My feet pound on the wooden ramp as it lowers to the stone landing, Eshya soon following, and Vii by my side floating on the wind. The academy world is just as we left it with the tall tree still offering shade from far above, and Nel healthy and waiting for our return.

She stands on the stone path, her hands nervously clutched before her as her eyes shine in the orange light of the coming dawn. She looks healthy, though her expression is stiff. She’d said in the messages that her injuries weren’t so bad and that they were already healed, but I wasn’t quite ready to believe her before seeing for myself.

I leap at her, wrapping her up in my arms ignoring the mess that I’m leaving on her clothes. For some reason we weren’t offered any cleansing stones during our stay, and the results are only made the more obvious as they’re rubbed on the otherwise clean Nel.

A dozen hard shapes jab into me, but they’re not mana dense enough to cause anything more than discomfort. For a moment my anxiety gets the better of me and a little water leaks from my eyes, I rub it away as frustration and anger fill me up all over again.

“Nel.” I say her name, as I feel her warm under my touch.

“I’m fine.” She says, running her hand over my head as the others follow after me. “I’m alright, I’ve already been healed.”

“What happened?” I ask, pulling away from our hug and looking around for any potential threats. My mana form already focused on combat, I can feel a fireball burning inside, ready to come out.

“I’ll explain, but first follow me.” Nel says, leading us deeper into the academy. “To put it simply, a door was opened in our base and a beast came through and attacked us. It killed one person, a human, before I managed to stop it with some help from the others. Wally is still safe, as well as his devices.”

“How did it get in? Shouldn’t the doors have been locked?” Eshya asks, her fingers twitching by her side as she reaches for a sword that isn’t there.

“Ria believes that someone tampered with the other side of the doors and opened them from there.” Nel says, “We haven’t been back down since, so we haven’t had the chance to confirm it.”

“Who would do something like that?” Vii asks, “We haven’t even had the chance to annoy anyone so bad yet.”

“Well, apparently we have.” I say before turning to the silent welfare officer, “Adler?”

“Yes?” She asks hesitantly.

“Since there’s been no response from the welfare officers, I’m guess we’re on our own in this?” I ask.

She quietly nods, opening her mouth as if to say something more but stops. I hope that her collar isn’t playing up, else everything is going to get more difficult from here.

“We’ll prepare to head down.” I say, “Is there anything else we need to know?”

“A few things.” Nel says, “When the human was killed the rest came back up here, to their old residence. Unfortunately, the welfare officers have decided to collar some of the students. Those that never came to class.”

“Shit.” I swear under my breath trying to take it all in, “Wally?”

“He’s fine. As I understand he takes his classes seriously. The real problem comes from the rest of the humans, after going through these two events… they want to go back home.”

“Well, good luck to them.” I say shaking my head, “When it rains, it pours. Just another shitstorm. Alright, we can deal with this…”

“There is some good news.” Nel says, leading us into the empty community housing area, “Wally has really stepped up. I honestly doubted you when you were saying he was important, but…

“He works well with the pervert smith, and rather unexpectedly, with Ria too. They constructed a rather interesting prototype weapon. It’s what I used to defeat the beast when it invaded our base.” She says, opening a door to a quiet building.

Inside I see Wally working at his computer, Ria and the smith sit at a table looking over various metal, bone, and wooden parts. They glance up at us briefly before returning to their conversation, a little twitchy, but seemingly excited.

“I’m telling you, we can’t get any more metal than this.” The smith says, “I’ve scraped by while working on my personal projects before and I know what we can get away with. We do not want the welfare officers finding out about this.”

“Besides,” Ria chimes in, “Larger weapons are too dangerous to have around until we return to the ruins. We can’t just walk these things down the main street.”

“I’m just planning ahead.” Wally replies grumpily, “These won’t be enough, and where are we on that mana battery idea. Not all of us can spare the mana, we need a weapon that works in isolation from the mana form of the user. It’ll also let us better stabilise the output and make our weapons more consistent.”

“Ah, hello?” I say, pulling out the crumpled pipe gun, “If you need metal, you can have this back.”

“Every little bit counts… you really pushed some power through this thing.” Wally says, looking it over before pulling something out from a desk draw and handing it to me.

A pistol with a polished bone grip that’s so small it only sits half in the hand, and a shiny metal barrel that’s only a couple inches long. A few hints of the perverted smiths design have made it into the product, but only in the rather spicy engravings on the small grip. Thankfully, whether through luck or forethought, the imagery is only of a feminine persuasion.

Alongside it is a small leathery pouch, which contains a good few dozen balls, each bone white and only a few millimetres across. They’ve been precisely engraved with some sort of magic, but they’re strangely lacking in any mana.

“A pistol?” I ask, lifting it and trying to get a feel for it in my hand. It’s a little small, reminding me of the really old pistols kept for self-defence. There is no magazine like I’d expect out of a modern gun, rather there’s a small locking mechanism over the back of the barrel which is probably where it’s loaded.

“It serves the purpose of a pistol.” Wally replies, “I’d like more time to work on it before letting it be used, but it seems you have a war to fight.”

