The trail opened to a wider clearing. A deep gully lay cloven into the forest floor, sloping steeply northward, as if eroded by a fierce river. But not a drop of water was left to run in the rugged canal. Soft moss and sporadic batches of flowers covered the floor of it, coarse boulders framing the high banks, through which the hydraean, knobbly roots of the trees pierced to grope down.

  In the wider center of the long ravine stood a lone, flat-top island and out of that earthen pillar grew a great tree.

  Even in a forest, that tree stood out like no other. An enormous, centuried maple with an immense, dense canopy of bright vermilion, star-shaped leaves. The foliage spread at least forty yards across, reached high to assert aerial supremacy. But it wasn’t dark under the savagely painted umbrella. The leaves gave off a faint glow, tiny, twinkling flakes of light phasing in and out of being about them.

  That tree had presence.

  A sluggish, sleepy giant, unquestionably alive and conscious in a way human terms couldn’t capture, concealing untold power under its rough skin. And dormant threat. Not nearly all of the tree was even visible, the strong roots digging who could say how deep below the ancient woodland. Standing in the Maple’s presence, anyone would've been reluctant to utter a careless word, so as to not unwittingly stir the titan to life and rage.

  There was the Elder Tree, the host of this Domain. The destination of our somber hike.

  A barrier of thick robes went around the base of the tree. A couple of apprentice fencers held watch in the clearing at the base of the Maple’s island, and one of them was Tom Harding. He waved cheerfully at me when we emerged from the trail.

  “Hope! You guys made it. Congratulations.”

  “Good day, senior,” I returned the greeting as we went over.

  “Just Tom’s fine. And here’s Kate.” He gestured at his pair.

  “Katherine Douglas, class B,” the female apprentice replied with an easygoing smile and bowed her head. “Kate is fine too.”

  I looked around, but it didn’t seem there was anybody else in the vicinity.

  “Has there been any trouble today?”

  “Not at all,” Harding answered. “The old forest’s looking downright merry. The weather’s not half bad either. Well, not that it ever changes around here. If it did, we’d be in huge trouble! Whatever the time of day outside, it’s always exactly 10 a.m. mood here in Greenfall Dale. Perfect for a picnic, wouldn’t you say?”

  “I’d say you’re right.”

  My stomach reminded me of its bottomless emptiness.

  Silla followed our casual exchange from the side, brow furrowed.

  “You know each other?”

  “Sure we do,” Harding replied with a grin. “Since we’re both in the Cabinet!”

  “Cabinet? The prefect office?”

  “Yeah. Hope recently joined us. That match with Rossy was fire! Damn. A mage besting a fencer in a sword duel, haha! It was like a scene out of an adventure novel. The Exciting Journey of Baron Linkerell—That one’s my favorite! Though it may not be the top choice for girls. It gets a little violent at times.”

  Silla stared at the man like he was speaking a foreign language, blinking and looking dizzy.

  I saw it best to change the subject and introduced my pair to the seniors.

  Their reactions were unexpectedly dramatic.

  “The Alice Silla?” Harding gasped and the easygoing smile left his face. He straightened his figure and stiffly nodded. “It’s an honor, your grace.”

  On the side, Douglas bowed deep without a sound.

  “As you were,” Silla told them with a halfhearted handwave.

  I raised a brow at my classmate.

  “Were you actually a princess?”

  “I’m not,” she grunted with a grimace. “My father is simply a Marquis. Well, he is also the current Speaker of the House of Lords.”

  The highest authority in the parliament? Suppose, if she told daddy she didn’t like somebody, she could make their life very difficult. Did Trudeau consider that angle at all when planning her prank?

  To speak of the devil, we still saw no sign of Trudeau, or the fellow bullies. I didn’t think we passed them at any point. Had seeing the patrol at the tree made them change their plans? The mana sign on the bracelet seemed to be nearby, but I’d used too little energy, and the overbearing aura of the Maple made it hard to locate with precision.

