The Knight Captain made his way back to the tent to conduct his business. The staff were busy serving papers and organizing the armory, but when he entered, a Knight announced his appearance before resuming his duties. The Knight Captain continued forward into his private office and saw that a large weapon was partially spilling over his desk. The Knight Captain looked over the weapon very carefully. It was similar to a voulge, but the metal was longer and covered roughly a quarter of the pole.

The metal itself gave off a blue glow and was consistent with what the Knight Captain knew of mithril weaponry. He lifted the halberd and found that it was quite light for its size, and looked at the etching on the pommel of the weapon. The markings were an array of sorts, but the Knight Captain had no understanding of the array and therefore had no use for comprehending it. The etching of the wolf eating the man twisted along the wood that made the pole, and it looked particularly ferocious. When the Knight Captain held the pole in both hands the wolf gave off a red glow. The weapon in the hands of the Knight Captain looked particularly fearsome, the guards found it hard to look at the man when he wielded the pole cleaver.

"I need eight volunteers for guard duty. Line up in ten seconds for extra pay." The Knight Captain called out from his private office. Eight Knights quickly lined up and saluted. Two by two, the four teams were dispatched to guard Sir Rowan, Sir Kris, Mark and Eli. The best method of protecting them involved twenty four hour guard duty, so the Knights were commanded to swift shifts at twelve hour intervals until told to stop. The Knights saluted again and the Knight Captain passed out eight separate bags of advanced pay for the guard mission.

Willem had dropped off the items as part of phase two, and now that it was done he could continue with his creations. He returned to his Private Sanctum after moving his shadow into the next class. The place was devoid of all noise except for the gentle pitter patter of claws striking floor. Apparently Willem had interrupted the White Tiger Cub while she was voraciously attacking a pillow from the bed. Seeing that her Master had returned, she proudly marched over with the torn apart pillow showing off her kill. Willem patted her head and thought about how she had yet to properly kill. If he found the time, he would teach her how to hunt properly.

Willem moved to the study room and the White Tiger Cub mewled from the entrance of the room. She had learned very quickly not to enter the study room or she would be punished severely. Willem tossed out from his spatial spell the broken pieces of the Astral Spider. It was time to drain it and craft his own armor. The Astral Spider was an ideal set for Willem, as it was thin enough to be hidden under robes but tough enough to not be broken by many monsters under level six. Willem hung the carapace on a line and placed a pot below to catch the draining blood. He then drug the fleshy meat from the body and threw it into another nearby pot. Finally he took the spider legs and ripped the tender meat inside before draining the blood out of them.

Though thoroughly messy, his efforts bore fruit quickly. The blood drained and the pieces were finally clean enough to start crafting with. First, Willem took out some of his strongest potions that he had for materials in the creation of magical armor. The potions came at a relatively high cost, even considering his position. The acquisition of the herbs cost alot of lives of both Knights and Mages.

Willem concentrated on cutting the large carapace to fit his body, finely contouring it using the sharp edge of a mithril dagger. After crafting it according to his size, he found that in order to properly fit it, he needed some kind of brace to combine it. He took from his spatial spell a spool of spider gossamer and intertwined the back and front of the Astral Spider armor. For the pauldrons, he broke apart the extra spider pieces and layered them closely together. The end result was interwoven shoulder armor that used alot of extra material but created much more protection.

Willem set up a ward against the study room so that no one would bother him while he worked. The White Tiger Cub quietly sat against the door frame, fixated on the spider meat currently in one of the pots.

Willem took the sharp mithril dagger and began to inscribe the runic symbols while pouring the high level potion into the body armor. The runes gave off an intense glow of white, the same color of the potion, like the armor was breathing and pulsing with life. The potion bottle shook gently as if it did not wish to part with whatever elixir was inside it.

After some time had passed, Willem was finished with his newly crafted Astral Spider armor. The gossamer was just barely showing from beneath the folds of the armor, but it gave the outer edges of the armor a pale white glow. The glow matched well with the pure black color of the armor, making it appear as if it had been forged by the fallen gods themselves. The pieces hid perfectly beneath his robes, and only those he allowed to know would actually be aware that he wore armor.

