“Beautiful.”

Celeste shifted her gaze from the sky to the headmaster after hearing Elicia mutter behind her. The fireworks display may have been beautiful, but it was coming from that crazy old man whose wails were still continuing to echo in front of them.

Everything below his waist was engulfed in murky shadows while his hair had almost fully returned to white. A look of dread was on his face as mana continued to drain from his body and shoot up into the air.

Incredibly unsettling.

Celeste looked up at the sky again, the mana that had reached a certain height was now descending in different directions.

“It's spreading around the city.”

“One's falling in our direction!” Elicia shouted.

A large clump of mana, enough to spill into the entire courtyard, was falling with a rapid descent while partly spewing out flames.

“No!” Celeste's eyes widened.

With its approach, she felt a dangerous increase in temperature.

“Everyone into to building!!!” She yelled out, but her warning fell a bit too late.

All she could manage to do before the clump had reached the courtyard was to raise her arms into the air and form an umbrella of ice. Unfortunately, her hastily made shield was only enough to cover herself as well as Instructor Danny and the student beside him.

Elicia and the other students were on their own as the clump of mana fell onto the courtyard, scattering towards every shadow.

Steam appeared along with a loud hiss, resulting from the points where the headmaster's mana met with the surface of ice.

Hazy and unclear, and with intense heat making it hard for her to fully open her eyes, Celeste cried out, “Elicia!!!”

She started gasping for air as it seemed to be getting harder to breathe.

If she could clearly see, then she would have noticed the previously unmoving Nifyr, now making a ferocious scramble for the headmaster's mana littered all around the courtyard.

From the ones that had managed to devour a piece, their pitch-black coloring began turning into murky red, and along with their change of shade, flames being born from their bodies were quickly consuming the oxygen in the courtyard.

By the time that Celeste released the umbrella of ice, a wall of fire had encircled her and was obstructing her view.

She turned to Instructor Danny. His hair was singed and was curling up, his clothes partly burned. He had shielded the female student with his body as her magic only managed to partly cover them.

“If we had only left a bit earlier,” Celeste felt regret.

She couldn't tell if Elicia was fine, nor could she assess the situation of the other students.

Elicia was right. They were the ones that brought them here so they should've been responsible for them.

“Cough! Cough!”

She tried to gather mana to open up a path in between the flames, but the fire was growing too quickly and was making it hard for her to concentrate.

Just as she was beginning to lose heart, the fire in front of her was suddenly split apart by a blast of cold air.

“Hey, Little Red! You alright!?”

An unruly-looking young man— Kyron had appeared and picked her up in one arm.

“Hey, man! Can you stand up?”

They went over to Instructor Danny and looked him over. Seeing that he only had minor burns, Kyron urged him to carry the female student.

“Over here!”

They ran through the clearing and into the academy building, past a hallway covered in ice, and made it to the exit where they were met with the other students from earlier. They had the same singed appearance as Instructor Danny, none of them too hurt.

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Once she'd seen that they were okay, Celeste almost let out a sigh of relief but held it back as she noticed somebody missing from the group.

“Where's Elicia!?”

“Hmmm? Oh, don't worry, someone else went to get her.”

Kyron turned around to face the building's entrance, he shouted, “Big bro Vigril!”

From the hallway, someone came out after them.

An intelligent-looking man with glasses, and the same ashen-grey head of hair as Kyron. In his arms, a certain black-haired girl was being carried like a princess.

Celeste felt relieved. Kyron did mention his elder brother returning tonight. It seemed he had arrived early, how fortunate.

She turned her head and glanced at the arm holding her up by her stomach before looking back at Elicia. She squinted at the difference in treatment.

“You can let me down now.”

“Ah, right.”

After being released, Vigril approached her and placed a somewhat blushing and disoriented Elicia by her side.

“Little Celeste, what's the situation? We rushed over after sensing a large movement of mana.”

“What about the stampede?”

“We blocked the entrance to the tower and left the people there on alert in case something happens.” Kyron answered.

“What's going on here? What was that explosion of mana in the sky?” Vigril inquired.

“I-It was the headmaster.” Instructor Danny replied, “He was collecting these shadowy creatures.”

“Shadowy?”

“Yeah, they popped up from the ground. They came from the direction of the tower.”

“That would explain the huge shadows moving under our feet.”

“Huge? There were a lot, but I don't remember any of them having large proportions?” Instructor Danny said, scratching his chin as he tried to recall.

“NOOOOOO!!!”

A grating scream resounded in their ears before a loud explosion suddenly blew apart the side of the academy building.

From the cloud of dust and debris, two huge Nifyr slowly peeked out. Each of their heads sporting what looked like a pair of massive horns.

Everyone was startled.

As the murky red monsters emerged from the building, their large and stocky-looking frames came into view.

Celeste and the others who had seen the previous appearance of the Nifyr shuddered. Kyron and Vigril, however, immediately went into action and both sprinted towards the lumbering creatures.

Their bodies emitting a hue of blue while they breathed out cold air as they ran.

“Big bro, Vigril, these huge things! Don't they look like Bihorns!?”

“Uncanny. Just be glad they aren't charging around like them, else this fire would be harder to contain.”

The two Nifyr were walking on four limbs, heading in the direction of the city.

“Kyron, one each, let's try to divert their path to the lake behind the academy!”

“We got our work cut out for us! Don't we usually need a squad to handle one of these!?”

“We've got no choice! We can't let them go or they'll raze down everything in their way!”

Vigril formed a translucent spear in his hand and postured himself for a throw. He threw his arm back— stopping in place and forming a stance before casting his spear.

The spear flew in a graceful curve but wasn't aimed at the Nifyr, it dispersed in particles like fine dust as it went past them. Along its path, ice jutted out from the ground and blocked the Nifyr.

The Nifyr stopped and changed directions after sensing danger from the obstacles in front of them.

“These things don't seem too smart, we can work with this!” Kyron laughed, forming a blade of ice and slicing at the path of the Nifyr, prompting it to go in another direction.

He had spoken too soon.

From the ruins of the academy that the massive Nifyr left in their wake, regular-sized Nifyr started crawling out— the same red shade and each leaving a fiery footprint behind them.

“Hey, Big bro—!?”

“I know, this might get difficult!”

Their hands were tied.

Diverting the ones in front of them already took a massive effort. Staying close to them was already draining, as the heat being emitted was so intense that they had to continuously cool the air around them. As for the insects crawling out from the woodworks, they obviously couldn't spare them any attention.

Kyron looked over his shoulder intending to give out instructions but somebody had already beaten him to it. He smiled and brought his focus back on his task.

“Those that can use water magic, provide some support!”

“Instructor, take care of the ones that get past us!”

Celeste and Elicia took a few students and confronted the smaller Nifyr.

Following Vigril's example, Celeste formed a rough-looking spear in her hand and threw it towards the academy's wall, ice protruded from the ground along its trail and cut off the path of the emerging Nifyr.

Two sides of the academy were now separated by a wall of ice, with the massive Nifyr being herded towards the lake behind the academy and the numerous smaller ones funneling towards Celeste and Elicia.

“Elicia, support me from behind,”

Celeste's body glowed a pale blue as she used her mana to produce a cooling mist. In her hand, she formed another spear— looking wieldier and much better than her prior attempts.

“No,” Elicia replied, ”I can't sit back this time. You're gonna need my help.”

She stood beside Celeste and released a thin film of yellow around her body. She knelt down and pressed her palms to the ground— A layer of earth adhered to her hand, forming thick earthen gauntlets.

Celeste nodded. She exhaled a puff of white air,

“Let's do this.”