Even though nothing is ever as it seems, the full impact of Mishka’s confession and the truth that she was hiding it, didn’t happen until after the immediate danger was over. However, the truth is, this secret took too long to come out. People couldn’t reconcile or adapt to what was originally seen as really advanced human technology to what it actually was, magic. And this blip began the greatest human tragedy.

Meanwhile, the boys’ brains seemed to short-circuit after receiving excess data and not knowing where to sort it.

The table Lark leaned on rattled and their eyes glazed-over at the view; a two-story slime rolled towards the epicenter of the schoolyard. More than fifty of their peers slept inside the slime’s body. Sky huddled Mishka into his chest as they hid behind the window column, observing the slime up until it rolled over another unconscious student hidden under a pile of slime bats before it disappeared in a white light.

Lark shuddered while gripping the baseball bat. He wouldn’t allow himself to get captured in that thing even if it meant dying.

Suddenly the circling bats converged together to create another slime building. Oh, so the worst wasn’t over.

Lark looked around the corner of the door, where a refrigerator slime roamed. Goddammit, he cursed in his head. Don’t roll around so lazily like you’re on a school tour!

Mishka saw the ring on Lark’s finger as he held the bat close to his face and exclaimed, “Where did you get that?”

“Wangshi gave it to me. Just thought it might be useful if we ran into a cultist.”

She quickly wiped her face into Sky’s shirt and hurried to over to Lark’s side with a face that said, “Who cares?”

“Hurry and perform a blood rite,” she ordered as if it were normal.

“Oh yeah. Okay. A whaa—?” The tiredness in Lark’s eyes showed as the bottom of his eyelids sagged. “You want me to give it my blood?”

Mishka replied only with her face again that screamed, “Hurry up!” She passed him a small needle she kept in her knapsack.

“It’ll hurt less if you poke the side of your finger.”

Lark followed her advice and pricked the side of his thumb. It took him longer than a second to drill the silver point through his skin, due to the callouses he developed from gripping the bat. Though it hurt less than digging out a splinter, he still clenched his teeth together.

“Drip the blood over the ring and we’ll know what kind of magic it contains.”

He guided his perfect dome-shaped blood bubble to the ring. Once, it made contact, a spiral of green and black smoke rose into the air to form a sphere.

Mishka’s face brightened, but her voice hinted disappointment. “Good, it wasn’t soul-bound. But it’s a low-grade storage ring using spatial magic. Not bad, but not very useful in our situation—”

So this is magic, Lark thought as he gazed upon the contents inside of the sphere and what looked like a storage container to him.

The small hairs on his neck raised, realizing the ring formerly belonged to an AA cultist. Not only did he learn alien-technology was magic, but the cultists were also magic users!

Which means…? He looked at Mishka, his heart thundering. The Allied Agency also knew about this and they knew how to utilize magic too!

To cover his shock, he pulled something at random from the floating sphere. A gold coin appeared in his hand. One side of the coin had the face of a woman with runes circling the edges. The other side had a creature that looked like a cross-bred creature with goat-horns and a fishtail.

“That’s a coin!” Mishka’s eyes bulged as she grabbed it from Lark.

“And?” Lark raised a brow.

“It’s a very special coin.” Mishka rolled her eyes and sunk one hand onto her hip, Sky shook his head, lips pulled to one side. “My father would know something more about where this coin came from, well which world, anyway.”

She winked. “I did say I was a foreign exchange student.”

“We thought it’d be like Russia,” Sky said exasperatedly, running a hand through his unusually unruly hair. “Not another world. Or worlds, whatever that means.”

Lark peeked at the classroom door. The slime was sure taking its time.

“Anything else in there?” She looked at Lark’s storage ring.

“Weird-looking apothecary bottles,” Lark answered, “But I’m not going to waste any time taste-testing them.”

“Old magic…” Mishka muttered and revealed the bottles were likely potions or tonics.

Lark nodded, playing along with Mishka’s ‘it’s not a big deal’ attitude. “Cool. It doesn’t look like there are any weapons in here.”

