No one moved.

  Time stalled, compressed beneath a weight of killing intent so dense it felt like a sudden rise in atmospheric pressure. The air, already bitter, reached a point of crystalline stillness.

  Then, the vacuum broke.

  Three streaks of mana—Pit Viper rounds—shredded the silence. They whistled past Isabella’s ear, the thermal output singeing her hair in a blurred instant.

  Isabella’s breath hitched.

  The air screamed; space itself seemed to shear under their velocity. It was a calculated subversion of expectations.

  Rein hadn't targeted her.

  The rounds tore through the empty space and buried themselves into the darkness rising behind her.

  It stopped the “black scythe” that was about to fall.

  Only barely.

  Seconds earlier, through Mana Vision, Rein had detected an anomaly. It was a high-density mana construct—dark-elemental, tightly bound—slipping from the corpse's feet and threading itself into Isabella’s shadow.

  At first, it looked like a perfect graft.

  But then he saw it: the “asynchronous ripple.” A subtle phase mismatch between that intrusive darkness and Isabella’s primary mana flow. It lacked the harmonic resonance he had memorized when she deployed her Darkness Armor to shield him.

  Without a mind trained to deconvolve mana down to its fundamental structure, he would never have separated the parasite from the host.

  For a fraction of a second, even Rein hesitated.

  Then the darkness began to compress.

  It swelled, gathering mass into a hulking outline. Rein made his decision.

  A shadow body—over ten feet tall—towered out of Isabella’s own shadow, its scythe twice the size of its wielder. The black mass expanded, absorbing the chandelier’s light until the hall plunged into a sudden, artificial night.

  The scythe halted inches from Isabella’s throat.

  The Reaper’s form recoiled as the Pit Viper rounds hit—three vacuum cavities punched clean through the shadow-flesh, the wounds carved by high-velocity, compressed mana.

  “That’s… Bella’s Grim Reaper!” Sophia shouted, her feet hitting the stone table as she coiled into a combat stance.

  Isabella spun, her defensive formation already half-formed, then froze. The thing emerging from her shadow was a nightmare.

  “No… this Reaper is nearly double the size of anything I’ve ever summoned.”

  Sophia didn't argue. She knew Isabella’s standard summons—six, maybe seven feet. This one, however, possessed a heavy, suffocating presence that seemed to warp the very air around it.

  The Reaper began to mend.

  “Impossible…” Isabella pressed her lips tight.

  The Reaper began repairing itself.

  Shadow threads wove back together like ink swirling in water, sealing the three cavities at a rate that defied nature. Another shriek erupted—high and piercing, like metal grinding on glass.

  “Watch out!” Rein’s voice cut through, sharp and cold.

  But the scythe was already in motion—merciless, following a path so precise it felt like an execution.

  Isabella’s Darkness Armor triggered on instinct. A Stratosphere-tier collision detonated in the center of the hall. The resulting shockwave rippled outward in visible rings, shaking the entire interrogation hall, as if seized by some enormous hand.

  Isabella was thrown back like a ragdoll, her armor failing against the enemy’s brutal, concentrated power.

  Just before the stone wall could claim her—

  Rein appeared.

  He caught her, his hands absorbing the momentum. He didn't just stop her; he redirected the force, spinning with the impact to send them both gliding across the room in a smooth, inhumanly fast arc.

  “You okay?” Rein asked. His voice was flat, detached. He wasn't even looking at the girl in his arms; his eyes were already analysing the Reaper’s movements.

  At the same time, Henry and Sophia launched into combat to draw its attention.

  Rein used the opening to observe.

  It didn’t take long.

  Henry stood like a monolith. His Stone Skin wasn't just a layer of rock; it was earth packed so tight it formed a barrier of sheer structural integrity. He absorbed the Reaper’s blows without yielding an inch—a defensive wall that felt even more absolute than Isabella’s Darkness Armor.

  Sophia, however, was a different kind of outlier.

  In a single heartbeat, she unleashed a flurry of Vacuum Blade kicks. Each strike tore the air into jagged seams, shredding chunks of shadow from the Reaper’s body like a blade through wet paper.

  Rein watched the way her mana flowed.

