Mina turned, returning her staff to the bag and jogging over. “It’s not going to hold for long.”

  “What is that?” I couldn’t help but ask.

  “Transmutation,” Wol answered before she could.

  “What your familiar said,” She panted out.

  “You can’t put the fire out?” I asked. We turned away from the bubble wall and began to jog down the hallway.

  “No. It’ll take too long and I don’t–” She shut up and looked at me, “Nice try.”

  I hadn't been fishing for information, just running on autopilot from a combination of fatigue and adrenaline. But Mina was too. If anything, she seemed even more tired. Either from the smoke or the exertion of her practice. It was most likely a combination of both. I banked the scene for later and concentrated on fleeing the proverbial scene of the crime.

  “Where are we going?” She asked after a moment.

  “Club wing,” I said automatically and grimaced. “It’s unsupervised.”

  “Damn it,” She agreed.

  I don’t know what high school is like in Korea, but judging by her reaction it couldn’t be too different than here. Unsupervised clubrooms meant that kids could take advantage of the fire alarm. There are always a few of those that don’t take announcements like this seriously and lingers back.

  Whether it’s out of laziness or lack of concern, it didn’t matter to me at the moment. That place was most likely to hold students that would stay behind in an event like this.

  “Left up there,” I yelled over the alarm.

  It was an intersection where this hallway joined with others. Up ahead, there was a crowd of lagging students walking towards the right.

  Hwari crept up from my shadows, floating up to my shoulders and flying straight ahead. ‘Caller, there’s another practitioner up ahead.’

  She must have spoke to all of us because Mina asked, “Who?”

  ‘The Fae from yesterday.’

  Mina shot me a questioning look.

  “One of the mercenaries.” Goddammit, I wasn’t the most athletic. Quite the opposite. I just had no idea it would bite me in the ass like this. I wanted to blame the smoke but I knew it was just my lack of exercise.

  “What about the Practitioner?” She asked easily.

  “I don’t know.”

  I got to the intersection and looked around wildly, searching for the Practitioner and her Fae familiar.

  ‘She lies in hiding, Jain,’ Hwari said.

  Mixed in with the crowd of nervous highschoolers was a lady police officer fully decked out in uniform and sunglasses. She was waving the highschoolers by, constantly looking all around. At her feet was a german shepherd who had his nose to the ground, sniffing rather aggressively.

  Just as I was about to turn and go in the direction opposite of foot traffic, the shepherd pointed with its nose towards us and started to growl.

  My Third Eye choked up on the scene, seeing through parts of their glamour. The cop lady’s gun flashed into a mirror before returning to a gun shape. The dog shifted into the Fae from yesterday –a boy straight from the wild with a bird’s nest on top of his head and chestnut skin– then back to the dog form again.

  They started walking towards us.

  “Crap. It’s them,” I spat. “The uniform, it’s an illusion.”

  Mina looked up sharply. “The cop?” I saw her hands reach for the kendo bag holding her staff.

  I grabbed her arm and she pinned me with a gaze that had withered lesser man than I. Smothering the spike of fear, I said through gritted teeth, “There’s people around.”

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  “You don’t understand,” She said, annoyed. “If we don’t do something first, she’s going to–”

  My sixth sense picked up on the working moments before my human eyes did. The police woman reached into her pocket and grabbed a walkie. My Third Eye revealed its true form: a round case that holds cushions for make-up. She opened it and dabbed at the wall with the cushion, leaving a trail of thick brown smudges on the wall while walking towards us.

  “She’s casting an illusion,” Wol sounded alarmed. "An Illusionist and Fae. This will be difficult."

  ‘We must run,’ Hwari added.

  If there was one advantage we had, it was that we were further up the crowd surging towards the exit. The bulk of them had already passed, while the merc practitioner had to wade through a hallway full of highschoolers taking their sweet time.

  “Come on,” I said, pulling Mina along.

  Someone screamed.

  It was a high pitched one, full of terror that had me turning back to see what had happened.

