Chapter 23

  Benedikt Kuhn sat in his quiet office, the sounds of the schoolyard chatter had faded to a distant drone as the school day came to an end. Other faculty members were managing his classes for the period of the chamite class’s first test, as he kept himself updated on their progress.

  Multiple display screens were projected from a singular crystal that sat on a dais at the head of the desk. Each screen was a live recording being fed to him from the magical devices he had dispatched to the forest to keep tabs on the different teams.

  The battle between Guy and Fleur was interesting, and Benedikt had made special note of Guy’s rapid improvement with the spear. The fact that he was able to adapt to the unique magic of the weapon he took from the kobolds was particularly noteworthy; truly, his learning speed was fearsome. His eventual loss to Fleur was mainly due to it being a poor matchup and his inexperience in real combat.

  Fleur’s performance was to be expected, although it was odd that her spirits had suddenly come back when they were unable to manifest for long just a day earlier. It was surely because of something Rex did when he disappeared down that hole, but the surveillance tool Benedikt had sent to follow at the time was immediately caught in a web and smashed to pieces. Whatever happened down there was unknown.

  But of course, the most noteworthy event so far had to be the fight between Axel and Rex. Axel was someone who broke all the regular laws of strategy and combat, a man who could throw caution to the wind and break through any obstacle alone.

  It was apparent this behaviour would one day come back to bite him, and it was for this reason that Benedikt had been trying to educate Axel in private. However, for it to happen so soon? That was not in his calculations.

  Rex’s strategy was… shocking. A man who claims to be a Druid burning a forest to win a fight and setting himself aflame at the same time? It was barbaric, brutal, and utterly devoid of honour.

  “Wonderful.”

  It was all he could say after seeing this display. Rex Jaeger, the only student that Benedikt’s eyes could not properly assess, clearly held no regard for the trappings of the knight’s code, nor did morality bind him. Yet he was not a mere psychotic savage; he showed a calculating personality that simply did what was required to succeed.

  He was similar to Albrecht Drachenskrone and Benedikt himself in that regard. They were men who lamented the prevalence of pomp and propriety in the nobility and yearned for the return of pragmatic realists in the military.

  With the Emperor’s name in his mind, Benedikt took note of which device recorded this fight and decided to send it back to the capital for his old friend to review the content himself.

  ***

  My leg was broken, my lungs could not properly take in oxygen, and my muscles ached all over. I was lying on the burnt ground, wheezing softly as Tiara licked my face. Guy and Fleur had evidently finished their own fight and were assessing the area in silence.

  A third person joined them soon enough, just as I had expected.

  “Rex Jaeger, are you fit to continue, or would you like to drop out here?”

  It wasn’t the same therian from before; this was likely Team 2’s observer. A lithe woman dressed in all black, her face covered with a plain silver mask that reflected my own face back at me as she bent over my body.

  “...Yeah. I’ll be fine after a nap.”

  It wasn’t a lie, but I was still surprised that she seemed to accept this response.

  “Very well, then it seems there has only been one elimination. Axel Lionheart, elimi-”

  “Think again, woman.”

  I could only laugh weakly at that familiar voice.

  Axel was up on his feet once more. He had only been knocked out for a couple of minutes at most, and despite the burns on his body, he was in much better shape than I was.

  “Ah. You wish to continue?”

  The masked woman cocked her head and directed it at Axel.

  “Of course! Do I look dead to you? No? Then I’m not done here.”

  He strode over to me and grinned.

  “Yeah! I knew it! Come on, Axel, let’s eliminate them and win this thing! Just the two of us!”

  Guy celebrated wholeheartedly, but Axel only looked at him like he was an idiot. Which seemed to be the default way most people looked at the vampire.

  “What? Are you stupid? Team 2 is out, we’re part of Team 3 now.”

  He grinned and pulled me up from the ground, slinging me over his shoulder with practised ease. Of course, it practised; this was how all our fights ended. Soon, there would be a Rex-shaped indentation on Axel’s back.

  “Why!? We can win this! A-at least make them join us!”

  Guy continued to protest, but Axel had no interest in listening.

  “If this were a real fight, Rex could have cut my head off the moment I passed out. We lost, pure and simple. But, I still want to punch that bratty princess; therefore, we will continue in the task, but surrender to the goblins.”

  The goblins surrounding them seemed satisfied with the outcome. Most of them had seen Axel fight and were too terrified of him to attack anyway. Having him as an ally could only be a good thing.

  “Sounds good to me.”

  I weakly groaned.

  “Hmm… If both sides agree to it, this is acceptable.”

  The masked woman nodded and walked silently back into the woods. Just like the previous observer, she was totally undetectable.

  “N-no, wait…”

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  Guy weakly called out to her, still not willing to give up.

  “Why do you care? Just be pleased you aren’t being eliminated.”

  Fleur looked at him with a raised brow.

  “Sob…You don’t understand… I was the boss…Me!”

  Fleur looked at Axel as if to say, ‘He’s lying, right?’

  Axel laughed in response.

  “He was the boss of the stunted reptiles, sure. The little geckos only listen to whoever can use that spear of his.”

  Axel walked up to Guy and leaned in close.

  “That means it’s your job to make them surrender to the goblins. And don’t try anything stupid, 'cause I’ll crush you all myself if I have to.”

  Guy swallowed his tears and nodded reluctantly.

  ***

  We decided to go to the kobolds’ base first, seeing as it was closer to our current position. Ideally, I would have wanted Gotrut to be here so his leadership could be established in front of both tribes.

