“Kill him.”
The mages gathered within the room, who’d looked like they’d been doing nothing more than lounging around, instantly snapped into action. The three closest to me lunged forward, including the woman who’d spoken with Aldric. My eyes darted around, looking for the biggest threat in the span of a heartbeat before locking onto the woman who was glowing a faint orange, flames beginning to lick around her fists which were adorned with silver-looking knuckles, the tools of a ‘fixer’ and more importantly, they were enchanted, siphoning off mana from the woman’s core.
Right. Don’t want to deal with any enchanted crap.
Flanking me from the opposite side was a silver-haired man wielding a rather brutish-looking paring knife. With every step he took, it was as if the earth projected him forward with even more speed.
Earth magic used to augment his speed.
Finally, the last of the three charging me head-on was a dark-haired man with a deceptively thin lasso being whipped toward me.
Mana thread, if I had to guess.
I’d made the immediate assessment before lurching into action myself. First, I whipped toward the knife-wielding man, mana augmenting my speed so that I moved like a rampaging tornado. My fist lashed out, striking him in the elbow as he inadvertently released his grip on the knife. Snatching it out of the air, I swung a spinning kick toward his skull, his neck cracking with fatal consequence as I used the momentum to turn on the woman in the same breath. Her eyes only had time to widen for a moment before I thrust the knife up and through her lower jaw, yanking the blade out and with an instant pivot, I sent the blade whirling through the air, where it proceeded to bury itself in the eye of the lasso wielding man.
In less than a handful of seconds, three of the twelve assailants had been instantly dispatched, their bodies only just landing with a thud on the ground a moment later.
“Still think you’re ready for this?” I flashed a barbaric grin at Aldric, relishing in their demise.
It was only fair for what they’d wrought.
“No problems here.” The man said with a shrug, his unphased attitude making me uneasy.
Why?
It didn’t take long to understand his reaction. Usually, when something dies, its life essence evaporates into effectively nothing, with only residual traces remaining. It would take hundreds of deaths to leave anything behind.
As with the death of the academy students.
In the case of the assailants, death was not the end of their energy. Rather than fade into nothingness, I felt the mana flow from their corpses, drawn and distributed through the remaining nine.
Oh. That’s not good.
I didn’t have time to consider how I’d never seen magic like that before or try to comprehend how it worked. Not when I was on a time limit; each death would only empower the rest.
Kill them before they can acclimate.
“Aulous!” I shouted as I cocked my finger toward the next closest mage, who was already drawing in the surge of mana to throw at me in the form of some spell I had no desire to witness. A jet of high-pressure water lanced out before my fingers, the woman’s eyes widening as she attempted to tumble out of the way.
The good news for her was that she avoided the worst of the pressurized water, the lance of water failing to strike her through the heart.
The downside was while she avoided the instant death of my attack, the water still managed to slice through her shoulder as her arm fell away, the woman screaming in pain.
I had no time for self-praise; she wasn’t dead, and the rest had also been conjuring forward spells of their own.
That’s the problem with group battles. They don’t have the decency to take turns.
One of them must have been a user of Kin magic, as rather than a standard elemental spell hurled at me, I was instead bombarded by a literal cloud of locusts, each nip not just taking a locust-sized bite of flesh out of me but also stealing small handfuls of my mana out from me, mana which I had sparingly little of in comparison to my overall strength.
Can’t have that.
With speed only gained through years of practice, I cast out a wave of null, which instantly dissipated the locusts, mana summons from their caster.
It would have been a perfect example of a summon-type kin magic user for the kids.
The thought of my students enraged me, of what I’d lost due to these cretins.
A chain sword lashed through the air toward me. Without thinking, I caught the carving pieces of the whip, ignoring the feeling of my flesh parting to the bone as I ripped the weapon away, twirling it before whipping out with it myself. The bladed whip snagged around the kin magic user’s neck, and with a yank, I ripped my arm back as the blades shredded her neck, her spine visible through the grisly tears in her neck.
Four down.
Like the three prior, her mana flooded away from her. I was sadly mistaken if I thought I was done dealing with her magic. Grinning, Aldric raised his hands as he conjured the locusts.
