There was someone else?!
Sevis tried to grip her wand again, but her hands trembled uncontrollably like dry leaves in the wind. The moment her fingertips touched the wood, they slid off weakly.
A flash of resolve crossed her eyes. She bent down sharply and bit down hard on the tip of the wand. Without a moment's hesitation, she tore off the blood-stained cloth she had previously bound around her arm and used it to bind her trembling right hand tightly to the wand.
“My, my~ Is your arm really going to be okay if you do that?”
Forcing her battered body to move, Sevis slowly stood up, her eyes locked onto the source of the voice.
It was a petite young girl, wearing a deep black nun's habit that almost merged with the night.
At this moment, she was sitting calmly on the back of a massive black bear. Several bizarre-looking avian magical beasts circled around her, flapping their wings and letting out low, hostile screeches.
She was definitely not from the academy!
“Are you the one behind these sudden magical beasts?”
The girl lightly twirled her wand with her right hand, her small head bobbing up and down to some rhythm only she could hear.
“Well, about that...”
She dragged out her words before letting a series of cheerful syllables slip from her lips, one by one.
“Who... knows?”
Sevis exhaled a breath of turbid air, her mind racing.
“How does she know my name? Did she investigate me beforehand?”
Her own mana was completely depleted. If she wanted to cast another Tier 3 or higher spell, she would need to survive a long recovery period first.
The magical beasts surrounding the girl seemed to have very weak auras. Since the beast tamer herself didn't seem particularly strong...
Sevis's eyes narrowed slightly as she speculated.
“Could this person be a tamer who relies entirely on contract spirits to fight in mobs?”
Records of tamers flashed through Sevis's mind. This class of spellcasters was entirely different from traditional mages. They rarely cast offensive magic themselves; instead, they channeled their own mana as nourishment, constantly pouring it into their contract spirits.
Catalyzed by this mana, otherwise mediocre magical beasts could suddenly unleash powerful combat strength far exceeding their normal tier.
Suddenly, a sharp, needle-like pain stabbed into her mind. Sevis let out a muffled groan, clutching her head tightly with one hand.
“No, I'm starting to get dizzy...”
“I can't let any more students get hurt. I have to at least...”
“My~ Young Master... oh wait, no, it should be Young Mistress!”
The girl nodded to herself, her eyes filled with mock concern as she spoke, “Are you really okay? How about I help heal you?”
Sevis sneered, “I'm truly honored.”
The girl's lips curled into an exaggerated grin. She looked at Sevis as if she had found a rare treasure, her eyes brimming with desire.
“Of course. I will tear you apart piece by piece, just like I did with them...”
Her voice was outrageously gentle, as if she were whispering sweet, romantic words.
“These eyes, this face...”
“If you became one of my magical beasts, you would be absolutely perfect!”
Magical beasts?
Hearing the girl's chilling, pathological ravings, an absurd thought quietly surfaced in Sevis's mind.
“Those magical beasts... were actually?!”
A spark of rage flared in Sevis's eyes, but reason quickly reclaimed its ground, suppressing her impulsive thoughts.
“I have to at least wait for my mana...”
“Are you waiting for your mana to recover?”
The girl narrowed her eyes, her slender fingertips casually brushing against the wings of the avian beast beside her as if soothing a child. Instantly, the previously docile, circling birds fell into a frenzy.
“Go.”
“Bite off that hand of hers holding the wand first!”
Several dark blurs rushed toward Sevis at extreme speed. Seeing no way to dodge, she had no choice but to rouse the very last, dried-up drop of mana in her body.
A spell spilled from her lips, and several magic chains materialized beneath her feet, tightly binding the airborne beasts.
But soon, one of the bound, bizarre birds began to swell violently within the chains, its body twisting and deforming like a balloon inflating. Then, with a muffled bang, it exploded directly into a cloud of blood, and deep red gas instantly enveloped the entire battlefield.
This was?!
Sevis's pupils contracted sharply. She immediately realized something was wrong.
“Vento...”
Sevis fought through the intense discomfort, attempting to use wind magic to blow the blood mist away. However, she had barely uttered a single syllable when a bottomless sense of emptiness instantly consumed her.
The magic circle that had been glowing faintly beneath her feet suddenly went dark, as if the power had been cut. The chains in mid-air lost their mana support and dissolved into speckles of light, dispersing in the wind.