  “Has Audrey Trudeau been here yet?” Silla asked the fencers, apparently thinking what I was thinking.

  “Who was she again?” Harding asked, and made an effort to recall our classmates’ faces. “One pair left back right before you showed up. Was she not one of them?”

  “No.” Visibly reluctant, Silla described our classmate. “Needlessly tall. Gracelessly thin. Hair bleached, cut short. Brainless laugh.”

  “Ah, that one.” Katherine had the answer only based on those vague clues. “She hasn’t been here yet. Wasn’t she in the line way before you two? Did something happen on the way?”

  “I need to talk to her. Do you mind if we wait here with you…”

  ——!

  At that moment, a high-pitched scream from uphill interrupted us. Accustomed to hearing screaming, I recognized it belonged to a young woman in imminent peril. The spirited cry was soon joined by much stranger sounds. Infernal snarling and baying, like a multitude of angry dogs in a fox hunt. And then more panicked, pained yelling by different human voices.

  There was suddenly a right parade unfolding in the previously serene woodland.

  The mixed clamor grew steadily louder. Closer.

  “What in the world is happening out there!?” Harding exclaimed and reached for his sword.

  “It would seem this Domain was not clear of hellions,” I said.

  I'd barely finished speaking when a handful of students stumbled out of the north side thicket, covered in blood and wounds, their uniforms in tatters. There was our friend Audrey Trudeau, with her followers.

  The group had grown by two second-year fencers, who should’ve been here for our safety. One of them carried the less athletic Elisa Canth on his shoulder. The sudden, unmarked drop in the terrain caught the lot by surprise, and they wavered, tumbled, and rolled down the hill to the bottom of the ravine.

  Out from the woodwork after the students, hot in pursuit, leapt large canine beasts.

  They resembled wolves, with furs silvery on the belly and growing shadowy black towards the back. Along the spine jutted glimmering, crystalline growth that formed an irregular, spiky armoring over the beasts. Long, slim tails flowed and fluttered like trails of opaque smoke after them, fading to invisibility towards the tip. Each one was as large as a grown man and heavier.

  “It’s the vision I saw in the water!” Silla exclaimed.

  Nightmanes. Threat level E in the bestiary.

  Not wild beasts, but monsters born out of mana. Hellions.

  The students did their best to fend off the monsters, but not to a great effect. As magical lifeforms, hellions didn’t have the same anatomy and vitals as ordinary animals. Whatever pain they felt was temporary and they knew not to fear it. As long as they had mana left, minor injuries would quickly regenerate, and this innate energy gave them a degree of magic resistance too.

  Our classmates couldn’t cast strong enough spells to get through the fiends’ pelts, and the senior fencers were already badly wounded.

  What filled Nightmanes' heads could hardly be called brains, but they weren't stupid. Their senses were based in the spirit realm and allowed them to perceive the flow of energy similarly to expert mages. They easily dodged badly executed spells and prana-fueled attacks.

  They made the most of their speed and agility to wear down their prey, merrily toying with the frantic students, until they’d be too exhausted to resist and easy to devour. The novices, overcome with panic in the face of a strange enemy against which nothing seemed to work, were just about finished.

  The smell of cigarette smoke on our classmates’ clothes worked better than any bait. The fiends shared the trees' hatred for fire, and would never let their prey go while they lived.

  As soon as the students were recognized as targets for elimination, their final chapter was written.

  I couldn’t say I was surprised it came to this, but things were even worse than I imagined. There had to be at least twenty beasts. Where had the fools even found such a horde?

  Hellions essentially served as janitors of the Wood, cleaning up unwanted elements. They converted whatever they ate directly to energy and could never be full, but neither did they hunt out of hunger. If we lingered, we’d be grouped with the others as hostile actors.

  Conversely, if we got out of their sensory range, they wouldn’t pursue us.

  The only real choice therefore was to leave quietly while the fiends were busy with their lunch. Fighting them near the host tree would've been immensely stupid.

