8 Surprise

The afternoon classes were uneventful. Many of those who had initially looked at me hostile now had a look of fear in their eyes.

This is the position that all people in power vie for, a position of true dominance over the weak. I can't say I was doing a good job at suppressing my ambitious need for power. Ever since I dropped into this world, it was as if a switch had flipped around, and I found myself wanting to prove my worth even more than before.

It is, however, still vitally important to not be reckless. Recklessness is a weakness, and clear provocations would hardly do much to help your case.

Aside from the uneventful school life, there was one anomaly, in the middle of the week.

Monday, the day of the entrance examination, and Tuesday had both been peaceful. Wednesday, however, was a completely different story.

In the middle of an afternoon lecture on Astronomy and Physics, the school alarm suddenly sounded. As there were no instructions on what to do in such cases, most of the students curiously asked around.

"What's going on?"

"Ms. Freyrs, is there any information?"

"Calm down!" Marie Freyrs, the A-class Physics and Astronomy lecturer, yelled. "I have as much information as the rest of you do!"

Something felt off. It was similar to...

Yes, it was similar to that time. But why would they be here? It can't be, is it possible that the same magic that brought me here brought [that] here as well?

I felt myself instinctively shiver as a response. That time, I had gone along to dispatch [that thing] with my parents...

It ended in success, but more than half of the S-rank mages ended up dead in that fight.

I could feel it getting closer and closer.

No matter, magic was free in this world, right? So others should be able to take care of it?

But even then...

"To the shelters!" the class was jolted awake from the shock by a voice that sounded in the hallways.

Panicked, most of my classmates rushed to follow everyone else to the shelters, I was the only one to stay behind.

This is not the time for you to be overthinking things, Candace! I mentally slapped myself. If it's a darkness incarnate forme, especially [that], you should be fighting against it, not running like you did before.

Seeing that everyone else was too panicked in the first-ever usage case of the Academie de Magie's alarm system, I quickly opened a nearby window and jumped out.

The classroom wasn't very far up, so it was a simple matter to climb out and touch the floor.

I felt the fluctuation from the west. Seeing that no one was around, I hurriedly whispered a simple flying spell, "Venite ad me venire ad aetheres [Let the skies come to me.]"

I felt the familiar weightlessness kick in, and simply pushed against the ground as I flew straight up in the opposite vector.

Once I was at a comfortable height where I barely felt the air thinning, I headed towards the source, in the forest to the west side of the school.

The gatekeepers hardly noticed them as I was at an altitude far above them, nor did they notice wind fluctuations, because I was not flying with wind.

The flying spell I used was a mid-level advanced one. It was made for midair combat, so it was flexible without requiring an overly large amount of energy input or focus.

Simple yet effective, just the way I liked it.

If it had come two days ago I would have been woefully underprepared, but since my arrival in this world, I've had days to prepare various spells, magic circles, and scrolls. The only point of question would perhaps be my combat attire. The simple clothing I had brought from the other world seemed extremely plain compared to my usual, and I lacked my usual cloak that would rid concentration requirements for most spells.

No matter, I was as prepared as I could be at the moment. I even had the time to fashion an extremely crude spellcasting focus that would suffice for low-level spells that required certain material components.

After flying for about five miles west, I could feel the air get noticeably denser with dark energies. The feeling was extremely familiar, yet my intuition told me that this current incarnate forme was different from the one that had destroyed an army of Society Mages five years prior.

As I flew closer, I felt familiar elemental presences. As I didn't intend to reveal everything I knew to the world yet, I cast yet another spell to obscure my presence.

"Quae non videntur esse videtur fiet [what is seen shall become unseen.]" I whispered.

I then renewed my flying spell to have an additional hour of obscured presence in the sky.

"Alright, time to see who it is this time," I muttered under my breath.

I took a deep breath before flying directly into the miasma, to the center of the action. Even though I was far in the sky, the dark energy affected me as well and it became harder and harder to breathe. It could only be worse on the ground.

I heard the sound of fighting on the ground and saw a stack of unconscious bodies to the side.

None of them looked familiar, though they all seemed to be students of the Academie de Magie, based on the uniforms they wore.

Deeper inside, I could hear rough coughing as magic energy swirled around.

