Author notes: Please share and recommend this work, or vote for it on topwebfiction. If you can’t wait for more and want to support the series, purchase the full, reworked edition on Amazon today!
Friday, the final day of the school week, was when the new substitute teacher for the Modern Magic class finally arrived. Some students were disappointed as it mean no more self study classes that they could do whatever they wanted in, whilst other were highly anticipating learning new magic before the summer break.
Senna sat in class with a bored expression, half-heartedly listening to the conversations of the students around. Helena, the gorgon, still tried to get closer to Senna even though the latter avoided or only casually responded.
There was a rift in between the two that seemed to come out of nowhere for Helena, leading to her being depressed.
“Senna, hey, what do you think about the incident the other day where the Hamilton Overpass collapsed. That’s not far from here!”
Senna turned her head and nodded briefly towards Helena before turning back and watching the new teacher walk in.
The teacher had wavy brown hair, deep set green eyes, and a rustic European face. His skin was tanned and figure extremely well trained. Whilst magic originated from Europe, this teacher’s clothes clung to his muscular features that screamed he was a warrior, not a mage.
What was particularly strange was he didn’t wear the modern trends of clothing that tended to highlight vibrant colors or had sleek designs. Instead he dressed in more old fashioned tones of grey and didn’t wear a single accessory.
He was what would be considered ‘old fashioned’.
The pointy-eared fae girl in the middle of the classroom couldn’t quite put her finger on what it was, but she felt an instinctive familiarity with this man, as if she had met him before.
She tended to not remember most humans, especially in the past, so it was especially difficult for her to recollect such information.
The fact that his gaze lingered on her more so that any other student as he entered hinted that he had at least recognized her.
“Good morning students, my name is Leogold Ulric, but you can call me Mr. Ulric,” The particularly buff european substitute teacher called out to the introduced himself to the class. “I specialize in body enhancement and self recovery magic.”
He dropped several bulky text books onto the table, each brand new and in pristine news.
Mr. Ulric fiddled with the display board at the front of the classroom with a clear inability to properly control the technology. The student watched in half disbeleif, half amusement as he failed to control what they would consider basic functions of modern tech.
“Ahem,” Mr. Ulric cleared his throat as he turned off the teaching display. “Today we will be doing a practical lesson to improve your grasp on magic. Let’s all head to the training field!”
What Mr. Ultric called the training field was in fact just an outdoor oval on the school grounds. It was usually used for mandatory physical education classes and athletics training or events.
Today however, it was used by the Modern Magic class for outdoor training.
Senna joined all the other students under the slightly overcast sky, the distinct scent of coming rain lingering in the air even though the weather forecasts distinctly said there would be no rain today.
The fae girl was in her sports wear, the same as most of the other students. The few who didn’t bring their sports wear were forced to borrow the school supplied clothing – a bit bland in color but clean.
She was inwardly curious as to what this lesson would entail, considering Helena and the other students were confused by a magic class being outdoors.
Students were generally not allowed to release magic on the school grounds, to prevent any accidental damage to the landscape or other students. There were specific indoor gyms for training and practical exams built to withstand whatever the students could throw at them.
Of course, this was policed very loosely whilst most of the students had substantial backgrounds, making the teachers afraid to stir up a legal storm by irritating parents that had too much money for their own good.
Whilst the school would be fine with government backing, their jobs weren’t so stable. Especially if the school needed a scapegoat.
“Who here knows what is the most important aspect for a magic caster?” Mr. Ulric asked the students who had lined up in before him.
Several students raised their hand to answer the question, some eager whilst others hesitant.
“You… ehh…”
“Sam, Mr. Ulric.”
“Sam. What is the most important thing for a magic caster?”
“Knowledge.”
“Wrong! Anyone else? Yes, you.”
“The spells they bind to their Mana Rings?”
“Wrong. It’s more fundamental and before that.”
“…Mana capacity?”
“Correct!” Mr. Ulric beamed and clapped his hands.
”It doesn’t matter how many spells you know, how many Mana Rings you have, what comes first is how much mana you can store. Your body is your vessel for mana, and the stronger and more robust that vessel is, the more mana it will be able to store. It is also crucial for forming a foundation as to how many Mana Rings you can build in your body. A weak body will only be able to support one or two Mana Rings, forever limiting your potential.”
Amongst the crowd of students, Jack Riddle softly nodded his head and agreed on this principal. Although he felt the teacher was weak, a farce whom he couldn’t feel a trace of mana from, he at least understood the basics of buiding a foundation.
“This is why we will be focusing on training your bodies!”
