-Chapter 36- Bladed Injury

The bloodlust practically oozes out of all my classmates, they really wanted to take me down and prove themselves. Professor Glory had suggested a mock battle to have me prove myself. I already didn't like her teaching methods, are all teachers in this school just insane?

"Teacher, if I can make a suggestion, how about we put all three of us DC members onto the same team so we can work on our teamwork," Claire suggests to Professor Glory.

"Excellent idea Claire, You, Arthur, and Curtis will be one a team together, as for the other team-" She gets interrupted by a concerned student.

"Isn't that a bit unfair, the DC officers are meant to be the strongest in the school. Plus two of them are upperclassmen." Another student cries out.

"I have an idea, what about the student council taking on the DC officers? Although we will need to find a third due to there only being two student council members here." Professor Glory says.

"I volunteer!" Lucas says.

"I volunteer!" Tessia says.

Two people had tried to take the last spot at the same time. Saya walks over to the teacher and says, "I'm fine with sitting out for this mock battle. One of those two can take my place."

"Really? Ok, so team two will consist of Tessia Crestless, Clive Graves, and Lucas Wykes. Those three against team one, Arthur Leywin, Curtis Glayder, and Claire. As a penalty towards team one, if Arthur is defeated their team immediately loses." Professor Glory announces.

"Everyone who will be fighting gets your gear on and gets together with your team! Those of you just watching go to the observation stands," Professor Glory yells out.

Everyone begins heading to the stands while the six of us begin putting on the gear we were given. I had a bit of a struggle putting on the pads on my elbows.

'Need help?' Saya asks through mental communication. The next thing I knew she was next to me, she took the straps for my elbow pads and began tightening them herself.

"Aren't you supposed to be in the observation stands?" I ask.

"I'm free to do whatever I want, aren't I?" She looks up at me expecting me to have a comeback.

"Are phoenixes always this helpful?" I joke, although I immediately regret it when she tightens my elbow pads too tight and I yelp in pain.

She begins walking off while waving, "If that causes you any problems I'll heal you later." She returns to the stands and sits down.

The Professor comes over to me and asks, "Are you flirting with the student council president?"

Confused, I answered, "No, she was just helping me with the elbow pads."

"Right right..." She says. I really don't like this teacher's personality. She is a real instigator.

She turns to face everyone on the battlefield, "Ok! Everyone who is participating in the mock battle, get ready for the battle to begin!"

We all decide who we will be facing, Tessia seems to be focusing on Claire, Clive is facing Curtis, and Lucas is facing me. Looks like fate is on my side here, letting me fight Lucas.

"Match starts!" The professor yells out to all of us as she flies away on the back of her bond.

"It looks like I'm facing another conjurer, prepare to lose-" They are forced to stop speaking.

I release my powerful bloodlust directed at him, the hate for what he had done to me in the dungeon flashes through my head.

I must have scared Saya because I can feel a great amount of fear and panic come from our mental connection.

"I'm gonna give you a limited-time offer," I say loud enough for him to hear me from where they are. "I will fight you using augmenter tactics, and I will still beat you."

I can see him visibly get angry and he begins casting spells, I withdraw my sword I had gotten from the ancient mage town. I have wanted to use this sword for a while but since I've been pretending to be a conjurer.

'What is that?' I hear Saya ask me.

I ignore her putting my full focus on this battle. I'm looking forward to this. I smirk.

Saya Asclepius P.O.V.

I see Arthur facing off against the boy named Lucas, I wondered why Lucas was so confident in his skills against Arthur. It was clear that day that Arthur was the strongest person here, well besides me.

I had chosen to step out of the mock battle to not accidentally reveal my power as an Asura. It would be strange if I just flicked away their strongest spells like a pesky wasp.

I truly worry about what will happen when the war comes to this continent, many of the mages here are not capable enough to handle their average mages over in Alacrya.

My attention returns back to Arthur facing off against Lucas, the power of his bloodlust, it is even making me shake from fear. I an Asura shook from the presence of a lesser.

This bloodlust reminded me of the mana art Kings Force, to think he can replicate something like that without even seeing it...

Arthur must have felt my fear seep through our mental connection because I can feel his confusion.

