Class Assignment Exam (Part 4)
How could this be happening?
Albert stared at the scene unfolding before him with hollow, unfocused eyes. Yet, paradoxical as it was, his mind screamed that he did not want to look. If he could, he would have squeezed his eyes shut that very instant.
What is this...? Why... why?!
Yet some inexplicable force held his gaze in an iron grip, compelling him to witness every agonizing second.
"What was that...? Did I hold back too little?"
"Ah... Aah..."
The woman, skewered clean through by the ice spike he had unleashed, was struck helplessly by the werewolf's brutal fist and hurled violently into the stone wall. Albert had to watch it all with his own two eyes, in vivid, sickening detail.
And it was not just any ordinary person who had died. It was the Saint—revered across the continent as the very hope of this world.
I-It's over...
It was his fault.
Albert sank into an abyss of despair, tearing himself apart with self-reproach. Even if he had not intended to cast the spell of his own free will, the undeniable fact remained: it was his magic that had dealt the fatal blow. Common sense dictated that no human being in this world could survive being impaled through the torso by a massive spike of ice, only to take a direct blow from a werewolf's fist immediately after.
Beyond the crushing guilt of having murdered another person, the victim was the world's shining beacon of hope—a revered existence whom the people of the north worshipped as a living god. What future could possibly await him now? The terrifying thought that his entire family might be eradicated, wiped from the Empire as though they had never existed at all, seized complete control of his mind.
Yet even that dread soon paled into irrelevance.
Because before any of that...
Can I even make it out of here alive...?
It wasn't even certain that he would leave this place breathing.
Ah... the bracelet...!
The realization struck him like a bolt of lightning. The Academy had issued evacuation bracelets to every single student specifically for emergencies like this. Now that he remembered a way out, he couldn't just sit here and wait for death.
"T-The bracelet... my bracelet..."
Trembling uncontrollably, Albert fumbled at his wrist with frantic, shaking fingers, desperate to trigger the emergency mechanism.
Yet—
Why isn't it working...?!
A bracelet already crushed and shattered had no hope of functioning. No matter how wildly he pressed and rubbed, it gave not the slightest flicker of a response. Tears streamed in torrents down his cheeks as he stared down at the useless contraption, yet his hands refused to stop clawing at it, clinging to the faint, irrational prayer that it might somehow work.
He prayed this was all a nightmare. No, he desperately wished it were nothing more than a bad dream.
Why do I... why must I go through this...?!
Throughout his life as an aristocrat, he had never killed a single living soul. He had merely been an ordinary nobleman, proud of having been born into a storied lineage celebrated for producing legions of brilliant magicians. He had come to the Academy with simple ambitions: to be of greater service to his family, to reach higher realms of magical mastery, and to etch his own name in history.
Yet the reality unfolding before his eyes bore no resemblance to the Academy life he had envisioned. Someone impaled on his own spell, a person dying right before his eyes... It felt so surreal, so utterly horrifying, as though he were trapped in an unending nightmare.
Yes... this had to be a nightmare...
There was no way this could be reality.
A nightmare...
A nightmare...?
Ah...
The mist...
The nightmare...
Kill... life...?
Uh... urgh? Ah?
A-Ah...?
The pitch-black mist slithering into the boy's fraying consciousness curled into a sinister smile.
"Hate all living things..."
"Annihilate everything before your eyes."
"Curse all that breathes."
As the insidious voice seeped like venom into the deepest recesses of his mind, the violent trembling that had wracked Albert's body began to subside.
Kill...
Eradicate...
Destroy...
The dark whispers burrowed into his fracturing psyche, and as demonic energy detonated within him, those cracks erupted across his entire flesh. The skin tainted by the demonic blight charred black as ash, and the proud light of noble heritage drained from his eyes, replaced by a hollow, crimson glow.
From his heart—wholly corrupted by the black fog—demonic energy surged in pulsing, violent thrums. Finding no outlet, the miasma tore upward through his skull, thrusting toward the sky to forge a pair of obsidian horns.
"..."
Albert no longer existed in that place.
In his stead stood a demon birthed from his ruined husk, created for the singular purpose of scouring this world of life.
