Chapter 26 - Achil…?

When the dust cleared, we saw the magic students looking quite pissed. Due to their magic lessons, which we hadn’t received, they were able to create a barrier before the attacks hit them. Thankfully, it bought enough time for Eclara and the girly boy to get away from them.

“I’m going to heal Eclara, and since I have no prior experience with this, it may take a bit of time. I’ll need you guys to buy me some time.”

“““Yes.”””

The unconscious Eclara and the girly boy stopped in front of us.

“W-who are you people!? W-why a-are you helping us? Where did you come from?”

“Shut up.”

Since Eclara was injured, time was of the essence, and I needed to focus on manipulating mana. I used the two most effective words to silence the girly boy. I knelt in front of Eclara and took a deep breath.

(This will be my first time using light-attributed magic. I have no one to guide me or rehearse this on. Hopefully, I won’t make a major mistake here.)

Placing my hand on Eclara’s injuries, I began using light-attributed magic. Her wounds started healing, but because this was a basic spell, her wounds were closing very slowly. From the corner of my eye, I could see on the mana screen that they were getting quite close.

“They’re going to be here any moment. Quickly start your preparations.”

The three created fireballs and waterballs, then fashioned weapons out of mana. Frank made twin swords, Achil made a huge bastard sword, and Vertical Rolls made a bow.

“You can’t win against them with only a fireball. Let’s escape quickly!”

The three ignored the girly boy’s words and continued to concentrate the mana. Once they felt it was enough, the two boys slashed at their respective fireball and waterball.

Once the bluish bastard sword combined with the fireball, it lost its bluish color and turned into a real sword. Its grip became red, and a sapphire was embedded in its pommel. The blade was engraved with golden words, which were, in fact, the spell words to invoke fireball. Achil now looked like a swordsman wielding a legendary-class sword.

For Frank, he now held two identical swords. The hilts were plain and retained their bluish color. The blades were quite slim, making them unsuitable for parrying. Like Achil’s bastard sword, the blades also had an inscription for casting waterball.

In Vertical Rolls’ case, the limbs of her longbow looked like the wings of a phoenix. The inscriptions were written on the grip and extended up to the sight window. Also, her longbow was taller than her.

We called this ‘Ethereal Shift’. The one who discovered this was Victoria, not me. Last week, she tried to congregate mana on a sword she made and then fused it with the windball. According to her, she had to guide the windball while continuously supplying mana to its parts. It took her three days of experimentation before she succeeded.

We were all greatly surprised by what she did. Most of us were focused on increasing the damage output of basic spells, so none of us had thought of combining weapons made out of mana with basic spells.

To be frank, the moment I saw Victoria use ‘Null Element’ magic in that way, I became very excited and quickly forced her to spend most of her day with me developing that magic. As a result, Victoria spent three days with me and Emilia in the sky without sleeping. We didn’t stop until we mastered this magic.

“Wawawa!”

“Here they come!”

Vertical Rolls stretched the string to its limit and created an arrow made of mana. The moment she released the string, the arrow caught fire and left an orange streak as it flew through the sky. She continued to fire at the pursuers without pause or constraint. It was because we never needed to cast another spell after we had done ‘Ethereal Shift’.

The pursuers created a barrier with their magic to stop the arrows. Achil charged towards them and sliced through the barrier. By controlling the mana, which was the general makeup of the sword, the edges of the blade were as hot as a blacksmith’s furnace, slicing through the barrier as if it were made of butter.

“Achil…?”

“Hello there, brother. How’s life?”

Achil jumped backward the moment he finished greeting his elder brother. In that instant, a barrage of fire arrows filled the sight of his elder brother.

“Spread out!”

The magic students quickly flew in every direction. Frank sliced the air, and a crescent wave of water flew towards the magic students, hitting two of them: one boy and one girl.

“Bastard!”

The magic students cast a high-level spell, and a huge tornado of fire headed towards Frank. Frank quickly flew away to escape the tornado. However, since it was made by magic, it could be controlled. Achil then flew between them and slashed at the fire tornado.

What happened looked very ridiculous. The giant fire tornado was literally sliced in half. The caster was shocked when he saw his spell getting sliced. However, while they were busy, the magic students managed to create a barrier and began gathering at that spot. Achil, Frank, and Vertical Rolls made a mana floor and stood in front of them.

“Frank-niisan?”

““Liza-neechan?””

The two who were called smiled wryly.

“It’s been a while, Krisha, Misha.”

““““Why are you here!?””””

The four people related to them asked the three in unison. However, none of the three answered their question.

“What the heck is that!? Why can it slice a high-level spell like a tornado!?”

Achil’s brother pointed at the bastard sword he wielded.

“As long as it’s made out of fire, I can pretty much counter it.”

“Where the heck did you get that?”

Achil frowned and became silent.

“So that means those two swords are the same, Frank-niisan?”

Frank nodded at his younger sister’s question.

“Were you the one who fired those fire javelins at us, Liza-neechan? When and how did you become so powerful?”

