Library of Mages (16)

It was six days since the Second-Year exam. Emily was slowly getting better, I think. If she needs help, I'm there for her, but until she asks for it its best not do anything. I was now reading about a theory of Elemental Essence in the Air. It was not popular but had some interesting conjunctions. And if I'm right about the symbols on my arm, it will be a huge breakthrough in the field of Seals.

The symbols on my arm were giving off energy into my body before I started to create the feathers and feeding it my soul essence. And I'm sure it didn't take my soul essence without me noticing. It means the symbols were gathering energy to keep working and changing my body from somewhere else.

My guess… it was from the air. It was hard to understand. How did the soul grow? Where did it take the soul essence from? If this theory is correct, then in the air there is soul, and elemental essence, the soul itself absorbs it. When I exhaust myself, the soul essence is absorbed back but it then overshoots and too much is absorbed, causing my soul to grow.

The symbols on my arm must have a way to absorb elemental or soul essence from the air. If I could find it, I would need Instaurare Cores anymore.

With that in mind, I decided to ditch the trials for the tournament and focus on research.

A few days later. I was walking back from the library when I heard footsteps behind me. I turned around and said. "What do you want? If someone sent you, I would recommend you go away now. Attacking me is a bad idea."

This wouldn't be the first attempts someone tried to threaten me since I 'joined' the Flores family. And after the assassination attempt, I can imagine they got more serious. I knew the person, he was in my class, but I couldn't remember his name. "I don't know what you are talking about… but there is something I want you to do for me. Why don't we go somewhere more private to talk?" he responded.

"You want to talk? Let me guess, there will be a few of your friends waiting in that private place. I would rather not get ambushed. Go, and I won't do anything to you." It smelled like a trap, I could feel there was no good about him. Like a snake, he was waiting for the right time to strike.

"… If you don't want people knowing about the "City of Ravens" and what you did there, we will go somewhere private."

I blanked about for a split second. City of Ravens is the name of the city that Emily translated form some symbols she saw in the city. Other than me, Emily, my Master, Jasper, and few high ranked people from the MCA knew. If the information was leaked by any of them, it only spells trouble for us.

The public doesn't know about the Raven Queen, and the MCA wanted to keep it under wraps. There was no reason for us to tell everyone about it, so we agreed, but now he somehow knew of it.

"Let's go," I said. It was no time to play, I led him to one of the classrooms in the S-class buildings. There are no cameras or people there. It will be the perfect place to talk. While we walked, I remembered his name. Dagon. Ike was in his team before. "Dagon, right? Tell me how did you find out about the City of Ravens? That name only a few people know."

"That's not important…" If you didn't want to tell… I will beat the answer out of you.

"It is to me." saying that I manifested my soul image and dashed at him. From his sleeve's snakes started purring out, with bloody red scales and black eyes. Like spawns of the devil, they slithered on the ground towards me before leaping trying to bite me.

But the moment their jaws tried to close their fangs broke on contact with my soul image. "Snakes? You couldn't advance to that level yet... you have mutated elemental essence with a phantom image. No wonder you are in the S-class. But that is not enough to stop me."

At a much higher level, to advance and further increase their strength, people with elemental essence will transform their elemental essence into a phantom image. That process is not only complicated but also requires sacrifice.

But in some cases… people are born with it. They awaken, and their elemental essence already has a phantom image. The potential of people like this is, is even higher than those with double or triple elemental essence.

If only these snakes were stronger. My attack continued, I could see snakes under his clothes helping him dodge, and the ones around me kept pestering me. At one point he wanted to say something, but I couldn't hear it.

It had to be a chant. Form his back a snake the size of a tall tree emerged, and his hands two snakes twisted and transformed into two daggers. "Go" the giant snake attacked me, his mouth big enough to swallow me whole. Changing my stance, I braced myself and… grabbed the fangs of the giant snake! With a soul sword, I plunged it into the snake's mouth aiming for its brain. Blood splashed all over me, slowly dripping down from my soul image.

Dagon was gone for where he was standing, and from behind, I felt something. I turned around and grabbed him by the wrists stopping the daggers from coming anywhere closer. "You are strong," I said.

"More than you think." Saying that the blood covering me transformed into hundreds of snakes! They restrained me, if I let go of Dagon to get rid of them, I will be stabbed, if I don't, the now growing daggers will pierce me!

On my left leg, I quickly transformed my soul image and separate it. I carefully moved the Gliding Blade behind him ready to strike.

"STOP IT THE TWO OF YOU!" before I could do anything, chains separated the two of us, almost stabbing Dagon onto my Gliding Blade. One of Dagon's daggers was still stuck in soul image, wiggling like a snake. With a flash 27 appeared and said. "Dispel your attacks. Both of you."

Only then did Dagon turned around and saw my Gliding Blade move and merging back into my soul image. The furious 27 stood between us and chains he created wrapped tightly around the two of us.

"ARE YOU TWO RETARDED?! I KNOW FIGHTS ARE ALLOWED, BUT ONLY UNDER SUPERVISION! AND I DON'T SEE ANYONE HERE MAKING SURE YOU TWO DON'T KILL EACH OTHER!" At this point, I realized 27 was even more furious than when we tried entering the Library of Mages.

"I wouldn't kill him," Dagon said. "I only wanted to ask him a few questions, but he attacked me."

"Doesn't matter. You two are going to see the Principal. She will decide how to punish you!"