Return of the Runebound Professor
Chapter 732: War

Father was just a hair’s width away from infinity.

The pulse of the world. The weave of reality. The laws that governed all things, aligning the universe and slotting every single piece into its proper place — he was so close to seeing it all.

It was a muted whisper against his ear, so gentle that the words were lost and only its intention could be made out.

It was the tender caress of a presence against his skin, so soft that he could only notice it after it had already passed.

It was the heartless steel bars of a prison cell locking all of reality in its proper place, cold as death and equally as inevitable.

He was so close. The laws were there, hovering so tantalizingly close to his grip, and yet he still couldn’t quite grasp them. Every second he spent studying the Long Night and delving deeper into the ancient weapon’s powers brought him closer.

His understanding grew. The way of things laid itself out before him — infinite weaving paths. A myriad of choices so vast that attempting to comprehend them all would have driven even a god insane.

And yet every path led to the exact same place. No choice could ever make a difference. One could change their path, but they could never step off the paths entirely. And when all was said and done… they would end up exactly where they had always been meant to be.

Everyone, everything, had a place in the universe. A place they belonged. A duty to fulfill, and none of what they did or desired could ever change that. Such was the decree of Order.

But understanding was not enough. Father didn’t need to understand Order. He wanted to control it. To wield what could not be wielded. To bend what could not be bent.

Order was rigid. Stiff. Unyielding.

And that was exactly what was going to allow him to wield it.

A slow smile pulled across his lips as he sent his senses deeper into the Long Night. The ancient artifact was even more powerful than he ever dared hope. A part of him had hoped that he would have been finished by now… but this was fine too.

After all the years he’d spent lying in wait, all to get to this point, a few extra days was just the aftertaste of victory.

It won’t be long, now.

“Janice,” Father said, his eyes not even shifting from the staff in his hands.

“Yes?” Janice asked, arriving by his side in an instant.

“We are almost finished here,” Father said. “Begin preparations for our departure. I will be done ahead of schedule. The Arbalest Empire is just about ready to serve its final purpose for me.”

***

Judgement paused.

Something was nipping at the back of her mind.

Things had been off as of late. There had been… fluctuations. So small that she never would have noticed them if her senses had been any less keen, and so fast that they were gone by the time she’d spotted them.

Chaos always struggled against Order. Such was the inevitable cycle of life. But it had been bumpier as of late, and it was coming from the portion of the universe that Renewal had overseen before she’d run off with the Fallen.

A flash of anger shot through Judgement at that. She found a hand drifting to her backside before she stopped herself. That only made her anger smolder hotter still. It had been years since she’d been injured like that — and at the hands of a god who shouldn’t even be able to kneel in her presence, no less.

Decras. Vile, sickly pile of sludge. The day will come when I crush the Fallen from existence. Those who dare stand in the way of progress and Order will inevitably fall. That, too, is the way of the universe.

Judgement was sorely tempted to set out and do just that. But were she to do so, she would have been no better than Renewal. Her post was one that could not be abandoned. The Order relied on her. This portion of the universe relied on her.

The Laws had to be kept. She was not so easily replaced as a mere goddess of reincarnation — and even that hadn’t been simple. Renewal’s abscondment of her post had would at least a several thousand year-long backup, and her replacement was… not adequately prepared.

Judgement winced as a distant crunch poked at her senses. She didn’t even need to peer across reality to see what it was. The incompetent buffoon who had taken control of Renewal’s Waters of Life had dropped another tile.

That tile took at least a thousand years to create. There was enough runic energy within it to build an empire on a mortal world. And now it is shattered irreparably.

It was beyond her how a literal god couldn’t manage to slot tiles into place, but everyone had to start somewhere. Everyone had a purpose. This was all according to the Order’s will. It was simply—

Another crash broke Judgement’s thoughts.

There went another tile.

Her jaw clenched and she forcibly pulled her attention away from that particularly displeasing section of the universe. She couldn’t allow herself to be distracted right now. There were more important matters than an incompetent god or even the Fallen.

Chaos had been restless recently. It had been cropping up more at the edges of the Order’s domain. Almost as if it was rallying for something. And the last time that had happened…

Judgement’s hands tightened at her sides.

She couldn’t allow such a thing to happen again. Whatever — whoever — Chaos was preparing for, she would bring an end to them before they could ever grow to fruition.

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***

A troubled frown pulled at Noah’s lips. He sat on the edge of the bed, his chin in his palm as he thought. Fuyin sat on the other end of Moxie’s bed, poring over his grimoire. He had let her take a look at it after he’d gotten all the information he could from Grim about the Night’s Shadow.

The Inquisitor’s archives had, in fact, possessed information about the ancient monster. There hadn’t been a lot. Grim suspected that there might have been more information about it, but buried within the more encrypted books that he hadn’t managed to pull apart yet.

But what Noah had found was quite troublesome.

The Long Night — not the weapon, but the war — had been said to be some massive conflict between humanity and monsters.

That wasn’t wrong. There were indeed monsters involved on the other side. The part that had been twisted was the number of them. People hadn’t all banded together, the Bastions hadn’t been created as outposts, to fight against some enormous horde.

In fact, there hadn’t been a horde at all.

There had only been three combatants on the monsters’ side of the war.

The Night’s Shadow. The Suneater. And… something. There hadn’t been much information about the final monster. Just that it had been present, and at least as strong as the other two if not even stronger.

According to the Inquisitors records, the empire had killed the Suneater. The Night’s Shadow had been sealed away — and there was no information as to what had happened to the final monster.

Presumably, it had also been sealed. Noah doubted anyone had managed to talk it down. The archives had made it pretty clear that none of the three monsters were the kind that would stop until everything in their path was destroyed.