Lark swung his bat at the sphere and Sky let out a gasp as it appeared that half the bat disappeared from view.

An idea struck him. Taking off his backpack, he stuffed it into the sphere.

“C’mon, I’ll store our stuff in here, so it’ll be easier to run.” He grunted as he took their backpacks and tossed them into the sphere. “What did you have in your bag?” He glared at Sky. Rocks?

“A magic-less dictionary. We can’t all be lucky. But I suppose a bat deals more damage than a book.” Sky swung the bat around as if he was a natural.

“How do I cancel out this thing?” He asked Mishka, while waving at the sphere. Unlike his phone screen, it wouldn’t go away when he swiped at the rotund smoke.

“It should act according to your will.”

The sphere dissipated as soon as Lark twisted his ring and said, “Off.”

“You didn’t have to do it like that. There’s no on or off button on the ring.” Mishka teased.

“It worked, didn’t it?” Lark shot back.

“We need a break-out plan,” Sky said as he crossed his arms.

“I need new shoes.”

“If you wash the goop off later, you’ll be fine.”

“No, I need new shoes or I’ll be forever tainted by the memory of getting slimed. There should be a back to school sale downtown, right?”

“God. And Mishka says I sound like a woman,” Sky said while putting his hands on his hips.

“You know me, I’m only highly motivated by the state of my emotions,” Lark said with a smirk.

“Back on point,” Mishka clapped to get their attention. “Break-out plan: I’ll take out the slime that’s guarding the exit with a rank D fire spell and I’ll activate the spell, wind-walker. Then we’ll rush to the parking lot.”

…

“I’ll explain it all later, once we make it out of here,” she said, huffing at their clueless faces.

“Let’s go then, we need to leave campus somehow,” Lark said, edging his feet towards the door. “That thing is kidnapping people for no reason and then disappearing off to god knows where.”

He received a timely notification on his Trinity watch from Wangshi.

After opening the message, Wangshi’s haggard face appeared in front of them.

“Young master, thank goodness you’re still here—but you must hurry to escape the premises. I’ll be waiting for you at the twelve o’clock entrance.”— The tendrils of a slime bat swooped above his face before it got minced by Wangshi’s sword.—“Make haste!”

The transmission ended. The 12 o’clock entrance was the parking lot where Wangshi would sometimes pick them up for their long-hour lunches on Wednesday.

“Good-timing. Now, we have our getaway driver.” Sky grinned.

Lark peeked out the door again. “Not good.”

There were two slimes now. Both guarding each end of the hallway.

“It’s like they know we’re in here.” He frowned. They spent too much time talking.

Plop. Plop.

The three jerked their heads to the computer monitor in the corner of the room. Stringy silver slime fell from the air vent. Then its entire body descended onto the computer desk, swallowing the monitor into its transparent body.

Sky, who was standing closest to the monitor, tripped over himself after getting away from the slime that hopped down to the floor.

Unlike the refrigerator slime Lark fought earlier, this slime was a lot smaller; it was barely the size of a newborn. The baby slime jiggled its body, wiggling the glass panel inside its ‘stomach.’ They held their breaths, watching the glass bubble into foam, and the slime bounced onto another screen.

Lark gritted his teeth and moved towards the slime with his bat raised close to his ear. “Stop looking at it! Go!” he shouted, putting himself between the slime and them. It reacted to his voice, he guessed, and it lobbed overhead.

“Hey, come back, here!” he said, watching it disappear, hidden underneath the desks.

Then he heard a loud crunch. Both Mishka and Lark shouted, “NO, Skyyy!”

“I’m okay. Broke my glasses with my foot.”

Lark groaned and treaded carefully to the row where he saw the slime vanish. “How am I going to recognize you?”

Sky gave him the finger as he and Mishka retreated to the door.

“Let’s go, remember to look where we’re going,” Mishka said.

“How will I ever manage that without my eyes?” Sky retorted. Only things that were far away looked blurry to him. Fortunately, a wall would not become his enemy today!