"What in the... What is that form...?"
The werewolf stared at Albert, an icy dread constricting its chest. Every animalistic survival instinct screamed in terror, urging it to flee this instant. Cold sweat bathed its fur as it took a trembling step back.
Yet the beast's keen senses discerned its impending demise a fraction of a second too late.
D-Danger—
The thought never finished.
Where the werewolf's head had rested just a breath before, the air detonated with a thunderous crack, leaving behind only empty space.
"..."
Thud!
The headless mass of flesh collapsed in a limp heap.
Albert—no, the demon—turned with an unreadable expression, moving with cold mechanical precision to extinguish every trace of life within reach. And its second target had already been chosen.
"Haa... haa..."
The demon's gaze shifted.
To a demon, divine power was far more than an annoyance; it was an abhorrent existence they hungered to erase from this world at all costs. Naturally, they despised the power of purification, the very force designed to incinerate them. Though it had only just been born, the demon instinctively recognized the exact nature of the threat that could destroy it.
Sacred power.
An energy whose mere presence triggered an instinctive, visceral revulsion throughout its being.
"[To think... you would undergo demonization already...?]"
Thus, even if it possessed the nascent intellect of a newborn infant, its behavior remained unfaltering. If anything, stripped of all else except sheer destructive instinct, it was far better suited to the demonic purpose of butchering life and ushering in the apocalypse than any demon whose personal whims might derail the slaughter.
"Ghk..."
The demon moved with singular intent: to annihilate the repulsive existence before it.
It looked up at the girl dangling in its grip as she struggled desperately to break free. She pounded feebly against the iron clamp around her throat with both hands, but her frantic strikes couldn't budge the demonic grasp in the slightest.
Because this demon had been spawned from the human known as Albert, it inherited nearly all the knowledge Albert possessed. Thus, even if it had never killed with its own hands before, it knew with clinical precision how life could be snuffed out.
Tightening its fingers, it applied crushing force to sever the fragile lifeline before it—the windpipe through which a living creature drew breath.
Snap!
"..."
Soon enough, the spark of life flickered and died once more.
The girl's body went completely limp. Feeling the pulse beneath its palm fade into absolute silence, the demon recognized that she was dead and released its grip. Her body dropped heavily to the floor, collapsing in an unmoving heap.
After staring down at the fallen girl for a fleeting moment, the demon turned on its heel, preparing to leave the chamber.
"[Where... do you think you are going...?]"
It was not a spoken voice that reached its ears.
Yet, somehow, the girl's voice resonated clearly inside its mind.
Something was wrong. There had only been one woman present in this place, had there not? For a voice to echo like this meant that the girl it had just slaughtered was somehow alive again.
Dismissing the thought as impossible, the demon turned back toward the spot where it had cast her aside.
And there—
The very girl it had just murdered stood on her own two feet, watching it.
The demon felt genuine, utter bewilderment.
The girl whose neck it had snapped with its own hands—her throat clearly showing the dark bruising of its grip and the traces of vomited blood—had picked herself up as if completely unharmed, her body radiating pure divine power.
How could she possibly be alive?
For a brief instant, the demon puzzled over the girl who had risen from death even after it had personally confirmed the cessation of her life with its own hands. But the curiosity vanished just as quickly, replaced by cold indifference.
If she was alive again, it simply had to kill her once more.
Just as the demon took a step forward to extinguish her life a second time, it saw the fierce determination burning in her eyes, even as she gasped through agonizing pain.
Once more, confusion rippled through the demon.
The will she directed toward the monster that had just murdered her bore not a shred of hostility.
It was baffling. A dead creature rising back to life was strange enough, but far stranger was the bizarre resolve radiating from her. Having just suffered a brutal death at its hands, she displayed neither hatred nor animosity; instead, her gaze burned with the unyielding conviction that she would save him no matter what.
To an outside observer, it might almost have looked like pity.
Before the demon could parse the thought, the girl addressed it in a clear, resonant declaration:
As she spoke, the necklace clasped tightly in her hand blazed with radiant divine power.
Blindingly, infuriatingly bright.