“They weren’t javelins, Misha. They were actually arrows.”

“Arrows?”

Vertical Rolls showed them the longbow she held.

“Also, I didn’t become powerful. Look, casting two fireballs at the same time takes up most of my mana.”

Vertical Rolls made two fireballs appear in front of her. As a result, she started breathing hard.

“Then how did you do that?”

This time, she didn’t answer their question as she caught her breath. Krisha placed her hand on Misha’s shoulder and asked Vertical Rolls.

“More importantly, why are you helping them, Liza-oneechan?”

“It’s because we were ordered by the ‘Master’ we serve.”

“Master? Is he the one who gave you those weapons?”

Vertical Rolls shook her head.

“No. We made these. Victoria was the first one to make them, though.”

“Victoria-oneesama?”

“Yes.”

“Where is she now?”

“She’s going to come here any moment now. It’s because our ‘Master’ called for her.”

Achil’s brother then narrowed his eyes.

“Is that Master of yours an ally of that ‘Thing’?”

“We’re not sure. The reason we stopped you was because you injured one of her servants.”

He raised his eyebrows when he heard, ‘One of her servants’.

“We don’t remember ever attacking any of you.”

“Not us, but her.”

Vertical Rolls pointed at Eclara, who was now fully healed. At that moment, I had finished healing Eclara. Though I had the option of using ‘Null Element’ to augment the light attribute magic, I was quite hesitant to do it since it was my first time. Thankfully, the amount of time Vertical Rolls and the others had was enough to close her wound.

I then walked towards Vertical Rolls. Every step I took rippled the atmosphere. The eyes of the magic students focused on me. I showed them a smile as I greeted them.

“Nice to meet you, everyone. I am the Master of Eclara Sluga Chiem, as well as the three people here.”

“So you’re the mastermind behind the confusion that’s been happening in the school?”

“I have no idea what you're talking about.”

“Stop lying! Since you’re her master, that means you ordered her to tempt the dissatisfied students to fight against our Masters. As a result, many of the students who followed our Masters have been injured. Thankfully, no one has died yet, so the healers were able to heal most of them.”

“Our Masters decided to cut off the root of the problem. And that is by killing that ‘Thing’ and expelling those two.”

I tilted my head to the side and said, “Like I said, I absolutely have no idea what you’re talking about. However, when you said ‘killing that thing,’ does that mean you’re planning to murder that boy with the strange clothes?”

“Murder? That ‘Thing’ isn’t even a human because he was summoned. Do you think killing a summoned being is ‘murder’?”

Achil’s elder brother started laughing.

“You don’t consider him a human?”

“There are books that say, ‘Humans can never be summoned.’ That means that ‘Thing’ isn’t a human. So killing him is fine.”

“That poses a problem.”

I knitted my brows and placed my hand on my left cheek.

“You’ll expel Eclara?”

“Of course. She’s just getting what she deserves.”

When he mentioned expulsion, I recalled that the protagonist, his summ

oner, and Eclara had started traveling across the country. They fought against elves, dwarves, dragons, and monsters at the border even though they were young.

If that is so, how did the protagonist escape death? I mean, they were planning to kill him.

Clap*

I clapped my hands together when I remembered that the protagonist was a monster. He was able to defeat all those students by himself. However, the move he used destroyed half the school. It was a miracle that nobody died as a result of that move, though.

Sweat began forming on my forehead as I finally recalled the disaster. The protagonist became desperate and made a huge magical explosion. That explosion destroyed the barrier protecting the country, leaving it open to invasions.

The protagonist felt guilty and began traveling across the border to protect the country. It wasn’t because of expulsion; it was because the only school for magic in this country was destroyed by him.

He only became a hero because of the deeds he performed while fighting against the invaders.

“… Fuck.”

I uttered a curse and stared at the sky in despair.

“Lumina-sama! We have arrived!”

Emilia then started running towards me. Behind her, almost all of the general students were following her. Even though I told Anthony to only call 30 students, why did almost all of them come? No, I know why. It’s because I told him to gather 30 students. Those 30 students then called their friends, and their friends called more friends until it became the entire student body.

“Emilia! Have everybody fly as high as possible!!!!”

I created a mana screen and shouted at Emilia. She looked confused for a moment but nodded to my words.

“Vertical Rolls, Achil, and Frank, we also need to go as high as possible! Quickly, or we’ll be caught up too!”

“““Y-yes!”””

“Oi! You think you can escape from us!?”

Achil’s brother shouted at us as we began ascending.

“We’re not escaping from you; we’re escaping from the disaster your master brought!”

“What are you talking about?”

As I was about to answer, a giant explosion erupted from the direction where the protagonist was.

“Oh fuck, we’re too late… well, at least I won’t die from this.”

The explosion rapidly expanded and swallowed half of the school. Most of the general students managed to escape, but I, Achil, Frank, and Vertical Rolls weren’t so lucky. The four of us, along with the six magic students, were swallowed up in the explosion.