“This damned pig!”

Running through the magic forest, my group, which was tasked with hunting down a magical boar, continued to chase our target. When we first fought the boar, it stood its ground and gave us a hard time. However, once it found out that we wouldn’t back off, it turned tail and sprinted away.

Damn my master! He knew this would happen!

As we saw the boar slow down to make a sharp turn, I saw the opportunity and shouted at the bubbly girl, “Felixia! Tie him down with your lightning-ice spell!”

“No problem, no problem!” Felixia cheered as she cupped her hand without stopping on her tracks. When she was done casting her spell, she shot her arm forward, and a lightning bolt zapped across the ground towards the boar.

The lightning hit the boar but it didn’t do any damage against the boar’s magic-resistant body, but that wasn’t what Felixia was aiming for. As soon as the lightning dissipated, ice started forming around its gray fur.

The girl with the thick glasses in our group rushed up to use her spells to trap the boar with arcane magic, but she got a bit too close and the boar charged at her. I quickly snapped my fingers, and fire erupted around my feet. Two small imps made out of fire crawled out of the ground, then flew straight at the flaming boar.

Just before impact, the two imps spun mid-air and their fiery bodies turned into rocks. Though the two boulders smashed against the boar’s body, it didn’t stop its charge. The girl couldn’t defend herself in time and was sent flying by the boar’s charge.

At the very least, the boar slowed down due to the pain, so the charge wasn’t lethal. Injured by the rocks and slowed down by the ice, the boar sprinted away once more.

My group didn’t pursue and instead we went to check up on the injured girl.

“It’ll be bad if we leave her here, so I’ll take her back to camp. Will you three be alright?” Boye said after inspecting the girl’s injuries.

“With me, Iova, and Felixia, I think it’ll be fine. Besides, the pig’s injured already,” I replied.

“Then, I’ll quickly get back to camp.” Boye held the injured girl up, then carried her like a sack of potatoes.

“One would think this would be a good opportunity to carry a girl in another manner, you know what I mean?” Iova commented as she saw the stern boy leave.

“Now’s not the time for that, let’s go!” I shouted.

It wasn’t hard to follow the boar since it kept leaving a trail of charred leaves. Strangely, the boar’s flaming back wasn’t causing much damage to the forest other than charring the plants. Perhaps the forest was innately resistant to fire, which was why a massive forest fire wasn’t ravaging this place already.

When we finally managed to catch up with the boar, it stopped running and turned towards us. By now, the ice latched onto it had melted away, and the boar was ready to face us once again. Felixia and I stood at the front, while Iova was placed at the back since she was more support-oriented.

I took out a mithril dagger then took on a combat stance. Strangely enough, Felixia wasn’t taking out any magical apparatus and opted to continue barehanded.

The boar scrapped its hooves against the floor while its head was lowered, ready to charge at us. I took the opportunity to strike out first by twisting my dagger, then pointing at the boar.

Cracks appeared on the ground I was standing on, then it started crawling towards the boar. Once the crack reached the boar, earthen hands tried to grab the boar, but it was unwilling to be caught by such simple spell. It ran across the forest floor trying to dodge my spells, but unfortunately for it, Felixia had started casting her spells.

Felixia’s lightning homed towards the boar and chased it relentlessly. Sparks of lightning were hitting the boar and doing no harm, but Felixia wasn’t trying to hurt the boar. She was poking around to find any weaknesses.

“Okay, okay! I think I found its weak spot, but I need some kind of distraction,” Felixia shouted.

“Leave it to me!” Iova clenched her fist and placed it close to her mouth. Muttering a chant, a bright white orb of light was formed in front of her. She then swept her hand, causing the orb to split into a wall of blinding light which faced the boar.

Surprised by the bright light, the boar stopped sprinting for just a moment - but Felixia only needed a moment. She concentrated her sparks into one bolt, then struck the boar’s weak spot under its neck.

The boar didn’t die, but I had already prepared another pair of boulders to crash against it, causing the magical beast to fall down in pain once the boulders found their mark. I ran towards it and plunged my dagger on its head while avoiding the fire surrounding its body.

Even at Death’s Doors, the boar squirmed and struggled against my blade. Even the flames on its back was getting stronger, making me nervous that my fire shield might break before the boar does. I violently twisted the blade, plunging it deeper until the boar finally stopped moving.

As the flame on the boar died out, I let out a sigh.