Senna listened to all the students cursing as they were forced into running laps around the oval before also having to do strength building exercises and other grueling training that one would expect from a military training camp.
The fae girl found the exercises very basic and not challenging in the least. She gracefully completed them without breaking a sweat, much to the envious and even amorous glances of her physique in sports wear.
One of the students was Helena, the gorgon. Whilst she had mastered walking on two legs, running was a completely different story
Mr. Ulric watched the students while nodding his head, but Senna saw his eyes gaze towards the sky with a queer expression several times.
Unsure as to what was grabbing his attention, she too glanced up and what she saw was so shocking she stopped running on the spot.
Giant tendrils, like the limbs of an octopus, could vaguely be seen twisting and stretching above the sky over the school. It was extremely faint, someone without her level of sight could easily miss it, but it was definitely there.
She thought back to the previous weekend when Thomas and herself investigated the school overnight. What she was seeing was exactly what he described to be there.
The difference was that it was completely invisible then, whilst now it had become visible.
Jack Riddle’s attention hadn’t left Senna once, as if waiting for her to attack another student. As soon as she stopped and looked up, he also looked towards the sky from the edge of his vision. Whilst not seeing anything at first, that abruptly changed once he moved his mana to his eyes and buffed his vision.
“Charlotte,” Jack softly called to the silvery haired girl next to him so as to not alert anyone else.
“Hmph, are finally willing to apologize?” The beautiful heiress scornfully responded without turning her head to look at him.
“This isn’t the time for this, we need to leave, now.”
“If all you have to say is rubbish, then don’t say anything at all.”
Jack felt like forcefully picking up her up and carrying her away, but he still held confidence in being able to protect her no matter what happened so he didn’t take such drastic action.
A cold wind blew across the school grounds and trees rustled menacingly. The birds also sensed danger and flew off in packs that chirped and cawed endlessly.
Many of the students slowly came to a halt as they began to feel something off, although their main concern was that they thought it was about to rain.
They weren’t wrong. Small droplets of rain sprinkled down from the sky and soak into their hair and clothes.
“Alright, everyone, that’s about enough for this lesson. Go and get changed and…”
Before Mr. Ulric could finish, the anomaly in the sky suddenly mutated.
One of the tendrils, or roots, extended like a bolt of lightning before coming crashing down on the school grounds extremely close to where the students were. This root wasn’t the near invisible spacial tear it was in the sky, but had become much more visible. It was still opaque, but even that was rapidly becoming more and more solid as time passed.
Some of the students screamed in fright at the suddenness of it, whilst others stood in shock with their mouths hanging open. Senna also rose her brows with a look of surprise, clearly not expecting this outcome.
Not just the fae girl, but all the students and even the substitute teacher had a clear vision of the world beyond the space tear.
The inside was an inverted world, meaning that rather than everything being situated on the outside of a globe, it was all placed on the inside.
The sheer size of it was mind boggling, as was the other end was like viewing the Earth from space. That is only what could be seen beyond the floating mountains and meteorites that freely floated within or orbited the inner space.
The landscape was extremely perilous with giant rocky spires and mountains. Lava flowed down some of these mountains, and in others is simply rose to the sky as if gravity had been reversed.
It wasn’t mere rocks and lava though, foliage grew wherever it could, both in dense thickets and sparse open plains.
A girl jumped from a nearby tree all of a sudden and landed just inside the tear.
She wore beast leather that tightly clung to her well developed figure and had long, dark hair. Not only was she extremely attractive, she even appeared to be human from the other side.
She reached out with one finger and softly touched the barrier between the two worlds, which created an immediate reaction. The barrier instantly solidified and opened the connection between the worlds in its entirety.
With the spacial tear as the origin, a shock wave rippled through the rain shortly followed by a hot and humid maelstrom of wind.
“Everyone, evacuate immediately toward the front of the school!” Mr. Ulric calmly called out to the students as he quickly directed everyone away from the nerve racking tear in space.
Senna felt an annoying gaze as the substitute teacher sneakily glanced in her direction several times.
What followed were a crowd of beastial roars as monsters rushed out of the spatial tear like a hoard of hungry beast who had caught the scent of blood.
These monsters weren’t your typical longarms and prowlers that humanity was used to, creature mutated from animals or plants. No, these were monsters unseen before as if they were straight out of fantasy.
Their claws and teeth were razor sharp, some of them even drooling acidic saliva that caused the grass to begin smoking with a stench of rot. Some grew bone armor carapaces, whilst others seemed to have a means of refining metals within their body to create armor plating.
Students screamed and fled in a panic, any sense of orderly evacuation collapsing immediately. At the same time, the evacuation siren in the school began to ring, the disturbance here already detected and staff acting on it.
