Return of the Runebound Professor
Chapter 728: The results of a poorly laid plan.

Dayton’s jaw clenched as white-hot fury pulsed through his mind. His hands clenched into tight fists at his sides as his teeth ground against each other with such intensity that they could have shattered stones.

Spider.

That name was a plague. A curse. One that had hounded him for months on end. The vile, word-twisting demon had played him. Spider had stolen what should have rightfully been his. His home. His future. His respect. Spider had taken everything — and Father had made damn sure to hammer every single nail into Dayton’s coffin.

But they hadn’t gone all the way. They’d buried the corpse but forgotten to check its breath. And Dayton’s heart still thumped. A burning vitriol tore through his veins. One that would not be sated until the debt had been repaid.

His path upward in the Linwick family was no more. But Dayton didn’t care about that anymore. That path was old. It had been the sky from a well, the only thing he’d been able to see from the tiny cage that had been his life.

Dayton was blind no longer. Perhaps Spider had hoped that exile would break him. But that couldn’t have been farther from what happened. The humiliation had given him the one thing that he’d never truly had before.

Purpose.

And that purpose had driven him to the Torrins. To Exal — who had welcomed him with open arms. He’d peeled away the lies that permeated the entirety of the Linwick family and the weaknesses that rotted their house to the core.

Exal had given him all that and more. He’d given him a chance for revenge… and to reclaim what should have been his all those years ago. It would be the final task to break open the path to his new life. To the power that always should have been his.

His fingers twitched in anticipation. He could practically feel the throats of the blacklisted brats within them. Dayton had never once done laundry before his departure from the Linwick estate. There had been servants to handle such things for him.

That had changed in the past months. He had been alone, and the tasks that were the duty of others had been unjustly laid upon his own shoulders. Because of Spider, because of the children the demon protected, he had been forced to wash and wring his own clothes.

For months he had cursed them all.

But today, Dayton thanked them. Had he not known what it was like to squeeze the water from a shirt, he would have lacked the anticipation of knowing just how satisfying it would be to wring their necks.

I lacked appreciation for what I had. Never again. I will enjoy every moment of this life. My eyes are open, and they will not close again until I have seen every last drop of life squeezed from the little fledglings that Spider cares so much about.

They thought that they could steal my future, but their blood will be what paves my way to it.

“They are coming,” said the man clad in red-trimmed robes of white that smelled of death. A glossy metal mask bearing the visage of some screaming penitent obscured his features and muffled his words to a heady mumble. “It seems we have stumbled into Spider’s web. How fortuitous.”

“Spider is coming?” Dayton asked, his eyes snapping to the man beside him. “Now?”

“No,” the other man striding alongside Dayton said. “It is not Spider. We still have good reason to believe he is not present.”

This one wore the very same robes as the first, though his trimmings were a sickly green rather than the red of his compatriot. He’d learned neither of their names. They hadn’t introduced themselves — and Dayton didn’t need them to. Exal had sent them to ensure he completed his task. To ensure that nobody would be able to interfere with what he had been waiting for months to do.

“Our opponents are nothing more than the guard that Spider left behind in his absence,” the man in red-trimmed robes said. “We will ensure you are not disturbed. These mages may have some power to them. It is likely that demons are among their number.”

“We are prepared to deal with such matters,” the green-trimmed man said, revealing a glossy white rosary wrapped around his wrist. “You will deal with the children and obtain the rune. I suspect we will have dealt with our end of the problem by the time you have completed your task. It is imperative to move quickly. We cannot be here when Spider returns. He is too unpredictable.”

Dayton’s lips peeled back into something between a snarl and a smile. “I won’t take long at all. But don’t underestimate Spider. He gets into your head. Twists things around. Even if he isn’t here… his trickery could have already been laid.”

The man of red-trimmed robes turned to look in Dayton’s direction. Even though the man’s silvery mask completely covered his features, the derision in his posture was so clear that Dayton could practically taste it.

“We will approach the situation with due caution. But do not confuse me for yourself. Our capabilities are not comparable. Serve your duty — and I will serve mine.”

A coil of anger twisted through him. They looked down on him. Dayton’s hands opened, then clenched back into fists. Then they opened once again as he forced his jaw to unlock. Anger had taken him nowhere. It had blinded him; led him astray.