Having not closed her eyes for a whole day and night, and with her mana completely dried up, Sevis's body had long since reached its breaking point. She had only been holding on through sheer, incredible willpower.
“I'm so tired...”
As the final thread of strength supporting her body was completely drained, Sevis collapsed heavily to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut.
The cloth bound tightly around her wrist instantly unraveled, and the wand slipped from her completely numb fingers. Its crisp rolling sound echoed with jarring clarity in the dead silence.
“It seems... it's finally over...”
Sevis's consciousness began to fade.
The girl leaped lightly down from the black bear's broad back. With a flick of her fingers, the avian beasts in the air quickly flew back, circling obediently around her.
Taking elegant, leisurely steps, she slowly sauntered over to Sevis, her eyes filled with condescending mockery. Then, she raised her foot and kicked Sevis's soft abdomen ruthlessly.
With a dull thud, Sevis's battered body was kicked completely over by the heavy blow, leaving her lying miserably on her back.
The heavy blow to her stomach felt as if it had shifted her internal organs, yet she was deprived of even the strength to let out a faint groan. She could only bite down hard on her pale lips, letting the excruciating pain ravage her body.
“Those students... they should be safe by now, right?”
A trace of bitter relief welled up in Sevis's heart.
At least, the person before her hadn't gone after those innocent students.
At this thought, Sevis's tense body suddenly relaxed. She finally had a reason to stop.
Thinking back on all her efforts up to this point, she only felt a sense of irony and ridicule.
“I seem to have ruined everything.”
To prove her worth to her family, she had gone so far as to hide her identity from the world, completely locking her true self away.
Practicing magic day and night, her only wish had been to become an Arbiter, just like her father.
Sevis had actually known for a long time that the mountain of official duties lately was a shackle forced upon her by the higher-ups.
But if she could have finished them earlier, would she have been able to make more people aware of the crisis and protect them?
Yet, she was about to face severe punishment from the Prosecution Office, only to be ruthlessly discarded by her family like a worthless piece of trash, and then picked back up later solely to solidify the interests between the family and the imperial family.
She had once thought she was the pride of her family, but she was actually just a puppet who could be sacrificed at any moment.
“Was her fate really this absurd and laughable?”
The Prosecution Office had abandoned her, and her family had abandoned her as well.
Aside from her laughable strength, what did she have left?
Sevis wanted to pour out all the bitterness in her heart, but when she struggled to look back on her life, she realized how empty everything around her truly was.
No warm embraces from family, no heart-to-heart talks with friends... Having come this far, she seemed to have never truly possessed a shoulder she could rely on in peace.
Her so-called colleagues and allies were merely putting on a show during good times. Once the building began to collapse, she was left to face the abyss all on her own.
An unprecedented emptiness welled up from the depths of Sevis's heart. No one was waiting for her to come home, no one would shed a tear for her, and even the identity she was once proud of had been completely stripped away.
“It turns out... I really have nothing left...”
With a violent tug, Sevis was forced to tilt her head up. The petite girl grabbed her hair tightly, pulling her face up with a look of utter disbelief.
“Huh? No way, you're actually feeling happy at a time like this?”
“Hey, hey, did something awful happen to you recently? Tell me, tell me! I want to hear it too~”
“Tell me~ Tell me~”
Sevis was shaken violently, her consciousness gradually sinking deeper.
“Happy... am I?”
“If I die here, I should be able to escape the family's political marriage, right?”
“I'm really... so tired...”
But...
Tears welled up in the corners of Sevis's eyes.
“I still want to see what Rosalind looks like now. I still want to take a secret peek at those little ones in the academy running around for their studies.”
The world was so big, yet she had to make an early exit.
“What do the legendary elves actually look like? Are dragon scales really as brilliant as the legends say?”
“And that endless sea of flowers in the south that only appeared in my dreams... how gorgeous would it be?”
There were still so many beautiful sights in the world she hadn't set foot on, so many pure wishes left unfulfilled...
There were clearly so many things she still wanted to try and experience.
Was she really willing to let it end like this?
Hot tears finally broke through her defenses, tracing down her blood-stained yet still breathtakingly beautiful face.
“I really, not at all...”
“Huh? Your voice is so quiet~ What did you just say—”
“I don't want to die at all...”
But now, who could possibly...
“If you dare touch him like that again...”
“I wouldn't recommend it, unless you want me to rip your head off and kick it like a ball.”
Rate on N.U.
