Chapter 43

"It's an awakening!" Grand Knight Lucifer exclaimed.

They tried to come closer, but couldn't take the scourging heat of the crimson flames from Arman's body. Thankfully, I was able to cast a shielding spell around Lycan and myself.

"Call on Grand Magister Shalem to apprehend them!" he instructed the seniors around him while he tended on his wounded companion.

"Arman! Calm down!" I called out to my friend.

"It hurts!" he cried out.

"Don't let the magic consume you. You must channel it somewhere else!"

"How? Where?" he desperately asked, blood spilling from the orifices on his head.

"Where else?" I asked him back.

Arman turned around to face the grand knights and grinned.

The Grand Knight Lucifer guarded themselves as the heat assaulted him, but the seniors around him weren't so luck as they burst into flames.

"Surround them!"

I heard Grand Knight Alcides shouting orders. The guards have arrived.

"My Goddess! What is happening here?!" Prof. Novil's voice came up from the din.

"Get the Grand Magister at once!"

I felt at tug on my sleeve.

"We need to leave!"

It was Arman, his skin red from the heat of his own flames that now burned around us.

"We need to get out of here!"

"What for?" I mumbled as I cradle Darius in my arms. "It is all over now. The guards are here, as well as the professors, we are already caught. There is nothing left to fight fo – "

The pain of Arman's hand slapping my face barely registered in my mind.

"It's not over `till it's over!" he told me after another slap. "You still have your reverting spell, don't you?"

I looked at Arman. A glimmer of hope sparked inside my numbing mind as I watched him pull out the swords stuck on Lycan's bloodied body.

"That's right..." I mumbled.

"Surrender, students!" a voice magically entered my mind, making me wince in pain.

Arman who just manifested grabbed his aching head and fell on his side.

"Stand down and submit yourselves to us."

It was the 9th circle mage, Grand Magister Shalem, head of the magic studies.

"Arggh! My head is splitting!" gasped Arman.

"Patric, Arman! Put your hands up behind your head and surrender!" Boomed Grand Knight Alcides' voice.

"Patric!" Prof. Novil's called out. "Surrender for now, and let's talk!"

"Should I, professor?" I called back to him. "They have already passed judgment on us. Tell, me, should I simply surrender? When the crown prince had already sentence my friend to death?!"

"We are here to make things right!" Prof. Novil argued, though his voice slightly quivered. "We will listen to your side, so please, stand back for now, and surrender!"

"You expect us to trust you?" Arman shouted back. "We know you can't do anything against those bastard! That's why they're so confident that they can kill us all!"

"Your professors are here to – "

"Then why is Darius now dead!" I sobbed. "Cat and Elliot! They are all gone! Just like all the other students that were sent home in wooden boxes, just to satisfy the lust of some godforsaken royal!"

"How dare you blaspheme against the Royal Indicus family!" Grand Knight Alcides bellowed. "I won't let this seditious speech go unpunished!"

"You'll have to catch us first, you fucking imbecile!" cursed Arman as he directed his anger at the head of military studies.

A pillar of fire rushed towards Grand Knight Alcides, but the veteran knight was not to be underestimated, as a mere slash of his broad sword dispelled the elemental attack.

"You leave me with no choice, then," came Grand Magister Shalem's voice.

I felt a shift in the atmosphere as he readied a large spell.

Pillars of lightning surrounded us, growing closer, tighter, until we were confined in a small circle. All I could do was place a shield around us to keep us from being electrocuted.

"Oho, I see you have been learning quite the useful spells," Grand Magister Shalem mumbled as he came close to our tight sanctuary. "I can't believe that I failed to notice such a talented individual... How many circles do you currently have?" he asked me. "Four? Five? With the level of this shield you made, I'd guess you are at your 5th core!"

That's it!

I suddenly remembered the mana spell I cast on Arman and myself! The fail-safe may not have worked on Arman, but him manifesting was a blessing.

"Arman, can you use your fire again?" I asked him.

"I can try," he replied, wiping the blood dripping from his nostrils. "Do you have a plan?"

"I want you to distract them as I calibrate my mana spell."

"On it!"

Arman closed his eyes to concentrate. Our surroundings burst into flames one more.

I always knew he was a fast learner.

Meanwhile, I chanted parts of my mana siphoning spell to calibrate the values I've placed earlier.

From 20%, I increased the mana intaketo 50, and changed the main source from the air, to the grand magistrate's powerful lightning attack.

'A magic spell is made of mana, after all.'

Those were my thoughts as I finished chanting the spell.

I felt winded as an enormous amount of mana entered my body and circulated into my 3rd mana core. I quickly used a part of it and chanted a rewinding spell on Lycan and myself.

