Return of the Runebound Professor

The rest of their time in Graybarrow passed quickly and without any major incident. With the survival exam rapidly approaching, all of them focused wholeheartedly on training – in their own ways.

Noah tried using the Fragment of Renewal on Todd the next day, but to his disappointment, it failed to do anything other than make him feel more energetic. There was still so much that he had to learn about the new Rune – there was a good possibility that he simply hadn’t figured out how to use it properly yet. He still wasn’t sure what its passive was, so there was a good bit of work he’d have ahead of him.

Todd wasn’t too bothered by the failure. He’d just promised to keep things about the new Rune secret and gotten back to training with Emily and Isabel. Lee joined in more fervently than ever, resulting in more than a few nights where everyone went to bed so sore that they could barely move.

Noah spent most of his time practicing with Sunder and hunting monsters to fill in his Runes, filling Natural Disaster further. He kept an eye out for any Runes that he could use to improve the Rank 3 Rune, but he didn’t find any more interesting ones and ended up focusing mostly on getting more runic energy.

Now that he was Rank 3, Noah could actually help Lee and Moxie fix their Runes – but there were two things he needed to do first. Most importantly, he had yet to find a way to actually cut out the Runes of something without killing it. Moxie had mentioned a potion that let someone into another person’s soul, which was promising. But, before he could do that, they needed to get new Runes to actually replace the bad ones with.

Noah had a decent amount of Runes between his, Dayton, and Evergreen’s grimoires, but he’d need to work with Lee and Moxie to find Runes that would actually fit them before he went around cutting things up.

So, for the time being, the best thing he could do was to continue practicing – and that was what Noah did, up until their time in Graybarrow finally came to an end and the group set off to Arbitage.

Their return went quietly. They got back late in the evening, and Moxie set off to report their arrival to Neir. Noah had half expected something to have gone wrong or Contessa to be waiting for them on their arrival, but no such thing happened.

Instead, the students broke away, heading back to their apartments. Noah and Lee went back to their room, more tired than either of them cared to admit from the trip. They spent a few minutes scouring it to make sure Father hadn’t sent someone to leave an unpleasant surprise, but found nothing out of place. Moxie swung by shortly afterward to report that Neir had just shrugged when she’d reported their return.

***

Time passed. Over the following weeks, everyone continued their training. Noah spent some time in the Scorched Acres and Windscorned Plateau killing monsters to gather more energy for his Runes.

Both Noah and Moxie were confident that all three of their students were more than prepared. As the exam grew closer, the training ended to give all of them some time to relax and prepare without overworking themselves.

The final two weeks leading up to the exam passed with Noah not seeing Isabel, Todd, or Emily a single time. Lee went to check on them once or twice, confirming that they were perfectly fine and that there was nothing to worry about.

That was enough for Noah, who was largely preoccupied with trying to figure out if he could get the Fragment of Renewal to do anything else. To his mild disappointment, he was unable to coax any new forms of magic out of it. However, he did learn more about exactly how it worked.

Of course, that came through killing himself to test out how quickly it would heal his soul, and found that it worked for him exactly the same way that it had for Lee. Instead of an instant healing, the white void was pulled shut over the course of a day by strands of pearlescent light.

Unfortunately, Noah also discovered that the Rune seemed to go dormant after he used its strength. No matter how little energy he used from it, the Fragment of Renewal would go to sleep for around a day at a time after he called on its strength.

Noah also confirmed that the Rune didn’t just completely heal his soul – not in it’s current form, at least. It worked just like Sunder in that he could only handle a portion of its power, and that corresponded to a portion of healing.

He’d yet to be seriously wounded enough as to where that would be relevant, but if Noah ended up with massive soul damage, he suspected it would still take some time for him to go through and fix every part of it. In the future, when he could handle more of the Rune’s power, he was hopeful that that limitation would fade away.

It would have been nice if Noah had more time to explore the extent of his new Rune, but before any of them knew it, the day of the exam was finally upon them. In an eerie case of déjà vu, Noah woke up early that morning to a knock on his door.

Rolling out of bed and pulling his jacket on, Noah rubbed the sleep from his eyes. There was no sign of Lee anywhere. There was always the chance she’d gotten stuck outside and was too lazy to come back in through the window, but considering what had happened the previous exam day, Noah suspected that it was probably Moxie at the door.

The knocking continued. Noah let out a heavy sigh as he adjusted his clothes and walked up, twisting the handle and pulling it open.

“Is something wrong, Mox–”

Noah trailed off. The girl standing before him had red hair just like Moxie, but it definitely wasn’t her. She stood half a foot shorter and wore a plain white and green uniform without a nametag. Her neck was craned slightly back, letting her gray eyes lock with Noah’s as a polite smile passed over her features.

“You have the wrong room,” Noah said. He closed the door. There was a startled yelp, and Noah realized that the door hadn’t closed all the way. His eyes narrowed and he opened it slightly, closing it again.

“Ow! Stop that!” The girl exclaimed. “What’s wrong with you?”

Noah glanced down. The girl’s foot was stuck in the doorframe.

“Don’t put your feet in other people’s doors.”

“It was supposed to get you to stop closing the door. You aren’t actually supposed to close it on me!”

“Do you think I’m watching where you stick your feet?” Noah pulled the door back open. “And you have the wrong room, as I said. I’ve got a lot of work to do, so please–”

“Vermil Linwick,” the girl said, pointing at Noah’s chest. “Right?”

Noah stared at her for a moment. “Nope. You got the wrong guy.”

“Wait, really? I could have sworn this was the right room.”

“Sorry. It isn’t.”