But his focus wasn’t even the other monster right now.

He’d been hoping that the books would have information about how the Night’s Shadow had been defeated and what steps he could take to make sure the damn thing didn’t turn everyone to stone the next time Father decided he wanted to mess around.

The information he’d found there was… concerning. The Inquisitors had known that the Night’s Shadow used Order magic. That concept sounded large, even for a Rank 8, but Noah couldn’t deny it felt appropriate. The mere movements of the Night’s Shadow were enough to turn everything around it into singing stone.

It basically rewrote reality into its own image.

But, oddly enough, that ability was barely even mentioned. Despite its immense destructive capabilities, the majority of the entry about the Night’s Shadow talked about how difficult it was to damage. The monster was apparently incredibly resilient. And, according to the Inquisitors, the biggest threat it posed was literally just smashing things in its way.

The archives contained little information about the Night’s Shadows beyond that, but Grim did find that people had been able to fight it by using large groups of Formation Masters.

This is odd. Surely the song it plays is far more dangerous than its physical size. I mean, it was huge, but is that their main concern? And what did Formation Masters have to do with being instrumental to holding it back?

He was missing something.

The bed bounced slightly as Fuyin’s head abruptly snapped up.

“Someone is coming,” she said, pushing Grim to the side and shooting to her feet as frost gathered around her knuckles. “Someone powerful. And they have backup. Ready yourselves.”

Noah blinked, tearing his attention away from his thoughts and turning it toward his domain. A familiar presence prickled against it. He only needed a moment to figure out who it was.

“Oh,” Noah said. “Don’t worry. That’s just—”

The door swung open. Yoru stood beyond it, flecks of blood splattered across her white and blue mask. Standing beside her was Lee — covered head to toe in blood like she’d taken a bath in it.

“Shit!” Moxie exclaimed, leaping out of her chair. “What happened, Lee?”

“It’s okay,” Lee said. “The blood isn’t mine.”

Fuyin glanced from the demons to Noah. Recognition washed over her features — likely as she finally placed them among the number of people that had been sitting around Noah when she’d dropped by to ask him to help raid the Inquisitors’ archives.

“They’re with you?” Fuyin slowly let her hands lower. “I thought the Inquisitors had sent assassins.”

“I don’t think it was the Inquisitors,” Lee said. “They didn’t taste like Inquisitors.”

“Inquisitors have a flavor?” Fuyin asked with a frown.

“Yeah,” Lee said with a nod. “Kind of like—”

“Lee,” Noah said, his voice going cold. “Do you mean there were different assassins here?”

“Yes,” Yoru answered for Lee. “A Rank 6 and three Rank 5s. They attempted to attack Isabel and Todd, potentially delaying vital meeting plans.”

Fuyin stiffened. “A Rank 6? We must go immediately. I will—”

“They’re dead,” Noah said. Anger burned in his stomach like hot coal. “They already killed them.”

Even through the fury welling up within Noah, he didn’t miss that Fuyin had been about to offer to help.

Fuyin blinked as she looked from him to Lee and Yoru. “What?”

Lee nodded. “Yup. All dead. Isabel and Todd are fine, by the way. Don’t worry. We checked on them.”

“You killed a group of Rank 5s and a Rank 6? Just the two of you?” Fuyin asked in stunned disbelief. “Just the two of you?”

“No, Isabel and Todd helped,” Lee said. “They got one of the Rank 5s. None of them were that strong, though. But… I recognized one.”

“Who?” Moxie asked, her own features taut with anger.

“Dayton,” Lee said. “The guy from the Linwick Estate. But when I ate his body, he didn’t taste like Linwick. He was earthy. Almost like…”

Her eyes flicked to Moxie.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Moxie asked. “I’ve never met the guy.”

“Not you,” Yoru said. She nodded to Lee, who held out a glossy metal mask. “The Torrin family. And they were joined by people wearing masks like these.”

The simmering fury welling within him fought to break free. Even with the Empire teetering on the brink of collapse, the nobles were still trying to kill Isabel.

Enough was enough.

Clearly, he’d taken too passive of a role.

Noah took the silvery mask from Yoru. He’d never seen anything like it. But, as his eyes lifted, he noticed something in Fuyin’s features.

Recognition.

“You know what this is?” Noah asked.

“The Herron family,” Fuyin said. “That’s the mask of their Enforcers. We’ve worked with them before on missions. When you become an Enforcer for them, you don that mask in place of your former identity.”

“So the Herrons are working with the Torrins now,” Noah said. His knuckles turned white as his grip tightened on the metal. “And they think they can try to kill my students? I had hoped that the chaos would have kept them off balance for longer.”

“Unfortunately not,” Yoru said. Her head tilted to the side. Then she let out a thoughtful hum. “That’s odd. The darkness has… shifted.”

Noah turned the mask in his hands over. Then his gaze lifted once more.

“Moxie. Do you think something like this would happen without the express permission from a Family Head?”

“Definitely not,” Moxie said. “Enforcers never move on the orders of lower level members. And my family has always been hierarchy oriented. None of the branch heads would dare go for an alliance with another family without permission.”

“I see,” Noah said quietly, his words measured. He strode over to Grim and slung the grimoire over his shoulder. “Then please gather everyone and make sure nobody gets caught off guard by a surprise follow-up attack. I’m heading out for a little while.”

“What do you mean to do?” Fuyin asked. “And why would the Herrons and the Torrins collaborate to attack your students like this?”

“I was counting on the noble families having enough problems to worry about right now. Clearly, that was overly optimistic. I’m not making that mistake twice.” Noah’s hands clenched into fists and his eyes narrowed. “They want a war, so I’m going to bring one right to their doorstep.”