Smirking, Lark swept the club under the table, seeing the slime glued to the side of the desk. At the last second, it flattened itself like dough onto the floorboards causing his swing to meet head-on with hard metal.

The missed strike burned through his hands. He needed to pinpoint it in place. As if reading his thoughts, the slime weaved over and under the computers.

You wanna play? Then let’s play!

Mishka unlocked the door and stepped into the hallway, focusing on the slime covering the back exit, while Sky protected her back.

Holding one hand on her headband, and the other aiming at the approximate direction of the slime, she spoke with confidence, “Rank D fire spell: Blaze!”

A red glowing magic circle in the shape of six petals formed underneath the refrigerator slime. From each petal erupted a burst of red-hot flames. The circle covered a wide area, so other than the melting slime, it destroyed a large portion of the building too.

“Amazing,” Sky breathed. Though his vision was a bit fuzzy when he looked down the hallway, he could see and feel the heat from the firepower.

“Lark, hurry up in there!” Mishka yelled, raising her arm with the enchanted ring.

“Coming,” Lark responded with a light tune.

“How did you deal with the slime in there so fast?” Sky inquired, with a confused look.

“I dealt with it in more ways than one.” Lark’s cunning grin startled the two. As soon as Mishka finished chanting her wind spell, they escaped from the last pursuing slime in the hallway.

He could get used to flying, Lark thought, as the trio soared(more like glided) towards the parking lot. Unfortunately, the spell only lasted ten seconds before they had to look for cover around the cafeteria.

“I can recast wind-walker again in five minutes,” Mishka said as they hid below a table from patrolling slime bats.

“So weak.” Lark pouted.

She snapped, “It’s only a rank F enchantment, of course, it’s not going to be so great!”

As they sneaked their way from the cafeteria, Lark regaled about his ingenious idea, while impersonating his evil dragon persona. His left hand was stretched out with his fingers wide open, as though he were a proud bride showing off her engagement ring.

“Inside this is a slime.”

Sky gasped, while Mishka shook her head pretending to cry. “I guess that’s one way to tame a creature. Just so you know, all the items in the storage ring will probably get eaten by that thing.”

“You’re worried about your laptops, right? I’ll just make Gushi spit it out later.”

“You named it!” the two of them exclaimed at the same time.

“What? It’s kind of cute, and didn’t smell that bad.” Lark said with a frown, looking kind of hurt that they didn’t like the idea.

“Stop,” Mishka motioned to them. A crowd of slime monsters blocked the path. Five bats and a refrigerator slime.

She hurried to cast Blaze, effectively eliminating all their enemies, while Lark slipped all the monster drops into his spatial ring: a slime crystal and five slime bat wings.

After making it across another few yards, the second group of slime creatures appeared. This time three refrigerator slimes and seven bats.

Mishka used Blaze once again, destroying the refrigerator slimes and six bats. Lark got the last one with a fast swing and watched it splatter against the stone wall. He collected the three slime crystals and seven slime bat wings.

“What are these things?” Sky mumbled as he landed a clean hit on another swooping slime bat. The explosive sweep drenched his baseball bat in slime guts. It was a slime bath.

“Goop. It’s exactly how it sounds like!” Lark shouted over to Sky. In the middle of the frantic walkway, Lark batted away one of the silver bats. Its body splattered translucent goop onto a locker.

They were a little more than halfway to the parking lot when they got swarmed by a bat colony. This was their fourth run-in with monsters since leaving the cafeteria, and the situation got worse when Mishka said she could only cast Blaze one more time. Sky and Lark hadn’t noticed the petals disappearing from her headband each time she used the fire spell.

“Hold off on using it till we’re in a crisis,” Lark said. “We’re still too far away from the parking lot.”

“Is this not a crisis though?” Sky said a bit desperately, hacking a slime bat to the ground as he protected Mishka, who stood in between them as their guide.

“Forty more seconds,” she reported while keeping her back close to Sky’s.