  Luckily, things went better than expected. Just like Axel had said, the kobolds blindly followed whatever Guy said. I had fed him a script on the way here to smooth things over, and he recited it like an obedient puppy. Axel breathing down his neck probably helped motivate him a little.

  “So you see, I, the great descendant of the Red Dragon Versikules the Grand, have decided to combine our might with the honourable Blood Thunderers. We shall ally ourselves with former foes to achieve great… greatness.”

  Guy had added some ‘flair’ to his speech, but his improv skills left much to be desired. For the record, ‘Versikules’ was the name of a talking lizard in a children’s book that was popular in Soleo.

  “It is only with our forces combined that we can crush the impious imps and secure supremacy for our homeland!”

  Guy finished up, and the kobolds, though confused, still cheered and hung off his every word. An older kobold was translating everything, though, so maybe they were making it less dramatic.

  “Huh, I thought we’d have to kill a few to get them to cooperate.”

  Axel mused to himself.

  “Small tribes like this come and go all the time. They live a constant cycle of killing each other, being absorbed into different tribes, breaking into even more tribes, killing former friends, and repeating it all over again.”

  I explained from the log Axel laid me out on.

  “This kind of thing isn’t really a big deal to them. The goblins will likely let them in without issue as well, so long as they recognise Gotrut as the boss.”

  “Soleo could learn a thing or two from them.”

  Axel chuckled.

  “Simplicity can be a virtue.”

  I echoed his laughter.

  The goblins who accompanied us were strutting around the kobold camp and greedily sifting through their belongings while ordering the kobolds around. Their orders made no sense; they just wanted to flaunt their power.

  “Uhh, so what’s the plan now?”

  Guy hurried over to us now that the kobolds were busy marching around and moving things pointlessly from one side of the camp to the other.

  “Are we moving them to the goblin camp?”

  “Nah, we’ll wait here, and I’ll send some goblins back to bring Gotrut and his boys over. This place is way more defensible than ours.”

  No sooner had the words left my mouth than our course of action was decided for us.

  Boooooom!

  Everybody hit the ground in reaction to the massive explosion that shook the earth. An immense ball of black and purple fire had plummeted from the sky and left a sizable crater right outside the kobold camp.

  Axel pushed me to take cover behind the log I was lying on and leapt behind a tree, trying to spot the attackers. But no matter how long we waited, no follow-up attack occurred.

  We relaxed somewhat, and Axel dragged me over to the burning crater.

  “Do you know what that is?”

  I asked him. It did not resemble any spell I had seen, but in my current state, I could not even determine whether it consisted of mana or something else.

  “Mmm… yeah.”

  Axel grunted, a look of annoyance on his face.

  “It’s made of unholy magic. A hell of a lot of it, too.”

  Fleur joined us. Her fire spirit, Shar, had been summoned as well.

  “Shar says the fire wasn’t made by a single person. It looks like a mix of multiple sources of magic combined into one.”

  “What? Combining magic with others isn’t something easily done. Are you sure?”

  Axel expressed doubt, but Fleur simply shrugged.

  “I don’t know, but that’s what Shar says, and I trust him.”

  “...It’s not impossible for them.”

  I recall the results of our reconnaissance on the other teams before we left the IMA.

  “Meztili and Lily, they could pull something like this off theoretically.”

  “Those two? How?”

  Guy popped up from behind a rock, his hands still shielding his head.

  “Soot has seen Meztili using complex spell circles, and Lily can weave magic inside of shadows, right?”

  The others nodded, still not understanding where I was going.

  “Well, Lily uses her Gift to accomplish that, not her magic. So what if, using a spell circle to enhance the potency of a spell, Lily and Meztili repeatedly stored spells inside of a single shadow?”

  “Ah, that’s pretty cool.”

  Axel understood now and seemed impressed.

  “It’s like a workaround. There’s no need to combine mana; they can just release a dozen spells all at once and achieve the same result.”

  Axel hopped into the crater and kicked at the black flames.

  “Yep, the black parts are definitely from shadow magic. I reckon Rex has the right idea.”

  “So what we’re looking at is like… a bunch of tiny fireballs instead of just one?”

  Guy nodded along.

  “And how does knowing that help us exactly?”

  Admittedly, I didn’t have an answer to this. I was just posing a theory to explain how the attack might have been carried out.

  “It should be obvious, no?”

  Fleur answered for me.

  “If they have to use such a roundabout method, it would take time to prepare another one. This means they are likely not nearby. Otherwise, they would be left wide open.”

  The logic was sound, although it was based entirely on conjecture. Preferably, I would want some solid proof before acting on this information, and unfortunately, the birds I asked to check their base only told me their numbers and the fort layout. There was no mention of magical bombardments, but then again, birds wouldn’t know anything about that.

  “If it’s a long-range attack, wouldn’t that mean they already know our location?”

  Guy had his eyes to the sky, squinting against the sun and looking for incoming fireballs.

  “Considering imps can fly and you guys put wooden barricades around the entrance to a cave, it wouldn’t be hard for them to spot you without your noticing.”

  I answered his question. Even if I hadn’t found this place before the test, I would have done so fairly quickly because of this very fact.

  “Change of plans, evacuate everyone, we’re going to the Blood Thunderer camp. Fleur, make sure we don’t have any eyes following us.”

  I handed out my orders, and with Axel backing me, there was no need to argue with Guy, who quickly got the kobolds moving.

  We began our hurried march back to base.