Chapter 31: The Scholar’s Last Disciple

Alyssa continued to cling to Jon as the staircase docked with a staircase that spiraled about the circumference of the oculus of light. The moment Jon stepped off one set of stairs and onto the next, the flying staircase left port and returned to the darkness below.

“Carry me,” Alyssa demanded.

“You have legs.”

“Correction. I have one good leg. I hate stairs” — and she just wanted to cling onto Jon for a moment longer.

Jon weighed his arguments for a second, only to decide that any sort of argument wasn’t worth it, finally beginning his ascent.

The oculus turned out to be a huge hole in the ceiling, opening up into a circular room lit by a chandelier that swung ever so slightly. Seeing it swing, both Jon and Alyssa became aware of the intermittent explosions that gently reverberated from outside. No doubt, the Order’s troops were trudging inch by inch up assault ladders by now.

Jon let Alyssa down, letting her feet touch the ground again. The moment they did, however, and Jon stumbled, a spell of dizziness hitting him and dragging him down.

Alyssa caught him, wrapping her arms around his waist and butting her shoulder against his back. He regained his balance a split second later, but she wasn’t satisfied with that.

“You’ve been shot to hell, Jon. Take a breather right here for a moment, will you?” she said. For a second, Jon was about to disagree, but disagreeing when he really did have dozens of puncture injuries all over him would just make him another obstinate man. It paid off to listen to his allies, every now and then. He grunted.

She rested him against the wall, and she sat down beside him, looking over his bloodied body. He was a lot more beat up than she was. If only she’d spent more time learning one-handed parkour, he wouldn’t have needed to carry her. She took a little comfort in knowing that she wasn’t completely useless, but would that be enough? The power to telekinetically control a couple of guns... It wasn’t something that could stand up to high-level fights, was it? She needed to get stronger.

The man beside her, on the other hand, observed his surroundings in detail, even if just to take his mind off his injuries.

There were four archways around them, each bracketing one of four sets of stairs that led into different hallways. Lying on the steps of one of the staircases was a neatly folded brown cloak; Jon recognized it as the one that Wiz had been wearing when they’d met.

“Wiz is that way,” he said.

Alyssa followed Jon’s gaze to the brown cloak, then she gazed at Jon himself. “Don’t push too hard. If Wiz is that way, we don’t stand a chance” —

Jon unbuttoned his suit and showed her three out of many more wounds: just tiny red dots, really, but they were just the tip of long wound channels that would appear to skewer his body under an X-ray. “We need his help or I’m done,” he said. Just like the Order’s priestess, it should be the case that Wiz could use some kind of medical magic to piece him back together somehow — and he was in pieces.

Even his muscles were destroyed from overexertion, torn like the last vestiges of rope strands struggling to keep the whole thing together. Although he didn’t feel much pain while his brain was still drowning in endorphins, he already felt that he’d lost almost all his strength.

He had to rely on someone else. All he could do this time was watch. “I need your help,” he finally said. It always felt strange to ask for help, like it was something he shouldn’t ever do. It was just ... too unnatural, even if he knew he needed it.

His words and appearance made Alyssa’s chest tighten. Maybe she’d cry. Maybe she’d go insane. For fuck’s sake, she’d asked an injured man to carry her up a flight of stairs!

After five seconds of regret and self-blame ... she wiped it all away. Regret and self-blame wouldn’t help her now. More than five seconds of it, and it would become a full minute, and they didn’t have that kind of time.

She steadied her breathing as best she could. Jon couldn’t fight, so she’d do it in his stead. “I’ll help you.”

She floated a carbine next to her hand, using it to help pull herself up to a crouch, then she took Jon’s arm around her neck. Slowly, they stood, and slowly, they trudged towards the stairs that would lead to Wiz.

The hallway ahead of them was short, and Alyssa couldn’t decide whether that was a good or bad thing. On one hand, Jon’s arm was heavy on her shoulder. She looked down at him, and the poor guy couldn’t even stand properly anymore, having to hug her around the waist like a motorcycle passenger just to keep himself upright. On other hand, a shorter hallway meant they didn’t need to go far ... a shorter distance to hope.

