The island crumpled as Jujud’s enchantment collapsed in on itself, shooting bits of mental energy into the gathering storm.

  I spun in the air, utterly helpless.

  There wasn’t a scrap of mental energy left in my system.

  And Jujud was still only getting started.

  She ripped herself from the crater, blowing smoke from her mouth. One of her teeth had been knocked out, but that grew back almost immediately.

  {Jujud : Mage Class : Mana Soul}

  [Convert Mana into Hitpoints]

  [(+3m) 20m Hp]

  I lowered my center of gravity, Reaching on the flat of Crapshoveler’s blade to drift through the hole in the clouds.

  “You little brat…” she hissed, gathering red-tinted mana in her fist.

  My vision blurred and I nearly slipped off Crapshoveler, struggling to keep concentration. I was breathing heavier than I realized. I was tired.

  And yet, my senses continued to sharpen, flaring at the slightest sound or smell.

  “If I can’t bring you in alive, I’ll just have to resurrect you later,” Jujud snapped. “Before you start permanently hurting yourself.”

  I could hear every syllable she whispered under her breath, despite a distance of at least a few miles. The howling wind roared in my ears, drowning out my own thoughts.

  What was going on?

  I pressed a hand to the tattoo on my neck.

  And I felt nothing.

  The summoned ink had been completely dissolved, no doubt burned up to feed that last foothold I’d summoned.

  Which meant that at least two of my senses were no longer being held in check. At the very least, my lack of mental energy ought to dull the symptoms.

  Crapshoveler slipped from underneath me, flipping into the air.

  And then Jujud was in front of me.

  She caught my face in her palm, throwing me to the ground. I crunched against the dirt, dodging a punch Jujud landed, summoning chains around my arms, pinning them in place. Before I could even think of worming out, she pinned needles in my back and side.

  Without mental energy, I couldn’t move the mana to get them out, and without that, I was finished.

  Jujud tensed, aiming the ball of molten mana at the side of my face. “Grind, this is your last warning—”

  “I give up,” I groaned.

  Jujud twitched. “You—seriously?”

  “Yeah. I already ran out of energy,” I muttered, blinking hard to stay awake.

  She almost collapsed in relief. “Thank goodness.”

  Jujud grabbed the chains, pulling me to my feet. As it turned out, she’d also hidden some chains in the ground.

  I smirked. “You’re a fast learner.”

  “I feel slow by comparison,” Jujud grunted. “Even without mana, you’re more than capable of pulling your weight.”

  “Thank you—” I twitched.

  My mana channels were completely fried. Which meant, in order to push the needles out with mental-energy guided mana, I’d have to unconsciously use the neutral mana in the air, and who knows how much mental energy that had burnt through.

  How inefficient was I?

  Jujud rubbed between her eyes, keeping the chains tight around my torso. “I’m not letting you out of those, by the way.”

  “Fair.”

  The hole in the cloud had been all but swallowed up, overshadowed by dull gray clouds, darkening hue. Wind snarled, whirling strands of wild grass and bushes, blowing up against the crumpled husks of trees, blown apart in Jujud’s descent.

  We watched each other.

  “Do you have any idea how much trouble you’re in?” Jujud growled.

  “I have some ideas.”

  “Double it.” She wrapped another chain over the ones holding me, dragging me behind her like a stray puppy. “But not as much as you would’ve been in if you’d try to keep fighting.”

  Jujud checked the forest. “Where’d Soise run off to…” the Silver facepalmed. “She took off running, didn’t she?”

  “I asked her to.”

  “That girl trusts you far too much.”

  “And I trust her more.”

  “I can see that. I hope you realize it’s one thing to get yourself in trouble, but getting another girl caught up in one of your episodes is going to have some hefty consequences. You know we can’t let Soise return to the academy with an infected goblin under her care.”

  “I know,” I said. “But I’ll think of something.”

  “Oh no you won’t. You’re getting a medical exam. Immediately,” Jujud snapped. “Who knows what state you’re in now.”

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Soise could do that.”

  Jujud picked up her pace, hurling an uprooted tree out of her path. “I guess she could. I don’t even know how I’m supposed to explain this to the rest of the team.”

  “I can manage that much,” I stated.

  Jujud looked back at me, staring into my eyes. “Are you okay?”

  I nodded. “I feel okay. Your needles are making it pretty hard to move, but you're just dragging me along so it’s not a big deal. Other than that, my tattoo fell apart, so now I can taste the floor through my feet, which is supremely uncomfortable but it doesn’t actually hurt.”

  “Tattoo?” Jujud’s eyes widened. She pressed both hands on the raw side of my neck, stinging far more than I would’ve expected, considering how numb the rest of my head felt.

  “You idiot.”

  Muscles and tissue in my neck adjusted, swelling up for a moment, before the affected area became suddenly and startlingly cold.

  Jujud snapped her hands away.

  That actually hurt, despite the new bands Xoiae’s given me.

  Which probably meant…

  “That’s bad, right?”

  Jujud finished her enchantment, moving much, much slower than previously. When she finished, she let go of the chain.

  Jujud sat on a rock.

  In silence.

