“Hoshimi, before you go.”

  “What is it?”

  “I want you to have this.”

  The corridor outside was chaos.

  Students ran in every direction, some in uniform, some in various states of dress, all with the same wild-eyed look of people who'd woken to find their safe space suddenly unsafe.

  A girl with bloody hands clutched her arm to her chest, sobbing. Two boys dragged a third whose leg ended in a charred stump below the knee. An instructor Hoshimi barely recognized was trying to direct traffic, her voice hoarse from shouting.

  He walked through them like a ghost. His feet found clean patches of floor, his shoulders twisted past outstretched hands, his eyes tracked everything and nothing.

  The emergency stairs were worse. Bodies huddled on every landing, some conscious, some not. The air smelled of blood and burnt hair and something acrid that might have been melted plastic. A first-year grabbed his ankle as he passed, begging for help. He stepped over her and kept moving.

  “Shame but I can’t do anything about it.”

  [She can turn her body into a black sludge that reforms from almost any damage. I don’t think I’ve got any way to completely take her down, she must be immediately bursted down in order for her to die. Best I can do is buy time until Sophia wakes up]

  He burst through the emergency exit into the courtyard.

  The world ended.

  That was the only way to describe it. The manicured lawns he'd walked across a hundred times were gone, replaced by a cratered moonscape of mud and rubble. The fountain, that classical stone monstrosity, lay in pieces across what used to be a reflecting pool. The ancient oaks that had lined the main path were shattered, burned, uprooted.

  Students in Hex Academy uniforms clashed with rogues in tattered clothes. Fire and ice and sound and blood techniques lit the darkness in strobing flashes. Screams cut through the air, battle cries, death cries, cries for help that no one could answer.

  Hoshimi took it in in a single frozen moment.

  A girl, pinned beneath a chunk of fallen masonry, her leg bent at an unnatural angle. Two rogues advancing on her position.

  Three first-years trying to hold a defensive line near the main hall entrance, their techniques flashing in desperate, uncoordinated bursts against a wave of attackers that seemed endless.

  And at the edge of the chaos, moving through the shadows with the patience of a spider, a figure he recognized.

  Malachite.

  She was different from their last encounter. Taller, for one thing. Her body had filled out, muscles defined beneath skin that seemed to ripple. Her hair was longer, darker, and her eyes an eerie gleam.

  She was toying with a group of students. Three of them, maybe fourth-years, trying to hold a position near the shattered remains of a classroom wing.

  "Come on," she crooned. "Is that all you've got? I thought Hex Academy was supposed to be the best."

  One of the students, a boy with earth magic, drove a spike of stone through her chest. It passed clean through, emerging from her back in a shower of black sludge. Malachite looked down at the hole, then back at him, and laughed.

  "That tickled."

  Her arm elongated, transformed into a blade of solid black, and swept toward his neck.

  Hoshimi moved.

  [I dislike fighting, because battling with words is usually easier. Fighting costs mana, costs time and can create scars]

  He wasn't invisible but he was fast.

  [My body, it feels lighter, my mana responds quicker. Faster than it did during the fight with her the last time]

  His foot connected with Malachite's blade-arm a millisecond before it reached the boy's throat. The impact sent a shockwave through both of them, and Malachite's eyes went wide with recognition.

  [I won’t lose this time, or at least I won’t die]

  "You."

  "Me." Hoshimi landed, already moving, already flowing into the next attack. His fist drove toward her face, wrapped in a cocoon of compressed mana.

  She caught it.

  Bare-handed. Fingers closing around his fist with enough force to crack bone. Her amber eyes gleamed.

  "I've been waiting for you," she breathed. "I can’t believe you really did manage to survive after bleeding out like that." Her grip tightened. "I guess that girl with silver hair isn’t here to save you this time."

  His other hand came up, and in it, light gathered.

  The light took shape. A blade. Not long, not elaborate. Just a simple edge of pure, condensed brilliance that hummed.

  "What?"

  He drove it through her stomach.

  The effect was immediate. Where the blade touched, Malachite's flesh melted. The black sludge that made up her body sizzled and smoked, eating away from the wound in spreading circles of ash.

  Hoshimi stepped back, the blade still glowing in his hand.

