by Andrew Rowe
“We need a plan for if there is no stairway, or if it is inaccessible,” Jin pointed out.
Sera pulled her dueling cane off her belt and handed it to me. “We hit whatever is in there with everything we’ve got. It can’t be worse than a dragon.”
I accepted the cane and nodded to Sera in thanks.
“True. Okay, we ready?”
Everyone acknowledged their readiness. Jin looked a little more skeptical, and I understood why. “Let’s go open the door first. Maybe we can take a look before the fight actually starts and formulate a strategy from there.”
Jin looked noticeably better after I said that. “Agreed.”
We walked over to the door.
There were three keyholes.
As far as I knew, we only had two keys left — the red one from the box, and the one Jin had just retrieved.
Fortunately, Sera pulled out a third. I raised an eyebrow. “Where’d you get that?”
“That series of pillars that led to nowhere above the water in the room I started in? Turns out you were right. There was an invisible platform over there with an invisible key on it.”
“Nice.”
We inserted the three keys.
The door slid open.
Inside was a plain, circular room, almost like what I’d expect from a fighting arena.
There was no visible stairway within.
Instead, on the opposite side, was Professor Meltlake.
Patrick said what we were all probably thinking. “Uh, guys?... That might be worse than the dragon.”
“Hello, students.”
A blazing aura enveloped the professor’s body. “Welcome to your final exam.”
Chapter XIV –These Tests Are Never Fair
Somehow, in spite of having actually fought one of my professors inside the spire, it hadn’t occurred to me that one might show up in the fake spire test.
Teachers weren’t exactly typical spire monsters.
Then again, the professors at this school did seem to have a bizarre fixation on beating up their students in general, so I probably shouldn’t have been surprised.
We paused in the doorway, hesitant. This was a bad situation for a number of reasons.
Professor Meltlake was renowned for her fire magic. Her surname was a title she’d earned by literally evaporating an entire lake.
The best way to counter that was ice magic, but even if Sera was at her best, she wouldn’t have been strong enough to do much against someone of Meltlake’s level. And Sera was still far from recovered.
This was going to be messy.
Sera stepped forward. “Professor, is that actually you over there, or a simulacrum? I need to know if we should be using lethal force.”
“An excellent question, dear. I’m a copy. But even if I wasn’t, I’d invite you to do everything in your power against me. A group of first-years isn’t much of a threat.”
That helped resolve any concerns about killing Meltlake by accident, at least.
“And I assume we have to beat you to conclude the test?” Patrick asked.
“Correct, Patrick. Unlike the rest of this exam, there are no hidden tricks here. You can think of me as a floor guardian.”
That was unfortunate. If there was a hidden trick, we’d have had decent odds of finding it with this group.
“Also, Patrick,” Meltlake continued, “no using the high ranked spells I’ve been teaching you. You’re not ready to use them in an actual fight yet.”
“Aww.” He frowned. “If you say so.”
Professor Meltlake clapped her hands, causing her fiery aura to swell out for a moment before collapsing back around her. “Well, if you students are done with the questions, shall we begin?”
Sera whispered, “Jin, Corin, go right. Patrick, with me. Go.”
Jin and I rushed forward, then veered right.
Jin drew a pistol and opened fire while on the run. His bullets disappeared into Meltlake’s aura, and I saw no sign that any of them connected.
Sera and Patrick ran the opposite direction, and Meltlake turned to follow them. Apparently, she saw them as the threat — and she was probably right.
Meltlake threw a sphere of fire in their direction, which Patrick blasted with a jet of his own flame, knocking it back toward Meltlake. It exploded part-way, and I felt a wave of heat wash over the entire room.
Sera followed up by hurling a shard of ice. Meltlake didn’t even move. The ice shard hit her aura and melted on contact.
Jin and I were safely behind Meltlake now, and I fired a few blasts from my dueling cane at her back.
The spheres of mana hit her aura, crackled, and vanished without a trace.
Meltlake threw a blast of lightning, which forked into two. Patrick’s aura shifted into a crackling field of electricity, causing the lightning aimed at him to rebound off harmlessly, but Sera took a hit. Cracks spread across her shield.
Sera folded her hands and whispered. “Child of the goddess, I call upon your aid—”
Meltlake slammed her cane into the floor, and the whole room shook. Sera fell back, losing her concentration on her spell.
I didn’t have my sword or gauntlet, so I just kept firing the dueling cane at Meltlake. It was ineffective at hurting her, but I had to hope it would work as a distraction.
Jin fired another bullet into her aura, but again, nothing happened.
This is ridiculous, we can’t even hurt her. Unless...
“Jin, can you do what you did to the Tyrant?”
His jaw tightened. “Just tried. The bullets are melting too fast.”
Resh.
Should I ring the bell and get Marissa?
I shook my head, dismissing the idea.
No, she’d have to run all the way across the fire room to get to us, and she’s still probably injured. I can’t lean on her to handle this for me.
Shrouds are less effective at close range. If I had my sword, I could reach that far, but the dueling cane is too short.