  For almost five minutes.

  I tried to get a good look at the spot, but I couldn’t quite crane my neck around it.

  “You…you didn’t even notice, didn't you?” Jujud asked.

  I blinked. “Notice what?”

  “Grind, never, under any circumstance, enchant yourself.” She covered her face in her hands. “All of that skin was dead.”

  Dead?

  “The top layer of skin was fine, but the muscle and arteries below had been completely erased.” Jujud thought for a few minutes. “When you make any sort of mental change to your body, it contorts it. The more mental energy the more contortion. Teleportation is an instant change, easily reverted. But the longer the mental energy sits on your body, the harder its effect is to remove. Either way, mental energy makes the affected area behave exactly according to your understanding.”

  “When I enchant my face, it stops being my face.”

  “...Yes. It becomes only what you understand and see. If that mental energy had gone even a few inches deeper it’d have cut through your spine. You’d be dead, Grind.”

  I let out a chuckle. “That would’ve simplified things quite a bit.”

  Jujud looked at me.

  “Is that what you think I want?”

  She started crying.

  “I DON’T WANT YOU TO DIE!” Jujud grabbed me by the sides of my head. “You, stupid, stupid student! THINK! Before you start using techniques you’ve never tried! I just want you to be okay, okay? Ahgh!”

  Jujud whirled, punting a boulder over the horizon.

  “Xoiae’s going to have my head,” she hissed. “Oh Jujud, how did your mission go well? Oh Headmaster it was fantastic,” she snarled. “Soise is currently a bioterrorist and Grind’s lost his marbles. When I was attempting to restrain him he broke two of his bands, before creating a suppression tattoo which almost killed. Now I’ve got to find everyone else before Soise—” her voice choked. “Soise…must be terrified out of her mind right now. Don’t you have any idea what kind of trouble you’ve put her into?”

  “She made her choice,” I said. “I stand by it.”

  “Neither of you have any idea what that means! We’re going to need to hunt her down, and who knows how long that’ll take, or what condition she’ll be in. if she tries to hide in the forest when the firebombers unleash their attack, she’ll die, Grind!” Jujud spun away, tears streaming down her red face. “I’m—I just…I-I just—”

  “Need a moment?”

  “I need to go home,” Jujud growled. “And when I arrive, I’ll probably stay there. Teachers get fired for less.”

  She took a deep breath, grabbing my chain again.

  “C’mon.”

  Several of Jujud’s mana needles had dissolved during her breakdown. I still couldn’t move freely, but I was able to walk upright behind her.

  Jujud barely seemed to notice. “I need a straight answer. Have any other students tried to help you?”

  “Not that I know of, but Soise might have convinced them otherwise. She’s their leader, after all. And she has access to their earpieces.”

  Jujud huffed. “I want you to realize that in the event of a unified retaliation against the union, we would have to call in additional Silvers. Even if it’s just a few starry-eyed students, the safety of the entire second area is currently in jeopardy.”

  “Because of one monster.”

  “Because of one infection.” Jujud shook her head. “Xoiae’s tired enough as it is. Resurrecting entire cities is so difficult only a handful of Platinums in the world have ever managed to do it. If this infection becomes too common, we won’t be able to keep reviving everyone. We’d have to start making sacrifices. Then real people would die.”

  I sighed. “You won’t even try to let me use my screens?”

  “They don’t work when you fall asleep, right?” Jujud asked. “Then there is no long-term solution. Besides, the Union isn’t particularly enthusiastic about a single player with that much power.”

  I nodded.

  “You haven’t actually given up, have you?” Jujud groaned. “You’d just done fighting?”

  “Done with this fight.”

  “We can’t keep doing this, Grind.”

  She was about to say something else when a scream echoed over the forest canopy.

  I blinked. “That was close to us, wasn’t it?”

  Jujud bristled. “Yes it was.”

  She hefted me onto one shoulder and jumped, landing with a thud in a lush field, covered in thick grass that came up to our knees.

  A girl was hunched over, slick black and sobbing. Smoke hissed around her in a haze, mixing into the darkened clouds above.

  Jujud grabbed me by the back. “Stay here and don’t look.”

  “Why?” I asked squinting to get a better look.

  She spun me around, tying the chain to a tree. “Ardenidi! Stand down!” Jujud shouted, running across the field.

  Ardenidi?

  My hearing sharpened involuntarily, the sound of heavy breathing and sobbing ringing around my head.

  What was Ardenidi doing?

  Jujud had clearly wanted to put distance between me and…Soise. It was Soise hunched over. I knew her voice well enough.

  Soise was crying.

  Rex wasn’t breathing.

  And Ardenidi stood above the two of them, both spears at Soise’s forehead.

  The screen appeared a moment later.

  {NOTICE}

  [Party member : {Rex} has been killed]

  [{Rex} has not met the requirements for respawning. {Rex} has been erased]

  [Warranty has expired.]

  My heart stopped.

  I wasn’t thinking straight. But I understood.

  Ardenidi had killed Rex.

  That was all there was to it.

  Rain poured from the clouds in falling curtains, whipping the grassy meadow into a sea of motion.

  // {Notice} //

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