What a relief! I almost thought that I would-

I threw my body to the side and managed to roll away just in time to see a large ice shard rupture from the ground, impaling the boar’s corpse. My gaze fell upon the one responsible for this - Felixia.

“Kendra! Watch out!” Iova shouted as she raised a basic barrier to defend herself against an ice barrage, but failed to protect against the whole barrage. She was knocked out by a stray ice, but her injuries didn’t look too serious.

“When you push your body to the limit, the ice helps. Instead of pushing the body, you push the limits,” Felixia suddenly started to monologue.

I twisted my dagger, then slashed the air towards Felixia. Two fire imps launched themselves from the ground, spinning rapidly at Felixia. She boosted herself with enhancement magic, then dodged to the side, anticipating the fire imps to turn into rocks. Instead, the fire imps flew past and swung back at her, engulfing the girl in fire.

As my imps flew around her, trying to surround her with more fire, Felixia calmly stood straight, then flexed her biceps. Her skinny body suddenly began expanding, her veins popping out from the sudden pressure.

As her body grew, icy winds wrapped themselves against Felixia, staving off the flames while freezing her own body.

“What the hell is this?” I muttered.

Felixia only continued to grow larger and larger, and when my fire imps lost the duel against the icy winds, the girl finally took out her magic apparatus from her bag. It was none other than a dumbell.

“You’re a musclemancer?!” I exclaimed.

“Oh yes. My real name is Flexia,” Felixia-... Flexia raised an arm to the air, then flexed her whole body then continued, “Surprised by my transformation? You should. Ice and lightning is key to muscle transformation. The ice stabilizes the puny body from exploding inwards, and the lightning stimulates the body with precision. Very advanced, isn’t it?”

“I don’t care. What is the meaning of this? Why are you attacking me?” I shouted.

“It’s nothing personal,” Flexia answered while kissing her forearms. “It’s just that we musclemancers like to keep the Interstate Academia Games between us muscle elites alone. That’ll be all I will say to you.”

It turned out that Flexia was actually conjuring a spell the entire time she was flexing. She was actually buying time! Damn it!

With a snap of my finger, a chain of explosion erupted around Flexia, but she simply shielded herself with her own body. Her injuries were quickly doused with ice, and she didn’t seem to be taking much damage in the first place.

With a kick and a punch, Flexia finally finished casting her spell. I felt my body’s temperature suddenly plummeting, and it was getting harder for me to move. Even so, I used air magic to push myself as a mix of lightning and ice bolts barraged past me.

I clapped my hands, then imagined that I was in a scorching desert. Slowly, the ground close to me turned into sand, but I knew it was all in my head. Master’s magic dealt with forcing one’s will into the reality, no matter how absurd it was, but it was still hard trying to control it. Not only do I have to concentrate on not letting the magic control me, but I also had to guess what Flexia was casting.

Luckily for me, Flexia also had to guess my attacks since none of my attacks were ever chanted.

As my temperature stabilized enough to keep me from getting hypothermia, a wave of ice began crawling towards Flexia from my feet.

“Ice?!” The musclemancer screamed as she shot her own wave of ice to contest against me.

I gave her a smile as I focused on bringing winter hell upon her.

I spun my body while flipping my dagger, and my crashing ice obeyed my commands. It quickly melted mid-course, then froze up again into an avalanche of snow which engulfed Flexia’s ice shards. My snow continued crawling against the forest floor and crashed against Flexia’s body.

With another snap of my fingers, the snow melted into water. Not even a second later, a lightning current flowed through the wave of water. Flexia conjured her own lightning all over her body to ward off my attacks, but I focused on one specific spot of her body to break through.

It was quick. There was nothing showy about it.

A massive electric shock smashed against her chest and into her heart, causing it to stop instantly. Without even giving any parting words, Flexia’s lifeless body fell onto the floor.

I was sure the musclemancer was dead so I quickly turned to Iova.

“Keeeendraa!” Iova was already up and rushing up to me. She had a huge face of relief with tears flowing down her cheeks.

Ah… Thank the Goddess, she’s alright.

“Seriously, Iova. Don’t worry me like that…” I chuckled as I approached her. Iova’s arms were wide, and she was ready to give me a big hug. Normally I would dodge out of the way, but I guessed that she deserve this one.

Instead of Iova slamming into me with a hug, I felt something bony colliding at me.

Eh?

“Teleport!”

Instantly, I was teleported a few steps away from Iova. At the same time, the person that collided into me summoned magical vines to shoot out and grab hold of Iova.

