C16: Fight!

Anika was talented, and she knew it.

Even before coming to the 7th Exorcist Academy, she knew she had a high affinity for Blaster. Over 80%. That was something that appeared once a decade. Which was once a generation.

She should have been the protagonist of her era. But of course, another monstrous talent had to show up at the same time as her! Taking everything from her!

That was what always got on her nerves! But today it was different.

Why was she even thinking of her jealousy as she was struggling to stay alive? She didn't know. Was this what her life amounted to? A prison of insecurities?

"Ahhh, help me! Please!"

"No! Mom… I want…"

People around her were dying and crying out in pain. She didn't even have the time to look. She didn't dare look either, afraid of her heart wavering.

Shooting small beams from her hands was a basic power of a Blaster. It wasn't something even considered a special ability. Any blaster with basic Ord control could do it.

She had been quite proud of being able to do something like this only one week after entering the Academy. Though she had cheated a bit, due to being able to control her Ord even before entering school. This was what she had planned to use and show that she was superior to the other once-in-a-thousand-year genius!

A demon came toward Anika, getting her out of her stupor.

Unlike the first wave of demons, who she had killed a couple of. This one was middle class, and it had the body of a horse with a bear's head. When it roared toward her, there was a face on the back of the bear's throat.

It was nightmare fuel. Instinctively she knew it was an abomination. Demons were all like that!

She aimed her finger at the creature and gathered an orb of Ord at the tip of it. It was the size of a tennis ball, but it was growing dimmer with each second.

'I'm running out of Ord.' She had already killed over a dozen low-class demons. Even she wasn't naive enough to think she could defeat every demon in here.

'I need one explosive shot and open an escape path.' But as she thought that. She glanced at the dying classmates around her. Initially, there had been ten classmates and two teachers.

Now there were five classmates and one teacher. That same teacher also didn't have any fighting ability. Though she had stored an ungodly amount of talismans in her frog and kept using them rapidly. But talismans were only so effective.

Anika shot her blast at the mid-class demon charging toward her. The shot hit the demon right in his bear face, and its horse body staggered a bit. But the demon still kept charging at her.

'I'm not going to die like this! I'm going to become one of those Legendary Exorcists from the stories. The Gods have given me talent! I won't waste it like this!'

Her body shook with fear. Her situation got even worse as another demon, landed next to the horse and caught sight of her.

The new demon was a four-armed gorilla, with two round eyes that looked like they belonged to a dead fish.

They charged at her. Anika attempted one last shot with all her Ord, but she felt light-headed. Due to the dire situation and panic, she hadn't noticed that she was all out of Ord.

But just as the demons got closer, a shadow jumped on the horse demon's back. It stabbed a sword through one ear and it came out of the other.

The body of the bear-faced demon fell to ground. As soon as it did so, the demon gorilla with four arms noticed what had happened and punched the attacker. But the human moved out of the way, taking the sword with him. He used the four-armed gorilla's big body as leverage to move under his swing.

Round glasses, too big for his face. Unassuming looks, and uncaring eyes. The one who had just saved her was Kon.

One of the people she hated. He was below her in talent. Their distance in talent was big!

She always hated that despite being below her, he never seemed to care even one bit. He never showed signs of jealousy or even any sense of competition. It was as if there was always something else on his mind.

He looked at her. While his eyes were always cloudy before as if he wasn't looking at the person in front of him. Kon was staring at her with something she had never seen.

His gaze was a machine-like coldness.

As the demon gorilla swung its fists down, Kon pointed the sword toward the fists and the gorilla stabbed its fist at the sword. The gorilla demon screamed in pain and tugged at the sword. Kon let go of the weapon, and the demon stumbled.

Kon didn't even take 1/10th of a second to worry about losing his weapon. He took out a small knife the size of a finger and threw it at the beast's eyes with pin-point accuracy.

"Rarrrww!!" The demon roared and swung his arms around wildly. Kon didn't even flinch away, as if fear wasn't something he even felt. Then with another smooth move, he threw another knife at the demon's other eye and blinded it.

A snake with hairy spider legs stepped out of Kon's shadow. It was a demon with a special ability and Anika was about to warn him. But before any noise could come out of my mouth he threw a knife and stabbed the snake demon straight through its head.

He didn't even look to confirm his attack had landed? Did he have eyes on the back of his head?

Suddenly, half of the demons in the vicinity turned their eyes on him. They were either low-class or middle-class demons.

Immediately they charged, with maddened roars.

Anika felt like she should help him somehow. But she was too scared to do anything. Instead, she backed off.

Ever for a split second longer, she wanted to live. So running was the best option, leave him behind, and take her chances to run away.

But she couldn't do that. She hated everyone in her year. But they also had families, and people waiting for them.

"I don't want to die," Anika muttered under her breath and stopped backing away. Not because she was no longer afraid. But because of what she saw unfolding in front of her, it was something straight out of a storybook.

It was outside of logic.

'Am I hallucinating?' She wondered.

The way Kon moved wasn't fast. Unlike the time when Professor Chain fought against the demon, she could see Kon's moves clear as day.