I’d seen that problem solved before. Keras could form blades out of his mana, and Marissa had learned to shape her shroud in a similar way.
I still couldn’t do that. My shroud stubbornly refused to move into a blade shape, in spite of numerous attempts.
But I did have another idea, based on something else I’d seen Keras do, and one of my own older techniques.
I pressed a rune on the dueling cane, bringing out the blade.
Then I pressed my hand against the metal and concentrated. This was going to take a minute.
While I focused, Meltlake was beginning to attack with greater ferocity. She threw another sphere of fire, but when Patrick blasted it like before, it split apart into three smaller spheres instead of rebounding.
Those smaller spheres flew apart, then righted themselves and continued flying at Patrick and Sera.
Sera countered one of them with a burst of arctic wind, causing it to detonate prematurely. The explosion knocked her back, but she didn’t look hurt.
Patrick’s aura shifted from lightning to fire. It wasn’t as intense as Meltlake’s aura, but it still was bright enough that it was hard to look at. The other two spheres hit him dead-on, exploding against his shroud, but his own flames deflected most of the damage.
Most. I could see thin cracks underneath his shield. Like deflected like, but there was too much of a difference of raw power here for his fire to protect him completely.
I was surprised by his next move — he charged.
Meltlake threw a lance of flame at Patrick, but he side-stepped it, and the spear slammed into the wall behind him, melting a hole in the stone.
When Patrick came in close, he swung a burning fist at Meltlake’s face. She knocked his hand aside with her cane, then kicked him in the chest. He flew backward, a crack in his shield where she’d connected.
He threw a bolt of lightning at Meltlake as he flew back, but that just vanished as it hit her aura.
“Permafrost Cascade!”
Sera had finished her spell this time, whispering while Patrick had Meltlake distracted.
Dozens of icy shards appeared, raining down on Meltlake. She created a wall of flame in mid-air, interposing it in the path of the shards.
Sera waved a hand and the shards veered off of their path, flying around the wall and slamming into Meltlake’s aura.
I was impressed Sera had pulled off a spell like that. She must have gotten used to drawing mana from the rest of her body. Still, I didn’t think she’d be able to keep it up for long.
Jin immediately opened fire on one of the spots a shard had hit. This time, I saw a flicker of protective mana flickering beneath the shroud.
Good, that makes it more plausible this will work.
I raised my dueling cane, finished with the harder part.
Making a small mana crystal was easy now. I’d made dozens of both solid crystals and hollow ones.
I hadn’t really experimented with other shapes, but it wasn’t hard. I held the proof of that — a dueling cane, with the blade extended by two extra feet of pure crystal.
The real test was what happened when I hit the last rune, flooding the blade with mana.
Just as I’d hoped, it ran right up the metal and into the crystal.
It still wasn’t quite as good as a real sword, but it would do.
Professor Meltlake was finally turning toward my side of the room, apparently having noticed that hit from Jin.
She hurled a sphere of fire in our direction.
Instinctively, I tried to activate the ring of jumping, but it was still out of mana.
Jin stepped in front of the sphere and shot a hole right through it.
The rest of the sphere collapsed harmlessly.
Huh. Didn’t know that could happen.
I took the moment of apparent safety as a chance to charge.
Meltlake was raising her cane to meet my rush when Patrick threw a blast of fire at the floor at her feet. The explosion was harmless with her aura active, but the tremors caused her to stumble just a step.
That bought me the time I needed to close in and strike.
The crystalline blade made it through her aura, hitting her dead on, and then snapped on contact.
I saw the telltale sparks of damage to her barrier, then she waved a hand and I was engulfed in flame.
My vision was nothing but fire. Both sigils and shroud were protecting me, but the heat was so intense that they couldn’t ward it off entirely. I felt my skin crack and burn.
A burst of cold flashed over me, then the flames were gone.
I stepped back, coughing from the smoke.
Sera was coughing, too, for a different reason. I could see the hints of icy mana still around her from the spell she’d used to save me from the enveloping flames.
She clutched her chest, and I felt a sudden spike of worry as I realized how much she’d pushed herself.
Meltlake must have noticed that, too, because she threw another wave of flame directly at Sera.
Patrick tried to get in the way.
He failed.
The inferno washed over Sera, and then she was gone.
The crystal blade on the dueling cane was snapped too short to give the reach I needed to hit Meltlake again. I needed another plan.
Patrick was forming a sphere of lightning in his hands, preparing what looked like a larger attack than I’d seen him use before. I doubted it would work, but I’d have to buy him time.
I rushed to the right, trying to draw Meltlake’s attention. It worked.
She raised her hand to blast me again, but I was ready for it this time.
Haste.
The burst of speed took me out of the way of Meltlake’s attack, but it also threw me off balance. I stumbled and tripped, but recovered before I actually tumbled to the floor.
When I spun back around, I took a blast of lightning straight to the chest.
My phoenix sigil’s barrier shattered immediately, and I felt my shield sigil drain to almost nothing. Meltlake hit hard, and I didn’t have Sera to save me from another attack.
