Chapter 111

After rushing back to school, I wasn’t surprised to find the courtyard as a confusing mess, the guards and students running around to establish a secondary defensive line to prevent anyone else from escaping, but the lack of surprise didn’t equal a lack of disappointment.

“It’s supposed to be the strongest bastion of humanity,” I murmured in disappointment as I watched the ineptness of the defensive force as they tried to establish a defensive force. Even the existence of the spies on the higher ranks wasn’t enough to excuse this incompetence.

A sigh escaped my mouth, considering the relative merits of actually asking the headmistress to take control of the defenses. Making myself a target —even more than I already was— ranked quite low on the list of my priorities, but it was still ranked above losing my only effective power base.

Not to mention, the headmistress was important for more than one reason. Not only she was currently my only clue about the Divine Spark, she most likely knew much more about what a Divine Spark in the first place. I highly doubted that her true identity as a mystical angel and her possession of a Divine Spark was a coincidence.

And it would be a lie to say that I wasn’t imagining bending her over against the window of the highest tower, pulling back her wings, and impale her repeatedly as I interrogated her...

I cut through the crowd, directly to her tower, cutting through the wards she had established around her tower. It was a nice change to casually cut through them rather than fiddling with them for several minutes while trying to stay concealed. I wanted her to know I was coming.

I found the headmistress in her office, sitting behind her desk, once again concealed with her dark robe, her wings gathered behind her to create an impression of a hunched crone. However, knowing what lay underneath —and the fact she wore nothing under that robe— I felt excited. The room looked pristine at first glance, but both her desk and her shelf were considerably poorer thanks to my restless fingers.

“What are you doing here?” she asked in a crooked voice, perfected to make her look like she was a woman that was battling the ailments of aging unsuccessfully, but now that I knew what to look for, it was easy to identify the artificial nature of her sound. The fact that she wasn’t focusing on her acting made that even easier.

She wasn’t paying attention to her act, because her attention was on her magic. As she spoke, a wave of magic slammed against me, dark enough to suffocate me. She trembled as the threatening waves slammed against me, giving the impression that she was barely holding herself back.

Amazing performance, I noted in my mind. If I hadn’t known the magic she was using wasn’t the opposite to her true nature, making her even less threatening than her usual state, I might have actually felt scared. But considering her light-based magic, she was actually making herself weaker as she tried to intimidate me. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have to cleanse herself from darkness through that ritual.

Of course, I could have acted like a craven visitor, like I was scared of her display of power, but I decided against it. I had enough leverage to push her buttons without courting death, unless she wanted to reveal her true nature to everyone on the edge of a crisis. “Hello to you as well,” I droned calmly.

Her shadow magic staggered for a moment as she moved. It wasn’t hard to imagine her cute face frowning under the shadows of her cloak as she tried to understand the implications of my casual response. “Speak,” she ordered a second later, once again leaning on her mysterious headmistress persona.

“If you want to be a bitch about it,” I whispered to myself, with the full knowledge that she would hear. But before she could even process that calculated disrespect, I pulled the remaining two fake mana gems and passed one to her. “Look what I had found,” I said to her as I passed them.

She cast darkness magic to cover the gem completely before pulling it telekinetically. “Careful,” I warned her, not because I expected it to hurt her to a significant degree, but I didn’t want to be blamed for an inept assassination attempt.

She established a shield around the gem to protect herself before filling the said sphere with darkness. I acted nonchalantly as I examined the flood of magic, only to notice the distinct flare of light magic under the concealment of the darkness. She clearly didn’t trust her darkness magic enough to cast detection through it.

Then, a few seconds later, the gem exploded —rather harmlessly thanks to her shield. I was happy to see the gem explode, because it implied that her magical detection capabilities weren’t too much above mine, at least not when she was multitasking by duel-wielding magic of opposite natures.

Her posture stiffened as the explosion faded. “What’s this?” she asked.

“It’s the second wave of the monster hordes I managed to intercept. I managed to intercept two of them in twenty minutes. I’m willing to bet that they are sending them to every single location. You better warn the teams there that the gams they extract from the monsters might be trapped.”

“All of them?” she asked, for once the crackling artificial nature of her voice disappearing as she pronounced the first word, instead of starting with a smooth, melodic tone, more beautiful than every single piece of music I had the pleasure to listen. “Explain.”

“Your Highness,” I said, adding just enough mocking edge to leave no doubt that I was mocking her. I wanted to remind her that I was not a subordinate of hers. “Whoever was behind the attacks, they seem to be determined to weaken your loyal forces further using the opportunity.”

“Don’t you think that it’s the necromancers?” she said, her tone cracking once more, but despite that, she had made a big mistake as she tried to process the surprise. It was the first time she was asking my opinion rather than giving an order, which made an obvious attempt to distract me from the truth. Unfortunately for her, that deviation strongly suggested that she was aware of the mysterious organization’s presence, and that awareness stretched back quite a while. Otherwise, she would have revealed their presence.

Precision: 35 Perception: 37

Agility: 35 Manipulation: 40

Speed: 34 Intelligence: 44

Endurance: 34 Wisdom: 46

HP: 5370 / 5370 Mana: 6600 / 6600 ]

SKILLS

Master Melee [100/100]

Master Tantric [100/100]

Master Biomancy [100/100]

Master Elemental [100/100]

Master Arcana [100/100]

Master Subterfuge [97/100]

Expert Speech [70/75]

Advanced Craft [50/50]

PERKS

Mana Regeneration

Skill Share

Empowerment (1/1)

Teleportation

COMPANIONS

[Cornelia - Level 21/25]

[Helga - Level 17/21]