It was likely that the miasma would have corrupted these individuals until they were dead. Since it was confirmed that it was a miasma, I expended a small amount of my focus to drop to the ground and cast a simple purification spell on the unconscious individuals before surrounding myself with an extra layer for protection. I felt the magic shimmer around me, purifying the miasma as it passed through.

Instantly, the pressure subsided. However, in this state, it would be impossible to cast any additional spells unless I were to break either of my current ones or resort to using a spell scroll.

An aria was absolutely out of the question. It would be impossible to split my focus between the invisibility spell and the aria channel. At most, I could maintain a weak light barrier if worst came to worst.

Without hesitation, I pulled out two spell scroll from my bag, holding both at the ready in case trouble were to occur.

One was the spell scroll for an ice knife, my favorite low-level offensive spell. It did additional explosion damage when it shattered, in addition to the damage from the spell hit.

The second was a larger scale barrier that I could cast defensively in case I needed to isolate myself to properly channel a purification aria, one of the strongest spells I knew in this situation.

As I ran closer and closer into the thick miasma, it became clearer to me that this was only a small disturbance, completely unlike [that] creature that had invaded Earth so many years ago.

I still felt uncomfortable, but it was clear that this creature was one I could single-handedly take down if it came down to it.

I let out a sigh of relief, before having to quickly jump to the side as a body landed next to me.

To my surprise, it was Fredric Mendoza, my "brother."

As his "sister," I didn't exactly feel as much for him as I was likely "supposed to."

I had no memories in this world from before I came, so it was impossible for me to warm up to him, when his first instinct was to question my motives.

I could say the same for myself, however. If Therese were to show up with a sudden talent differential, I would spare nothing to rid of the intruder.

It seemed that there was an intense battle happening within, so I let go of the barrier I was upkeeping to quickly cast a purification spell on him before heading inside.

I could feel my mental energy draining, so I quickly had a sip of the coffee I had brought along.

Pitifully looking down at him, I only ran deeper into the miasma.

When I got to the center, there was only one standing, Garcia Arvras.

She seemed to be struggling against the forme in front of her.

Now that I was close, the forme that stood tall, exuding miasma in every direction seemed pitiful in comparison to [that] which I had fought years ago.

It seemed that she was in trouble, with most of the teachers and students laying unconscious on the ground.

It seemed that I would have to use the purification aria after dealing a chunk of damage to it.

I quickly shed my invisibility spell, and used three of my ice knife spell scrolls, sending each flying at the forme.

They struck in three different places and subsequently exploded, rendering the forme weakened.

Garcia seemed like she could hardly hold on any longer and collapsed onto the forest floor, but the creature seemed to still be up, with plenty of combat power as it turned its attention to me, black blood dripping over the forest floor.

I used a scroll to cast both entanglement to slow its movement and a holy barrier in front of me, which scared it enough to back off.

So it did have some intelligence after all.

I took a deep breath, and began to concentrate on channeling my aria.

The purifying song, a B-rank aria was not my strongest one, but mastering it was difficult enough.

I opened my mouth and began to sing.

Minutes passed by before the forme realized that I was channeling and useless with no one around to distract, so he charged straight towards me.

My eyes didn't even flicker, my concentration wholly on singing the song that would channel the power of the divine into this area, purifying all darkness.

The forme crashed straight into my barrier, but was deflected as the force of the holy barrier pushed against it, flinging it back a few meters.

Realizing it could not break through, it only continued sloppily running through the vines that encircled my position crashing against the barrier again and again.

It was the fifteenth time it charged that the barrier shattered.

As I could afford no distractions during this precarious time, it was a lucky thing that I was only half a stanza away from finishing.

It stumbled through the thorns once again to reach me, its claw raised, ready to strike.

A split second before it hit, I finished my song.

And the moment it finished, a divine white light came bursting through, starting at my location. The moment the light touched the forme it disintegrated, letting out disgusting, unintelligible screams in the process.

You don't even have a hundredth of the power of [that], and you were thinking to destroy me?

What a joke.

White light continued pouring around me.

Since my work here was done, I used the last of my mental energy to cast an invisibility spell on myself in an attempt to sneak back to school.

Mentally, I was absolutely exhausted, and not even fifty espresso shots could cure me of that.

When I reached the outskirts of the action, where the first group of students I met were, I collapsed onto the ground, letting my eyelids drop.

Naturally, the invisibility spell subsided, but I was too tired to care.