Fortunately, as usual, we’d all forgotten about Jin.
He stood behind her, dagger in hand, and stabbed straight at her neck.
Meltlake side-stepped the attack effortlessly, turned, and enveloped Jin in a blast of fire.
Addendum: Everyone other than Meltlake had forgotten about Jin.
He staggered, raising his arms to protect himself, but she continued the blast. I hurled my dueling cane at Meltlake’s back. The attack connected, but she barely reacted. The cane melted to slag a moment later.
And a moment after that, Jin was gone.
Patrick let out a growl, finally hurling the huge sphere of lightning he’d been forming between his hands.
Meltlake just shook her head and batted it aside effortlessly. “What did I tell you about investing all your mana in one attack?”
“Don’t do it.” Patrick shook his head. “But you also taught me the value of surprises.”
The sphere split apart, just like Meltlake’s had. Then, rather than flying toward her, the spheres each fired a blast of electrical energy from a different angle.
She knocked one of the blasts aside, but the other two hit her in the chest. I saw her convulse for a moment on impact, indicating that he’d done some real damage.
The spheres kept firing, while Patrick sagged from exhaustion.
I began to charge transference mana in my right hand. It was the last attack option I could think of, unless I wanted to run back to another room to try to get my sword.
One.
Meltlake waved her cane, and chunks of stone shot out of the floor, enveloping the lightning spheres. With the threat of the lightning attacks gone, she turned to Patrick. “Your control is improving — you couldn’t have managed that a few weeks ago.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
Two.
She shook her head. “It was still a poor choice. You could have done more damage if you’d managed to extinguish my shroud, if only for a moment.”
He shrugged. “I thought a distraction was a better choice.”
Meltlake glanced around. “For what? Corin is unarmed and your friends are all gone.”
Three.
Something slammed into her face a moment later, snapping her neck back.
She staggered, then raised a hand to a bloody lip, wearing an expression of disbelief.
She hadn’t forgotten Jin, like the rest of us had.
But she had underestimated him.
I hadn’t.
The moment Jin had vanished, I knew there were two possibilities. Maybe he’d been taken out of the match like Sera had, but he was a Sunstone, with a stronger shroud than any of ours.
More likely?
He’d gone invisible, using the item I’d given him earlier in the year.
And I had a pretty good idea of his dramatic timing by now. Not quite perfect — I’d only been charging my mana for three seconds, rather than the five I needed for full strength.
But it was close enough.
I lunged forward and punched Meltlake in the face.
She flew backward from the impact, and I felt a hardened barrier cracking against my fist.
Unfortunately, I also felt her aura of fire burn me as I closed in, and that ate up the last of my shield.
A moment later, Meltlake was standing again, and she pointed at me.
All I saw was a single line of light appear from the tip of her finger, aimed right at the center of my chest.
Then there was a flash of pain and my vision went white.
***
When I reappeared in the waiting room, Sera was the only one in there.
No second-year student to watch over us, and more importantly, no Marissa.
I briefly considered just running back into the testing room, but it was pretty clear that I’d be breaking the rules that way. And not in a fun, “Corin always breaks the rules as mu
ch as he can while getting away with it” sort of way.
I turned to Sera instead. “You okay?”
She nodded. “Tired.” She coughed, clutched her throat for a second, wincing. “Can’t talk much. Fill me in?”
By the time I’d let her know what I missed, Patrick had appeared.
“Aww.” He folded his arms. “Almost thought we had her for a minute.”
I shrugged. “Jin still might.”
Jin appeared a moment later.
“Or not.”
“She stopped holding back quite as much once we hurt her,” Patrick explained. “The attacks she was using at first were just basic stuff, like Quartz and Citrine level. I think we made her mad.”
“Good. That indicates a degree of success,” Jin replied.
“I agree.” I looked around. “Anyone seen Mara?”
It was five full minutes before a battered Marissa appeared in the room, smoke still rising off her torn and burned clothing.
She had some sort of weird, unfamiliar crystal in her right hand.
“Man,” she mumbled, “That dragon was tough.”
***
There was an awkward pause.
Patrick visibly stared at the gem, then Marissa, then back to the gem.
After a couple minutes of explanation, we found that Marissa had rested for a bit, then run back into the test room once Sera had come out — much like what I’d done in the first exam.
Sera had directed her to the room with Meltlake, but unfortunately, there was a dragon in the way.
Marissa had then solved the dragon problem.
Unfortunately, that had left her too weak to do much of anything else, and Professor Meltlake had come up behind her and finished the job.
The professor showed up in our chamber a minute or so after that.
She was clearly uninjured, so it was probably the real version this time.
“Congratulations. You have successfully passed your final exam for Magic Theory class.”
We let out a holler of victory. Even Jin looked pleased.
Sera broke into coughing again afterward, and I gave her a look of concern.
Professor Meltlake kept talking, though. “You’re one of few teams to reach the floor guardian room at all this year, and one of fewer to actually harm my simulacrum.”