The time had come, and Willem was sure that Anna had accomplished what she had set out to do. Before he left, he took down the ward in the study room and fed the Cub some of the spider's meat. The Cub had a hard time chewing through it but indulged itself off the rich taste of the meat.

Willem disappeared into the darkness of his desk and returned to the Magic Academy.

During Willem's excursion.

Anna had thought about how she would seek revenge against those who did her wrong. First, she would target the men who had physically abused her. Once her first class was finished, she followed the red strings that converged on their own. Four boys had gotten together after the first classes ended, as they often did, and she was now no more than twenty feet away from them with her head down and face obscured. The four boys had gathered together and headed towards their second class together. On the way, they harassed other students whom had accidentally stepped into their path. Anna followed them twenty paces, then used darkness magic to invade their minds.

The force of the mind magic made their brains go numb, and the four male students stood in the hall with a blank look on their face. During that time, Anna pervaded their mind to find out what dirty secrets they held. She found the perfect target in one of the boys, as she saw that he was brought up without a Mother. His Father was a drunk hunter whom would often beat him mercilessly after coming home to an unsuccessful outing. The boys days were often filled with foraging for food on the outskirts of town by slipping through a small crack in the wall of the Bastion of Hope. One day he found out that he could cast magic while he was out foraging for food. He had come under siege against a large wolf and hid himself in the small barrow of an old oak tree. The tree could not withstand the constant scrapings of the wolf claws, and in his moment of need a single word shouted out in his mind. "Fire!" The boy yelled while pointing his hands at the wolf.

The wolf caught aflame as a torrent of fire burst forth from the boys hand. The howls of the crazed wolf only stemmed the nightmare that would permeate the mind of the young boy, even after the threat had long been gone. The wolf screamed and howled with a crazed fury, but eventually burned away before reaching his meal. When the boy returned to the Bastion of Hope, he immediately applied to the Magic Academy to escape his previous life. He rose quickly in the rankings until he got to Advanced Fire Mage two year later, but stagnated and could progress no further. In his anger, he began to lash out at anyone who crossed him, the way his Father did to him. It became an endless cycle of him abusing those around him as an outlet for his own inability to advance. To Anna, this was a perfect candidate to begin her revenge.

She began by manipulating his fury, forcing it to bubble to the top. Next, she implanted in his mind that he was in back in the woods outside the Bastion of Hope, where he was surrounded by wolves and was trapped in the small barrow once more. She let go of the mind magic, while removing all traces that she was ever there and watched as events unfolded.

Out of nowhere, the male student exploded in fury, targeting the nearest person to him. The male student grappled the boy to his right and set him on fire, burning his clothes and body in a brilliant wave of flame. The male student then swung his fist backward into the face of the boy behind him. Before anyone could react, he grabbed the boy and began burning his face off. Finally, he turned to the last boy who had tried to run away in horror. The male student jumped forward and grabbed onto the back of the running boy, his hands turning into a penetrating flame that melted the skin off the kids back. He tore the boys spine out of his body and threw it across the hallway. The students screamed out in horror as they watched the events unfold.

In a mere few seconds, a quiet normal day had turned into a picture of the demonic realm itself. Three boys were being burned alive while the perpetrator cried out in lament as if he had his soul taken from him.

The male student continued on his rampage, destroying objects around him and attempting to maim the students in his clouded vision. In his mind he was no longer the kid stuck in the barrow fending for his life, but he was still surrounded by wolves. In his mind, he was finally taking his revenge on the monsters that had filled his nightmares for years. A few of the Advanced Mages nearby did their best to restrain him, but the controlled state of the Advanced Mages could not compare to the unbridled fury of the Advanced Fire Mage. In his mind the wolves had clamped their fangs onto his body and he felt his life slipping away. In his anger, he burned away the wolves and in response, his body burned and the Advanced Mages caught aflame with him until they could no longer suppress him.

The state of the boy raged on for five minutes until a Grand Mage answered the summon to suppress the student. No amount of talking the Grand Mage did calmed the boy, and in the end the Grand Mage of Water, Sveld, was forced to put the boy down for his own good.

Now that the boy was broken, the Grand Mage could approach him and heal his mind. Before the boy passed away, his mind was cleansed of fury by the healing magic of the Water Mage.

His last words were a cry of demons pretending to be wolves.