Villin turned back and looked at the two ogres who came near. They halted, showing their yellow teeth, when they realized he had nowhere to run.

He looked at them in full seriousness. Thanks to a gene solution he took shortly after beginning his classes in The Academy he had strength similar to an orc, sadly this was still far off compared to an ogre, they would be able to crush him with a single hand.

Villin’s first thought of using the offensive version of ‘Mentallage’ but since an ogre’s mind was constructed differently compared to that of a human, the spell was ineffective.

Knowing this, Villin prepared to use ‘Bombardo’, it was the only spell of which Villin was sure it would do some damage. Then again, it was unlikely to cause more than a burn on an ogre’s skin.

With a heavy heart, Villin watched as the ogres approached one step at a time.

When they were barely five meters away from him Villin was about to cast the spell when he heard something in his head.

‘Your spells and body aren’t the only powers you possess.’

The voice belonged to the Kitsune who had been taking note of the situation.

Confused, Villin replied ‘I thought you needed time to get used to my body, how could I use your powers?’

Villin could feel the Kitsune smile ‘Even though your body is hard to get used to, your mind is not. These creatures are primitive, their mind is their biggest weakness. Even though humans have difficulty connecting with the minds of other creatures, you are no longer truly human.’

Villin frowned as he heard her words. He could feel the intent in her words, she was sure of what she had been saying. But to attack with the mind without using spells, he wasn’t sure how to do it.

Still, Villin was sure the Kitsune wouldn’t help him any further, certain things had to be figured out by oneself.

Even though the ogres were only a few meters away from him. Villin closed his eyes and entered his mental space. Everything was the same, yet different. He couldn’t quite say what it was, but something in his mind had changed. His control had increased by a lot.

He recalled how he connected to his puppets generally, he would connect a string of magical power from the puppet all the way to the web, deep in the mind.

And so, he did something similar now. He made his magic power into lines, connecting to the inner pieces of his mind. When he opened his eyes, one of the ogres had one of his large arms raised, it was about to smash down on him.

A thin line of magic power shot out from his mind, going right into the ogre’s eye. Villin could feel some sort of connection had been made, he recaptured the feeling he had when attacking with mentallage. The spell created a bridge between two minds he could cross.

Without properly realizing it, the line of magic power had changed as such, his magic power moved through the line in droves, reaching the ogre.

Just as the massive arm was coming down, the first wave of magic power reached. An ogre’s mental space only had two areas, memories and feelings. But it was small, extremely small.

Villin didn’t think about what he was doing, all he did was send his magic power in droves and let it wreak havoc. 

First, the ogre simply stumbled, missing Villin with his arm. He shook his head confused, his mind was in disarray, he didn’t quite know what was going on. Then, he forgot why he was here, or where this was. Within a minute the ogre looked in front of him blankly it had lost its sense of self.

The second ogre which was standing just behind it frowned deeply. Normally his comrade should move forward and squish the human, then they could eat them together. By the time it truly noticed something was wrong, a thin thread of magic had reached him unknowingly.

As his memories and feelings were being destroyed, the ogre roared and dropped to his knees, soon, he too was empty.

Both of them were extremely similar to Elinoire, thinking of this, Villin moved next to them.

One of the ogres looked at him absentmindedly while the other was still looking in front of him.

This was exactly what had happened to Elinoire, the first two areas of her mental space had collapsed due to a huge amount of pressure, the ogres were the same. Their minds were already weakened due to the torture, using a basic mental attack was enough to break them apart entirely.

As he thought this, Villin once more used transfiguration to sense the situation in the facility entirely, when he did, he took a few steps back again.

A group of people were heading for him, five at least.

Moments after he noticed them, his connection was suddenly cut off. Apparently, one of them noticed he was spying and had some way to stop him.

Villin panicked somewhat. He thought of trying to get the two ogres to help him ,but for that, his technique was way too weak. He swallowed as he once more put his back against the wall, if he could take one of the guards with him, he would be fine with it.

He waited, and exactly thirty seconds after he sensed them, a group of people came into his vision. When they turned the corner, they immediately got distracted by the two ogres who seemed to be the largest threat, yet just before Villin cast a ‘Bombardo’ at the group, he heard a voice.

“Villin?”

There was one person in the group who didn’t look at the ogres, she had silver hair and was in her early twenties.

“Silver?”

At this point the other magi also realized the situation as a whole, unlike the ogre they fought earlier, these two seemed to have suffered from a mental collapse, this was seemingly caused by the boy next to them, the reason they were here.

“My go boy, what did they do to you?” asked Pompei, the burly man who now also recognized Villin.

“This, what a terrible fate.” said professor Messen who had taught him how to make gene solutions.

The group of five people consisted entirely of teachers, Silver was the newest of the bunch and Villin recognized the others. He stared at them, he didn’t feel happy or sad, not even surprised really, he didn’t know what to feel.

The group quickly all lowered their wands after affirming the ogres weren’t a threat “Did anyone else survive?” miss Valentine, one of the members of the group, asked.

Villin looked at her for a bit before responding absentmindedly “Elinoire is in the open cell, Marvin wasn’t brought here.”

Upon hearing Elinoire’s name, she looked confused but she didn’t ask anything else.

A few moments later, the group began leading him back the way they came. Students of the fifth and sixth year of The Academy were all over the place, corpses of guards also littered the corridors and even the ogre could be seen lying in a pool of its own blood.

Villin looked at everything without expression, he simply followed those before him, at some point Silver gave him a cloak to keep warm but he didn’t even truly realize it and it simply fell to the ground.

The ward he made to contact The Academy seemed to have worked, and much better than expected apparently.

While walking through the corridors, Villin touched the large scar on the right side of his face, then he looked down, there was barely a spot on his body that wasn’t covered with scars. Other than his genitals, his entire body had been practically destroyed.

When Villin properly regained control over his thoughts, he realized he was already outside. He was standing in a desert surrounded by people from The Academy, in front of him was Silver and she seemed like she had been trying to talk to him.

She was terribly worried he had lost his mind, they just heard of Elinoire and Villin was acting similarly, luckily, he wasn’t quite that bad off.

“Villin, are you okay? Can you still respond?”

Hearing her words, Villin noticed her voice was shaking slightly, “I’m not sure, but I can still talk and think.”

This was all he said, it felt terribly uncomfortable speaking to these people, he was shocked by the lack of happiness he felt, he was outside after all, he had dreamt of seeing the sun many times. Yet, now that he looked at it, he found it lacked any warmth.

It wasn’t so special and amazing as he always told himself before going to sleep. He didn’t feel like crying and laughing as he thought he would. For some reason, he almost wanted to go back to his cell. Back to the silent solitude, back to working on his escape plan. 

He was surrounded by these people now, but he didn’t like it as he used to.

Even though he didn’t like it, Villin responded to a number of the questions they asked. Then, before he knew it, he was lying in an unfamiliar bed. It was soft, so extremely soft.

After lying there for a bit, Villin stood up and went to sleep on the cold ground instead, it felt more familiar that way.