“It’s already effective.” Nel says, pulling one of her own out from nowhere. It’s small enough that I can already predict that she’ll be hiding a bunch them on her like she does with her knives.

“How does it work?” I ask.

“It looks weaker than the last one.” Eshya says, looking down over the one that’s been slid over towards her.

Vii looks over hers with eyes shining bright, it actually fits her smaller hands quite nicely seeing as it can only be held with two fingers and a thumb. She looks down the top of the gun, where a line has been engraved in place of proper sights.

Wally sits up and adjusts his glasses before closing his laptop. He stretches before he turns to face us again, a smug look rising on his lips. He’s not at all the same gremlin I saw when I left, and I think it has something to do with the little crafting group they’ve got together here. I suspect that Nel might have had something to do with getting them working together but I hadn’t expected Ria to join in so easily.

“Try to avoid comparing it to conventional guns. These are something more similar to an air gun, or a bb gun.” He waves the crumpled pipe gun up in his hands, “This prototype functioned purely on force enchantments, thus when the bullet is forced out of the barrel, there is negative air pressure behind the bullet. A stupid mistake that I made, because I had so few magics to work with.

“With these new pistols, both force and air enchantments are used to launch the projectile. Thankfully, the enchantment deals with most of the difficulties that I anticipated we’d run into. We opened a small air channel and had it enchanted to compress the air and force it behind the projectile, though as with the whole prototype, there is still room to improve.

“The next issue with designing a projectile weapon, was the mana density of a projectile. In order to do damage, it needs high mana density, but that makes it terribly inefficient to launch.”

“Ordinarily,” The smith cuts in, “Someone just needs to grow stronger to wield more mana dense equipment, but we found a way around that with this weapon.”

“We fire a 3b­— a, uh, bone bb, as we made them out of bone-” Wally begins, before being cut off.

“The bones from that room you cleared for me,” Ria cuts in excitedly, a little twitchy and energetic, her gaze moving between us before she starts humming quietly.

“Yes, we fire a 3b when it is nearly mana-less.” Wally continues, “And feed it mana in the barrel after it’s been launched.”

“I get the feeling you want me to ask. How does that work?” I say, looking over the complicated enchantments on the small pistol.

“Crystalised mana, suspended in the barrel.” Ria says, shaking her head with a smile, “Crystalised mana is unstable in the air, and can attach to a solid or a liquid that comes into contact with it. Though usually it will break apart and liquefy in low mana density air before it can.

“So, I enchanted the barrel to force dense mana out into the air within the barrel a moment ahead of the 3b after it’s been launched. The mana is dense enough to crystalise and gets absorbed into the 3b, which is now mana dense enough to do real damage.”

“Get to the best part.” Wally says excitedly, leaning forwards on his chair.

“The 3b’s have been enchanted with an empty spell. That is to say the enchantments are dead until the 3b absorbs sufficient mana to feed them. Understandably, when a 3b hits a target it’s not likely to be recovered easily, so it is far better for the mana inside to be used against the target. Thus, explosive enchantments…”

“Explosive rounds?” I ask, giving the little 3b’s a closer inspection. The little marks that cover them, remind me of everything else I’ve seen that’s been enchanted, but I can see nothing with my mana senses. I’ll have to take a few classes on enchantments alongside the infusion that I’m already working with. As it is, the types of magic that Ria makes with her enchantments are incredibly diverse.

“How did you get the mana out of the bone?” Vii asks, as she looks over the small bag of projectiles.

The room suddenly grows quiet, as the crafters look between one another nervously. They’re clearly a little embarrassed. All but the smith.

“We ate them.” The large smith says, “It’s a bother to clean them after they come back out, but art requires a certain measure of dedication. That, and none of us knew of an alchemist that we wanted to bring into our project.”

“Oh…” Vii carefully replaces the 3b she was looking at back into the small pouch.

“We’re currently looking into a loading mechanism.” Wally says, pulling the conversation away from the last topic. “I have plenty of examples to work off of, so it shouldn’t take too long, as long as we don’t get attacked again.”

“You won’t be hurt on the surface.” Alder cuts in, “Just be careful of welfare officers.”

“Always good advice.” The smith grumbles, “I think that was enough of a break. Let’s get back to work.”

“First,” I cut in before they fall completely into their own world, “Ria, can you come with us and help us work on some doors down in the ruins?”

“Oh, yes.” She says, nodding nervously a few times, before picking up a pair of pistols and awkwardly burying them in her dress. “The doors were… it was my responsibility. I should…”

“It’s not your fault.” I say, meeting her crystalline eyes, “But, I need your help to find out exactly what happened, and help us ensure that it doesn’t happen again.”

She nods, a little more sure of herself now. It’s not like she hasn’t gotten herself mixed up in violence before, it was her help that got us through the last fight in the ruins.

“Be careful.” Wally says, looking between us, but focusing especially on Ria.

“I’ll be fine.” She replies firmly, giving him a small nod before turning back to me. “Are we going now?”

“Yep. Eshya? That sword we first found in the ruins. Is it still the best on hand?”

“It is.” She says with a nod and a smile, “I can get it, just give me a few moments. I’ll meet with you at the top of the elevator to our base.”