Being relied on like this, she had mixed emotions of happiness and dread — happiness that she could help him, and dread that Jon wouldn’t make it, mixed with even more dread that the hallway was so short, putting them closer to the city’s most powerful mage.

Down the hallway were three doors. The one at the end was open, and she could smell and hear the crackle of a fireplace.

She dragged Jon’s increasing weight forwards, all the while keeping three measly pocket pistols around her pointed forward — too cute to do any damage against even a novice war mage.

When she reached the doorway, however, she just found an old man on a rocking chair, happily reading a newspaper in his pajamas.

Not for a moment did she let her guard down. They were in Wiz’s line-of-sight, and therefore, within his range. They had zero defenses against him at this point, and zero good ways to attack him.

They could only count on his mercy.

The old man lowered the newspaper, peeking at the visitors over the edge. “Oh, why, I hope you liked my gifts,” he said.

What fucking gifts? ... Alyssa would say. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” she said more politely. She was already shouldering Jon’s entire weight.

“That sir over there” — Wiz tilted the newspaper towards Jon’s limp figure — “must have some kind of Skill-stealing System as an agent of Ravena, does he not? He’s quite agile and a fast thinker, after all. It would be surprising if the Keeper didn’t give him at least that much.”

He folded up the paper in his hands into a neat little square, giving the half-dead Jon one last look-over. He’d been watching the couple’s progress through the castle’s hijacked security systems, expecting Jon, in particular, to get here bruised and scratched up. It seemed his expectations for him had been, well, maybe just a little overstated.

In the eyes of other mages, Ferisia’s attacks would have been seen as weak; a volley of steel needles weren’t much different from a volley of arrows, and any decent mage would be able to conjure up a decent defensive barrier to fend them off.

Wiz’s mistake was in setting up this “obstacle course” with the assumption that Jon was more of a mage than an assassin. An idiotic assumption in hindsight, but at the time, he had been so impressed by Jon’s extreme magic control that every cell in his body screamed “this man will be the most powerful mage ever to live.” That, combined with the fact that he was an old man on the verge of senility, triggered every cognitive bias in the book to assemble together into the super mega bias called “Big Dumb.”

After today, it was clear to him that the man still leaned more towards being an assassin. That was all well and good, occupationally, but it was just such a waste of talent! Sigh, what will he do with this disciple of his?

... Keep him from dying, perhaps?

“Well, what are you waiting for?” he said. “Put him on the bed. Go on.”

Distrust wrinkling her forehead, Alyssa’s pistols flew back into their holsters, and she laid Jon down on a bed by the window, catching a glimpse of the flashing yellows of cannons and combat below. She ignored those in favor of making sure Jon’s limbs weren’t hanging over the edge of the bed.

Wiz stood up with some difficulty, shuffling his feet towards Jon’s side. Seeing Alyssa handle Jon the way she did made him wonder about their relationship. Jon didn’t seem like the type to keep a woman, but what did he know?

Reaching Jon’s side, he hovered his hands over Jon’s body, scanning it for wounds. “What a tough one,” he muttered. “Lady, have you seen someone go through accelerated healing?”

Alyssa gulped. Well, nothing else would let Jon survive. “Once.”

“Splendid.”

Wiz started on his magic. At first, Jon’s body twitched, then he started convulsing. Anyone unfamiliar with this magic would think it to be some kind of torture or some esoteric way to suck someone’s life out of them.

Hundreds of wounds and thousands of fissures in Jon’s tissue closed themselves, and anything missing was regenerated through sheer force of magic — but only ever so slowly. The process generated immense heat, and even the most powerful of mages would be apt to cook someone alive rather than heal them if they lacked any finesse.

No matter the care, however, there was no way to turn off the pain. It wasn’t enough to just create new cells and matter, after all, but they also had to be welded together, electrifying every single nerve of the body in the process.

For the first time in her two lives, Alyssa heard Jon’s screams. He’d grunted, at first, then spiralled straight into screaming with barely any transition.

It pained her to hear it, but it was a pain mixed with hope. Jon would survive, after all, and she could finally stop worrying soon enough.

