Joint Class, Part 6
"Come on!"
"Groooooooar!!!"
The Behemoth roared. A barrage of Dark Arrows pelted the monster's body.
Considering the beast's ancient age, this was likely the very first time in its life it had ever felt the sensation of pain.
"Urgh!"
The beast raised a massive forepaw and slammed it down toward me.
Moving swiftly, I pulled Claire out of harm's way to a safe spot, then immediately unleashed another volley of Dark Arrows at the creature.
An overwhelming torrent of Dark Arrows—a quantity that even dozens of dark mages working together could not have produced—bombarded the monster's flesh.
"Gyaaaaah!"
"You've got quite the lungs on you!"
However, it wasn't as if I had an endless hand of cards to play.
My dark mana was virtually infinite. The energy I had absorbed from the Fragment of the Void showed no signs of running dry, no matter how much I drew upon it.
But my body—the faucet that had to channel and manifest that energy into magic—was still just a human body.
I might have been able to endure a bit more than the average person, but I couldn't transcend the physical limitations of the human species.
"Graaaar!"
The monster before me, the Behemoth, was a different story.
It belonged to an entirely different species. Its very existence was an affront to the divine, and dense dark mana constantly rolled off its hide and breath.
No matter how strong an ant might be, it could never defeat a human in battle. The gap between the Behemoth and me was just as vast—perhaps even more overwhelming.
"Hup!"
With a deafening crash, the Behemoth stomped its foot. Getting crushed beneath it meant instant death. Even a near-miss would leave my body incapacitated from the sheer shockwave.
The spells at my disposal were limited. I only knew crude, primitive techniques like Dark Arrow and dark shields—spells that consumed an absurdly brute-force amount of dark mana.
Dark magic was a field of study. While a clash between dark mages often devolved into a simple, direct contest of raw mana, that didn't mean the art itself hadn't evolved.
Techniques to manifest dark mana and eliminate enemies more subtly, reliably, and efficiently were constantly advancing.
And I had yet to learn any of those applied dark magic spells.
"This is getting... a bit tricky!"
I hadn't learned high-level spells like Blink. Instantaneous teleportation wasn't something a mere cadet could learn, unless they were a genius on the level of Zenia.
Dark mages could also temporarily slip their bodies into the dark dimension to evade attacks, but that was another technique beyond my reach.
Not only did I lack the specific knowledge of how to cast it, but the spell was as dangerous as it was convenient.
Even notorious dark mages with enough power to destroy worlds had perished simply from miscasting it—or sometimes, out of sheer bad luck.
"Tch!"
The same went for physical reinforcement. Drenching one's body in dark mana was incredibly hazardous, and I had yet to find a way to do so safely or control the flow properly.
Despite all that, the battle remained surprisingly even.
"Graaaaaah!!!"
I was slow. Compared to the steel-like muscles of the colossal beast, human flesh was infinitely fragile.
If that was the case, I just had to make the monster slower.
"Just hang in there!"
My Dark Arrows rained down incessantly upon the Behemoth's massive frame.
A single arrow couldn't deal a devastating blow. But dozens, hundreds of them were bound to slow its movements down.
Sprinting desperately, I managed to widen the distance before its hideous forepaw could make contact with the ground.
"Phew..."
The dark magic I could use was simple and straightforward. It was so basic that anyone who had just entered the path of dark magic would be deemed a failure if they couldn't cast it on their very first day.
It left no room for finesse and was far from efficient, but it possessed one highly practical advantage.
"Just... die!"
It was ridiculously easy to cast.
If ordinary magic was like solving a complex equation, my spells were on the level of basic arithmetic.
Even with rain pouring down, the earth shaking, and a thousand distracting thoughts cluttering my mind, I could still conjure dozens, hundreds of Dark Arrows without fail.
"Damn it!"
I wasn't at a disadvantage. My dark mana was practically limitless, and it wasn't as if the Dark Arrows were completely failing to damage the Behemoth.
However, my physical body was reaching its limit.
I was already exhausted from trekking up the mountain, and I hadn't slept nearly enough.
These trivial, almost absurdly minor issues were compounding, adding layers of instability to the fight.
How much longer can I hold out?
I didn't know. I could tell exactly how much mana I had left, but I had no way of measuring my body's physical endurance.
