Chapter 032:

Alexander was beyond pissed.

From the moment that Moore had transformed, he noticed fire particles gathering for a spell. At first, he thought nothing much of it, but the longer the spell took to gather, the more ticked off he became.

‘Who he fuck needs that long to cast a spell!’ He told himself over and over. At some point, he had decided to just ignore the caster and forget about the useless spell, ‘Fine, if you don’t want to help then fuck off,’ He had thought.

But after the darned spell finally activated, Alexander’s anger fully exploded. It wasn’t just the fact that the caster was targeting an unwilling Moore with such a blunt and unelegant spell, it was also not the fact that the spell was shoddier than expected; no, rather the problem lay with the caster himself.

Appearing from the distance with a hood poorly covering his messy fire-red hair, the caster approached the pillar of flame with grace and decorum aplenty, drawing gazes toward the steely blue eyes his hood also failed to conceal. His robes were magnificent as was his face. Strapped to his back was a long pole ending in a no doubt bladed tip which was currently bagged and tied.

By this point, the students’ screams had died down, unlike those of Moore and everyone turned their gazes toward this mysterious youth.

“Th-this,” Alexander stammered.

Someone in the crowd recognized the young man and his expression immediately lit up with infectious excitement.

“This bastard!” Timothy’s voice was drowned out by the growing murmur bubbling about.

As if unfazed by all of this, the red-headed youth continued his way toward the pillar of fire with a calm gait.

“This bastard stole my look!” Alexander bemoaned silently as he marched toward the young man.

A young man who was both a skilled flame magician and spearman? Someone with red hair and blue eyes? The hood?

‘This is daylight robbery, this fucker.. This cunt..’ A stream of expletives that would put even Mark to shame ran through his head as he began picking the most poisonous of which to hurl toward the youth.

Hot winds buffeted against his face, messing up his messy blonde hair but Alexander did not give two shits, let alone one, he stubbornly marched forward.

“Hey, you!” He screamed at the young man once finally in screaming distance.

In turn, the young magician turned around to look toward Alexander and his eyes widened at the sight of someone coming this close to him.

“I must say, this is quite surprising,” He spoke.

‘Even his voice is cool cringe,’ Alexander thought.

“What is?”

“The fact that some average student can come so close to me with {Firestorm} active,”

“Hmph, you mean that shitty spell you spent ten minutes prepping for?” Alexander said with a shit-eating grin spread across his face.

The young magician’s own face crumpled. “Now now, Timothy. I understand your ignorance on the matter grants you some leeway, but please try not to sound so stupid when in my presence,”

“You know who I am?”

“Of course I do. I know everyone in our year, though I must say, your answers for the written exams did amuse me more than the rest, which might be your greatest accomplishment,”

Alexander gnashed his teeth at the sudden low blow. It was at times like these that he missed Lexter the silver-tongued demon.

“If you know who I am, then that makes what you did even worse,”

The young magician tilted his head at that, seemingly puzzled.

“Don’t give me that face, it’s obvious! You stole my look!”

For the first time since appearing, the young magician’s face lost all composure as complete bewilderment took its place.

‘What is this idiot on?’ that was what the look seemed to be saying.

“You slimy bastard, you are just lucky that I am turning over a new leaf otherwise I would have knocked some of your perfect teeth off yer pretty face,”

“Mind your mouth, Timothy!” Anger finally found its way through the complete confusion. “I am the Iron Tower’s junior representative,”

“A useless position for a useless hack!”

Instead of replying, the young magician pointed toward the blazing inferno, after which a wisp of fire broke off the main pillar.

He then pointed toward Alexander and the wisp of flame immediately darted toward him. “This may be heavy-handed but you are growing increasingly antagonistic. You are in my way, Timothy, so I will put you down for a bit,”

“You really are an idiot!” Alexander screamed back instead of replying.

Just as the wisp of fire was about to touch Alexander, a manic howl interrupted their conversation.

Moore, who at this point was more burnt flesh than man, was howling something unholy as he continuously struggled to stand against the pillar of fire.

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Finally, after some moments of complete agony, he had managed to overcome the pain enough to fight back.

“Awooooooh” A wild howl broke free from his mouth as his jaws opened far too wide. The transformed Moore then spread his arms as far as he could before slamming his hands together. The force of the blow generated winds strong enough to dissipate the pillar of fire.

“W-what!” The young magician was flabbergasted for the second time in a row.

“I told you it was a shitty spell, even a baby guardian could fart that fire out of existence, you should be ashamed of yourself,” Alexander mocked gleefully.

“I don’t have time for you!” The young magician screamed back before he began to cast a spell. The billowing winds birthed from Moore’s attack blew his hood down, sending his wild red hair flying. The sight of his fire-like hair dancing and contrasting against his cold blue eyes further fanned the flames of Alexander’s hatred.

A distance away, Moore had fully recovered again. His leg muscles tensed and expanded in size as his eyes zeroed in on the young magician. Burnt flesh peeled off in strips as black goo shat out new skin.

“He looks pissed!” Alexander exclaimed happily before being forced to snap his head toward the ceiling with furrowed brows. “Today really isn’t my day,” He muttered dejectedly.