You have got to be kidding me!
It wasn’t just mana shared on death then, but even their individual magic they could use.
Of the remaining eight, four hung back, Aldric included, who were content with bombarding me with spells from a distance as the last four advanced on me. Now, each of the four was using the magic of their fallen allies, each augmented with the seismic speed of the earth mage, glowing with an orange cloak of scalding heat.
So they considered my abilities in their makeup.
In the world of adventurers and mages, I was known as a ‘Magic Knight,’ a term for mages trained in physical and magical combat. Some magic knights still chose to prefer their utilization of magic over mundane weaponry, viewing magic as the perfect weapon that a sword or pike could never replicate. As for myself, it was well known, or relatively well known, that Zero had always used magic to augment his skill with a sword as an adventurer and not vice versa.
And thus, this squad.
Some members had clearly been selected to contend with me in a close-up brawl, while the rest would pepper me with attacks from afar.
A man with a relatively tight crop of hair swung an axe kick toward my head and reacting instantly, I raised my arm in the way, catching it overhead on my forearm. Immediately, it was like I was being dragged downward, gravity multiplying its effect on me.
Gravity magic!?
Gravity magic had been theorized as a form of deviant magic; it certainly wasn’t a part of the composite match-ups of the primal elements. Mages of their caliber shouldn’t have been capable of using such magic. Still, anything was possible when their skill and access to different forms of magic were expanded upon with each death.
Gritting my teeth, I shoved against the gravity clawing at me as I tossed the kick aside.
I wish I had my sword.
Beggers couldn’t be chooser, and so freed from the gravity of the seismic kick, I launched my own kick at a woman about to bury her dagger into my side. Giving myself a moment of breathing room, I centered myself as much as I could, a single deep breath as I took a fighting stance, the two close-range fighters I’d knocked aside standing up again as they closed in with their allies, circling around my like predators circling prey, the four outside mages taking time to draw in even more mana.
Big spells incoming.
As much as I needed to be quick about this, panicking and rushing would be the end of me. With another deep breath, I raised my fists as the mana inside me swelled and rotated through my veins.
“Well then?” I said with dead calm. “I’m waiting.”
The four advanced on me, and the fight began with renewed vigor, the second respite over.
Calm in chaos, and chaos in calm. Stillness through motion and motion from stillness.
It was a mantra I’d read from overseas, a mantra I’d incorporated into my training with mana that I’d relegated to an afterthought once my life had become the more peaceful life of a teacher.
An overhead swing brought a hatchet toward my head, but I slipped inside the range of the strike, launching a three-strike combo with blindingly fast speed. A strike to either shoulder left the man wide open as the third strike became an uppercut to the jaw. From the corner of my eye, the woman with the dagger was ready to stab me with the blade. Preferring to not lose an eye, or die for that matter, at the last second, I switched the uppercut into a grab, catching the man by the neck and spinning around as I used his body as a human shield. The woman’s dagger struck true, or it would have had I not used the man as a shield, her blade driven hilt deep into his neck.
Five.
The first of the big spells being conjured forward was at last flung out at me, a guillotine-like blade of metal flashing out from the ground and toward me. Releasing the man, I flipped overhead, dodging the cleaving metal sheet. Had the man not already been dead, the spell from his ally would have done the trick as it cut him through the hip, his corpse split in two.
Mana flooded from his dead body, and the seven remaining grew even more powerful, each with the mana reserves of at least a mid-ranked gold mage.
The advance of the woman with the dagger was relentless as she and the two men flanking her, one of them the chain-sword wielding man whose weapon I’d ripped away, continued their attack, the utilization of their dead comrades spells even more effective now. With each step, the earth seemed to guide them forward, gravity only half its strength toward them and twice as strong on me.
Damnit.
Killing them one by one would take too long at this rate; they’d wear me down. I’d rather deal with one powerful foe than all of them nipping at me like pestering bugs.
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
As if reading my thoughts and agreeing, the outside mages finally cast the spell they’d been drawing mana for. At once, I understood what had taken them so long. Rather than individual spells, the three of them had been performing a ritual art, a tandem spell worked between several mages simultaneously. A massive fire lance hovered above them, pointing directly at me.
