Jung Seoyeon threw her robes over her body, bound her hair with a tie, and scooped up her Grimoire. Merlin’s call had rattled her, and, even worse, was his request.

  Keeping the fact secret that a student had taken steroids to amp their abilities was impossible. And she had let him know that. No matter who they were, the headmaster had to know. For one, it was for the benefit of the student. To have resolved to take drugs to become stronger, it meant that they were going through some things that could only be solved when talked about with professionals. She wasn’t well versed in that line, and only the headmaster could offer Nikolai the help he needed.

  And, secondly, there was no such thing as a steroid that could boost a Mage’s capabilities. Whatever Nikolai had taken wasn’t anything as simple as a drug, it was definitely something dangerous to mankind and Magehood as a whole. Which was the more important reason as to why the headmaster had to know about what was going on, so the necessary actions could be taken.

  She was glad that Merlin had understood and had not kept on forcing his request onto her. The perfect Mage was the one who made sure to take the necessary actions regardless of what it costs.

  Jung Seoyeon was well aware that Nikolai was Merlin’s friend, and trying to keep him from getting expelled would come off as the best course of action to the boy.

  However, no one had said anything about Nikolai getting expelled. Prestige Academy never abandoned their students easily. They would offer Nikolai the help he needed and he would go on with his classes and training, just that it would be in a separate location from the rest of the students.

  Jung Seoyeon rushed out of her room and banged on the door of that which was opposite hers. Park Minjee opened a minute later, eyes heavy as she rubbed it, and her hair turned into rough frills.

  “What’s the problem, unnie?” she asked. “It’s late isn’t it?”

  “I need you to snap out of it,” Jung Seoyeon said, her tone filled with urgency. Minjee’s eyes widened in accordance. “Head over to the headmaster and relay this to him… Nikolai Volkov is currently on an unknown substance and possibly on a rampage in the Open field. In all likelihood, we suspect he might end up becoming a Berserker.”

  Minjee blinked, taken aback by the words she had just heard. It took a second for her to truly grasp what was happening.

  “What?” she voiced. “S-Shouldn’t we let Professor Dmitri know then?”

  “The headmaster comes first,” said Jung Seoyeon. “And we don’t have the time to be making calls. I don’t have the time to waste here. I’m heading to the Open field. Get the headmaster there in—”

  Jung Seoyeon’s words were cut off when the shockwaves of a loud roar shook the building. Her attention snapped in the direction the roar had come from and her face scrunched.

  “Is that?” Minjee asked. Then grit her teeth and hurried into her room. “I’ll get the headmaster as you said, so hurry on over there already, unnie!”

  Jung Seoyeon nodded and rushed out of the building.

  Park Minjee, out of breath, arrived before the gates of Headmaster Im Ilseong’s home. And, honestly, she wasn’t surprised that he was already up and about. There was barely anything that escaped his eyes after all, and a student going on a rampage in the Open field wasn’t one of those things.

  He sauntered out, dressed in a simple shirt and black pants with Miss Eun-Wol following behind him.

  “Minjee,” Headmaster Im Ilseong called. “Has anyone gone to take control of the situation?”

  Minjee nodded, gasping. “Unn—I mean, Professor Jung has gone to the scene.”

  “Good,” he nodded. “Then let’s hurry too.”

  Minjee pursed her lips as they turned towards the path that led to the Open field. “What will happen to the student, headmaster?”

  Headmaster Im Ilseong smiled at her. “There’s no need to worry, Minjee ssi,” he said. “I never abandon my students.”

  Merlin saw it now. Nikolai was no longer the same. He had been wondering if he had truly done the right thing by contacting Professor Jung instead of Professor Dmitri on his way after Professor Jung had told him that they would be unable to keep Nikolai’s exploits under wraps, but now he could see why she had said that. The more he watched Nikolai take on Nora and Chima as he fought his way towards him, he felt the boy’s humanity slip out of his grasp bit by bit.

  Truly, whatever Nikolai had taken couldn’t be given a name as simple as ‘steroids’. It was far more complicated than that, and it was turning him into a wild beast.

  Merlin bit his lower lip as his mana swirled from his body and onto his fingertips. He trusted his mates and just did what he could do. No matter how many times Nikolai came close to attacking him, he didn’t let his breath turn uneasy or take a single step away from where he stood. If he did, he would have to start Reader Mage all over again. So he remained, and sure enough, Nora, Chima, and even Hakyun who was exhausted, did their best to keep Nikolai from cleaving him in half.