  Ordinary mages needed a medium—staves to focus, or incantations to bridge the gap between thought and reality. Sophia didn’t. She "wrote" her spells into the air with the arc of her hips and the snap of her legs. It was Gesture Casting at its most lethal—a style usually reserved for those who lived on the edge of a blade, like spellswords.

  Yet Sophia wasn’t just a fighter. She was an aeromancer with the soul of a brawler. She didn't wait for an opening from the backline; she created them.

  That carrot-head... is a real monster, Rein judged silently.

  He could feel the weight of her presence. Sophia wasn’t just fast; her mana was at its breaking point, already compressing and sharpening as she neared the edge of the Stratosphere-tier.

  And she was only a second-year.

  A question sparked so sharply it forced his brows to knit. If this was the level of her power, the scale of her "monster" status...

  Then how did the previous Rein ever beat her?

  ...Hey. You can put me down now.”

  Isabella’s voice, low and hoarse, brushed against his ear. She stared at him with emerald eyes that remained entirely unreadable.

  “Ah—sorry.” Rein released her instantly, scratching the back of his head.

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  He’d been so consumed by the data that he’d forgotten how this looked. Holding a council member like this in the middle of a crime scene was... a breach of social protocol he hadn't accounted for.

  I’d swear on a Nobel Prize my intentions were purely academic, he thought dryly. But one look at Isabella told him that explaining his "momentum absorption technique" would only make things worse.

  “We need to find the culprit,” Rein said, pivoting to the investigation to kill the silence.

  He swept the room with Mana Vision, searching for a tether leading to a hidden master. But there was no trail. The dark mana didn't exit the hall; it looped inward, spiraling back until it anchored itself deep within the shadow of Lance’s corpse.

  “...Wait. Delay Casting?”

  The realization hit like a physical weight. The killer had used Rein’s own specialty: embedding a complex circuit within a shadow, then setting a conditional trigger. It was a logic bomb programmed to activate the moment it detected a specific dark-element signature.

  It was surgical. Precise.

  The target wasn't just anyone; it was Isabella. If she had been killed by her own shadow, it would have been the perfect, silent assassination.

  A heavy question pounded inside his skull: Who else is capable of wielding multiple schools of magic and planning with this much cold efficiency?

  Behind him, the sound of the struggle finally died.

  Sophia’s leg came down like a guillotine—a Chop Kick backed by violently compressed wind. The resulting pressure didn't just shatter the shadow Reaper; it carved clean through the student council’s twenty-foot stone table, splitting the solid rock in two.

  Without enough mana to reconstruct its shattered core, the Reaper dissolved into dark particles, swallowed by the floor.

  Henry reverted to normal.

  The rock-like tension in his muscles gradually eased as he relaxed, then he and Sophia hurried over to check on Isabella. Thankfully, her Darkness Armor had held firm—she’d avoided any serious injury.

  “Thank you… for saving me.”

  Isabella spoke softly. Her face—usually cold and sculpted like marble—now carried a faint flush across her cheeks. She averted her gaze slightly, unable to meet Rein’s eyes directly.

  “It’s nothing,” Rein replied, his voice regaining its usual clinical distance. “But judging from the precision, the killer’s trajectory hasn't shifted.

  You're still the primary target.”

  He turned to Henry, whose face had darkened with the same realization.

  “Yes,” Henry agreed. “If Rein hadn’t intercepted that delay-trigger, we’d be looking at a third corpse right now.”

  Sophia planted her hands on her hips, her frustration practically humming in the air.

  “If they’ve got the guts to hide in shadows, they should have the guts to face me! I'll drag them out by the throat next time!”

  Isabella crossed her arms, her emerald eyes narrowing as she studied Rein.

  “Multiple schools of magic—ice, illusion, darkness—and Delay Casting executed with that much stability... right now, I can only think of one person who fits that profile.”

  She paused, the air in the room turning brittle.

  “That person is you, Rein.”

  Rein grinned, slipping his hands into his pockets. He looked less like a suspect and more like a professor acknowledging a correct answer.

  “On that point… I entirely agree with you.”

  “What!? Are you insane!?” Sophia yelped. “You’re agreeing with her deduction!?”