Except, calling the composition of the lance fire would be entirely too meek of a visualization. Instead, the lance looked to be made of pure, hateful sunlight.
“Shit,” I muttered, and with a smug flick of his wrist, Aldric sent the tandem spell rushing toward me.
He wouldn’t be so smug if it wasn’t for this core binding they’ve got working for them.
A tandem spell, or ritual working depending on where you were in the world and what you preferred to call it, was an intricate and complex work of magic. It required several mages of the same affinity to synch up their hearts and minds, and the resulting magic was exponentially more powerful than what could have been achieved individually. The fallout from failing to perfectly synch up with one another would be the carefully crafted spell to explode in their face, wiping them out instantly. For a group of mercenaries to perform, such magic was almost inconceivable.
It was an aspect of magic I intended to teach my students about next semester.
While ordinarily, the group before me should have been a hundred years away from even thinking of using such a risky sort of magic, I had a hunch that the spell binding their cores together also had the effect of forcing their magic to resonate with one another in the same fashion that was required to pull off ritual magic, all without ever having to suffer through years of cooperative training necessary to achieve the level of understanding of one another required of such magic.
A fun way of saying that the sunlight lance was pound-for-pound one of the most outright hostile spells I’d ever seen, only behind a few rare exceptions.
There was no time to dodge, think, anything for that matter, only a split second to brace myself as the spell rocketed towards me. Acting on reflex alone, I caught the beam of light, my mana reserves taking a massive hit as I used bend to layer my hands with space itself. Even with all that, I was shoved backward, blisters exploding over my body from the raw intensity of the attack.
The advancing trio of close-quarters fighters had gotten out of the way of the attack, too dangerous to stand near. I was left struggling to hold back the rampaging spell while they watched me with vile enjoyment. In theory, all I needed to resolve my deadlock was the activation of null; it would dispel the magic as I was left with enough mana to continue fighting in earnest. The issue was that I couldn’t be sure that null wouldn’t cause the intense magic to explode as it was disrupted. The resulting kinetic energy of such an explosion would be entirely natural, and thus, null would do squat for protection. Furthermore, I wouldn’t be capable of using any other form of magic while null was active.
So I was left to contend head-on with the working of several mages made far more deadly.
Damnit!
Involuntarily, my eyes landed upon the empty and discarded desks, mind recalling the days spent lecturing the kids who’d sat in them.
Kids. Innocents.
I’d had quite an array of students, from my star students like Mona to my former slackers like Leo or the quiet Rias.
Or to my hard-working but less-than-talented Elios.
So much potential. And yet, how many of them were still alive? Who’d died at the hands of these monsters? Who’d even managed to escape their rampage?
Only Mona, as far as I knew, and only because she hadn’t been here in the first place.
Images of Elios appeared before me, like a river that could not be held back, memories flashing through my mind until one final memory played out, his hand held by my own as the brave boy died a needless death.
Elios. You were meant for better things. You were supposed to be a hero.
If he couldn’t be a hero, then just for today, I’d wear that mantle for him.
Resolved, I felt my flow of mana steady before intensifying as it began to swell, a whirlpool of strength within me.
“I will not let you destroy this school!” I yelled out, voicing my fury and resolve as I finally rebounded the spell, all while adding my own mana into the mix, potent sage mana making the sunlight burn gold. Whether they had anticipated the rebound or whether rebounding such a spell was even possible in the first place, it happened too fast for them to process their surprise at the fact. Quick as literal light, the ray of burning sun ripped through them, disintegrating whatever it touched. Unable to contain such a volatile spell for more than a brief instant, I released my hold on the rebounding magic, which fizzled out instantly.
I was alone and exhausted; I wasn’t precisely practiced at manipulating large amounts of mana, given my lacking reserves of mana in the first place.
Or, I thought I was alone until a man emerged from a cloud of ash and dush, staring at me with eyes wide.