Smaller, lightweight monsters were faster, the students who had their wands on them casting stun spells and mana bolts at them to try and hold them off. Others cast small defensive barriers to block and even squash them, but the students weren’t even First Circle mages as of yet, so their spells were lackluster in performance compared to the robust monster bodies.
“Ahh!! Help me!” One of the students, a boy with blond hair and still exhausted from the training exercises, was knocked down by a charging monster and had his wand go flying into the grass not too far away.
He didn’t even register the blood staining his clothes from where the sharp corners of the monster’s barbed carapace tore apart his skin. He was just frantically trying to fend it off with his bare hands, but the monster bore down on him with razor sharp fangs.
Senna saw this, but it was Helena who immediately acted to save him. The gorgon girl knew her magic wouldn’t be able to save him and without hesitation removed her glasses.
She gritted her teeth and glared at the monster, her brownish-purple snake pupils glowing violet in response to her magic. At the same time, the watch on her wrist begun beeping in alert as a warning displayed itself.
Grey splotches of stone appeared on the monster which rapidly grew in size like a growing colony of bacteria. The monster groaned weakly as it turned to stone in petrification.
Helena breathed heavily as she placed her glasses back on and hurried to help her school mate, her watch continuing to emit an alarm.
Senna watched in silence as a monster tried to attack her from behind. She turned and caught it mid leap with a seemingly casual effort before slamming it into the ground with a force that caused a small crater in the ground. Black blood poured out of the now lifeless monster’s jaws, all its internal blood vessels shredded and brain turned into a grey paste.
Jack Riddle was also a force to be reckoned with as he casually threw out wind blades and bolts of lightning to easily destroy these monsters, protecting a frightened Charlotte Frost who now was very keen to stay by his side.
Mr. Ulric displayed his magic as he used his physical body to beat away monsters from the students, to which even Senna inwardly complemented his martial arts form. The monsters would chew at his arm, even rip them off and eat them, but he would immediately regenerate from any damage without flinching.
Other teachers who were First Circle mages, and even the vice principle, who was a Qi Refining cultivator, came out to help protect the students and assist in the evacuation.
“Everyone,” The vice principle, an attractive man who appeared in his early forties, called out to the students as he controlled flying sword and threw out explosive talismans to kill the monsters, “evacuate to the front of the school! The authorities and Protectorate are already on their way and will be here shortly!”
Not long after that statement was heard, floodlights could be seen as multiple air ships descended from above. The monsters stopped and roared defiantly at the lights, afraid of the unknown situation.
This gave the reprieve the students needed to finally break away from the ever increasing hoard of blood hungry creatures.
Several silhouettes outlined themselves against the spot light of the air transports as the on board heroes leapt off the craft mid-air. They all had battle-worn expressions and were filled with confidence.
“You are all safe now, the Protectorate will take over in subduing these monsters!” One of the leading heroes called out loadly, his voice powerful enough to be heard by everyone above the sound of screams of students and roar of monsters.
The heroes manipulated elements, covered their bodies in stone or metal, even used telekinetic abilities to take control over the battlefield. Their bodies were enhanced beyond a normal human by their powers, but what truly set them apart was equipment and experience.
The heroes worked in teams that complimented one another’s weaknesses. Solo heroes were the rarity as it was those who worked together that not only produced better results but also produced less fatalities.
This changed drastically however at A Rank and B Rank, the ranking at which they were classified as superheroes. Whilst they still teamed up when required, they were too few in number and too spread out to form proper teams.
Thankfully, there was a strength system evaluation for any hero to advance to the next rank. Only the truly powerful were capable of climbing into the ranks of superheroes, all others forever limited to the hero ranks.
Their equipment was on an entirely different level from what the public had access to. The Protectorate held innumerate R&D and support divisions that assisted the front line heroes in creating equipment to enhance their combat power depending on their power, and also defensive gear that would protect them far better than any other consumer grade product.
With only twenty fully equipped heroes, the monster outbreak was quickly suppressed and pushed back.
The air ships also held extremely destructive on board weapons. Armor piercing bullets rained down on monsters that tried to break away from the group or otherwise circle around them.
*GROARRRRR*!!
An ear ringing roar sounded out as what could only be described as a behemoth monster squeezed out of the spacial tear, the entire earth shaking in conjunction with its footsteps.
The entire battlefield seemed to be filled with a static electricity as the hair on everyone’s necks stood on end and goosebumps formed.