“Master! What in the Abyss are you doing?!” I shouted as Master threw me out of his embrace.

“Oh ho! What’s this? Why is Mr. Teacher attacking me? Hmmm?” Iova calmly asked as her entire body was imprisoned by numerous roots.

“Master! The one that attacked me was Felixia! The bubbly girl! Iova’s fine!” I added as I pointed at the musclemancer’s corpse.

“Okay, kid. Shut up for a moment.” Master turned to Iova and asked, “How the hell did you get past me the entire time? I didn’t even realized you killed my shadow minions until it was already too late.”

“Feh.. I didn’t think you were the actual threat. So you were the one that actually stopped my fellows at Angolia, huh?” Iova said. “They said it was the heroes and not the masked weirdo.”

“Iova, what are you talking about?” I asked.

“It’s hard for me to talk so first…” Iova didn’t even chant anything, but her entire body started glowing in purple light, and the vines holding onto her evaporated into nothing. When the vines failed to do what they were supposed to do, Master tried to cage her in with some kind of near-divine spell.

Transparent bird wings appeared out of nowhere and tried to surround Iova, but again, she managed to break through Master’s cage without effort.

“Bah. Satel, neither your spells nor mine work. We’re going to hit her with divine spells,” Master said to himself.

Satel?

I heard a voice speaking from where Master was standing, “Alright! It’s been a while since I fought one of my own kind!”

I could sense that Master was going on use some extremely destructive spell so I stood in front of him.

“Dagnabbit, Kendra! What are you doing?!” Master shouted.

“Why are you attacking Iova?!” I screamed back.

“You idiot! That’s not Iova!” he exclaimed.

What?

I turned to Iova with a dumbfounded expression.

“Hehehe… Bahahaha! So there was two of you? Fine, I guess I’ll have to use my trump card here.” Iova laughed, then abruptly crouched down in pain. Without warning, a small humanoid burst forth from her chest. “Lady Abyss, hear my plea!”

The tiny human held up a blade made out of void light. It glowed even through the blood, and I could see the stars across the void shining brightly like looking up at the night sky.

“Shit! Does every fairy have an instant-summon-The-Abyss knife?!” Master cursed as he pushed me aside.

Just as he was about to cast a spell, the tiny human cut her hand with the blade. Black lines began forming a cage around Master until it trapped him in a large partially transparent black box.

“What the hell is this thing?!” Master shouted as he stopped casting his spell.

“Curious? If you touch the walls, you’ll be teleported into the realm of Lady Abyss,” the tiny human explained. “Sadly, it’s used to create a fixed trap, so I can’t shrink the box to teleport you straight to Lady Abyss.”

“Great, if it’s not an instant-summon-The-Abyss, it’s instant-summon-you-to-The-Abyss,” Master grumbled.

“Now, then, Kendra. I’m afraid this is where you die,” the tiny human said as it started flying up with insect-like wings. “It’ll be fine, though. At least you get to join the dead girl.”

I stared at Iova’s corpse peacefully lying on the forest floor.

She’s dead?

What’s going on?

How did this happen?

Why?

“Kid! Start moving!” I could hear Master shouting, but where was he?

The whole world is spinning. Where’s the floor?

Why did Iova die?

It’s because of that thing.

That thing?

Yes. That little thing - the demon. You must avenge the girl.

But how could I? I’m too weak.

Simple. Go through the Doors.

I looked up at the sky. He was floating up in the air, uncaring about the world. The incomplete faceless clown that would always be close to me wherever I was; always whispering to me.

I tried to reach out to him. Slowly, his entire body faded in, and something touched my shoulders. I turned to find another faceless clown grabbing onto my shoulders with its rubbery hands.

You see me.

So, make this world yours.

What? How?

Lash out at the demon. Go ahead.

I held out my hand towards the demon and clenched my hand as if I was trying to choke her from a distance.

The demon sensed something was wrong so she teleported a few steps away from where she was standing just as a vortex of air exploded on the spot she was standing.

Unsatisfactory!

I felt the world freeze as the explosion moved itself to where the demon was standing.

What was happening? Reality flickered over and over as the explosion moved closer and closer to the demon, until finally…

The world stopped flickering and the explosion engulfed the demon. The tiny human was sent flying, but recovered mid-air. “Bahaha! I see! So you’re also aware of true magic.”

The demon threw waves of black light at me, slashing my body at multiple angles.