“Well, I’ll be damned, Wolf. We were led to believe that a spell like that, powered by that many mages sharing a linked core, would be enough to put down even a high-ranked adventurer party, but here you are, one man, standing up against it. You’re right. We really would have stood no chance ordinarily.”
The surprise was gone from his face, now smug once more.
“Too bad you didn’t kill us all with it.”
All at once, the mana of those who’d died rushed into him, the man containing twelve people’s worth of mana. He was so bursting with power that it was literally overflowing, light emitting from behind his eyes.
That can’t be healthy.
Even without outside interference, that much mana would likely kill the man shortly. His body simply wasn’t acclimated or adjusted to that much all at once. A regular human body couldn’t deal with so much magical influx.
But it wouldn’t matter if I was dead as well.
Well, now what?
I wasn’t out of mana; I had considerably more mana with my most recent sage ring than I once did. Furthermore, I was efficient enough with my mana usage that it took drawing out my most expensive spells multiple times to leave me empty.
But.
But while I wasn’t empty, I was low enough on mana that I had only a few more usages of bend left in me, and a fully manifested Rainsplitter was out of the question.
Could someone save me?
No, relying on that would be nothing but helpless wishing.
Is there anything I can draw upon?
A big fat no, even with the air thick with mana, it was thoroughly permeated with the stench of death. Trying to draw on that outside mana would leave me a giggling maniacal mess.
Which left my options as a relatively short list.
Fight and win with what I had in me or die.
That sounds about right.
I raised my fists, taking up my stance once more as I faced down an opponent who’d been uplifted to the sort of level I’d expect from top-ranked mages.
Like Harris.
I’d beaten Harris; I could beat him, too.
Just ignore the fact that you were fresh at the time.
Spreading my mana sense to encompass the room’s width, I kept my breathing still.
Calm in chaos, and chaos in calm.
To win would require perfection. If I had to try to counter a single spell head-on, I would lose.
So, I just needed to physically dodge the onslaught of magic without slipping up once.
Easy.
“Struggle, fight, try as you might. It brings me joy to see you helpless.”
He’s goading you.
I remained silent as I kept my breathing in control. Aldric finally grew irritated as I resisted his provocations. Flicking a wrist toward me, his lips began faintly moving.
It’s time to move.
My mana sense spread out; I sensed the mana shifting an instant before the thicket of metal stalks erupted from the ground like a forest of spears. With agility and grace that was only possible through knowing exactly where the spells were manifesting before they ever did, I dove and slipped through the thicket of death, even snatching one before hurtling it toward Aldric, who batted the metal shaft aside with a stone clad hand.
Keep going,
Noticing a shift in the mana above me, I skipped out of the way as a spike of ice suddenly appeared, stabbing down through where I’d just been standing. Skirting around it, I sprinted toward the man, who scowled as I avoided the ice spear. Waving his hand, I saw Aldric whisper scourlous under his breath as a wave of acid sprayed from a pipe running through the wall to my right.
Much as with the spear of ice, I’d already dodged out of the way before the spell had ever physically manifested.
The thing with magic is people often didn’t understand that it wasn’t magical in how it worked. Sure, it used mana, and by literal definition, it was magical, but it was a skill like any other. Much of my first-semester teaching had been about trying to drive that simple fact into the minds of my students.
If, for example, you took an ordinary person, gave them three times as much strength, and had them compete against an expert mountain climber, the mountain climber would still scale to the top first. A skill was a skill, regardless of how much extra strength or speed, or in this case, mana, one had to work with. If you weren’t already exceptionally skilled, your execution of a skill would be sloppy even with all the extra strength and speed in the world.
In this case, Aldric had gained power through whatever magical core binding spell had been placed on his group, and while it gave him a terrifying reserve of firepower, he wasn’t practiced as a genuine mage of that caliber, nor had he been well trained for it in the first place. Each attempt at drawing forward the magic he conjured was preluded by a split second of forewarning, unused to dealing with such volumes of mana. That split second was enough for me to react, the mana shifting sluggishly around me.
Which was one long way of saying that after dodging another spell without a problem, I could see the annoyance worsening on his face. With such a sudden increase in power, it should have been easier to kill me, not harder.