She soon found her worries only converted, not displaced, as a boom reverberated through the window. It didn’t sound like any artillery she’d heard, or even heard about, so she looked out the window to find its source.

Down below was a small, armored dot, brandishing a long, monster-hunting sword as he swept through one of the Order’s fighting lines, dismembering multiple men at once with a single slash and shrugging off all manner of gunfire and bayonets.

“I almost forgot about him...” Alyssa muttered.

“You were here to kill both myself and the youngin, weren’t you?” Wiz remarked. Under his hands, steam rose from Jon’s body as a small summoned cloud of icy rain sprinkled him to keep him cool. “I don’t mind you killing me, but would you mind doing it after I teach this man everything I know about magic?”

Alyssa raised a hand, silencing him. “Your intentions. Depending on what they are, the Lady might clarify Her position.”

“Hm? I believe I’ve told this man everything. I would only be repeating myself.”

“So you only wish for ‘the destruction of the House of Wiz,’ correct?”

Her words piqued Wiz’s interest. “No more, no less,” he replied.

Just as she’d suspected, Alyssa saw an opportunity — an opportunity to stage the death of the city’s most powerful mage, all the while recruiting him into the Theater’s ranks at the same time. How’s that for a scheme of mine, Lady Ravena?

In the first place, Ravena’s task for Jon had been to “Purge the City of Stave of the Three Great Houses.” Wording like that was flimsy enough to be flexible. As for the spirit of the order...

[I will allow it.]

...it was easy enough for the assignor Herself to just sign off on it. Direct and timely access to one’s superiors made things so much easier, and Alyssa took a second to appreciate this, clasping her hands together.

“How devout of you. Is that how you speak to Her? I thought the traditional practices of Ravena’s followers had died out,” Wiz remarked.

“That aside” — Alyssa lowered her hands ... and clapped! “Congratulations! Have you ever tried staging your death? It’s quite fun. I highly recommend it. Oh, we’ll even employ you for it.”

Wiz’s eyes widened in surprise. In fact, so shocked he was that his healing magic nearly stuttered for a moment. Good thing he hadn’t, or else he’d have exploded Jon’s internals — the magical equivalent of distracted driving resulting in a high-speed highway accident.

He spent a good few seconds putting his magic back in order because of that. Alyssa saw his straining face, too, and she wasn’t sure whether she should continue because of that.

“Then?” Wiz said after a while. “What will you have an old man on a short timer, such as myself, do?”

“Well, wouldn’t it be the usual? Murder with divine sanction and such.”

“My doctor says I shouldn’t do strenuous things anymore, just so you know.” Wiz chuckled. “I do want to see a world outside of fortress cities and battlefields, however. To be a scholar again...”

Warfare made the most money for mages, but it wasn’t warfare that had drawn Wiz to study magic in the first place. His flame of his curiosity was akin to a child seeing a gear train for the first time, watching all the different parts move at the same time, trying to find the pattern to which the gears moved.

How does it work? What can I make with it? Can I do something better? Even until now, he had a childlike fascination with magic. It was his life’s tragedy to be trapped in a system that forced him to simply kill people with it, like it was the most obvious thing to do.

To travel to many libraries and uncover new magic — was his childhood’s wish.

“Oh” — Alyssa clapped her hands again — “Congratulations, you’re in luck! Seeing new sights? Meeting new people? We will soon become the Travelling Theater!”

“I’m prompt to agree with your offer,” Wiz said. He already had his answer even before Alyssa’s little spiel. “However, I have one condition.”

“That would be?”

“I cannot simply be the Lady’s assassin. I am a scholar of magic before I am a war mage. I wish” —

Alyssa waved her hand. For a moment, Wiz’s ingrained sensibilities as a noble bubbled up at this blatant dismissal, but Alyssa explained. “Yes, yes, I’ve also heard this before — and yes, there’s no issue. Even before the Theater’s membership got defenestrated some years ago, it has always been a house rule not to interfere in others’ hobbies and free time. It’s not as if there’s constantly work worthy of the Theater’s attention, after all.”

