The bolt hit its mark, punching a fist-sized hole through the flying student’s abdomen.
Two more students coming from the sides tried to get the jump on Sofia, but the high-priest skeleton waved his staff and a golden shockwave sent the new ambushers flying. Summoning Bookie and ripping off a page, Sofia turned around.
“Everyone’s alright?”
“We’re good!” En confirmed, completely unfazed by the sudden chaos, unlike the four other kids.
“Pareth will escort you five to your dorms or your next class, just tell him where to go, I have some business to take care of.”
A flock of skeletal crows appeared behind Sofia, splitting into five groups of ten, one for each attacker and two more to seek any more troublemaker nearby who might be inclined to join them. Sofia flew up to take a better look at the situation.
The student she had bolted was currently struggling to keep flying away, the crows would be on him soon. Looking at the damage done to the classroom and the nearby building, the magic had probably been some kind of shockwave. Just a distraction for the other two to hit. That probably wouldn’t have done much damage even if I didn’t cancel it. The debris could still have hit my students though. Did they not hear the Emperor when he explained what would happen if someone died because of the competition?
Sofia observed as one of her skeletal crows caught up with the fleeing student and threw itself into the gaping wound opened by the bolt. The student completely lost track of his flight.
That’s a bit much. Catch him before he crashes.
The other crows caught the falling student, their beaks and claws digging into his face and arms.
Did I teach you all to be so vicious? Anyway, bring him here.
Below, the high-priest and the other crows were already taking care of the other two. When the crows carrying the unfortunate attacker reached Sofia, she got to see his face. He was just a random Exidian she had never seen. He looked like a man in his thirties and seemed terrified as Sofia flew closer to him. The crow let go of him and Sofia caught him by the hem of his uniform instead.
“I’m sorry! Don’t kill me! I-”
Sofia gave him a smile and a friendly tap on the cheek, “I’m a teacher, I don’t kill students, not even ones older than myself. Don’t be ridiculous.”
Just as the tense expression of the man seemed to relax ever-so-slightly, she let him go, and he fell with a scream.
The high-priest caught him with his slow-fall spell at the last second, and dropped him onto the other two attackers who were being pinned down by a bunch of crows. Sofia let herself fall too. There were quite a few onlookers who had come flying to check the commotion out, but there were no other students in the corridors of the SP classrooms section. Either they all fled or our three nice guys cleared the place in advance before blowing it up. A quick check on Pareth’s position told her he was already quite far away with her class. She looked back down at the three people sprawled on the debris-covered floor. Just to be sure she also checked that her token pouch was still there and intact, which it was.
“Happy?”
[Mage - Lv. 249]
[Warrior - Lv. 148]
[Warrior - Lv. 172]
None of the three students dared to answer, perhaps due to the skeletal crows happily jumping all over them. Sofia sighed. “Heal them.”
The high-priest healed the trio with a single spell, closing the crow-induced wounds and the gaping hole in the mage’s entrails.
“What should I do with you three?”
“LET-” the lowest level of the three started, Sofia silenced him with a kick to the side.
“This teacher never gave you permission to speak in her class. Now let’s see. You’re all high-level enough. You should be able to survive some injuries. Oh, I know! I notice you three all have hands. Hands are nice, don’t you think? I particularly like finger bones, they make for great playing dice.”
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“What are-”
Another kick.
“So noisy.”
Sofia dropped a bunch of bones on them and used them to gag them, filling their mouths with it. “Better. Now for the fun part.”
She extended her mana senses up, and to be sure, there were still quite a few curious bystanders looking at the scene from above. With the sharp claws of her scale armor, she pierced the hand of the chatty warrior, then, with [Bone dominus] had all the bones of his hand pop out from the newly created wound. The gag barely contained his horrified screams. He activated a few spells during the process, but [Heat Death] negated them all, not even making a dent in Sofia’s mana reserves. He struggled, but pinned by the crows all a hundred levels above himself, he couldn’t move at all.