It was like a beautiful dance. A strange deer-like demon with human-like legs tried to skewer him. Kon grabbed a dog-like demon with human ears and kicked him in the deer demon's charge. Which skewered the demon dog.

Kon tricked the gorilla demon, by getting his attention. The gorilla would throw a punch or slam, and Kon would move out of the way just as he was about to be hit. Causing the gorilla to instead hit another demon.

A lot of these mid-class demons, Kon didn't have the power to even injure them. But he used their attacks against each other. Also, the bigger the numbers that surrounded him, the better. As there was more room for error on the demon's part.

Suddenly, the blades of grass under his shadow moved and tried to grab him. Kon jumped forward and used as a jumping board a demon that looked like a human with an orb for a head.

Demons started dying one by one. Not long after, a pile of over twenty demons formed around him. About three of those demons were even middle class.

"A monster, an absolute monster…" Anika muttered under her breath, her legs felt weak.

She couldn't believe her eyes! The guy who anyone couldn't notice from a crowd was now taking down demons she stood no chance against.

By the end of it, he stood atop a pile of demon bodies. He was breathing heavily, but the strange thing was that there wasn't any injury on his body.

Anika knew she should have escaped by now or tried to find a hiding place. But she couldn't take her eyes off this average-looking loser.

"Damn, that's badass," suddenly the man sitting on a tree branch and smoking from a long pipe said something. "My dude. You haven't even been in the exorcist academy for a week and you're already taking out mid class demons."

The man scratched his chin and smirked. "You're not that strong. Actually, you should be having difficulties with low class demons. That's why you knew you wouldn't be able to kill mid-class demons with your weapons and threw other demons' attacks at them. Simply marvelous!"

He clapped. The smile on his face was something an older brother might show their younger sibling when they got good grades. It was pride!

Kon didn't answer and started walking toward the man who was clearly the one behind the attack.

"Damn. That's creepy," the man took a puff out of his long smoke pipe, blew the smoke out of his nose, and smiled. "I'm pretty good at sensing Ord and negative intentions within it. Well, I'm actually the best at it. But I don't sense any malicious intent from you."

Kon didn't answer or say anything. He just walked toward the tree, took out a talisman, and put it on the tree. Immediately the tree caught on fire.

"Wow, you don't even have any fear in you," the villain clapped with joy and jumped down from the tree. Landing right next to Kon. Which caused the exorcist to swing a blade, without even looking.

The evil man dodged. But mid-swing the blade slipped out of Kon's hands and became a projectile. But the man used two fingers to catch the projectile. "A perfect attack for that situation. I think I'm starting to get a hang of your ability."

Despite the man talking, Kon didn't stop his relentless assault. At the same time, the demons also stopped attacking and backed off. As if they were waiting for the result of the fight between Kon and the man.

The man took out a dark book, it had a red eye on its dark cover. Once he opened the book shot out a beam at Kon, and as soon as the beam landed he froze in place.

Instead of taking advantage of Kon's immobility. The man created some distance between them. "I know you're faking being frozen in place by the Book of Terror."

Kon moved again, once it was clear that the Demonic Exorcist wasn't fooled.

Anika couldn't help but feel that the name Book of Terror felt familiar. Did someone famous use it? Also for the object to cause a stun on someone with seemingly no limits, it must be a very strong Magic Item.

Creators were the only affinity that could imbue items with Ord. Magic Items were usually created by a Creator who has died and their lingering obsessions left their abilities stuck in this world.

"As expected, your ability is a human control type. There's only one situation where a human control ability doesn't work on them. That's when they're already controlled by someone else. You have to kill the Master if you want to try and put that human under your control. Though with you, that logic wouldn't work." The man explained forbidden knowledge as if it was nothing. "Trust me. I'm a leading expert when it comes to… Actually, I'm the best at this. Just like how I'm the best at everything else."

When she heard him say all those things. Anika put every piece together. There was only one person on this continent who was so knowledgeable about taboo techniques. Especially ones that involved controlling humans.

He was the cause of why human controlling techniques are forbidden. He used them to control the country's King and started wars. With the King's 'permission', he studied a lot of forbidden knowledge and did taboo experiments. This man was the reason Beast Masters were forbidden from making Human Controlling abilities.

"D -Demonic Exorcist…" the name was something feared by everyone. Now that Anika caught on to who they were dealing with. 'We have no chance of defeating him!'

Demonic Exorcist, his real name wasn't public, but that was the epithet of the human with the highest bounty on his head. Whoever kills him will get the gratitude of the royal family, and wealth that will last generations. They might even become high-ranking Nobles.

Even though finding the Demonic Exorcist wouldn't be hard. With his demon beasts following him everywhere, he would always leave a trail. No exorcist was naive enough to take such a request.

"Oh? You figured out who I was?" He looked at her, the Demonic Exorcists' eyes were dark. But every now and then they would shine in an unknown gleam of gray.

But in that split second, he had turned to look at her. The Demonic Exorcist had taken his eyes off his opponent and Kon's blade swung toward the man's neck.

**

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