“Alright. Is there anything I’m forgetting?” I ask everyone, as we head out into the sunlight. My muscles ache from the long days spent walking, and the fights, and all the rest of the nonsense I've been involved in through the last week. I was hoping for a chance to get a break, but it seems we have to deal with this first.

“I’m ready.” Nel says, “It only happened today, but even waiting this long has left me unsettled.”

“How did you get healed?” I ask after a moment’s thought. Healing magic is the one thing that we’ve been lacking all this time.

“Someone I work with,” She replies, “She’s not ready to fall into our mess, and to be honest she’s a little too soft hearted for it. We can rely on her to assist us after something has occurred, but we should avoid bringing her along for anything. She has already assured me that she won’t ask questions or go to the welfare officers.”

“Um…” Vii perks up, lifting the little pistol in her half hand, “How do you make these work? Not the magics and design, but how do I make it go shooty?”

“Here, I’ll show you.” Nel says, snapping the lock back and revealing a loaded bullet—it just sounds so much better than bb, or 3b, or whatever. Like with the last prototype there’s an enchantment to keep the bullet locked into place.

“Hold it like this, and then feed your mana into the enchantment here. It shouldn’t be too difficult with how the enchantment is made. You’ll feel it fill up a moment before it fires. You do have to be careful; it uses a good chunk of mana.”

Eshya doesn’t leave us waiting for long, joining us at the top of the elevator shaft that leads down into the ruins that used to be our base. Something that I’m rather eager to reclaim.

“Are you alright with me being here?” Adler asks, uncertain in herself as she stands beside us.

“You’ve been with us this long. Unless you feel like you need to look away or interfere in this then there’ll be no problem.” I say, “It’s essentially just another beast hunt.”

“It was a person behind opening the door.”

“An intelligent beast.” I say slowly and firmly, “They set a violent monster on my people, getting someone killed and clearly intending worse. They’re a beast, and lucky us, that’s what we’re getting trained to deal with.”

Adler nods slowly, sadly. I can’t tell for sure, but we may have to watch our backs. The others look between me and Adler with some caution so at least I don’t need to tell them to watch out for her.

I take a moment to rework my mana form, I’m not going to get jumped while I have nothing good invested into mana skin. While shifting around my investments, I’ve finally reached an interesting point in my mana form development.

My main efficiency is now no longer enough to max out my investments across my body. As such, I lower my mana senses to spread my mana defensively throughout everything else.

Eventually, once my body has gotten used to mana, I’ll be able to set up a few different mana form sets to focus on different tasks. Heavy investment into my skin and muscle for combat, stronger mana senses for when working on any sort of crafting, and lowered body investment when I need the free mana for spell casting.

After distributing my mana how I’d like it, I get onto the elevator.

“Let’s go.” I say, ensuring that the rest are ready.

The ride down is quiet as we all hold tightly to our weapons, ready to fight. I doubt the people behind this will be right here, but if the door was left open, it’s likely that some beasts will have found their way in.

The doors open into the familiar underground rooms. There’s a quiet and a stillness that is all too familiar, but I see nothing dangerous. We stalk through the halls checking every room and having Ria look over each door to ensure it’s as secure as we can make it.

It doesn’t take long for us to find the lower levels where the fight took place. The corpse of the beast is right by the open door, and it’s clearly been cut apart by someone familiar with butchery.

It’s not wild beasts that came to chew on its corpse, rather it seems a greedier form of beast has come by.

“We didn’t do that.” Nel answers before anyone asks.

“Then it had to be those who sent it.” I say, looking over the half butchered remains. “Why did they leave it half finished?”

“Were they interrupted?” Eshya asks.

“Or they just aren’t finished yet.” Vii says, “They might be coming back to finish the rest later. If it was students, maybe they had class.”

“So, they could be showing up any moment?” I ask, running my hand over the fleshy remains, sucking the mana in.

“Ria, can you take a look at that door? See what was done to it?”

She nods, as we head out and secure the hallway as she works her magic. Her steps are cautious around the corpse, even though it’s clearly dead and gone. We watch the darkened halls beyond for threats, but thankfully it remains quiet.

“It was definitely tampered with from out here, it was no-one inside that did this.” Ria says, in her pretty voice, “I think they attached the door to a remote switch.”

“Can you do something about it?” I ask.

“If I shut it down they can always just do the same thing again, but I guess I can swap out the switch. Though, I’m not sure how much good that would do.”

“Hey Kyra?” Eshya looks at me with her eyes shining, and a dark evil smile rising on her lips, “I have an idea.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Skills & Stats

~Mana Form:

Current mana density: 745 units

~Mana distribution:

Catagory Current Max. Skin 24% 24% Muscle 12% 12% Mind 22% 30% Cardiovascular 11% 11% Misc. 10% 10% Efficiency 79% 79%

~Skills:

~Mana sense

~Mana drain touch

~Mana skin

~Mana shield.

~Mana surge strike

~Mana surge kick

~Grapple

~Flame burst

~Fireball

~Infused delayed casting

~Harsh petting

~Chaos dance

~Multi-mind messenger