  “I guess Reina really did give me something useful.”

  Malachite clutched her stomach, watching the wound spread.

  “Last time you didn’t have a magical tool.”

  Then her body began to shift, pushing the damaged flesh away, isolating it, cutting it loose. A chunk of black sludge fell to the ground and dissolved, and beneath it, new flesh had already formed.

  “You must have someone close in the government to have something as valuable as this, you damn government dog.”

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  She straightened slowly.

  “Call me whatever you want to, from my point of view, you’re clearly not the good guys.”

  "You aren’t either, protecting a system meant to treat us like tools."

  Hoshimi looked at the blade in his hand. It pulsed gently, responding to his attention.

  She moved.

  Her speed was absurd. One moment she was twenty feet away, the next she was there, her hand already transformed into a blade aimed at his throat. Hoshimi threw himself sideways.

  His sword swept toward her legs. She jumped over it, her body twisting in midair, and landed with her hands already reaching for him.

  He ducked under the first grab, spun past the second, and drove an elbow into her ribs. The impact sank into her body like hitting water.

  “Is that all you’ve got, boy?”

  “Just stop talking.”

  He switched his grip, flipping the sword around and thrusting the blade into her stomach under his arm.

  The blade sank deep.

  Malachite's amber eyes went wide. Her mouth opened, spilling black ink, but no sound came out. The divine steel was doing its work, the wound smoking, the black sludge of her body eating itself away from the inside.

  Her hand shot up and grabbed his wrist.

  "You really aren’t as strong as the white haired girl.”

  Her other hand transformed into a blade and drove toward his chest.

  Hoshimi twisted. The blade caught him across the ribs instead of through the heart, opening a gash that went down to the bone. He stumbled back, pulling the sword free, and Malachite's wound... closed.

  “Vitae Core.”

  Not slowly. Not with effort. Just closed, the flesh knitting together in the space between heartbeats.

  She advanced, unhurried, confident. "You rat, think a fancy toy is going to change anything?"

  Hoshimi's hand went to his ribs. They were already healing, but slower than they should have been.

  [It’s difficult to supply mana to both the sword and myself, even with my mana reserves, my output isn’t anything spectacular]

  "You're slowing down already." Malachite circled him, her body rippling, shifting, never quite staying the same shape.

  Hoshimi didn't answer.

  She caught his wrist again. Her other hand drove into his stomach, and this time the blade didn't just cut, it pushed through, emerging from his back in a spray of crimson.

  Hoshimi gasped. His vision went white at the edges.

  "Where's your silver-haired girlfriend now?" Malachite whispered in his ear.

  He drove his forehead into her nose.

  The impact made her stagger, made her release him, and Hoshimi pulled free, stumbling back, one hand pressed to the hole in his stomach. Blood poured between his fingers.

  [It burns, like boiling hot water being poured over me, damn it. It hurts]

  He bit his lip, holding in the pain.

  The healing was agonizingly slow. The divine blade flickered in his grip, its light dimming.

  Malachite touched her nose. Watched the blood on her fingers.

  "You're a rat, a bit tougher than the others but a rat nonetheless." Her body began to shift, expanding, growing. The black sludge swelled outward, forming limbs, tendrils, a hundred reaching things that ended in razors.

  She came at him like a wave.

  Hoshimi dodged the first tendril. Sliced through the second with his blade. Felt the third wrap around his ankle and yank.

  He hit the ground hard. The impact drove what little air remained from his lungs. More tendrils found him, wrapping around his arms, his throat, his sword arm. They squeezed.

  "You know what your problem is?" Malachite's voice came from everywhere now, from the mass of sludge that surrounded him. "You're smart, I’ll give you that, but you’ve never really experienced real battle, that brain of yours stops working the moment you start bleeding."

  His vision was going gray. The tendrils around his throat were tightening, cutting off air, cutting off mana flow.

  [I can't...]

  "You’re a tool, a spoon unfit for digging while people around you are shovels that could actually do something."

  The magical blade fell from his fingers. Its light died.

  "Who's going to save you now, boy?"

  The world was going dark. The sounds of battle faded, replaced by a rushing in his ears that might have been blood or might have been something worse.

  Pressure.