Noah closed the door. A moment passed in silence. Noah let out a silent, relieved sigh. The last thing he needed to deal with right before the exam was some irate student coming after him because of some perverted shit that Vermil had done to them or their family in the past.

I’ve said this before, but if I ever catch Vermil in the afterlife, I’m throttling him.

Someone started knocking on the door again, louder than they had before. Noah’s eye twitched.

Maybe if I ignore it, she’ll just go away. I could jump out the window.

“Open the door, Magus Vermil,” the girl called. “I’ll shout this for everyone to hear if you don’t, and you won’t like that!”

Noah jerked the door open. “What do you want?”

The girl paused mid-knock, a smug grin crossing her features. “Ah. Ready to talk?”

Before Noah could even respond, she slipped inside. Noah considered grabbing her and putting her back in the hall, but the last thing he wanted to do was touch a random student. Her hair was setting him on edge.

If she looked this similar to Moxie, then he got the feeling that she was probably from the Torrin family.

I thought Emily was the only Torrin student attending Arbitage. Is this Bria in another form or something?

“Who are you?” Noah asked. “And what are you talking about?”

The girl turned toward Noah, crossing her arms in front of her chest as her grin grew even wider. A golden bracelet dangling from one of her wrists caught Noah’s eye. “You can call me Eline. I know about you and Moxie.”

Noah gave Eline a flat stare. “Know about us? You mean that we occasionally merge classes since we have different expertise? I don’t see how that warrants a visit to my room.”

“There’s no point playing dumb,” Eline said. “It won’t work on me. I already read up on you. You’ve been traveling with Moxie and Emily for far longer than any random pair of teachers would. Ever since you started traveling with Moxie, she’s gotten considerably less useful to the Torrin family.”

Noah tilted his head to the side, keeping his expression completely empty. “I fail to see what that has to do with me. Perhaps you should look inward if there are issues within your family.”

Eline’s eyes narrowed. “I also know that your students are Isabel and Todd – both of whom have been Blacklisted. That means nobody cares what happens to them. If you keep playing coy with me, then I’ll leave – and I’ll make sure that neither of them survive today’s exam.”

A moment of silence passed. Noah adjusted his lapel, then let out a slow sigh. “Fine. I’ll play ball. Who sent you, and what do you want from me?”

“That’s what I thought,” Eline said with a grin. “As far as you’re concerned, I’m just a student from the Torrin family that’s visiting to test her skills in the survival exam. I want you to tell me every single thing that’s happened between you and Moxie since you started working together.”

Contessa’s warning was correct, then. Eline is here to figure out if Moxie has failed in her duties. But… they couldn’t have just sent a kid to do this. Does she have an accomplice?

“That’s a long story,” Noah said, rubbing the back of his head with an embarrassed chuckle. “Aren’t you a bit young to be poking around things like this on your own?”

Eline’s grin vanished. “Why does everyone say that! I don’t need my tutor to do every single thing for me! I’ve got you dead to rights. Maybe think about your own position, huh? You’re the one that’s cornered here.”

“Does your mentor even know you’re here?” Noah asked, raising an eyebrow.

“I don’t need permission for everything I do,” Eline snapped. “I figured this out myself, you know. Just because I’m young doesn’t mean I don’t know what I’m doing. If you keep this up, I’ll just go take things up with Isabel and Todd instead. I’m sure they’ll be a lot more helpful when they’re reminded that nobody cares if they live or die.”

That’s a no, then. Sounds like she’s alone.

“You really sure you want to do this?” Noah asked, rubbing his chin and letting out a sigh. “Threatening the lives of other people isn’t something you should do lightly.”

“Like I care about them,” Eline said with a snort. “They’re Blacklisted. Now answer my damn–”

Noah’s fist slammed into Eline’s stomach. She doubled over in a sputtering cough and his hand shot down to her wrist, ripping the bracelet off and throwing it to the floor. Noah thrust his hand toward his bag, yanking the entire thing into the air with a powerful gust of wind – one that was so strong that he nearly struck himself in the head with the bag instead of catching it.

He pulled his dagger out from within it. Eline started to rise and Noah’s foot slammed into her chest, throwing her to the ground. He spun the dagger in his hand, turning the tip down. Killing her with a blade would be a lot faster and less messy than blasting her with Natural Disaster.

Noah’s blade plunged down. Vines erupted from Eline’s body, forming into a thick carapace around her chest. The dagger slammed into it, burying deep into the foliage – but it wasn’t long enough to reach its target.

Energy sparked at Noah’s fingertips as he combusted the vines. Fire roared across them, quickly blackening the magical defense and burning it away. Eline desperately scrambled away from Noah, grabbing for a necklace beneath her shirt.

Noah grabbed the smoke filling the air from the burnt Vines, turning it into a molten spike. He sent it forward with a thought, driving the point down toward Eline’s heart. There was a sound like shattering glass and a flash of green light enveloped Eline’s body right as the spell hit her.

The light shattered along with the energy from Noah’s spell, and fragments of a metal necklace tumbled down from Eline’s grip, tinkling as they hit the ground.

“Wait! Stop!” Eline wheezed. She scrambled back, thumping against the base of the bed.

“Shouldn’t have threatened my students and told me nobody knew where you were,” Noah said dispassionately, forming another spike from the ash in the air.

Eline’s body rippled. Her hair turned blonde and her eyes went from gray to a brilliant ruby as she raised her hands defensively. “Please! It’s me, Vermil!”

Noah froze the spike a moment before it drove into the woman. The way she’d spoken implied that he was supposed to recognize who she was, but he had absolutely no recollection of her.

Bria? But I didn’t know who she was either.

“And who are you supposed to be?”

Eline stared at Noah in disbelief. “It’s me. Karina. Did you seriously forget what your fiancée looks like?”

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