There was only one thing that mattered now. He didn’t care what Exal’s allies nameless thought of him. All that mattered was accomplishing his task. No humiliation would be too great if he could tear the stained mantle of the Linwick family away from his shoulders forevermore.

“You don’t have to worry about that,” Dayton growled.

But, before he could say anything else, a distant whump shook the very foundations of the building. All of them froze. No more than an instant of silence passed.

Then the wall exploded.

Dayton staggered back, throwing his hands up before his face as huge chunks of masonry spun through the air and crashed into the wall to his side. His domain screamed a warning far too late as an immense wave of magical energy poured in through the huge hole in the wall of the dormitory.

Ice gripped Dayton’s veins. This magic was well beyond anything he’d felt before. It just kept coming. Freezing goosebumps raced across his skin as his back pressed up against the wall, heart starting to hammer in his chest.

It was a Rank 6. It had to be. And yet, for some reason, he couldn’t sense a domain. There was something in the distance, almost overlaid over the magic he felt now. He might have said it was a domain, but that didn’t feel quite right either. It was too tightly wrapped, too dense. Dayton couldn’t quite tell what it was. His own domain felt like it had been rattled around in a storm. It was completely overwhelmed by the magic bearing down on it.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Spider has a fucking Rank 6 on his side?

The man in green-trimmed robes grabbed Dayton by the arm and yanked him into motion. “Come. This is not our fight. Spider is not the only one with a Rank 6.”

Dayton’s eyes widened. The other masked man hadn’t even flinched from the waves of magic pouring into the room. He stood exactly where he had been, his posture unchanged. It didn’t even seem like he’d noticed the massive hole in the wall.

That was more than enough for Dayton. He didn’t need to be told twice. Only a complete fool would stand anywhere near two fighting Rank 6 mages. He sprinted, the remaining masked man at his side.

It didn’t matter if there was a Rank 6 breathing down his neck. The Soul Master Rune would be allowed to waste away no longer. Nobody was going to stop him from accomplishing his task.

Nobody.

***

Glask had faced a number of powerful mages. He was no stranger to displays of strength and flaunted power. But, with all the fear and hype that encircled this Spider demon like a web… he was disappointed.

The power behind the attack that had broken the wall had been quite immense — but the now faded signature of magical energy was anything but. In fact, it was even less than he’d been prepared for. He might have even classed it as pathetic. Biya had made it seem like he was to expect some immense threat within these halls, not a well-below average opponent. This mage had just overspent their power trying to show off.

Glask fought Rank 6 mages before. Not many, of course — the Arbalest Empire really didn’t have all that many of them to go around, but there were more than most people suspected. He’d fought them.

He was still alive.

They weren’t.

And today would be no different.

That was doubly true for someone who was so clearly only at Rank 6 by a hair. They must have only had a single terribly combined rune.

The only thing that caught him off guard was the complete lack of a domain anywhere nearby. Even the weak magical signature he’d sensed before was gone.

They have that much control over their domain? I don’t think I could conceal my magic that effectively if I wanted to.

And then Glask’s surprise magnified. Through the crumbling hole in the wall stepped a child in a ceramic mask. It was painted with a glossy blue eye painted on its surface and a vertical line running down from the eye to the mask’s base — not a design that he’d ever seen before.

“You?” Glask asked, taken aback for the first time that day. “Are you a woman or a child?”

“You aren’t running,” the child said, her voice making it abundantly clear that she couldn’t possibly have been over the age of fifteen. “Why?”

“Did you somehow manage to reverse your age?” Glask asked. “How is someone so young a Rank 6?”

The child’s head tilted to the side. Something that might have been akin to unease built within Glask. This child’s mannerisms were… off. Something about them was unnaturally stiff. Alien. As if she was just imitating motions that she’d seen other people do. Her complete removal of the magical presence around her only added to his wariness.

Something was wrong.

Glask wasn’t scared, of course. Against a pathetic domain like what he’d just felt, he couldn’t have been. No special techniques to conceal one’s power could ever change that.

What a pity. This is a waste of my efforts… but I suppose an easy victory is better than none at all.

“I’m trying to avoid looking too closely at any probabilities right now,” the child said. “Are you here searching for Isabel? Please answer promptly. I only have twenty-five minutes left if I want to be early.”

