Chapter 9: Savior

As the fireball came closer to me, I clad my body in mana to minimize the damage.

Boom

The fireball didn't hit me. I again looked back and found an old man with white hair and a beard that reached all the way to his stomach. He had blue robes on him and a wizards hat on his head. He looked at me as a weird grin formed on his face.

Ah I hate this bastard.

The wizard cast a magic circle of his own. Unlike the lich, it was a faster and more fierce fireball that completely disintegrated the lich in a matter of seconds. 

The homunculi however, did not disappear. I put one last push into my legs and managed to get out of the pinned down position. As rolled to the side, chains came from magic circles around the giant and pinned it to the ground.

"Quite the nice specimen you have there for me" The old man said in a cheerful tone as he placed a hand on the giant's head. As soon as he did that, the giant fell unconscious.

"Shut–" As I tried to say something, I coughed up blood on the ground. My mind started going hazy and I kept hearing some voices in my head. I quickly took a bottle of pills from my pocket and took three at once.

"You still take them?" The old man asked in a weary tone.

I didn't reply as I sat in a meditating pose to calm the energy that was going rampant within me. 

After a few years of joining the army, when I started going on battles, I used to encounter this kind of problems when I exhausted my mana to a certain point.

My whole body would be in pain and my mind would start to go hazy. Strange voices would appear in my head telling me just one thing, 'Kill'.

I once killed an entire allied unit because of this. Back then I was still unaware of this problem. I have to use mana drugs from time to time to prevent another disaster like that from happening.

As I could feel my body calm down, I opened my eyes. I could see the old wizard treating Sakura, who was now lying in a blood pool. This old man was amazing no matter how many times I saw him.

He, Aurum Bohr, was the current headmaster of Avalon, the academy of the Empire, where only the children of the noble go to. He is also the only 8th circle magician in the continent making him one of the strongest as well.

"Was the lich forcing her to do the alchemy?" I asked the headmaster as I got up from the ground with the help of my sword.

"Seems so… But to think someone who has the skills to make a homunculi would exist in a place like this."

As we were talking about her, her eyes twitched, indicating she was waking up. Aurum's healing was more effective than a priest and yet he doesn't use any divine energy.

Cough Cough

Sakura started to cough up blood. Her blood was black and they seemed to melt the floor as smokes seemed to come from it. Her breathing started to get ragged. I looked at the old man but his face seemed to say that it was normal. 

As Sakura slowly opened her eyes, she looked at me and then at the old man and the surroundings. She repeated this process a few times before going unconscious again.

"She's completely exhausted. Poor child" The old man got up from his kneeling position and turned towards me. "So you finally decided to leave the army and yet you didn't tell me? So what are you doing now?" 

"I am trying to be an adventurer now"

"Ho ho ho! So the Bloody dragon is just an adventurer now? What a loss" said him as he was stroking his beard. It seemed like he was brewing something.

"So… How come you are here?" Not paying attention to his gestures I asked him in a serious tone.

"A demon in the middle of the town summoning a homunculi of this degree… Don't you find it abnormal?"

"..."

"I got reports of a certain cult that started to cause problems here and there. Since it was an urgent matter, I came here myself. Seems like the report was true" he continued. "Anyways…"

He put his hands on my shoulders as his eyes shone like a bright star. "Adrian, come to my academy. You could become a great professor. And who knows, you might even find solutions to your disease as Avalon is a treasure trove of knowledge."

He certainly was brewing something. "I will think–"

"THINK ABOUT IT! Being a professor and teaching the young ones would be much more enjoyable than just collecting herbs and killing goblins"

"I need some ti–"

"I will be going back to the academy. Meet me as soon as possible." That old geezer then disappeared into a portal that appeared from who knows where taking the white giant with him. He didn't even give me a chance to say anything.

Sigh

I looked around that place for a while. Such a large basement under a cemetery was impossible to be built in a few days. And such large construction won't be noticed by others? Impossible. The only possible explanation is that it was created by a mage. An earth mage with very advanced knowledge.

I picked Sakura up and went back to the alchemy shop. It was pretty late at night. But I just couldn't leave her alone in this state.

Sigh, why is living normally so hard?

I placed her sleeping body on the bed inside her workshop and went outside in the lobby. There was a nice chair by the counter which I decided to use as my resting place.

I sat on the chair and laid my back on its rails and closed my eyes. I used this time to meditate instead of sleeping.

I developed the habit of meditating whenever I could. This calmed my inner self. I used to always meditate instead of sleeping when I was on the battlefield. This allowed me to stay vigilant and at the same time rest my body. However I get an extreme headache from time to time because of this.

The night soon passed and the rising sun started to illuminate the town. Meditating makes time go faster. Only If I could learn this technique sooner.

As I stood up from the chair, I stretched my body.

!!!

As I heard a creaking noise from behind, I found out that it was Sakura who opened the door.

"Kyaak!" As she looked at me, she screamed in surprise. "What are you doing here?"

"... Do you perhaps not remember what happened last night?"

"Last… night? AHHH! HOW AM I ALIVE???"

Seriously, this girl is crazy. "I sensed some demonic energy when I happened to be near the cemetery, as a result you are alive. But I believe you got some explaining to do"

"Sigh. Come inside"

I came inside her room and sat on the chair she gave me. She sat across from me on her bed.

"So the truth is–"