The young magician ignored the crazy bastard behind him as he frantically gathered Flame magic for his spell.

Less than a second later, Moore had disappeared from where he stood only to appear before the young magician with claws outstretched.

Three things happened at the same time then.

“Fuck!” Alexander screamed.

Crash! Resounded the sound of glass breaking.

‘Shit, I won’t make it!’ The young magician despaired.

Shortly after, a strong gale descended upon everything and everyone, forcing all to their knees.

Above the kneeling students, an angel-like figure descended slowly from a hole in the ceiling.

“Student Moore,” A bell-like voice spread all around.

“Awoooooooo” The transformed Moore roared back as it tried to stand against the billowing winds.

“For causing excessive harm to your fellow students, you will be disqualified from this round. Furthermore, your participation in the next round will be discussed,” Professor Almer continued unbothered.

Her cold gaze swept across the kneeling mass of students and it softened somewhat seeing that they were relatively unharmed.

With a casual swipe of her hand, Moore was lifted from his kneeling position and rocketed through the same hole in the ceiling through which she descended.

After that she lifted the several injured Graveclaws students as well, only gentler.

Having done all that and with everyone still kneeling, Professor Lindsy Almer finally made her way toward Crooked Nose who was fighting off the combined efforts of Grim and Clive.

“Student,” She said softly floating above his head.

Crooked nose tried lifting his gaze but his head was prevented from doing so by the unrelenting winds.

“You are also disqualified from this round, come with me,” She said relaxedly as Crooked Nose was rocketed out of the maze similarly to Moore.

Finally done with her job, Professor Almer let loose a breath.

She turned toward a certain student.

The only person standing aside from herself, Timothy Baek.

‘Just who in the world is this punk.’ Lindsey thought to herself. She so badly wanted to take this student out as well, but she couldn’t go against her grandfather’s orders.

So she held herself back from acting and settled with giving the punk stink-eyes.

Alexander narrowed his eyes right back at her; in the background, he noticed the cultist's dead body raising subtly in the air as well.

‘Doesn’t look like she wants the other students to know that someone is dead. Good call for once,’

Nevertheless, he remained standing defiantly despite the heavy winds and watched her float her way back up through the hole she came through.

“Continue the contest,” She said finally. After she left, the maze’s walls slowly started to repair themselves.

A few minutes of silence descended as the students processed the events that took place. This silence was then broken by the sound of shuffling as everyone stood up again.

Hearing the sound of someone patting, Alexander turned to look toward the young magician who was dusting off his clothes.

“Did you know?” He asked after making sure he was clean enough.

“Did I know what?”

“Did you know that that thing was about to break free from my spell?”

“Huh?”

“...” Instead of continuing his questions, the young magician stared at Alexander for a bit in thought.

The annoying teacher’s interference really took the wind out of his sails so Alexander was thinking of letting this fucker go for the day and dealing with him later.

“You are not as stupid as you look,” The young magician finally said.

Now it was Alexander’s turn to be flabbergasted and he couldn’t help but let his jaw fall a bit.

“My name is Alec,” The young magician said as he held out his hand.

The flames within Alexander’s heart reignited once more at the mention of the kid’s name.

‘Even my name!’ he bemoaned.

He was about to lunge at the knock-off when a large hand rested itself on his shoulder with a bit too much force.

Turning around, he found Edward.

“Hey, Alec,” Ed greeted casually.

“A good day to you Edward,” Alec replied back as he withdrew his hand after noticing that Alexander wouldn’t take it.

“Excuse my rushed departure,” he said as he began casting a spell, “Hopefully we will meet in the next round, I’ll be able to educate you on some manners then,” He said, looking at Alexander steadily before pointing toward the ground.

Just as Alexander was about to ask what the punk was doing, he felt an abrupt boom as a controlled explosion went off in front of him, sending Alec flying toward one of the maze’s pathways.

His mouth hanging agape, he turned toward Ed.

“Yeah…He’s a bit…special,” The large youth let out an awkward laugh as he dusted off his robes which got dirtied in the explosion.

“Just who is he?” Alexander asked him as he too began patting his clothes clean.

“That is Alec Moroe, Junior representative of Iron-wall’s magic Tower. He is roughly the same age as us but despite that, he is already a fourth-grade magician,” A sudden voice interrupted.

Alexander nodded at Grim’s words as if unsurprised by his sudden appearance.

In the distance, he could still hear the consecutive explosions Alec made as he advanced through the maze.

As if he was the catalyst, other students began waking from their confusion and moving along as well.

Returning his gaze to the group of people around him, he found Clive, who was also looking toward where Alec went.

Clive seemed to be in bad shape as he was clutching his left shoulder. Regardless, when Alexander saw the Wisker shining above his head, an idea came to him.

“Hey, Clive,”

“What do you want?” Clive replied venomously.

“Woah dude, chill, I just want to help,”

Clive’s brows furrowed as an ominous sensation gripped his heart. For some reason, Timothy’s smile brought him discomfort, ‘I can see why that bastard and Grim are friends. They are both snakes!’ He thought angrily as he promised himself that from that day onward, he would do his best to avoid interacting with Timothy or his lackeys.