Duelcrest Academy

I closed my eyes as I began to move through the solid stone wall.

This kind of spell required the utmost concentration.

I had to make sure that there was a constant flow of mana through every inch of my body. If I made a single mistake and any part of me became solid again...

I didn't even want to think about what would happen...

Fortunately, after only a few seconds, I felt my nose coming out of the wall, in a new room.

I jumped forward, trying to get my whole body through as quickly as possible, as I could already feel myself losing control of the spell.

But just as I thought I had succeeded, something pulled me back, causing me to fall forward.

"Fuck!"

I cushioned the fall with my hands.

So much for catching the killer off guard. With the noise I had just made, they had surely already noticed me.

I finally opened my eyes.

But of course that wasn't possible. Even if I had stepped out into the courtyard, it was still night.

No, the light that had just blinded me didn't come from the sun, but from two glass balls resting on a table. A bright, shapeless mass swirled inside.

"Mana."

And the one who had stolen this mana from their victims was there, just a few steps away from me.

But the blinding light prevented me from distinguishing their features.

The figure raised an arm in my direction. Three shadows rose into the air and zoomed towards me. Even with my impaired vision, I knew immediately what they were.

I tried to get up quickly, but I felt something still hold me to the wall.

I used one arm to lift myself a little off the ground and aimed the other, armed with my wand, at my attackers.

At my command, a river of flame roared in front of me, forming a barrier that instantly incinerated the three bugs.

I immediately looked behind me to see what was preventing me from moving.

In another situation, I would have burst out laughing.

The back of my skirt was still stuck in the wall. My spell must've stopped working before it went all the way through.

I pulled at it with all my strength until it tore off.

"So much for a heroic entrance..."

Well, all things considered, it could've been worse. That could have been my leg.

"Anyway, at the moment I have bigger problems than a torn skirt."

Finally, my eyes adjusted to the unnatural brightness of the room.

Beyond the thick veil of smoke caused by my spell, I could finally make out my opponent.

They were shorter than me and seemed to have very long hair. From the shape of her body and her uniform, I quickly realised that she was a girl.

As the cloud of smoke dissipated, my mouth fell open in an expression somewhere between astonishment and horror.

It didn't make sense.

After all, her tear-streaked face and desperate screams as she mourned the loss of her friend were etched in my mind.

A friend who, I now knew, she had killed herself.

"Have I got the wrong person?"

No. Although I didn't know her personally, her distinctive brown curls were unmistakable. I clearly remembered Amy stroking them as she tried to comfort her, unaware that she was holding a murderer in her arms.

That girl was Chloe, the best friend of Mary Stillwater, the first victim.

«You... but... why?»

The girl just looked at me coldly.

"She doesn't seem to be inclined to talk..."

I had no other choice. The fact that I had just seen her summon those insects in front of me left no room for misunderstanding.

She was the culprit Sophia and I were looking for.

I pointed the wand at her and shouted:

«Fireball!»

As usual, I put a large amount of mana into the spell.

I aimed at the ground beneath her, as I didn't want to hit her head-on, but rather knock her out.

If possible, I wanted to catch her alive.

Predictably, Chloe was thrown backwards and crashed into the wall.

But immediately four insects flew towards me.

"She must have summoned them just before I attacked."

The creatures split up and attacked me from both sides.

«You still haven't realized it's pointless?» I shouted, unsure if my interlocutor was still conscious.

Effortlessly, I summoned another whirl of flames. The insects fell to the ground incinerated.

As before, I had to wait for the thick cloud of black smoke to dissipate before I could assess my opponent's condition.

"Huh?"

Chloe stood up, seemingly unharmed.

"How is that possible?"

She had been thrown against the wall at high speed, it was impossible for her not to have been hurt.

Had she used those bugs as a distraction to heal herself?

I raised the wand again:

«Fireball!»

This time the girl was ready:

«Mana shield!»

My fireball fizzled out in mid-air before reaching its target.

"Mana shield?!"

It was rare to see this kind of defensive spell used.

From my first days at magic school, I was taught that to defend against an elemental spell, you should use a spell of the opposite element.

For example, the most common response to a fireball was to cast a water shield.

The reason for this was simple: it was very efficient. It used less mana than the attacker's spell.

The spell Chloe had just used, Mana Shield, was the opposite. It completely nullified a spell by suffocating it with the caster's mana, but since it didn't have an elemental advantage, it was terribly inefficient.

The only good thing about it was that it did not require careful tuning.

An elemental shield had to be cast with the exact power needed to counter the opponent's attack. Meanwhile, a mana shield would simply cancel the spell by draining the caster's magic power directly.

It was a sort of brute force approach.

Could this girl really afford to be so liberal with her mana?

Sure, it might have worked against someone else, but against me?

I knew for sure, thanks to the first day's evaluation, that she couldn't have more mana than me.

