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.
“Not really. If that power belonged to them, they would have used that before,” I answered before smiling, with a slightly mocking edge to anger her further. Knowing that she wouldn’t dare to reveal her true power gave me an edge in our discussions that I wanted to push to the limit. “However, wouldn’t it better to continue this discussion after you alert the defenders about trapped gems. Unless you have too many soldiers and you want to use the opportunity to get rid of some of them, of course.”
She took an audible breath, reflecting her frustration in a visceral manner. She clearly didn’t appreciate my mocking an hour after her office was broken in. Despite her cloak, I could see that she had to struggle to keep her temper down.
“It’s better to avoid jumping to conclusions,” she murmured before she pulled a crystal from the depths of her desk, and used that as a focus to cast a spell, no doubt sending a magical message using one of the contingencies they had set up.
While she was busy with communication, I pulled a chair and sat across her without her permission, even crossing my legs and leaned back to show my relaxation. Even as she spoke, I could feel the weight of her gaze. I managed to properly anger her.
As she spoke, I spent my time imagining the flawless body underneath her body —though I also set up a fake soul space to trick her once more just in case she started to feel jealous. The effect of the crystal was still working —through to a reduced degree— which meant the fake space was much more believable.
[-23 Mana]
It took five minutes for her to put down the crystal once more. I spoke before she could take the control of the discussion. “So, you were going explain this new organization supporting the necromancers,” I said despite being well-aware that not only she hadn’t slipped up enough to admit her knowledge, but also she was —or at least, should have been— smart enough to know that she hadn’t made a mistake of that extent. I was pushing my luck, which also suggested I had come across them during one of the missions.
It was a strategic move, both pushing her to give me information, but also simultaneously giving her the opportunity to strengthen the alliance between us. I was hoping that my arrogance would sell the idea that the imaginary organization behind me was strong enough for her to make such a move worthwhile.
She came to a quick decision. “There is a group called the Knights of the Eternal Vigil, or Eternals for short,” she started, and I put my whole effort to push a fake expression, like I tried to suppress my shocked expression, keeping my face calm except one subtle twitch, trying to sell the idea that I knew about them. If she thought that I was testing her by asking something I already knew, she would give me more information, thinking that she was converting a useless chip into goodwill.
It was a tricky line to walk.
“Their root goes back to ancient times, a time before the Cleansing,” she said, and I took a note of the term she had used. Cleansing was no doubt referring to the catastrophic event that changed the world, but there was not a lot of information about the nature of the event. But the term she was using for that was really specific, meaning, she likely knew what happened those days.
Maybe she was alive those days. After all, I had no idea how long an Angel could live, or whether they even have a natural lifecycle.
“They had been established by a group of Divine-touched, led by seven demigods, on the city of Akhenaten, to protect people from the excess of the storm god,” she said, giving me another shock. Yes, the presence of an angel in front of me —in addition to the rather suggestive name of Divine Spark— suggested the legends about the old gods might not be as artificial as I had first assumed, but to be confirmed by her with such casualness was a different thing. I tried to process the blow while she gave a breakdown of the names of the demigods and some notable Divine-touched, without actually explaining what a Divine-touched was.
I couldn’t even guess from their abilities, as none of the events she mentioned meant anything for me. Smart, I thought. She was clearly testing the limits of my knowledge, maybe even slipping some fake information as insurance. So, I decided to act like I hadn’t recognized anything other than major references to the concept, like the nature of the demigods and divine-touched —hiding them behind the appropriate fake expression to make her work for that information, of course.
“A lofty goal,” I murmured, cutting her history expression short. “I’m going to guess that their nobility didn’t extent forever.”
“Not particularly, no,” she continued. “Their daring to stand against him enraged the Storm God immensely, and he sent his own forces to destroy the city of Akhenaten. The battle lasted for a century, but much to the surprise of everyone, the battle ended with the Storm Avatar being slain, damaging the very soul of the Storm God.”
“Impressive,” I murmured, aware that the true fun was just about to start. “What happened after that?”
“Then, they got arrogant…” the headmistress said with her raspy tone, the darkness around her tightening. This time, the darkness felt less like magic, and more like a natural reaction. Much to my surprise, it didn’t even felt connected to Headmistress, but as a part of the aura of the room, independent of her control.
[Divine Spark Identified! Please absorb it to continue to support the operations of the System]
The presence of a second Divine Spark surprised me immensely. My little angel was naughtier than I expected…
[Level: 30 Experience: 447193 / 465000
Strength: 41 Charisma: 53
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]