My clothes, soaked through with rain, grew heavier by the second. In just a few moments, a single misstep could send me tumbling.
"I could escape, but..."
I knew what the problem was.
With this half-baked magic and the restrained firepower of my Dark Arrows, I could never truly finish off the Behemoth.
I would have to make a greater sacrifice. Given that there were no healers nearby, I had to be prepared to sustain permanent damage to my body.
"..."
Or, I had to abandon Claire.
If I expended all my available mana to disorient the beast, I could probably find a way to slip away alone.
But if I did that, Claire would die. The girl I had invested so much effort into, the friend who had tried her best not to cause me harm until the very end, would perish.
"And there's no backup coming..."
If I waited too long, I might not even have the luxury of a choice.
"Graaaaaah!!!"
The Behemoth roared once more.
A massive, earth-shaking cry reverberated across the mountain, loud enough for everyone to hear.
"How amusing."
Though the rain poured down in sheets, the space around Katarin remained dead silent.
A pitch-black darkness enveloped her, as if time itself had ground to a halt.
"...My lady?"
Fear flickered in Kellin's eyes. Watching her, Katarin let out a faint chuckle.
How foolish...
Kellin must have realized it too—the fact that she had been strangely excluded from the recent conspiracies.
There was a good reason for it. Dealing with a secret organization, from contact to execution, wasn't a task that could be entrusted to a subordinate who was merely loyal.
"It is fine. Everything is going smoothly, is it not?"
Katarin recalled the secret organization operating in the shadows of the Academy.
An organization bent on destruction, calling themselves Kazot.
A man like Wade wouldn't just appear out of thin air for no reason...
He was a man hiding his true power. To believe that someone with a talent for dark magic had 'coincidentally' appeared at the Academy was lazy thinking. Failing to doubt was a sin.
And there was no organization other than Kazot capable of planting such a dark mage agent so casually within the Academy.
If they hadn't provoked me first, I wouldn't have interfered.
Both the Behemoth and Wade were likely assets deployed within the Academy, aimed at achieving some grand result for a larger scheme.
Whatever they did in the Academy was none of Katarin's business, but unfortunately, Wade had been the one to provoke her first.
Ruining their plans was a simple, effortless task.
An extreme cell-based structure where even long-term members don't know who the others are... It has a certain romantic flair, but really, it is far too dangerous, isn't it?
An order encrypted with dark magic, its sender completely anonymous.
For anyone else, it might be impossible, but for Katarin, manipulating such an 'order' was child's play.
Since these assets were bound to be wasted on something useless anyway, they should consider it a favor that I am putting them to good use.
To be sure, staging a terror attack with such assets would shake the Academy.
But it would yield no meaningful results. Something of this scale could never kill the Imperial Princess, nor could it cause chaos that spread beyond the Academy's walls.
It would merely throw away the meaningless lives of a few innocent students, offering nothing but the hollow satisfaction of having 'done something.'
This woman must have been afraid of that as well.
Katarin looked at Kellin with a mocking gaze.
"The Behemoth's dark mana has blanketed the area. The dark mages at the foot of the mountain... well, they might just end up with slightly frayed nerves, but those up here won't get off so easily."
Not many dark mages could resist the dark mana of such a colossal beast.
Even if Wade was an agent handpicked by Kazot, he wouldn't be able to withstand it.
And even if, by some miracle, he did resist, it didn't matter.
The girl who accompanied him was undoubtedly an ordinary girl with nothing to hide.
She would surely turn her blade against the Imperial Princess. And then, she would die without putting up a fight.
Imagining the future, Katarin wore a satisfied smile.
My lady...
However, her assumptions were wrong. Katarin was completely misreading Kellin's expression.
While it was true that Kellin felt fear, the source and object of that fear were entirely different.
My lady. Please, you must not make an enemy of that man...
Just because one was a dark mage did not mean they were devoid of personal affection.
It didn't mean they lacked loyalty, nor did it mean they had no love for the master they had served for so long.
It was simply that a far more terrifying existence had entered the picture.
You have no idea how much power he might be hiding...
Not reporting this conspiracy to him was the final act of resistance Kellin could muster.
She did not want to see Katarin ruined. She only hoped that her mistress would leave that unknown entity alone.
She didn't believe for a second that Katarin's schemes stood any chance of harming him.
Please, let this pass without incident...