‘Oh shit, I’m dead.’

Wichita shouldn’t be thinking that. Thinking like that was how you died before the battle even began. But her Heart burnt with a sharp warmth in her chest, keeping her ready for combat. Even though Leirot hadn’t made a move yet. Like it thought her life was in danger or something.

Calling on her needles, she crouched. Why did one crouch in the middle of a fight? That sounded stupid. Wichita really regretted not taking combat classes this year, even if their content would overlap with the compulsory classes next year.

But she hadn’t known she would face this when the year started, and a certain professor had blocked her from changing any of her electives. There was no space left, apparently.

Pay attention to your surroundings, she reminded herself again as the world flashed purple for a second. There was another person in the room. A person in knight — no, squire armor. A person that really shouldn’t be here.

Was he why Leirot had not attacked immediately like she had expected him to? Wichita’s eyes narrowed at the squire, trying to get a feel for how powerful he really was. Of course, she couldn’t. But the armor alone made him a threat, perhaps even equal to Leirot.

Now to think of an excuse for why she was crouching.

“Are we sure that this place is safe?” she asked.

“I have scouted its entirety, your grace.” the knight bowed.

Wichita blinked. Leirot didn’t budge. The world flashed purple again, a sign that it was getting dangerously unstable.

“There is a crack.” she lied, finding her excuse. Even if one wasn’t around now, it would be soon enough. Dragon fire was not gentle, even it would not break the world on its own, it would put it through much hardship.

Veruna’s ring had extended into a naked blade, and Leirot had been gathering mana since she had entered. A fool could sense what was going on. And yet the squire had not moved to defend her.

Wichita was intelligent enough to see what was before her eyes. The squire was not here on orders of helping her. Perhaps he was here on orders to kill her, and was simply assessing the situation. No, she could not depend on him. But an idea did occur to her.

“The world clearly has a rather large flaw. Look at the boundaries weakening every few seconds” she said. Not strictly true. But magical theory was not Leirot’s strong suit. And she was not lying. The world looked like a clearing, its edges marked by trees.

A few times the size of her room, but not really big. There was no grass on its floor, and the trees were merely illusions born out of the spacial boundary. An illusion that was rapidly fading.

“Dragon fire is Fae magic, that kind of magic is far more skilled at altering reality.” she commented. Not false. No, she’d pulled that straight from the textbook, hoping someone would take the bait.

“Does her grace have any suggestions?” the squire asked. Smiling, she looked at Leirot. Why hadn’t he attacked yet? What was he waiting for? This would be a test to see how far he would go.

“Yes, we shouldn’t gather large amounts of mana, any mana at all if we can help it. As you know, it weakens spacial foundations.” she commented, looking at Leirot pointedly. Veruna smiled, and the squire looked at him.

Wichita gathered her needles. In mere seconds, he would attack. Letting gathered mana go would give her the advantage. An enchantment took less time to take action than a spell. Veruna walked up beside her, the girl’s presence comforting as they waited for the attack to come.

An attack that didn’t come. Leirot let the mana go, letting it back into the world.

So much mana. Wichita wanted to grab it and just swallow it whole. But that was not the point. Leirot would only let his advantage go if he had something else in store for them. The boy was not foolish enough to let his advantage go just because she wanted him to.

The world shook as she tried to think of what could be coming. The edges flashed purple, and this time, it did not fade quickly. Veruna looked at the boundary closely, and Wichita soon figured out what she was looking at.

The world was crumbling. There were cracks there, barely visible ones. Wichita was sure they hadn’t been there before. The world was crumbling far quicker than she had expected it to.

Why would the royal family send a princess — oh. The reason was obvious. So obvious she regretted not thinking of it the second she saw the world weaken.

The world collapsing would be epic or even legendary. So would escaping from one. A nice addition to a Story.

A boy escaping from a collapsing world, his blade stained with the blood of his half-sister, his mind weighed by what he had done. The kind of thing Fae magic loved. The kind of thing that gave one better classes. Leirot wasn’t just going for a Fable class, he wanted to go for something bigger. Wichita personally found it excessive, but…it fit. There were few things her people wouldn’t do for power, and this wasn’t one of them.