“All heroes. I repeat, all heroes,” A voice was projected from the speaker of the largest air ship at the front of the pack, “ionized proton cannon has been cleared for deployment. Do not approach the behemoth, I repeat…”
A hatch on the bottom of the largest air ship opened and an extremely large cannon lowered itself. Sparks of electricity were already arcing between the inner walls of the barrel as it pointed towards the enormous monster.
What happened next was shocking to the students secretly watching from the distance, but not unexpected from the heroes.
A giant blueish-white beam of plasma fired from the barrel of the cannon with a sound multiple times louder than the crack of thunder.
The dark clouds in the sky reflected this light as they momentarily lit up and all the rain in the proximity of the beam instantly evaporated into steam
The behemoth didn’t even have time to cry in pain as this beam tore a barrel sized hole all the way through its body, even the blood immediately evaporating whilst the flesh around the hole was scorched black.
“Target eliminated.”
The speakers on the air ship announced the result of the blast before focusing back on eliminating any stray monsters via air support.
The ground began shaking once again as more of the behemoth monsters exited the portal.
Another air transport arrived, this one with the logo of the police projected in the air around it and not as heavily armed as the Protectorate ships.
In front of the carrier was a man standing on a flying sword with a military crew cut. It was Captain Reeves, his eyes glaring down on the battlefield full of monster corpses before looking into the giant spatial tear that formed the portal between this world and the other.
As he descended from the sky, he threw out a dozen handle-less foot long blades before using his Spiritual Qi to control them. They zig-zagged through the sky as a speed that was near impossible to follow with the naked eye.
Every drop of rain seemed to be split in two at that moment before the new behemoths cried miserably and collapsed to the ground before pitch black blood began pouring out of their bodies and onto the ground with an odor of rot.
If Captain Reeves was ranked according to the Protectorate’s hero system, he would be within the ranks of superheroes. A level impossible to reach unless one had a truly powerful superpower.
Senna stood out of the rain with a brooding expression whilst she watched all the other students being evacuated. It was still safe out front of the school, so most took taxis or were picked up in their expensive cars. Others simply wandered towards the nearest bus stop whilst constantly talking about what happened.
The school had already worked alongside the police and arranged for additional bus services to get the students home, else they would be delayed in evacuating the school.
The fae girl also saw Helena, who was surrounded by several armed government officers and escorted into a black car. She guessed these were the officials from S-GAIA who responded to her using her powers and triggering some form of safety device in her watch.
She still stood there after everyone else had left, as if waiting for someone.
Mr. Ulric approached her at this time and said, “Senna, do you have someone to pick you up? All students need to-”
*Snap*
Senna abruptly kicked Mr. Ulric and broke his leg at the knee, an action that happened so fast nobody even realized what occurred. She also grabbed his elbow with enough force to cause his bones to creak, as if to stop him from escaping.
“Thomas, you asshole! Body strengthening and regeneration magic?! What utter bullshit!”
‘Mr. Ulric’ was unfazed by the damage, which he healed within seconds, but he paused at her words as if caught off guard before eventually breaking out into a familiar slovenly grin and displayed his pupils which had taken on a ghostly white hue.
“What gave it away~?”
“Your stench!” The fae girl hissed in displeasure.
“Huh? No, no, I made sure to get deodorant that I’ve never used before. I know how good your sense of smell is. I wouldn’t make such a rookie mistake.”
Senna gave his a deadpan look before unfurling her clenched fist, exposing a small bloodstain on her finger that didn’t belong to her.
“I don’t understand,” Senna stated with a hint of confusion in her tone, “I thought you can’t rebuild once off vessels? You didn’t have a record of it in your soul, so it was disposable, or whatever.”
“Who said its a disposable vessel? I will have you know that Theodore Ulric once existed. He was… a companion.”
“…So why do you have his vessel?”
“…”
“Well?”
“It’s not important. What is is that I am here to help investigate.”
“Whatever.” Senna casually licked the small bloodstain off her finger, leaving no trace of it behind. “By the way, your gorgon story isn’t hold up. She has a tracker that constantly monitors her. Also, you saw that inside the portal, before it stabilized, didn’t you?”
“…Yeah, almost human.”
‘Mr. Ulric’ shook his arm free from Senna’s grip before wrapping it around her back, his hand on her shoulder.
“Let’s go home.”
He began guiding Senna away from the school, the distant roar of monsters shook the air as floodlights shone down upon the battlefield and air ships hung overhead. Not even the noise of gunfire and claws on steel could drown out these sounds
“It was looking at the students, the male students,” Senna commented before swatting his hand off her shoulder, “Now hurry up and change back, you look stupid.”
Subscribe now and be the first to be alerted of any new chapters!
End Online Novel 