  The brown paste that the practitioner was smearing on the walls glittered with power and warped the walls into a different scenery all together. Plain walls turned to trees and greenery, while glass cases of sports trophies turned to shrubs with watermelon-sized insects. But it wasn’t just my eyes, I could smell the forest, and hear the buzz of the insects.

  The german shepherd had disappeared; and in its place was a different predator. Something older, leaner, and definitely not domesticated. The beast stuck close to the illusionary trees, its stripes only giving me glimpses at a time before it camouflaged once more.

  The scream turned to two, then three, and before I knew it the calm hallway was filled with mindless panic. My classmates surged through the hallway without order or form, a living wave of humans that were scared out of their minds and only knew how to do one thing: running away from the animal with teeth.

  “What the hell is going on?!” I yelled over the commotion.

  Wol leaped on top of my shoulders, nearly weightless. If he had stayed downfoot, my familiar would have been trampled.

  “She’s an illusionist,” Wol spoke directly into my ear, somehow keeping balance while I was being jostled by the crowd. “She’s turning the hallway into an illusion that feeds into her familiar’s glamour. Our little trick won’t work this time.”

  The Fae-creatures roar bounced up and down the hallway. The alarms, the screams, the intercom –they all got sucked in, somehow amplifying it.

  “This is getting bad.” Mina was close to me, her limbs tucked in. She was hugging the kendo bag close to her chest. “If you had just let me–”

  Another ear-splitting scream, but this time a hush fell over the corridor as all eyes shifted in the direction.

  A girl fell to the floor, bleeding from her leg.

  I didn’t know people could scream that loud.

  Screams traveled up and down as the crowd redoubled their efforts to exit. This wasn’t just hurried movements anymore; it was mass-panic on a groupthink scale.

  Some of the bigger guys literally started shoving kids to the floor in an effort to move even a step forward, while others took that opportunity to charge past their fallen friends. Most of the smaller kids who were on the floor just gave up and curled up into a ball.

  “The fear. The illusion. It’s all feeding the glamour. We can’t beat them here,” Wol said.

  “Then do something,” Mina growled near my chest.

  “What about you?” My words sounded more accusatory than I wanted them to be. “Can you do something?”

  “You took my chance away. Seoul and I aren’t good in crowds like this,” She snarled back.

  “Jain, we should run,” Wol said, claws digging in to my shoulders to hang on.

  I didn’t like how he kept saying that ever since the mercenaries showed up. “We can’t just go,” I hissed back, “They’re hurting people.”

  I left out the part where it felt like it was because of me.

  The practitioner was only a few feet away from us now. She still had her damned hand on the wall, smearing that brown goop behind her.

  “Then decide on what to do,” Wol hissed in anger. “But you must make a decision. To fight, run, something. Any decision will do except dithering about like this!”

  Wol was right. I stood shocked at the practitioner’s illusions and the Fae’s glamour. Maybe if I ran immediately this wouldn’t have happened. Maybe if I took a different route, I could’ve avoid them all together. Maybe if I had made a damned decision in time, that girl wouldn't be hurt.

  I needed to do something. But what? I needed time.

  But time was up.

  Only a few feet away, there was a deep-throated rumble. The half-disappearing illusion of bushes revealed the Fae, glamoured into a feline creature from some bygone era. It was a hulking thing, barrel-chested with strong legs but still flexible enough to prowl low to the ground and hide itself.

  Its amber eyes met mine.

  “Who’s the cowardly dog now, Practitioner?” It purred.

  Then it lunged.

  ? The Myth Seekers [A litrpg fantasy adventure] ?

  by Luminous Zephyr

  Sever the strings of gods and kings.

  But no favors come free, and the more he fights for freedom, the tighter the tangle of fate becomes.

  Finally, after forming a team to take on Janek’s Tower, the adventurers set off with high hopes.

  But before even reaching their destination, the team finds they are no longer chasing adventure.

  They are living it.