“As I said.” she continued, trying to hide what she had discovered. And likely failing since she really shouldn’t be continuing a conversation that had already died. “Do not gather any mana or prepare any spells. At most, you may practice your enchanting.”

Leirot did not look amused but he kept quiet. There was no anger on his face. Wichita still found it distressing. The boy was many things, mild-mannered was not really one of them. If he had been, then she might hate him less.

This was strange. Was there even more at work here that she was not seeing? The more time she spent with him, the more changes she found in his behavior. Just what had happened in the last day?

The mystery of it made her frown, making her wonder what new trap awaited her. Then again, there was little point in fear. The only thing she could do was prepare, and hope it was enough.

The needles she had were enchanted to work with [Quick Needling], not [Bloodthirsty Needling]. A few alterations were needed. Throwing a nervous smile at Veruna, she opened her mana senses, pulling out her needles. What should she add? The Skill was strange, and she would be lying if she said she understood it. Wichita frankly had little idea what to do.

The normal version of the Skill did not work on Arcana at all. This one would. After all she had gained it when a needle had pierced her. That implied things. A Skill was not some random collection of magic, it was a spell someone had cast at some time in the past. The System simply copied how the mana had been then and replicated it, like the thief it was.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

An earned skill though. That was even more restricted. The System would only accept things that one had cast themselves, and ones that did not require specific conditions to cast, usually. A normal earned Skill was just a convenience, a way to cast quicker. At least that was what she understood of them.

The Skill baffled her, but she had not become the best enchanter of her age in the Lower City out of luck. There were a few things she could still try. An enchantment that dispersed mana on contact, perhaps turn it back to pure mana that reinforced the enchantments? Yes, that would work. A classic really, one of those enchantments that were useful when dealing with most mana wielding beasts. Even if the Skill did not synergize with it, it would still be useful.

The world shook again, drawing her attention from her work as she tried to get a feel of what was going on. There were cracks visible to her eyes on the edge of the space, spreading throughout the border. This…was a death trap.

Not a surprise given her conclusions from a few seconds ago, but it still troubled her. If she had any choice, she would have left. That kind of thing needed magic however, and the System had long denied her species such a thing. In the name of balance.

“The world has been displaced slightly.” Veruna commented, looking at the space where the portal had been. Wichita looked at it. A crack to the void. If the space had been in the same place, it would lead back into their world. Wichita’s nervousness multiplied. If something went wrong with the anchor, she really wasn’t sure she could fix it. This wasn’t the sort of thing she had trained for.

“Perhaps we should check the anchor.” she said, discreetly adding the enchantment to her needles. A Master class one. Leirot did not yet know that she had broken through to that stage. Perhaps it would be of use. Or knowing Leirot, it wouldn’t make a difference.

The odd one still resisted her, but it accepted the enchantment in the end. Leirot stood up, followed by the squire who just looked confused at what was going on. Veruna walked up beside her.

Wichita wished she could trust the squire. But he was too much of an unknown. For all she knew, he was acting possum, thinking Leirot was a friend of hers. Then he would kill them all and walk out with a better class. The Heart of Ambition beat in them all after all.

Veruna clutched her hand, “There is something strange about this world.”

“I know.” she whispered back. “The rate of degradation is way too fast. I am pretty sure it’s a trap.”

Veruna gave her a sad smile. “The Crown Prince, I think. Or the Queen.”

“Well whoever it is, they planned well. Leirot will walk out of here with a class worthy of a Prince.”

“Or you will, Princess. That’s gonna be great for our plan you know? Just imagine how much you could do with your title. That’s like five steps skipped, at least.”

Wichita scoffed. “The steps were supposed to make us powerful, Veruna. I doubt anyone would care about a Tier 0 weakling, princess or not.”

Veruna gave a look that told her that she was holding a lecture in. “Well, Princess Wichita you won’t be walking out of here a weakling. Don’t think of what Leirot will kill you, think of what you’ll get after you win. Tier 1 is just a step away. Remember, there is power in your thoughts, especially with Fae magic involved. Don’t let it smell your fear.”

Wichita did not reply, keeping her disagreement to herself.

The anchor was in the middle of clearing. A circle of enchantment that connected this world to theirs. One of the simplest Tier 8 spells she had seen in her life, and one of the most powerful.