  “He’s lost his mind, but he’s still aware of what Merlin’s planning to do!” Chima roared as a shield of flames manifested in his grasp. He flashed into view before Merlin and raised his shield up so that Nikolai’s attack slammed on it instead, sending sparks of flames scattering about. The fire burned the beast, but his resilience was on a totally different level.

  “Push him back and leave your shield of flames with him!” Nora voiced from where she stumbled to her feet after being hit away by Nikolai.

  “Roger that!” Chima yelled and pushed Nikolai backwards with all his might. His ears were still bleeding, but it seemed he had long grown used to the pain.

  Nikolai stood his ground, however, fighting back against Chima’s strength. But Chima didn’t give up and only amplified his fire, burning the beast a bit more; and that moment of hesitance from Nikolai due to the brief pain that assaulted him, forced him to move back. Chima instantly did as Nora had requested. He pushed his shield of flames onto Nikolai, sustaining its structure as much as he could, while he blasted himself away from the beast. Instantly, a large ball of air flew at Nikolai, specifically the shield of fire, and amped its flames. The air stung with heat, and roars of agony mixed with frustration and annoyance blasted through the air.

  However, they both knew that wasn’t enough to keep Nikolai down.

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  Nikolai opened his arms wide, and Merlin’s Perception went haywire. Whatever Nikolai was about to do would be destructive.

  “Everyone, get down!” he shouted. However, he couldn’t move, so he decided to take the brunt of the attack head on. He split the mana he was channeling to his fingertips, preparing to send a portion of it towards his feet so it kept him standing in the aftermath of Nikolai’s attack. But before he could go through with his plan, Hakyun jumped before him.

  “Don’t split it,” said Hakyun, seemingly having sensed Merlin’s mana fluctuating. “Keep going.”

  Merlin arched his brows and nodded. Immediately, Hakyun dropped to the ground and slammed his palms down, channeling what mana he had left into it. The ground rumbled, cracked, and then a portion of it shot out, rising to form a large, sturdy wall that filled Merlin with a sense of safety.

  Nikolai poured out a roar, and slammed his palms together. The Open field shook as air blasted out of his hands, putting off the fire that surrounded him, revealing charred fur, and spread out in all directions; Nora protected herself behind a wall of air, and Chima did the same behind a wall of flames. However, they were not all left unscathed. Chima barely managed to avoid being burned totally by his flames, as it was amplified by the shockwave of Nikolai’s attack, rolling away just in time and suffering burns only on his right arm. Nora was blasted backwards, and had almost slammed into a tree if only she hadn’t used a vortex of air to slow herself down. Regardless, her landing wasn’t smooth, and she cried out in pain as her shoulder was dislocated.

  Hakyun’s wall, on the other hand, was destroyed like it was made of wood. It shattered into pieces and countless pieces of rocks flew in all directions. One headed towards Merlin’s forehead, but before it could hit him, Hakyun zoomed into his view and received the attack with his back instead.

  Merlin grit his teeth as he watched Hakyun cough up blood. But he knew better than to let it distract him now. If he broke focus, he would be back to square one, and the pain everyone was going through at the moment to keep him from losing concentration would be rendered pointless. He shifted his gaze back Nikolai’s way and, finally, he had channeled enough mana to take on Nikolai’s maniacal spell.

  Reader Mage activated.

  [Perk: Reader Mage Activated]

  [Analyzing spell…]

  [Analysis complete]

  [Spell: Hybrid Beast Form.

  Category: ???.

  Spell Wielder: D-Class Mage.

  Spell Description: A spell formed by shaping the nucleotide sequences present in the Mage’s modified deoxyribonucleic acid to correspond with a certain aspect of the knowledge their mana possesses. In this Mage’s case, the knowledge of the cellular structure of the hybrid structure of beasts of the panthera genus in conjunction with the characteristics of a peak human. The Mage seems to have lost all reasoning as a result.]

  [Deconstructing Process: Disrupt the bonding between the weakest of the rung base pairs of the Mage’s deoxyribonucleic acid, which is the adenine to the thymine pair, by channeling your mana into the construct of their hydrogen bond. Fatality is almost certain.]

  Merlin’s brows fell as the world stilled around him.

  [However, getting through the deconstruction process manually will greatly reduce the fatality certainty percentage.]

  [Deconstruct manually?]

  [Yes?]/[No?]

  Merlin had no idea what the System was talking about. He had never seen such words before, and even the category of the spell wasn’t specified—-that was probably because of the drug, though. But he was well aware that now was not the time to be bogged down by something such as understanding the System. So he proceeded onwards.