  A weight in the air that made every hair on Hoshimi's body stand up. A presence so vast, so overwhelming, that for a moment he forgot how to breathe.

  Malachite froze.

  In the sky above the courtyard, the clouds were parting. Golden light poured through, so bright it hurt to look at. And in that light, a figure rose, standing on top of a floating golden sword.

  Sophia Miller's eyes were open.

  They burned gold, brighter than the sun, brighter than anything Hoshimi had ever seen. Her coffee-brown hair floated around her face as if caught in an unfelt wind.

  She looked down at the courtyard. At the chaos. At the rogues and the dying and the blood soaking into the mud.

  “This is annoying.”

  “I pray to no such god, the only being I pray to is myself, for my power even surpasses the Primordials. Zenith.”

  “The Grand Archive of Perfected Creation.”

  The sky darkened, the light of the sun shadowed by enormous bookshelves the size of large buildings that peeked through the clouds.

  Within Sophia’s Zenith, the effective range of her creation ability is expanded to 500 meters and her own mana output is sextupled. With the need to fire off weapons from her small range being gone, she is able to fire them from above, eliminating terminal velocity with mana, effectively increasing her destructive capacity.

  Every mote of dust suspended in the air. Every drop of blood mid-fall. Every screaming student and charging rogue frozen in place like insects in amber. The only thing that moved was the light—that terrible, beautiful golden light pouring down from the figure in the sky.

  Above them, Sophia raised one hand.

  The gesture was casual. Almost bored. Like someone reaching for a book on a high shelf.

  From the clouds, from those impossible bookshelves that stretched into infinity, something began to descend.

  It started as a point of light. Then a lance the size of a building, its surface crawling with intricate golden runes that shifted and reformed as Hoshimi watched. Behind it came another. And another. A rain of divine weaponry that blotted out the sky.

  "I am judgement!”

  The first lance struck.

  Not the courtyard. Not the frozen rogues. The ground beside them, fifty feet from the nearest fighter. The impact sent a shockwave that knocked Hoshimi from his feet, sent frozen bodies tumbling across the mud like dolls.

  They ran.

  Not in good order. Not with coordination. They ran like animals fleeing a forest fire, trampling each other in their desperation to reach the gates, the walls, anywhere that wasn't here.

  The lances fell.

  Each one struck with surgical precision, landing in the path of fleeing rogues, carving trenches that cut off escape routes, herding them back toward the center of the courtyard. Not killing. Not yet. Just... containing.

  Sophia descended.

  She floated down on her sword like an elevator, her expression utterly serene, her golden eyes fixed on the chaos below with the mild interest of someone watching ants rebuild their hill after a rainstorm.

  "Miss Miller!" a student cried out. "You're awake!"

  She didn't acknowledge him. Her gaze swept across the courtyard, cataloging, assessing. It landed on Hoshimi.

  Malachite’s eyes widened, frozen in fear, yet her body started to melt away, quickly crawling away into a nearby pipe.

  Sophia descended the rest of the way, landing on the cratered ground with a soft thud that should have been impossible given the power radiating from her. The golden light in her eyes dimmed, slowly, reluctantly.

  She walked toward Hoshimi.

  "Get up," she said.

  "I'm trying."

  He was on his knees. The hole in his stomach was still healing, still agonizingly slow. His sword arm hung limp at his side, the divine blade nothing but a faint shimmer on the ground.

  Sophia looked at him for a long moment. Then she reached down, grabbed his collar, and hauled him to his feet.

  "You're stupid as shit."

  "Probably."

  "You suck, do better."

  Hoshimi met her golden eyes. They were still flickering with residual power, still dangerous, still other.

  “Do you really expect me to be as strong as you? That’s a rather tall order.”

  Sophia stared at him. Then, slowly, her lips twitched.

  "You hoe, all you do is play around with women, you can’t even protect yourself."

  She released him and turned to survey the courtyard. Students were emerging from cover, staring at her with expressions ranging from awe to outright terror. The surviving rogues were long gone, vanished into the forest or the shadows or wherever they'd come from.

  "Is it finally over?" a student asked, his cheeks inflating like an unnatural balloon, blood dripped from his eyes.

  Pop.