Anchoring a world was not easily done, and required power at scales she could only imagine. There was at least one Tier 8 powerhouse who had given up their mana pool to power this. Knowing her species, it probably wasn’t willingly.

That was why she was surprised it was not the only thing there.

There were other things here, an enchantment, technically. Or at least they supposed to be made to look like it was one. There were no runes, no glyphs that held the mana bounding, it simply floated in the air. Wichita had not seen it’s like before, but she had heard of it. The very peak of Arcanian enchanting, the kind of thing less than five people in the city, and likely the entire world could do. In fact, she only knew of two.

The Queen of Arcana, and the System itself. Perhaps the Dragon Queen, though the Tier 9’s abilities were a mystery to her. But even the excitement of seeing something she had only dreamed of faded before what was before her.

A controller.

The invention that had ended one of the longest reigning monarchs of Arcana. The world killer. An enchantment so powerful that it could interface with the world itself, and manipulate its borders. The kind of thing that really shouldn’t be usable by someone of her Tier. But the glyphless enchantment allowed it.

Wichita’s hands itched as she struggled to keep herself under control. Leirot’s eyes followed her, making her more nervous by the second.

The controller would let her control the spacial folds of the world. Resist Leirot’s magical attacks in ways she had only wished for. If the world were still stable, she could form a crack right under him and chuck him into the void.

Heck, she would do it anyway. The world would suffer, but it had long ago lost most of its value. The boundaries were already failing on their own. Perhaps that was why the controller was here in the first place.

Perhaps this was one of the places where the thing had been researched. This type of casting had existed since the days of the Second Queen. Wichita would not be able to differentiate between an older cast and a new one.

The only reason she was even able to identify what a controller at all was because of the way it interacted with the world. The way half the enchantment was not visible, having slipped into the spacial boundary.

Not a normal thing.

Wichita tried to act normal as she stood next to the controller, though she was sure the others had guesses of their own. Why Leirot had not blocked her simply out of caution was strange to her. The boy would have done that a day ago. Another thing that was odd.

The controller’s mana shuddered as she activated it, her mind slipping through the enchantments and making slight changes to the mana configuration that were necessary to safely transition to an active state. The kind only a Master enchanter could hope to do without prior knowledge. At least it did not need mana. Wichita would have been done for if it had.

A second after the other, the controller slipped into her grasp and she felt the world come alive. Wichita could feel the spacial folds, the edges of reality. Then she focused on Leirot, feeling the mana around him. The boy had chosen one of the most stable places in the world. Of course, he wouldn’t make it easy on her. Now which crack to pull over -

Wichita’s mind froze in a far too familiar situation. A terrorizing feeling crept up her body, making her unable to think or act.

[Dragon Fear] has been applied

What? How? [Dragon Fear] was not supposed to cross world boundaries! Not until someone broke them! Wichita felt like she wanted to scream in frustration as she found herself unable to move. Of course this happened. Fae magic, that ridiculous, overpowered thing. This was why she hated it.

Iridorian magic was nice, it made sense. The thing worked just like it should. Fae magic did none of that by definition. The Magic of Legends broke its own rules whenever it felt like it. Like right now. How had Leirot wielded it? How did he have it at all?

Wichita tensed as she tried to get ready for whatever was coming. Fae magic did not start acting up at random moments. The magic twisted the odds in its wielder’s favor. But it’s reality fudging was minor. The [Dragon Fear] would fade, just as whatever strange alignment of dragon, crack and magic that had caused the fear to slip in ended.

What mattered was what was coming. Fae magic was trying to force a situation, and it had put a lot of effort into it. Getting Fae magic to break its own rules was not an easy thing.

There was something coming.

As if to punctuate her thoughts, which it probably was, it struck. Wichita did not really feel what happened thanks to her lacking mana sense. But she felt its effects well enough. The anchor’s magic just…winked out.

Wichita’s eyes widened in realization as she felt the [Dragon Fear] slip. The enemy had just negated magic across Arcana. The anchor was gone, and this small world had just lost one of the thing’s keeping it from crumbling. In a few seconds, the world would wander into the void, and she doubted it would chance upon another world before it crumbled.

In other words, she needed to act now. Or they would die.