Arthur then summons a beautiful translucent purple sword from his dimension ring, 'What is that?' I was amazed, this boy not only had an aether rune, but he also had a sword developed by the djinn themselves.

When Arthur begins moving both wind and earth mana into the sword and a purple haze begins to cover his arm. 'What a peculiar ability.' Looking at the sword it looked like it was trying to match itself to Arthur's body and mana.

Their fight began and Arthur was now fighting like an Augmenter, he was using mana channels as well as using the popular conjurer spell 'buff' to strengthen himself.

Throughout their battle I kept watching his mastery of swordsmanship and mana, he was abnormal... It was a strange sight, I was used to seeing skilled and powerful Asura use skills and techniques that make his look like child's play. But the way he moves through the mana around him I could have mistaken him for a clan leader.

When Lucas used a large fire spell that non-stop launched fire-like lasers at Arthur it was sort of worrying, I had expected Arthur to begin taking a large amount of damage to his gear. That's exactly what had happened for a while, it was like that until suddenly all of the fire spells being launched at Arthur would become extinguished before they reached him.

'There's no way, is he manipulating the air itself using his Wind affinity?' He was holding his breath and getting closer to Lucas without a single fire spell hitting him.

He then defeated Lucas with ease. It wasn't surprising because I knew Arthur was stronger, but the method he had used I did not expect.

After Arthur had defeated Lucas he checked on his other teammates, Curtis was easily winning against my assistant Clive. But Claire was being beaten down by Tessias spells. Tessia was using Plant magic and Wind to push back and damage Claire whenever she got the chance. It wasn't looking good for Claire, and eventually as expected her gear gave out and she was defeated.

Arthur began running at Tessia seeing her as his new enemy to defeat. Tessia looked reluctant to fight him, when she finally used a spell it looked like she was simply trying to capture him instead of harm him.

The spell was slow so Arthur dodged it, when she learned that he was actually trying to get her out she had begun actually fighting, although still holding back.

Throughout the fight, I saw Arthur getting slower and slower. Arthur was tumbling around or nearly falling. 'What's wrong?' I ask him.

'Nothing, I'm fine.' It's obvious he is lying though.

I looked at his body and mana core to see if there was something wrong. It didn't take long to find the problem. The energy the sword was moving into Arthur's body to bond with his body and mana core was rejecting him. Was it because he wasn't entirely a Djinn? I had purposely said energy because it isn't just mana that is moving, although I can't sense aether, I can recognize when it is being influenced.

That sword was doing something bad to Arthur's body and he will likely get hurt if he doesn't do something about it. 'Arthur stop, I will heal you, hold on. I'll be right there,'

'No, don't interfere. I'm fine,' What is that idiot thinking? A lesser can't handle Aether like how the Djinn and Asura can. He will get hurt, I know it.

But Arthur continued persisting, I had wished I had stopped him because of what had happened next...

His legs collapsed from under him, no longer able to hold him up any longer. He fell down onto the ground and was hit by the oncoming spell Tessia had launched.

She had seen this happen and immediately tried to cancel the spell, it was too late though. She began to run over to Arthur to try and help him. I beat her to it though having arrived at Arthur sooner even though I was further away.

I picked him up in my arms princess style and noticed he was unconscious. I began to carry him to the infirmary walking past all the concerned students and the professor who was trying to take him from me and take him to the infirmary herself.

I ran down to the infirmary with him in my arms, I began to use phoenix mana arts to begin healing him. While I could fix his physical injuries right now I couldn't solve the main problem. The mana and aether that the sword moved into his body and mana core were still there, I would need to manually move mana into his body and fish it out in a similar fashion to how they remove impurities from a mana core.

I sat there waiting for several hours waiting for him to wake up. Thankfully my authority as Student Council President gave me a reason why people can't visit him while I'm here. People should think we don't know each other.

I sat there next to him, his unconscious state making him vulnerable reminded me of when I had pinned him against the wall and kissed him. 'I'm an idiot, why did I kiss him,' I sat there continuing to play the scene of me kissing him in my head. I couldn't get it out of my head.

Authors Note:

Don't worry, the Arthur vs Lucas fight will be tomorrow's chapter. Think of tomorrow's chapter just going into further detail of what happened here but from Arthurs P.O.V.

Anyways this doesn't confirm the ship for those of you asking. I just do things for story purposes.