Now with a handful of hand bones, Sofia let go of his flaccid bloody right hand and grabbed his left one.
This continued until all three students were left with a total of zero functional hands. The skeleton high-priest then closed the bleeding wounds but didn’t heal the missing bones.
Sofia dumped all the bloody hand bones into her token pouch, and waved it above her head, showing it to all the onlookers with a big smile on her face.
Come and try to take them. I dare you.
Looking back at the three shivering students on the ground, Sofia almost puked at the sight and smell. More than blood had been spilled. She removed their gags, storing the bones, but none of them dared speak, only looking at her in terror, breathing laboriously.
“You better get your hands checked out fast. I don’t know what happened to them but they don’t look so good. Good luck, kids. I’m sure the academy has a healer on duty somewhere.”
Sofia dismissed the high-priest and flew up with her crows. The show was over, most of the watchers dispersed, and those who didn’t flew back when Sofia moved in their direction. The only one who kept flying close-by was someone she hadn’t expected to see, leisurely flapping his large black wings.
“Oh, hi, Eternam. Had your first class of the year yet?”
“I was on my way to it. Interesting display. I quite like the small ones,” he commented as he observed the small crows. You do look like a giant crow yourself so I suppose that makes sense?
“Thanks, I like them a lot too. They are a very smart bunch. I think I will have them out all the time from now on, to avoid a rerun of this morning’s events.”
“Perhaps I ought to do the same. Not that many students would pose a threat, but it might get more of them interested in necromancy.”
“That would be nice, wouldn’t it? Well, I shouldn’t keep you here too long, don’t you have your class to get to?”
“Yes. You should go too, Sofia, I sensed a presence at your door when I left; someone is waiting for your return.”
“Any idea who?”
“Not a professor.”
“That does eliminate some people. Well, I’ll go check, then, have fun with your class.”
Eternam nodded to Sofia and flew away, in a single wingbeat he traveled hundreds of meters toward another part of the academy, leaving Sofia with the last few onlookers who still had yet to leave. Not giving them a second look, she flew to the teachers’ tower.
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Sofia climbed the stairs to her floor of the tower, fully expecting the person waiting for her to be another student in ambush despite the announcement that this tower was now off-limits. Pareth happened to teleport back to her as she went, so he went ahead with Sofia looking through his eyes.
She sighed with relief when she saw the person sleeping against her door. Quickly jumping over the last steps, she gently shook the sleeping princess.
“Having a small nap, Saria?”
“Oh, hey,” Saria yawned as she struggled to wake up, “I couldn’t get inside and neither you, Asty or Zerei were there so…”
“Ah, sorry, I was out teaching my first class of the year,” Sofia explained. She reached out, grabbing Saria’s hand to help her stand up.
“Nice! How did it go? Are your students good? Any hot guys?”
“My students are nice, surprisingly polite. It all went very well up until the part when the class ended and three unrelated pricks attacked me out of nowhere.”
Sofia brought out her key and started to unlock the door.
“So that's why you have all the birds out? I hear every teacher is going through the same thing at the moment, but I don’t think any got their tokens stolen so far. I managed to get a few anyway,” Saria said, shaking a small leather pouch that clinked with the sound of multiple tokens shaking inside. “I have like fifteen already.”
“Duels?”
“Yep. I spent all day dueling other level 249 students, there’s quite a number of them, and I haven't lost to one yet.”
“Wasn’t there a need to have a teacher supervising the duels? Who did that during the mess that was going on yesterday?”
“That Saint Tartaros guy was at the same spot in the underground arena all day organizing duels since after the announcement. I’m willing to bet he’s still there now.”
“Oh, I hoped to use that place with my students later… Door’s open, come in. The others didn’t want to come pay me a visit?”
“They had classes this morning. Cinthia is taking a multicasting lesson and Alith said she was going for alchemy I think. Dunno about Joah, he’s in the male dorm… Hey, is that a statue of me?”
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