"How interesting," Grand Magister Shalem muttered. "A spell that absorbs your opponent's mana and uses it as your own? Where did you learn such a spell? Or did you formulate it yourself?"

I stared at him coldly.

"And was that a healing spell you used on yourself and your friend?" he kept on mumbling. "Such a pity, we would need to hand you over to the ivory tower... I would have enjoyed teaching you right here in the academy, instead of the bumbling fools I'm forced to deal with..."

Arman fell next to me, exhausted by the magic he cast.

"Is your plan ready yet?" he gasped.

"Hold on to me," I whispered to him, holding on to Lycan as well. "We'll take Elliot and leave."

I chanted 'Weaken' and 'Disarm' in quick succession, breaking the grand magister's spell, as well as the shield I made. I then chanted a 'Sprint' spell and dragged my friends with all my power, towards where Elliot's body fell.

"Oh, no you don't!"

There was a loud clap of thunder, and lightning faster than the spell I had casted crashed down upon us. The next thing I knew, I was lying face down on the ground with my beloved's body beneath me, while Arman and Lycan were blasted several feet away.

"Incapacitate them!" boomed Grand Knight Alcides voice.

A couple of guards went to the fallen Arman, pinning the already weakened mage to the ground. Several others rushed at Lycan who cradled Cat's lifeless body in his arms. They pointed their weapons at him, though he hardly moved. His eyes looked dead to the world.

I, on the other hand, was bound with magic chains on my hands and on my feet and around my neck. I could feel it seep the mana from my cores.

"As you can see, you're not the only one who has a mana absorbing spell," the grand magister told me with a smile. "It's really such a pity that I can't keep you..."

"You won't keep any of us!" Arman hissed from beneath his two captors.

"Silence!" Grand Knight Alcides jabbed him on the head with the butt of his blade.

"That is enough, Sir Alcides!" Prof. Novil came between them. "These students will be taken into custody and interrogated. They will then be given a fair trial!"

"What trial are you talking about?!" Our attention went back to Nigellus.

The healers were busy trying to re-attach his severed leg.

"Kill them all this instance!" he shouted like a mad man. "Kill them for daring to hurt me, their future emperor!"

"You deserved it, you fucking bastard!" Arman spat out.

"I told you to be silent!"

Grand Knight Alcides was about to kick Arman, when the later pulled an arm free and grabbed the tip of his long cloak.

'Praeuro!' he chanted.

The grand knight's clothes quickly burst into flames, engulfing him.

"Douse the fire!" the people around him yelled as the grand knight screamed in pain and anger.

"Lycan!" Arman called to the catatonic man who sat a feet away from him. "Lycan, Cat can still be saved!" he said. "Remember! Patric placed a rewind spell on us all! He can still revive Cathian!"

Lycan's eyes regained their shine as he looked at me with renewed hope.

"Save Patric, Lycan!" Arman went on. "You must save him to save us all!"

"That is quite futile, my dear boy," Grand Magister Shalem started to prattle once more, when a growl escaped Lycan's lips, and like a wild wolf cornered, he jumped from where he sat, and slammed his thick arms at the guards standing around him.

Their swords cut him, yet he looked unfazed.

He ducked low, clutching Cat's body close to his chest, and swiped his leg at the guards' feet.

"What are you doing?!" came Nigellus crazed shouts. "Kill that stupid mongrel!"

But Lycan was already running towards the grand magister who took his eye off me for a second to try to fend the bulking student off.

'Let the absorption rate be set to 80% percent'

I chanted with all the remaining mana in my body.

'let the grand magister be my target'

Grand Magister Shalem looked back at me wide-eyed, just in time to see the magic chains he placed upon me disintegrate as I seeped his mana into my core.

"You dare – "

I took a deep breath, stretching my arms out towards the grand magister. I noticed light blue tendrils seeping out of the old man's body, turning to thin shadowy smoke being sucked towards my direction.

I braced myself against Darius' body as the mana flooded into my two empty cores.

"Patric! What are you doing?!"

Prof. Novil's voice hardly registered as I took another deep breath. I watched as the grand magister raised a hand, ready to retaliate with a spell of his own.

That was when Lycan's solid body crashed upon him, sending him spinning across the paved ground.

"Are you ok, Patric?" he asked me.

"I-I'm fine..."

Yet the influx of mana got me disoriented.

"We need to take Elliot's body... and Arman..."

I looked at our friend who still lay on the floor. Four guards now held him down.

"Go! Now!" he shouted at us. "Save yourselves!"

"How could I possibly...!"

"Save him, Lycan!" Arman insisted. "Come back for me next time! Save Patric and Cathian and run!"

That was all Lycan needed to hear.

Grabbing me and Darius' lifeless body, he threw us over his right shoulder, and with Cat still grasped in his left arm, started to run towards the academy's main gates.