Were her tactics related to her power? I had to find out.

I continued my attack, casting spell after spell. One by one they were neutralised.

But I continued to attack relentlessly.

I could see my opponent beginning to gasp for breath, growing more and more tired.

After a few minutes I decided to stop.

"If I keep pushing her like this, it could end badly."

Sure, it would have been ironic if she ran out of mana and got a fireball in the face, but I really didn't want to kill her.

«Do you really want to continue? By now you must have realized you can't win like this.»

I knew it might be risky, but I wanted answers. I was unlikely to get them after handing her over to the headmaster.

I used the short break to look around.

The room we were in was bare. Apart from the table on which the two mana vessels and other empty glass spheres rested, there was a bookshelf on the right wall, full of ancient looking books.

There were no doors or windows.

Obviously, it wasn't possible that the only way into this room was the one I'd used. There had to be a secret entrance.

Had Chloe discovered it by accident?

But a more sinister question haunted me.

Why did this room even exist?

Once I was out of here, I would have to investigate it. Perhaps it wasn't the only secret hidden within the walls of the Academy.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my opponent make a sudden movement.

"You'd like that..."

During the brief respite I had granted her, I had never let my guard down.

I gave her my full attention again.

Although she still looked exhausted, she seemed to have regained at least some of her energy. She had one arm outstretched in front of her.

"What the...?"

Something was moving under her skin, as if it were trapped and trying to escape. The mass grew rapidly and its movements became more and more erratic until something surfaced.

"Ew..."

With a mixture of amazement and disgust, I watched as a huge insect emerged from Chloe's arm and took flight.

Finally, I had a chance to see her power in action. Of course, I would have preferred to remain in ignorance.

The way she created those strange familiars was as anomalous as Sophia and I had imagined. Instead of summoning them with a simple spell, she seemed to bring them to life inside her body.

However, Chloe's arm was intact, there was no wound where the bug had come out.

I remembered that even when Amy had been attacked, I had found no marks on her body.

This confirmed my theory that those beings were made entirely of mana and could simply pass through things.

I aimed my wand to kill the creature before it had a chance to attack me. But just as my fire dart was about to incinerate it, Chloe cast a spell as well.

«Mana shield!»

This time, however, her wand was aimed not in front of her, but at the insect. Before it reached its target, my attack collided with the mana barrier and vanished into thin air. Chloe's familiar darted towards me, still enveloped by her shield spell.

"Fuck!"

I couldn't let that creature sting me. If Sophia was right, it would paralyse me.

I had to stop it.

I prepared to cast a much more powerful spell than the ones I had used so far.

"I'll completely demolish that barrier."

But I hesitated.

That shield was sustained by my opponent's mana. If she had tried to absorb all my firepower without deactivating the spell, she would have ended up like her victims.

Was I ready to kill her?

"No..."

I shifted my aim to the side, towards the bookshelf.

Throwing books left and right, I sent it flying at high speed towards the opposite wall, overwhelming the insect and crushing it against the wall.

"Mmph."

I couldn't help but smile, pleased that I'd thought of the idea so quickly.

Chloe's barrier was excellent for neutralising spells, but completely useless against physical attacks.

It had been a risky thought. Knowing that the insects could make themselves intangible, I had feared that the bookcase would simply pass through it.

But since my previous spells had been effective, there had to be a catch to their power.

I turned my attention back to my opponent, and from the expression on her face, she looked very frustrated.

Before she tried to attack me again, I decided to try again to get her to talk:

«I advise you to stop. You should be the first to know what happens if you exhaust your magical power. If you surrender, it will be easier for both of us...»

«Surrender?»

For the first time, Chloe responded to me. Her tone was cold.

«Do you really think that after everything I've done to survive, I'm just going to give up? I know very well that even if you don't kill me, the headmaster will want my head.»

«You should have thought about that before killing two people...»

Chloe threw me a dirty look:

«Do you have the nerve to blame me? It's the damn school that put us in this situation. I had no choice but to do what I did...»

"Mmmh."

Based on her crimes, I had expected to face another crazy murderer like Valentine. Were things different this time?

But even if the school was ultimately to blame, she had done something I could never forgive her for.

«Suppose that in this situation killing is justified, you still deceived a poor girl, pretended to be her friend, and then stabbed her in the back!»

«I DIDN'T PRETEND TO BE ANYTHING!»

My accusation seemed to make her lose control.

It took her a moment to compose herself again, then, staring at the ground at her feet, she continued:

«I didn't pretend... Mary really was my friend... We've known each other since we were kids, I... I cared about her.»

«But then... how could you?» I asked.

«If not me, then who?! Did you want to be the one to kill her?» Chloe looked up, her eyes on fire, «or maybe you wanted someone to defile her body like what happened to Stuart?! EH?!»