The tension from Wiz’s face — tension he wasn’t even aware was there — drained away, replaced by a soft smile. “I see.”

A knife came flying point-first at Wiz’s face, stopped just inches away by a personal defense barrier. Even if it was stopped, its point continued to tremble and scratch at the invisible wall that it tried so hard to punch through. The hand that held it in a hammer grip — was Jon’s.

Wiz stopped his healing magic. “Why, you’re a vigorous one.” He chuckled. He’d had previous patients lash out at him before upon being resuscitated — accelerated healing magic was painful — but none as lively as this!

“Jon! He helped you!” Alyssa shouted.

The knife stopped trembling, and Jon slowly pulled it away.

He sat up, taking his time to make sure he still remembered how to move his body. Alyssa quickly went to his side to help him up.

Going by the flow of things, it was easy enough for him to figure out that Wiz was, at the very least, temporarily an ally. The sounds of explosions, gunfire, and gore coming from the window, however, reminded him that there were far more enemies to be dealt with, and among them was Lord Bowyer.

Still, he asked Alyssa for a rundown of the current situation.

She told him something to the effect of, “We have to stage Wiz’s death, and then he’ll join our side. By the way, we still have to kill Bowyer somehow.”

Unbelievable.

He thought to refrain from going unconscious from now on. Too many things happened while he was out cold, and his brain felt like an overworked cassette being rewound too fast just trying to keep up.

Then he realized something.

His list of targets had shrunken by one.

Not because he killed him, but simply because he didn’t need to kill him anymore.

This had never happened before. Operations being called off at the last second was a regular occurrence, but that and this weren’t the same.

He looked up at Wiz. The old man had an air of being released from his own personal hell about him. Jon had seen that kind of face before ... right. The Fallen Knight. He’d killed that man, too, and he’d even been thanked for it.

This and that weren’t the same — because this one didn’t need death to be released.

Suddenly, he had proof right in front of him that these kinds of scenarios really existed — that a path full of pain was not a destiny, but just another path.

“What is it, sir?” Wiz asked. “You look like you’ve seen a strand of Lumina’s hair.”

“Congratulations on your retirement,” Jon simply replied.

Wiz let out a hearty chuckle. “Now just what are you saying to your master?”

Master? Jon had nearly forgotten, but, right, he’d landed a scholarship out of nowhere.

“How’s your body, Jon?” Alyssa asked. He looked to her, and her eyes were full of genuine concern. They were familiar, and for a fleeting moment, Jon almost remembered where he’d seen those eyes.

At the least, he didn’t feel hassled to answer her. He stretched his hands and stood up first, feeling for how his muscle fibers slid between each other. There was still some pain, no doubt from whatever magic Wiz had used on him. It wasn’t too bad, or rather, this was a familiar kind of pain.

In his previous world, after all, he was being constantly harried by other agents and killers. As a result, he was constantly injured in some way.

This amount of prickling pain in his every joint and worn-out tendon? Just another Tuesday for him.

“I can fight,” he said.

“But you can’t fight him,” Wiz said, pointing out the window. Even now, they could hear the acts of a human-shaped minotaur cutting his way through the battlefield, sending people through walls and snapping guns and swords in half with nothing but an angry glare.

Jon admitted it freely; not even he and Alyssa combined could take on Bowyer. In fact, after experiencing resounding defeat at the hands of a witch whose only attack was to shoot needles at people, he’d only become ever more aware of the chasm between him and this world’s magically-gifted.

The fact that Bowyer was in the lower end of what counted as “powerful” was just more reason to grind any confidence he had into dust.

And that was what he felt. Alyssa, on the other hand, had zero confidence to start with when it came to fighting anyone even slightly stronger than a reserve war mage. Her best chance against such people was really just to get the first shot in, and if that failed, pepper the guy until they died.

“But worry not!” Wiz proudly proclaimed, even spreading out his arms to make a point. “Would you allow this old man to tell you about a few tricks?”

The Shadow and the Rat

— In a secluded safehouse near the city’s main harbor.

