blood. He scrambled and booked it as fast as possible away from the monster and the cliff’s edge.

That didn’t stop him from hearing the monster’s sounds of ecstasy alongside the tinkle of breaking glass. It was eating the vials whole, glass and all.

He ran, his mind narrowly focused on survival. It wasn’t until he reached the door that he finally took in what he’d seen. A monster. He tried to think of what it might have been, but he had so little to go off of. He quickly went through everything he knew about the creature via their brief exchange. He had only seen its teeth and general stature. But he had spoken as well. He tried to find some hint of its species through what it had said. Then he finally processed a simple fact. He had understood the words clearly, despite being half an ocean away from Hon.

Then, with a sinking feeling in his stomach, he touched his earring. His enchanted earring. He was so stupid. Roba had instructed him to discard all enchanted items.

When he finally reached the door, his hands fumbled for the key. He dropped it twice before he managed to get it in the keyhole and turn it. He slammed the door shut behind him and locked it.

Then he collapsed on the stone floor and laughed in terror and relief.