  “We should leave—” I began to say, but was much too late.

  The other three with me weren’t listening, but had already rushed to join the fray.

  “...”

  What good would it do to add more dishes to the menu?

  Harding ran swinging among the beasts and managed to cut down two, catching them by surprise from behind. He had physical strength, as unrefined as his technique was. Douglas cut off the hind leg of one and stabbed another in the side, but her approach was altogether mistaken for fighting hellions. Small wounds regenerated in a matter of seconds.

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  The hellions now registered the new faces as enemies.

  One beast turned to confront Harding’s sword head-on. He was too slow and hesitant for it. The wolf caught his swing in its jaws and wrested the blade from his grip. A hellion’s teeth weren’t made of plain bone. In horror, everyone watched the fiend chew the steel sword into two mangled pieces and spit out the untasty fragments.

  Silla formed thin, improvised spears out of water, which she launched at the beasts with impressive speed and precision. Her attacks seemed to work at first, aiming at their softer eyes and mouths, and the sharp, magically hardened javelins pierced clean through the targets. But her success was only an illusion.

  Nothing but decapitation or crushing the mana stone acting as the heart would kill them completely. The wolves Silla hit were stopped only for the time it took for their bodies to absorb the water and the wounds to close, and then returned to life. The pack wasn't growing any smaller no matter how they were hit.

  The survivors formed a circle around the worse injured, and I ended up effectively herded into the same box.

  A schoolbook maneuver that also eliminated any chance of escape. From there, we were waiting only for death, our remaining fighting strength fast waning.

  One wolf sneaked in low, close to the ground, snatched Elisa Canth’s ankle and began to drag the screaming girl out from between us. Douglas moved to help, but had to stop to fend off another beast jumping at her from the side. Silla turned to the rescue, firing a rapid jet at the hellion's face and got it to release its victim. The others dragged the hysterical girl back among the living.

  But it was a trap.

  While Silla’s attention was drawn one way, another wolf sneaked far around and came lunging at her directly from behind. What a novice mistake. She should've realized using big, flashy attacks would make her the primary target. On top of that, with everyone else's attention on the screaming Canth, nobody was left to cover the mage. Always cover the mage!

  No choice.

  I stepped up between my classmate and the fiend, and drew a vertical line with my hand.

  “Rend.”

  A sharp shriek like a sawblade rang out, air chased outward in a flat arc. The leaping Nightmane was knocked back, its head and torso split, the seared wound hot and smoking. The stench of burned fur and wild game stung my nose.

  The ring of beasts flinched collectively and ceased their baying.

  Through their shared senses, they could feel it—this magic was dangerous. And they weren't the only ones to take notice. Behind us on its earthen pedestal, the docile Grand Maple slowly stirred to life. Its leaves rustled in the windless air, the red luminescence intensifying. The branches filled with mana drawn from the roots and leaned our way like many curious heads. Probing. Smelling.

  So you’ll react to that, you old bastard?

  This was why I didn’t want to get involved. All my techniques were a terrible match for the Wood.

  “...No matter how it's been groomed by human hands, an Elder Tree is still an Elder Tree,” I said. “Using destructive, heat-based effects in front of the host will turn the whole Domain on us. We'll trigger a stampede and risk even those who aren't here.”

  “So, what?” asked Harding. “We’ll just have to let them kill us?”

  “Somebody call the teachers.”

  A veteran fencer like Howard should’ve been able to deal with a few dogs without noise.

  “I've been mashing this thing nonstop!” Audrey cried, clutching her compass. “But nobody's responding! It’s not working!”

  Did something interfere with the communicator? What a timing. We just had to end up in trouble at the furthest point on the route. Even if they got the alarm, it would take the teachers a moment to reach to us. When we could endure bare minutes…

  “The harder you fight the Wood, the harder it fights back…”

  If I unsealed my magic, I could deal with any number of smaller beasts. But if the host tree felt its survival endangered, it could expend all the power of the Domain to spawn something truly abominable, a Guardian of the Fey, a Sentinel…

  I could still survive that, probably.