My arm! It’s..

It’s cut off!

I couldn’t even feel the pain even as my body was ridden with large cuts. I only felt anger. Unsatisfied. Unfulfilled.

This isn’t what I wanted. I must…

The world began to blink and flicker. My arm reattached itself in one moment, and in another, it was cut off again. Every flicker and blink produced different slices at different parts of my body.

At one point, even my head was cut off.

Will this keep going forever? When will this stop?

No… I get it.

I willed faceless clowns my orders and they obeyed. Without even realizing it, I found myself a few steps from where I was supposed to be at.

The world stopped changing as the waves of black light sliced the ground next to me. Did the demon miss because I moved? No… was it because the wave of light moved? Yet, I felt like nothing ever moved.

“Hoh, you’re a natural at this,” the demon remarked.

I looked down at my arm, but everything was too blurry. Changing reality repeatedly had started to take a toll on me both physically and mentally.

I wanted to vomit.

But Iova…

I wanted to fall down and sleep.

But Iova…

I wanted to stop this.

But Iova…

Iova…

Something in me snapped.

Confusion and disorientation became anger and concentration.

Master’s teachings resonated within my head.

“Drink milk to become bigger!”

No, not that.

“Understand the world, and it will understand your intentions.”

I sliced the air with my dagger, and a fireball shot out from my blade. I spun my body then produced another fireball, then another, and another.

I forced the world to shift, and the fireballs were gone. I conjured more fireballs, then forced the world to change reality again. Once more, I created fireballs, but this time, I didn’t force the world to shift.

I want those fireballs here now.

Dozens of fireballs materialized out of nowhere and all hurled themselves at the demon. She raised barriers in every directions with multiple layers, blocking or redirecting every fireball I threw at her.

But I was never a person for doing things one at a time only.

I was already behind her by the time she realized that I was missing from where I was standing. I swung my dagger at the demon, and realized that her body had seemingly moved out of my attack after reality flickered.

I forced the world to shift in the last second.

“Bullsh-” The dagger split the small demon into half, splattering her organs everywhere. I plunged my dagger downwards and crushed the demon’s head just to be sure.

When the black box surrounding Master disappeared, I was sure the demon was dead.

“You did it, Kendra! That’s my student for y-”

“Get out of my way!” I pushed him aside as I rushed up to Iova’s body.

Crouching down, my hands nervously shook as it hovered over Iova, not knowing what to do. Her lifeless eyes stared vacantly at the sky, and blood was dripping from her mouth. I tried to cover the large gaping wound over Iova’s chest, but I was sure that it wasn’t helping at all.

But there was a tinge of hope that maybe… it’ll be alright.

Even as a shadow cast over me, I didn’t stop holding down Iova’s wound.

“She’s dead,” Master remarked.

No.

“Fairies… I mean demons are known to snatch bodies of people and even control them for many years. She must’ve been dead for a while now.”

You’re wrong.

“Even before I started teaching, I think.”

“SHUT UP!” I shouted.

Master held up his hands and muttered, “Geez, alright. Chill out.”

“I-I’m sorry. I…”

Wait…

I turned to him quickly and asked, “You can use healing magic, right? You know, the one that could seal wounds like this, right?”

“Even if you seal the wound, you won’t raise the dead, Kendra,” Master replied.

Raise the dead…

“That’s it! Raise the dead! It could work, right?!” I quickly turned my attention back to Iova. I began preparing my spell when Master crouched in front of me.

“That’s impossible. She’s been dead for too long, and if you’re not extremely good at necromancy, you’ll just have a lifeless groaning corpse,” he answered.

While it was true that I was only a novice at necromancy, there was someone here who would fit the bill of being ‘extremely good’ at necromancy.

“Then… you can raise her back to life? Resurrect her?” I asked.

Master paused and remained silent for what I would have thought to be the longest minute of my entire life.

“True necromancy. Using your friend over there, it’s possible. But, only you will be able to do it. I don’t know Iova at all,” he replied.

My friend? The faceless clowns?

“Your memories of her will be the key. But it’s seriously risky,” Master explained.

“I don’t care.”

I raised my head and noticed that there were not one, not two clowns - there were dozens of faceless clowns hovering above me. They were all staring at me.

I bet if they could, they would all each have a huge smile plastered all over their faces.

"Good luck." Master pressed his hand against my chest then pushed me.

I fell backwards…

...and never reached the ground.