  “The logic is sound,” Rein said calmly, ignoring the chaos.

  “I think the same,” Henry added at once, smiling in a way that revealed nothing.

  “Then what do we do now?” Sophia asked, glancing between the two council members before finally landing on Rein.

  “I suggest you call in the Guardian Unit outside—the ones trembling on the other side of the door,” Rein looked at the door and said calmly. “Tell them it’s safe. There’s nothing left in this room. Have them clean up this mess.”

  He paused, then reached into his pocket and produced the insignia of a Forensic Magic Investigator.

  “As for Lance… the Forensic Magic Division will arrive in two hours to handle the transfer and preservation protocols. Until then, consider this scene secured. I’m officially off-duty; my cognitive energy is spent.”

  Rein stretched, his joints popping in the heavy silence of the hall. He gave a casual, two-finger wave to the three council members—who stood frozen amidst the debris of their own shattered meeting table—and strolled toward the exit.

  “Get some sleep, Councilors. Tomorrow, the real headache begins.”

  leaving the distinguished councilors standing dumbstruck amid the wreckage of a shattered stone table.

  “Heh… that first-year really is something else,” Henry chuckled, clearly amused. “Well then. I’m exhausted too.”

  He stretched, waved to the two girls, and left as well.

  Isabella rolled her shoulders lightly, checking herself one last time. A faint smile touched her lips as she turned to Sophia.

  “I’ll be heading off to rest as well. Please handle the rest.”

  With that, her tall figure walked away gracefully, leaving the vast hall with only one rigid corpse—and one person on the verge of an emotional explosion.

  “Oh come on—what the hell is all this!?”

  Sophia ran a hand through her sweat-damp orange hair and let out a long breath before shouting at the top of her lungs,

  “You Guardians outside! What are you standing around for!? Get in here and clean up the interrogation room—now!”

  …

  …

  The night wind of Arath carried a dusting of snow, blanketing the academy grounds in a mute, crystalline white.

  The sky above was moonless—only faint starlight and the soft glow of mana lamps illuminated the pathways at intervals. Rein chose not to take the tram. He walked instead.

  He moved unhurriedly through the snow-covered ground, using the quiet to replay every detail of this day in his mind.

  A basic Magic Shield hovered above his head, but he’d modified its structure—supporting it with Levitate so it floated on its own. An invisible umbrella. Snowflakes that touched the barrier instantly evaporated into mist.

  Along the way, Rein pulled out a mana recovery potion. He grimaced as the viscous, metallic-tasting liquid slid down his throat.

  Still tastes like battery acid…

  Ingrid really should stop inventing new formulas and fix the flavor first. Every mage has to drink this stuff regularly anyway. If it tasted like cola, she’d have a monopoly on the entire mage population by morning.

  He pulled out the card she’d given him, the faint glow of a lamp reflecting off its surface. He let out a short, quiet breath—not quite a laugh, but close—and slipped it back into his cloak.

  Looking up at his hovering shield, he couldn't help but smirk.

  If Master Bloom ever saw him using defensive magic as a snow umbrella, he’d probably get yelled at until his ears went numb—for misuse of magic.

  [LIZ: The problem is, everyone now knows you can cast across multiple schools. That’s an extremely rare—and dangerous—ability, Rein.]

  The message glowed softly in the dark.

  “My hypothesis is simple,” Rein muttered, his breath hitching as he adjusted the floating shield above him. “Most mages try to ‘link’ themselves to a deity. They want a shortcut to power, so they accept a specific divinity's framework.”

  He shrugged, the movement casual despite the weight of the night.

  “They’re afraid of cross-casting because they’re afraid of divine interference. Maybe the previous Rein wanted to sign a contract with some lightning god, but sorry... I’m not a fan of hammer-swinging sky gods.”

  [LIZ: That makes sense. But don’t get cocky—we still haven’t made progress on Dragon’s Speech.]

  “Yeah…” Rein sighed, the white mist of his breath vanishing into the shield's barrier. “It’s not like I wanted to choose the hard path. Who knew I’d end up wasting time on a ridiculous murder case too?”

  [LIZ: And with a countdown attached. Want to see it in hours—or minutes?]