Glask’s lips curled into a sneer behind his mask. He drew on his magic, letting sickly power course through his veins in a rising tide while keeping any external signs of the power from showing. It didn’t matter if he was fighting a child. A concealed surprise attack had won him more fights than any other move. “You’ve got far less than twenty-five minutes, girl. Seems you chose the wrong side. Siding with Spider when your magic is that pathetic for a Rank 6… foolish. You should have laid low. Your combinations must be terrible.”

“My combinations?” the girl tilted her head to the other side. “You sensed them? I find that unlikely.”

A blur passed through the air beside the child, moving so fast that Glask didn’t manage to register the newcomer’s presence until they were standing beside the masked child. And, by the time his eyes had processed the information he was seeing and sent it to his brain, they had already started to widen.

It was a woman, and she was completely coated with blood. Viscera dripped from her almost as if she’d just taken a bath through someone’s guts, and clasped between both of her hands was someone else’s still-bleeding fist.

And within the fist was a thrumming artifact.

The very same artifact that should have been in Breen’s hands — back down at the entrance of the dormitory, where they’d left him to stall out any potential threats.

“Oh, Yoru. You’re here too. That’s good,” the newcomer said. She looked down at the orb clenched within the fist within her hands. “The guy down there said this thing would blow up and kill everyone if he let go of it — but I accidentally killed him before I got a chance to ask if there was another way to turn it off.”

Disbelief welled in Glask.

Impossible. She was so fast that she killed Breen before he could release the bomb? That can’t be true. He was a powerful Rank 5 mage. There’s no way he’d fall that easily.

“Isabel and Todd are in danger,” the child said. “Get that out of here.”

“I was thinking about eating it, actually,” the newcomer said. “Do you think I’ll blow up if I do that?”

The child tilted her head for a moment, as if she’d completely forgotten about Glask. Then she shook her head.

“No. You’ll be fine.”

What?

“Great!” the other girl said, tossing the bomb — along with Breen’s hand — right into her mouth.

“No!” Glask yelled, grabbing every scrap of magic he’d gathered and shoving it into his Shield. A shimmering wall of green magic exploded into being around him, reinforced with the full might of a Rank 6.

The girl’s jaws slammed down on the hand and the artifact alike.

Glask braced himself. An explosion of that scale would be enough to injure even him if it was this close — but, to his surprise, not so much as a puff of magic slipped out from the girl’s mouth.

Instead, a familiar wave of magic slammed into his domain.

Not from the child, but from the girl standing beside her.

“Bleh. That tasted like greasy pork,” the blood-covered girl said, her nose scrunching in distaste. “I thought that much magic would have tasted better.”

All too late, realization struck Glask. The magic he’d felt before hadn’t belonged to the masked child. It belonged to the newcomer.

“You,” Glask growled. “You’re the Rank 6?”

“What?” the girl blinked. “Yoru, this guy has Dayton’s smell on him. We don’t have time for this.”

“He wasn’t answering my questions. I wanted to make sure.” The child turned back to Glask.

A wave of magic tore through the rubble-strewn hall. Pressure drove into Glask’s chest like a striking warhammer, passing through his shield as if it wasn’t there and slamming him into the wall. The air exploded from his lungs in a wheeze.

Terror bound his mind in a noose. This magic was nothing like anything he’d ever felt. No Rank 6 mage ever could have had such an immense presence. It was overwhelming beyond compare.

“What are you?” Glask gasped as he crumpled to the floor, barely able to muster so much as a breath. His three Rank 6 Runes felt like they were nothing more than toys caught in a hurricane.

The child’s head tilted to look down at him. She walked forward until they were only inches apart, then reached up to her mask and removed it from her face.

Her eyes were pale and empty, like two flat disks of silver. They seemed to go on for miles, plunging endlessly into her mind until there was nothing left but mercury.

Then she put her mask back on.

Moonlight poured in through the hole in the wall behind her, sharp and harsh. Confusion pounded in Glask’s mind. He could have sworn that it had been day — but his mind was rapidly fading.

Any panic that should have sprung up was far too late. She’d done something to him and he hadn’t even realized it. He couldn’t even see her anymore.

The only thing that remained in his eyes, seared into his very being like it had been branded by a cold iron, was a rising moon swallowing the night sky.

“You can die now,” the child said.

But Glask didn’t hear her words.

He was already dead.