Chapter 114

Someone muttered a curse under their breath.

“How am I supposed to clean this up…”

The voice trailed off. Then came the harsh sound of tearing fabric, and more swearing followed.

Ariel forced her eyes open through the constant ringing echoing in her ears. Her head felt so heavy, like it was underwater. Everything she saw was blurry and foggy as if she were looking through frosted glass, and she couldn’t move at all as though she was pinned down by an invisible weight.

Ah.

She tried to say something, her mouth moved silently, but no sound came out.

Someone’s face came into view through her hazy vision.

“You’re bleeding a lot right now.”

The voice was deep and gravelly.

‘…Bleeding?’

Now that she noticed, she could feel something wet trickling down her head. She struggled to blink, closing her eyes and then forcing them open again.

“Don’t pass out.”

He warned her.

The voice was strangely familiar. He kept talking to her to prevent her from losing consciousness.

“My magic power right now…”

Ariel blinked blearily.

Even though he was saying something, the ringing in her ears drowned out the words, so everything just sounded like a distant, muffled mumble. All her senses felt dull and far away, and the world seemed to slip further and further from her grasp. No matter how hard she tried to stay awake, her mind stayed lost in the fog. The thin thread of her consciousness was on the verge of snapping completely.

“Don’t lose consciousness.”

The man repeated the warning, his voice stern, almost like a command. But Ariel didn’t have the strength to obey.

Unconsciousness claimed her once more.

︵‿୨ ₊‧꒰ა ཐི༏ཋྀ ໒꒱ ˚₊ ୧‿︵

Racine tossed a bloody rag right at Lexius’s face. Lexius caught it, eyes going wide in shock. The dark red cloth still reeked strongly of blood.

“It was really this bad?”

“It was a f*****g awful experience.”

Racine’s voice was sharper than usual, bristling with irritation. He looked exhausted, having ripped his own shirt apart in the middle of the night just to patch someone else up. With nothing but tattered rags left, he sat on the mattress bare-chested, wearing only his pants and looking completely worn out.

“Explain.”

When Lexius asked, Racine spat out a curse before continuing.

“She smashed her head and collapsed all by herself, so I had to take care of all her wounds. But I was out of mana, so I couldn’t use any magic, and everything was just a mess…”

Racine cursed again under his breath. He seemed more honestly furious than Lexius had seen him in a long time.

He couldn’t really blame him. Being dragged out of bed when you were already exhausted from having no mana, then having to patch up someone who was badly hurt. Even someone as emotionless as Racine would. Especially since Lexius had told him nothing would go wrong.

Racine’s anger was justified, and Lexius understood that. Even so, there was still something he couldn’t quite understand.

“Why did someone who would normally just leave an injured person to their fate go out of their way to help this time?”

“I made a deal with the Huckley family not long ago. She offered up her family seal and a voting right in exchange.”

Hearing those words, Lexius was quite surprised. The County of Huckley had put everything an imperial noble valued most on the line for Solem. Sure, the vote was probably handed over, knowing Solem would only ask for neutrality among a hundred votes, but even then, it was still an act carrying considerable risk.

Lexius grew curious about the details.

“She staked that much? Why?”

“She wanted an invitation to Solem. Maybe the Countess wants to get into central politics. It’s probably some sort of investment for the future.”

Racine answered openly, not bothering to cover anything up. He had no reason to lie about doing something uncharacteristically selfless. Besides, it made no difference whether Lexius knew. The only reason he hadn’t said anything sooner was because he couldn’t be bothered.

“But imagine if the Countess’s daughter ends up dead barely any time after the deal, and it happens in the very annex where I was staying.”

“Dead? Didn’t you just use a deep barrier? You know putting up anything too aggressive on campus, except in the training arena, violates academy regulations.”

“I didn’t do anything like that. It was just the deep barrier, like you said.”

Lexius frowned, confused by Racine’s answer.

The deep barrier responded differently based on how much mana someone had. If you didn’t have any mana, you wouldn’t even notice the barrier and it would stop you from entering altogether. If your mana was weak, you’d just feel drained and probably end up collapsing.

With average mana, you’d get tired and maybe have a mild headache, sometimes even a nosebleed. Even if you managed to get through the annex doors, the barrier was designed to keep anyone from getting up the stairs.

Compared to others, the deep barrier was considered rather gentle among entry-blocking barriers.

Some of the others could literally tear intruders to pieces. The deep barrier just barely stayed within school rules. Of course, if someone had a lot of mana, the impact from the barrier would be severe, but those people usually had their own protective barriers, so they wouldn’t be affected by the deep barrier in the first place.

Put simply, if someone had strong mana but didn’t have their defenses up, they would experience serious effects from the deep barrier. Most of the time, it meant passing out, losing consciousness, or even having seizures. And if that happened, the person who set up the deep barrier would be punished by the academy for causing harm to another student.

When Racine put up the barrier, he had no reason to consider such special circumstances.

The only people the deep barrier considered strong mana were those with special-grade magic or above, and at the academy, there were only four people with magic that powerful.

Devoncia, Skylar, Lexius, and Racine himself.

There was no way people like them would ever be harmed by a deep barrier. Anyone with less mana wouldn’t be in any real danger from it, either. So, there shouldn’t have been any way for the academy’s rules to be broken.