  A Domain this young shouldn’t have been able to manifest anything above S-rank. But everyone else was likely to die in the crossfire. Whoever survived, I’d have to kill them myself to keep my identity secret. The outcome would be no different had I just run away from the start.

  Why couldn't I abandon these fools?

  Let's be the good guys? When did that ever work out, damn it.

  “——So it’s fine to subdue them with magic that’s not destructive or based on heat?”

  The one to suddenly ask that was Silla.

  “You get nowhere poking at them one by one,” I said. “They’ll just adapt to your techniques. You shouldn’t think of them as a group of animals, but as a singular entity with separately moving limbs. Your every move has to be a certain kill. But you can’t achieve that with non-destructive techniques.”

  “I can.”

  I glanced at the girl. Was she arguing only for the Hell of it? No. As pale as her face was, her eyes were resolute.

  “If going after them one by one won't work—then I’ll just have to hit all of them together.”

  “Are you sure sure?” I asked. “None of us can assist with techniques of your level. The whole burden falls on you alone.”

  The pause was a little long, but her reply came firm.

  “I can do it. Let me do it!”

  There was no childish emotion in her voice. It wasn't only the wishful thinking of a desperate victim.

  The impartial, objective assessment of a magician.

  Fair enough. The most important thing was to believe you could do it, even if it meant lying to yourself. In that case, making her doubt herself would've been the worst thing I could've done.

  “All right then. Give it everything you’ve got.”

  “Audrey.” Silla turned to the girl sitting on the ground, cradling her gored arm. “The manawell bracelet. You’d better still have it. Give it back to me.”

  With trembling hands, Trudeau took out the silvery bracelet and shoved it onto Silla's outstretched hand. The heirloom was smeared in blood, but she put it on and began to channel power.

  “Everyone, cover Silla,” I said. “Don’t touch her and make sure she's not interrupted, even if you have to feed yourselves to the beasts!”

  We tightened our circle with Silla in the middle. The hellions moved around us, cautious of me, seeking a gap in our ranks, unable to tell what the directionless swirl of power in our midst meant. Whenever one came too close, we’d kick and make threatening gestures to hold it at bay. Douglas gave her sword to Harding, who slashed at any muzzle that drew too close, and the two other second-years made a valiant effort themselves, though they were bleeding profusely from their many wounds and were on the edge of losing consciousness.

  One wolf made up its mind to attempt a breakthrough.

  It crouched to leap at us, but became abruptly caught—in a mass of water rising from the ground. The fiend kicked and wriggled, trying in vain to escape from the slime-like bubble that rose from the moss and swallowed it whole. The wolf's paws were lifted off the ground, and it rolled upside down, feebly twitching and tossing in its transparent jail.

  In wonder, we watched more water rise from the small gaps of the terrain, trickling into brooks and streaming upwards to form more bubbles. Each bubble a trap that caught the hellions on touch, wrapped around them and raised them up in the air, gently like a mother collecting her cubs but irresistible, until we stood surrounded by a menagerie of monsters floating inside enormous spheres of water.

  This—was the true power of a Tier 4 mage.

  I knew she went easy on me in our duel, but my victory came with an even bigger luck factor than I realized. It was easy to forget in an age of transcendent heroes, when only the outliers were noticed, but mages of Silla's caliber were far from standard. It was only after seeing life from the perspective of the powerless for these past months that I could recognize just how outstanding she was.

  To have reached this far at only eighteen…I'm sorry, Emily. I was wrong to ever compare you two. It wasn’t only a matter of mana intensity; the gap in technical skill was vast.

  But Silla's work wasn't finished yet.

  Hellions didn't breathe. They couldn't be drowned. To kill them, she had to combine the bubbles as one and raise the pressure of the water high enough to wring life out of them.

  Technique alone couldn’t settle this battle; a staggering amount of mana was required.