Lark estimated that the enchantment would break them out of the entanglement, but it would be a gamble to see how close to the parking lot could they reach in ten seconds. At this rate, they didn’t have much to lose, except for their dignity after all the struggles they went through to get here. What worried Lark, even more, was that the masterminds behind this smelly plot haven’t revealed themselves yet. Which could mean a lot of things?

One, they could be watching all their struggles from elsewhere.

Two, the AA cultists were finally being intercepted by the agency.

Or three, this was all just a dream.

Option three sounded the best, honestly.

After getting rid of one bat, another one dove towards his arm, taking a nip at his windbreaker jacket. Lark flinched at the small tear at the seams.

“Goddammit, these flying shitbags think they’re so cute. This jacket’s worth a hundred bucks!”

He took a swing at the bat who bit his jacket with its gelatin-like teeth. It exploded dramatically and fell to the cement ground amongst other strange gray fluids. Only this time, the slime bat left behind a different drop other than batwings. It looked like a crude piece of paper with a black circle and a shape of a bat in the center.

“Bat signal?” Lark wondered and passed it over to Mishka. “Something useful for once?”

“Yes! It’s a summoning scroll,” she said her face in smiles. She placed her hand on top of the circle, fingers spread out. “I only know a lesser summoning art, so it won’t come out to its fullest potential.”

“That doesn’t really matter now!” Lark said as he counted his fifteenth kill.

“I also need all the batwings you collected.”

“Fine! Extort me out of my dragon treasure while you’re at it!”

While swinging a bat with one hand was difficult, fiddling with sticky bat droppings was a whole other level of difficulty. He tossed her at least twenty wings that somehow produced goop even after shaking them.

“I’ll pay you back appropriately after this is over,” she said once she pressed down on the paper. Black ink moved off the page and seeped into the ground. Dark spots covered each of her five fingers as she tapped on five points on the paper in the shape of a pentagon. “Five-point Summoning: Dark Array. Creature of the night, please lend us your speed and power as we take flight!”

The scroll shriveled up in purple smoke after the chant.

“Do the summoned creatures like it better when you rhyme Cat Princess?”

“Shut up!”

Out of the ground, where the black ink ran, a phantom hand emerged to take the twenty-seven batwing offerings. Sky, who watched on the other side of Mishka, couldn’t help but feel his blood run cold at the ghastly spectacle. If he didn’t know any better, he would’ve thought Mishka practiced necromancy. Which could also be a possibility considering how little they knew about her home life.

After eating the sacrificed batwings, the phantom hand broke into purple and white particles.

“What’s going on?” Lark said as he blocked a slime bat from going after Mishka.

“Look with your eyes,” Sky said, keeping up with blocking three bats. “I’m on twenty. You?”

“Thirty.” He lied. His arms felt as heavy as lead, and his swings were getting slower.

“It’s transforming,” Mishka cut in. The broken particles assembled together, shaping into a purple Phantom Bat.

If the slime bats were level one mobs, this huge purple, smokey bat with a wingspan of almost five feet was like a level five boss!

Mishka only had one order for it as she prepared wind-walker: Cover them!

The greenish glow whipped around their feet, and they all dashed to the entrance with the Phantom Bat charging ahead. Unlike the slime bats whose main attacks were scratching and blinding, the Phantom Bat used its large wingspan to slice through the slimy crowd like pudding.

Lark turned on his spatial ring and combed through the fallen slime bats. He picked up whatever he could, but nothing like the bat signal scroll appeared after the Phantom Bat mowed down over fifty of them.

“You’re such a free-rider.” Sky booed while gliding over a picnic table. In over five-seconds, they transversed over a hundred meters before they could see a small figure consistently evading slime bats at nearly the same speed they were arriving at.

Wangshi!

A wave of hope spread from his relieved smile down to his toes. Feeling a burst of power, he dashed faster with Wind-Walker. As he raced along the surface of a wall, he couldn’t help but admire the versatility of movement magic. Albeit the fact that they were being chased did put a damper on things.

Nearing the ten-second mark, the team was another fifty meters away from the entrance. And they could see Wangshi fighting valiantly against the bats…and a five-story slime!