  “Not time for an alarm yet,” Rein waved the window away. “And besides—no one times themselves while they're fishing.”

  The path grew slick as the snow thickened. Rein exhaled a plume of white breath, already calculating the cost of a second-year cloak. He wanted built-in thermal regulation and reinforced fibers next time. Then he remembered the price tag.

  Ridiculously expensive.

  Ahead, the clock tower square loomed—a mandatory junction on the way to the DVM. The trees stood bare, their twisted black branches reaching out like skeletal hands against the pale starlight. The mana lamps flickered, losing the battle against the encroaching dark.

  Through the mist, Rein spotted them. Two figures, standing motionless in the center of the stone plaza.

  “Twin Vipers…”

  He stopped twenty paces out, his boots crunching on the fresh powder.

  “You recovered faster than expected. The Crown family must have a surplus of high-grade catalysts—or very talented doctors.”

  Rein tilted his head, his voice sounding more exhausted than threatened.

  “Listen. I didn’t kill Lance. I’m genuinely done fighting you two for tonight. Could you just step aside?”

  No answer.

  They didn't move. Not a twitch of a finger, not a shift in weight to offset the wind. They didn't even seem to be breathing.

  “...Sigh. So you’re saying you—”

  He cut himself off.

  Something was fundamentally wrong.

  Or is it…?

  These entries expand the lore and mechanics introduced in this chapter.

  Completely optional—read only if you enjoy diving deeper into the system.

  Magic & Spell Techniques

  Grim Reaper (Isabella’s Summon)

  A high-tier darkness elemental summon typically used by Isabella. In this chapter, the Reaper is abnormally oversized—twice the usual size—indicating possible external interference or sabotage. Its scythe is capable of launching Stratosphere-tier attacks. The shadow creature can self-repair using regenerative shadow threads, making it highly dangerous.

  Mana Vision – Asynchronous Ripple (update)

  Rein uses Mana Vision to detect minute disharmonies in mana flow. An “asynchronous ripple” is a type of phase mismatch indicating mana that doesn’t belong to the original caster—key in revealing illusions, shadow possession, or hijacked constructs.

  Delay Casting (Update)

  Rein identifies that the attacker embedded a logic bomb—a delayed magical trap—within Lance’s corpse, set to trigger upon detecting a dark-element signature. This shows expert use of multiple magic schools and precise planning.

  Darkness Armor (Isabella)

  A Stratosphere-tier defensive spell made of darkness-element mana. It reacts instinctively to high-threat attacks and forms a high-density barrier around the user. It protects against both physical and magical damage but has limits against overwhelming power.

  Stone Skin (Henry)

  A high-density earth-elemental defensive spell that hardens the user’s body into rock-like form, drastically increasing defense. Described here as more structurally solid than even Darkness Armor.

  Vacuum Blade / Chop Kick (Sophia)

  Sophia uses gesture-based combat magic, launching air-elemental blades with kicks. A Chop Kick backed with compressed wind mana is used as the finishing blow, showcasing her status as a front-line aeromancer with Stratosphere-tier capabilities.

  Gesture Casting

  A technique of casting spells through body movement rather than traditional incantations or staves. Sophia’s kicks form spell glyphs midair—an advanced, risky technique often seen in spellswords or battle-specialists.

  Forensic Magic Investigator Badge

  A specialized badge given by Master Rachel to Rein. Initially thought to be just symbolic, it functions as a miniature communication orb, capable of remote messaging and possibly issuing authority in legal cases.

  Cross-Casting

  Mentioned during Rein’s internal monologue, cross-casting refers to a mage’s ability to use multiple schools of magic, which is rare due to the risk of divine interference (e.g., conflicting magical frameworks). Rein theorizes that mages avoid it due to fear of disrupting divine contracts.

  Basic Magic Shield + Levitate Combo

  Rein modifies a standard defensive spell into a floating “magic umbrella” using Levitate, allowing the shield to hover above him independently. This shows his ability to fuse low-tier spells creatively for utility.

  Potions

  Mana Recovery Potion

  Described as having a “battery acid” taste due to Ingrid’s experimental formulas. A running joke in the narrative, but also indicates how regularly mages depend on these for maintaining combat readiness.