Two men sat across each other. One was a thin, humble fisherman, his attire ragged but sturdy, and his skin, scarred but used to the work. The other was a stocky nobleman in a coat of clean, sleek fashion and muted colors. Anyone seeing him wouldn’t mistake him for a commoner, but they would also consider him strangely frugal for a nobleman to be waring such an uncolorful coat.

“Such a shame what happened the other day,” the nobleman said, his voice truly filled with pity.

“Yeah. We couldn’t reel in the catch. Net got cut, set the whole bunch loose in the ocean,” the fisherman replied. He didn’t have the finesse of language of the upper class, but this was something the nobleman easily forgave.

Language, after all, was just a method to convey meaning. The meaning that the language carried was ultimately what mattered most, and in this case, the nobleman regarded this matter to be a grave one. “Then, what do you and your brothers plan to do about it? Those were all supposed to be bait so you could catch bigger fish, weren’t they?”

The fisherman scratched his head, sighing as he replied, “We’ll have to make do with what we have. These kinds of things are seasonal, so we really don’t have a choice, anyway.”

“How regrettable.” The nobleman paused. “Will it really work?”

The fisherman paused. “We’ll pray.”

The nobleman chuckled. “How devout.”

A light scratch from the ceiling shut them both up. Was it a rat, or was it a rat? If anyone had heard their conversation just now, it shouldn’t have aroused any suspicions, but if someone were intentionally hiding in the ceiling and listening in, then there was a good chance they had all the context they needed to understand what had just been said.

The fisherman eyed a dark corner of the room, and a shadow nodded. He and another dashed for the window, quietly opening it, and jumped out.

They caught hold of the edge of the roof, pulling themselves up. It only took a few seconds for them to spot a hole in the roof where several shingles had been shaken off to get into the crawlspace under the rafters.

One shadow looked to another, speaking in an indescernible voice. “They couldn’t have gotten far. Get the others and spread out. I’ll go in that direction.”

The shadow turned and ran, hopping along roofs, their footsteps making no noise at all as they did. For a split second, they caught a glimpse of someone’s shadow disappearing around an alley corner.

Giving chase, the shadow found more and more glimpses of the runaway, getting closer each time. Having memorized the area, they knew that the would-be rat was going to be confronted by a dead-end soon.

Rounding the last corner, it was as they hoped: the rat was faced with a tall wall. The shadow jumped down to confront him.

Although his landing made no noise, the rat still somehow heard them, turning around and meeting eyes.

The rat was dressed in a cloak, hiding his hands and his weapons inside, and his head was wrapped in cloth. Either by arrogance or tactical ingenuity, he refused to get in a ready stance. He just stood there, glaring at the shadow as the shadow glared back, only their eyes visible through their respective masks.

They kicked off at the same time, closing the distance in three seconds. The shadow took their knife from its sheath and slashed upwards in the same motion — but then flicking their wrist midway, changing the direction of the slash from diagonal upwards to a horizontal one.

It was a feint, one that most spies wouldn’t expect. Assassins, however, would. The rat forcibly stopped the slash, his arm butting against the shadow’s from a strong position, stopping it in its tracks.

The shadow threw a roundhouse kick in the next beat, and the rat saw it coming. He ducked below the trajectory of the kick — drawing a short sword from under his cloak in a reverse grip.

The shadow had expected an attack from the rat’s left hip, and so he’d mentally prepared to receive that with the armored plates sown into the sleeves in his arms. The rat’s attack, however, came from his right hip, which the shadow’s own kicking leg obscured.

— The unexpected angle, the extremely close distance, and the shadow’s misjudgement all came together to conclude the three-second engagement.

The rat sliced the shadow’s unprotected inner thigh. The shadow slashed forward, but the rat backed off. The shadow slashed forward, and the rat took one little step back.

The shadow fell to a knee, losing strength as one of their most vital arteries continued to spill black smoke, and their whole body began to disintegrate and join the wind.

The rat’s eyes widened at this sight. He’d suspected the nature of the enemy, but he didn’t want to be right.

He hurried on into the night, escaping the other shadows who would soon follow. The document had to reach the priestess — any priestess — or else Jon would die.