  From here, the scene went into a realm where book-smarts alone could never follow, becoming purely a contest of raw talent. And she spared no effort. Silla drew forth her full channel capacity and all the mana painstakingly stored in the bracelet. Sweat pearled on her bluish, cold face and through every pore in her skin, her eyes shut in deep focus, lips tightly pressed together. But she didn't waver or hesitate or flounder. Two of the wounded girls fainted simply for being too close, unable to endure the heavy energy in their weakened state.

  But the ensnared hellions fared worse. One by one, they were crushed, squeezed into broken lumps of flesh, as if dragged into the deep trenches on the ocean floor. I sensed the spark of life in them release, their energy wasted trying to recover from the accumulating, devastating damage, until there wasn’t enough left to maintain the vital functions. They were dead.

  “You can stop now,” I told Silla, confirming the absence of life readings.

  She couldn’t hear me, so deep in concentration, sunken within a hair of overloading.

  I took a step closer and, with a slight wince, sought the name that had become strangely difficult to pronounce.

  “Alice. It's over.”

  It would've been an insult to call this girl a novice like the other freshmen.

  Even in that state, she deftly took down her spell, relaxed the flow of mana, let all the water pour controlledly away without even splashing on our clothes, and closed the channel. With heavy hands and great effort, she pulled the manawell bracelet off her wrist and tossed it onto the ground in front of Audrey Trudeau.

  “You can keep it. The Silla family isn't so poor that we’d miss one trinket.”

  Having said that, she collapsed to lean on me, as I happened to stand there in front of her, her head against my collar. I reflexively caught the girl and held her up, but she only kept on limply gasping for air, spent, and made no attempt to stand on her own. My shirt was turning damp with her sweat and my nose was full of the scent of her wet hair. But suppose I owed it to her to endure the discomfort. Putting her down on the dirty, flooded ground didn’t seem like a decent thing to do.

  She did save our lives and help me keep my secret.

  The supervising adults and other Sword course assistants arrived at the scene shortly after. At first, they couldn't tell what was wrong and why there were so many wounded. The pile of mangled fiend corpses was difficult to recognize as having once been something alive and animate. Professor Fawkes noticed it first and froze.

  “Who…did this?”

  Unnerved by his grave tone, several students pointed at Silla, who remained in my hold.

  Technically, the Wood within the Kingdom’s borders belonged to the King, and so did everything in it, the monsters included. The academy was merely allowed to research it with government permit. Would there be legal consequences for the killing?

  But the Professor only stroked his chin, mumbling,

  “Hm. This exceeds expectations…”

  He came over to take a closer look at the hero of the day and asked me,

  “How is she?”

  “Fell asleep out of exhaustion,” I reported. Sure enough, Silla was out cold and unaware of anything that went on about her. Would she have let the person she hated so much keep holding her otherwise? “No injuries.”

  “I see.”

  The professor shrugged and went on to treat the others. Healing was a rare affinity, but he seemed unexpectedly proficient with it, for a flower-gazer. It appeared we were going to get through the crisis without deaths.

  Meanwhile, Instructor Howard, finished with giving instructions to the second-years, came over to me.

  “Good work, Ruthford. I can take her now.”

  “...”

  The man held out his hands expectantly. I stared back at him and didn’t move.

  “It's all right,” he assured me. “I'll carry her back to school. Your arms must be getting tired by now.”

  Certainly, Instructor Howard was the stronger of us, physically. He wasn’t much of a bull, but carrying one or two students was no trouble at all for an ex-mercenary. I should've been glad to get rid of this slimy baggage. It was a very sensible, gentlemanly offer, all in all. But my hands didn't want to let go. I clung onto Silla like to a 1:1-scale doll.

  “...No,” my mouth spoke on its own.

  “No?” the Instructor repeated.

  “No, I'll carry her.”

  “You'll carry her?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know, it's a long way back to the school.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  What was I even saying?

  Too late for second thoughts now. Guess we're training Mana Boost today…

  ACT 2 End