Amateur.
Aldric attempted one last go at skewering me through with a thicket of metal spikes, but I skirted the spell. It was the final straw that broke the camel’s back, so while I had been forced to dodge back and out of the way, giving the man more space to work with, he wasted it as he began hurling mundane balls of fire at me instead.
I’m guessing Scorz was his original affinity.
All his attacks thwarted, he’d begun to default to the basics, fireball after fireball. Seeing the behavior change, it was my turn to whisper under my breath, the fireballs winking out of existence before they could ever reach me as I drew upon null. I hadn’t dared to use null earlier against the massive tandem spell; the explosive fallout could have killed me. Against simple fireballs, there was no danger of a spontaneous explosion of power as the mana within was disrupted. Closing in on the man, he began tossing more and more with an ever-increasing string of verbalized vitriol spewing at me, the worst things you could say to a person. Even one of those remarks would have earned one of my students two weeks of detention.
I ignored them.
Finally, I raised my hand toward the man, acting like I was drawing in a mass of power. Not missing a beat, Aldric began drawing on his own.
So, when I simply leaped forward and slugged him hard in the face, the man went sprawling.
“Amateur.” I literally spat at the man as I landed flat on his back, eyes bulging.
Mages, especially those too proud of their power, had a rather interesting habit. When magic and power were flying, it was as if they forgot that the world didn’t play by rules of ‘honor’ and that a ‘magic duel’ was a sham made up by those with power to convince those with less to never bother those magically gifted few.
Hell, I’d seen that attitude as an adventurer before. It was a young mage, still older than I was then, who, so sure of his power, insisted on taking point in a commission against an Elder Khan. For a while, the Khan had seemed content to match his magic with blasts of magically created razor winds. The two had battled it until the Khan grew tired and walked up before simply snapping the head off his shoulders; the man had honestly believed the Khan would have the honor to only engage in a magical duel.
A magical beast, have honor. Idiocy.
Get them drunk on power, and suddenly, they forget they can still get hit in the face.
Aldric opened his mouth, whether to throw a spell at me or begin spouting off some grandstanding monologue; I had no care to find out. Thrusting my hand forward, Rainsplitter appeared as an ordinary sword, manifesting through his neck, and silencing the man as it pinned him to the ground. Not even seconds later, Aldric was dead.
“You deserved worse.” As I looked about my classroom, I scowled at the corpse, the flames of the rest of the building now threatening to bring the roof down on me.
And you deserved better.
I wanted to do something to preserve the room, but I was already low on mana, to begin with. I couldn’t conjure enough water to put out the flames, especially not magically intensified flames mired in the grisly mana spawned by countless agonized and terrified deaths.
Beginning to cough from some of the smoke that had made it past my protective veil of water vapor, I jogged out of my room. As much as I wanted to search for any survivors, I could hear the groans of the building as it prepared to give way.
Time to go.
Dashing through the burning halls, I slammed through the doors leading outside, returning to the clean air and bright sunlight. I was out for only a few seconds before the groans turned into a chorus of shakes, as at last, the proud Parisian Academy fell inwards, the fire winning out.
“Damnit,” I said quietly, a single light tremor passing through me.
I failed.
I’d killed those immediately responsible, but the damage was done. I didn’t know how many had survived or escaped, but it couldn’t have been many based on the thickness of the deathly mana clogging to school.
“Damnit.”
Taking a moment to give the school a silent vigil, I jumped when a hand gently touched my shoulder. My adrenaline still pumping, I was prepared to throw a punch before I forcibly stopped myself.
“Scyla!” I was surprised not just to see her here but also to have personally found me until a glance down at her side revealed my demon cat looking at me, who I guessed was responsible for bringing her here. “And Pantera.”
“Well, what am I, chopped liver? Don’t forget about me.”
The world felt as if it had slowed as I heard the words, a voice I recognized but hadn’t heard in years. Standing just behind Scyla was a cloaked figure who pulled back his hood after a dramatic pause, revealing the man. As my mind made sense of what my eyes saw, shock washed across my face, unabated as a single word escaped me.
“Master?”