  He would make sure Nikolai survived.

  “Yes!”

  Merlin’s mana shot out of his hands and doused Nikolai in one fell swoop. Nikolai froze, almost like time had stopped, and Merlin was pulled involuntarily into a trance.

  When he snapped back to his senses, he found himself in vast black space that reminded him of his inner world when he had been attuning with his mana.

  Am I in Nikolai’s inner world? Merlin wondered as he glanced around.

  It was all dark, without any trace of light or anything that gave him any intuition as to how to cancel Nikolai’s spell. But that problem of his was solved a brief second later as a large ball of what was obviously mana appeared before him.

  Merlin narrowed his eyes at the sight of the ball. He instantly floated towards it and studied it. It was naturally blue, like all mana was, but it was slowly getting tainted by a black impurity. He swallowed, understanding that the impurity was definitely the drug Nikolai had taken. In other words, if the impurity completely took over the ball of mana, Nikolai would lose his senses completely.

  Merlin couldn’t let that happen.

  A knife instantly manifested into his hand. The impurity was like the outer leaves of a cabbage; all he had to do was peel it off just like he would for a cabbage. The problem was, he had been atrocious at cutting cabbages, and, worse, Hakyun had been the one to peel off the outer leaves then.

  However, he couldn’t give up before he had even started.

  Merlin took a deep breath and got to work.

  All he had to do was replicate Hakyun’s technique. He had watched the boy do it; he could too.

  Hakyun had started from the head of the cabbage, so Merlin floated to the base of Nikolai’s mana. He rested upon it, and gently put his knife beneath the spreading black impurity, making sure it didn’t slice Nikolai’s mana itself. He made a shallow cut in between the impurity and Nikolai’s mana. The impurity wriggled, and immediately he grabbed the part that came undone tightly. It shook violently, but Merlin didn’t let it go. The rest of the impurity started to circulate a lot faster, but Merlin had no intention of letting it win.

  He spun around the ball of mana, not taking a moment to relish in his success of not cutting Nikolai’s mana in the process. The knife he held vanished, and then he grabbed the impurity with both his hands and pulled.

  Merlin glanced around to see if there was anything he could use [Mana Whip] to hold against to increase his pull, but was, of course, met with only a black silence. He decided to try some other way.

  Whips of blue mana shot out of Merlin’s back, almost like spider legs. He didn’t know how many he had produced, and he didn’t care to start counting. The whips hardened and shot into the small gap he had produced between the impurity and Nikolai’s mana and pulled with him.

  Bit by bit, the impurity came undone. Merlin strained and put all the strength he had accumulated ever since getting the System behind his weight. The impurity struggled, fighting against him, but the inner world was all about imagination. He was a sentient being, and he would never lose to a drug in a game of imagination.

  More whips shot out of his back and grabbed onto the impurity. A second later, Merlin pulled black from blue, and subsequently the wriggle of the impurity stopped.

  Merlin breathed out a sigh of relief as he watched the impurity shift away. But then he realized that his rest was short-lived, as the impurity contracted into itself and began to swell.

  His brows jumped up, realizing that it was probably about to explode. Merlin glanced at Nikolai’s mana as his brain went into overdrive. There had to be something he could do to contain the blast.

  Merlin’s brows twitched as he had an idea.

  The last time he had channeled out so much mana, he had almost killed himself. However, he had been yet to attune with his mana then. Perhaps now that he shared a more deeper understanding with what existed within him, he would be able to use it a lot better.

  Well, he didn’t have a choice. He had sworn to make sure Nikolai survived. Even if he ended up killing himself here, he had to fulfill his mission. That was the whole reason why he had become a Mage anyway. To protect, even at the cost of his own life.

  This is the third time my life is flashing through my eyes in just a few months… Merlin chuckled as he hovered towards the black impurity and poured out his mana towards the swelling ball. His mana surrounded it, creating a container, and his body grew abnormally cold in return. He heard Nora’s voice speak to him, his mother’s, his father’s, and the images of all the connections he had made appeared before his eyes as his vision blurred slowly.

  Ah… He breathed out softly as his heartbeat slowed, mana still pouring out of his finger tips, creating layer upon layer over the ball of impurity, and it was only when Merlin began to feel like even his life was being siphoned out of him did he stop. After all, if he died before the impurity exploded, his mana would probably cease to exist.

  Merlin took one more glance at Nikolai’s ball of mana and nodded to himself. Hopefully, he succeeded.

  Then he turned back to the ball of impurity just in time to see it explode. The light engulfed him.