I was starting to understand what was going on in that girl's head, and I didn't like it at all.

"Did this situation drive her crazy?"

«Instead, with my power. It's like falling asleep.... That night she was waiting for me in the hallway outside her room, as I had told her. I hit her from behind... she didn't even realize what was happening.»

So that's why Mary Stillwater was out of bed in the middle of the night. She was there because someone she deeply trusted had asked her to be. Someone who would take that trust and stomp on it.

«It's better this way. She didn't suffer. I would have had to kill her in the end anyway... So she helped me, yes helped me start...»

Chloe's words trailed off into an incomprehensible ramble.

Even if a part of me felt pity for her, I could never accept what she said.

«You're wrong!»

«Uh?» Chloe looked at me bewildered.

«If you were really her friend, you would have done everything to protect her! You would have tried to survive with her for as long as possible! And in the end, maybe you would have even sacrificed yourself for her!»

I could see Amy's smiling face in front of me while I was saying those words.

Chloe's expression quickly changed from astonishment to anger, to hatred.

«You're the last one that should preach that to me! Didn't you use your friend or am I wrong? You sent her to snoop around and look how that turned out!»

"Uh?"

«So that's why you attacked her?»

When I asked Amy to look into Mary Stillwater, she may have asked questions that put Chloe on alert.

«Exactly, all because of you!» the latter replied maliciously.

She was trying to make me feel guilty. But she wasn't going to succeed.

«If I asked Amy for help, it's because I trust her. Precisely because we're friends, we support each other, it's something you could never understand!» I replied, «And now, thanks to her, you're trapped. If you hadn't tried to get rid of her, I would never have found out what your power was.!»

«Tsk...»

She probably regretted trying to silence Amy. If she hadn't made that miscalculation, I would still be in the dark.

I decided to put pressure on her.

«Well, you messed up. What were you afraid Amy would find out? Your relationship with Boyle, your next victim?»

I had thought about it after I found out the circumstances of Mary's death.

Why was Frank Boyle in his room in the middle of class?

Was he also waiting for someone he trusted?

My intuition was confirmed by Chloe's words:

«That creep thought he could take advantage of me.... After Mary's death, he started talking to me often under the pretext of consoling me,» she said contemptuously, «who knows what he expected when I told him I wanted to talk to him in his room that morning...»

I could not know what Boyle's true intentions were, but no one deserved to die the way he did...

«What about the dude you tried to kill tonight?»

«Who, Von Bitten? It was easy with him, you know how he was always looking for a suitable companion for his social status?» Chloe replied with a smirk, «All I had to do was propose a date night and he immediately took the bait.»

I had heard enough.

Initially, from her words, I had thought that girl was also a victim, forced to kill because of the circumstances we were in.

But now I was sure of it. The school had only brought out Chloe's true nature: that of a ruthless killer.

Now I could proceed without hesitation.

However, my opponent seemed to sense that the time for words was over.

Four insects took flight from behind her back. She must have created them stealthily while we were talking.

But now that I knew how to bypass her magical defenses, her familiars were no longer a threat.

I quickly aimed my wand to my left, towards the remains of the wardrobe . Four wooden splinters intercepted the flying insects, piercing them lethally.

Since she used her own mana to give life to those beings, soon she would no longer be able to summon them.

I looked at her. She seemed to be barely standing.

But...

"What the fuck?!"

Two strange bumps were forming on her left arm. They were much longer than those caused by the birth of her familiars. They stretched and stretched, forming what looked like two fleshy tubes. They touched the ground and, as if endowed with a life of their own, began to crawl towards the table, a short distance away.

I had not yet seen all that her power could do after all...

I didn't know what she hoped to achieve, but I didn't intend to find out.

As before, I took control of two wooden splinters and sent them towards those strange fleshy tubes, intending to sever them.

But before they could reach their destination, Chloe lunged into their path.

Blood splattered on the floor. The two splinters had pierced the girl's chest, penetrating deeply.

"Is she fucking crazy?!"

With a groan of pain, Chloe pulled the two projectiles from her body. This only amplified the loss of blood from her wounds.

I had to refrain from rushing forward to help her. I knew I couldn't let my guard down, but if I didn't get her quickly to the infirmary, she would bleed to death.

But when Chloe looked up, she was smiling.

«I hoped I wouldn't have to spend everything I had gathered so far, but it seems I have no other choice.»

I looked behind her. The two appendages had reached their destination. Their tips seemed to have connected to the two glass spheres resting on the table.

The glow swirling within them suddenly seemed to intensify. And then...

The tubes began to move and shake uncontrollably as light began to be drained into them and flow toward their creator.

With horror, I saw the color return to Chloe's cheeks. Her breathing became more controlled. Her wounds closed.

Now I knew that our battle was not over but, on the contrary, it had just begun.