Among nature elves, Enid was basically a rare breed, a top tier social butterfly.

  Most of her kind never left the place they were born.

  And yet Enid had been out in the wider world for who knew how many centuries, maybe longer, and she still hadn’t run into a single one of her own people.

  Every now and then, though, in places no one ever went, she would catch the faint presence of another nature elf.

  So she knew she wasn’t the last.

  Enid really did like being around people.

  That was true, at least when the comparison was other nature elves.

  If you forced her to spend an entire day with Rosalie, though, she’d start regretting every life choice that led her there.

  How did a short lived race produce someone this talkative and this relentlessly enthusiastic?

  All afternoon, through lunch and well into the day, Rosalie dragged Enid everywhere.

  From the main city tower to the Holy Spirit Cathedral in the divine arts wing, a place Enid had never even visited.

  Rosalie chatted about hobbies, then random everyday nonsense, then whatever else popped into his head.

  And it was mostly one sided, Rosalie talking and Enid trying to survive.

  She wanted to escape.

  She couldn’t.

  Every time she saw his face or one of those cute little mannerisms, her resolve just… melted for no good reason.

  By the time dinner was getting close, Enid finally hit her limit.

  She told him she had things to do tonight and needed to head back.

  Rosalie smiled like he’d been waiting for that.

  “Perfect, then let’s eat together!”

  Absolutely lethal.

  Still, it wasn’t like Enid got nothing out of spending the entire afternoon with him.

  She had a rough idea why Rosalie seemed to have this strange fondness for her.

  Even so, the explanation was so abstract that if she had any other option, she wouldn’t have believed him.

  Rosalie said that the moment he saw Enid, it was like he’d fallen head over heels. He couldn’t stop himself from wanting to get closer, to know her, to understand her.

  But he insisted it wasn’t romantic.

  If there was anything like that, it was only a tiny bit.

  What he felt was more like Enid carried something that stirred a certain hunger inside him, a kind of craving.

  And even Rosalie didn’t know what to call it.

  He only knew that standing next to Professor Innis made him feel calm, like his mind could finally unclench.

  To Enid, it sounded like this.

  If Rosalie was a cute little kitten, then Enid was catnip.

  You couldn’t always explain why cats loved it so much, but you couldn’t deny it worked.

  Rosalie also told her what he knew about Ilyana’s current situation.

  He had no memories of his early childhood.

  All he remembered was being an orphan, being found by Ilyana, and being raised by her.

  After the Stahill Empire was founded, Ilyana, backed by the reputation of being one of the Four Saints, established the Church of the Holy Spirit.

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  Before long, it replaced the old Church of Light and became the empire’s official faith.

  But Rosalie’s relationship with Ilyana felt less like a parent and child and more like teacher and student.

  Growing up, he barely saw her at all, even though she was, on paper, his guardian.

  His only real impression of her was simple.

  Ilyana rarely spoke to people, but she was gentle, and she was strong.

  That was it.

  Enid could also sense something else from Rosalie, beyond the holy power that aggravated her curse.

  There was a presence to him that felt familiar and unfamiliar at the same time.

  It didn’t feel like Ilyana.

  It felt like something buried deeper in Enid’s shattered memories, something she still couldn’t reach.

  So Antonio sending Rosalie to get close to her was meant to speed up Enid’s recovery.

  Maybe Enid’s missing memories contained something Antonio needed.

  Either way, Enid couldn’t force it.

  If she couldn’t remember yet, she couldn’t remember.

  And like Antonio said, there was no point rushing. She should just live her life, teach her classes, and enjoy the days as they came.

  Still, for Enid, today was just one of those days where everything went wrong.

  And right on cue, trouble showed up.

  As Enid and Rosalie were heading back to the dining hall in the main city tower for dinner, Enid suddenly felt it.

  That sickening sensation of being watched by something evil.

  Rosalie’s holy aura stirred the curse inside Enid so badly that her ability to read the surrounding environment and elemental flow was heavily dulled.

  Even so, she caught the shape of it.

  Something big was hiding in the dark, waiting to jump them.

  Rosalie felt it too.

  Enid instinctively gathered elemental mana in her hand, ready to cast.

  At the same time, a two handed sword formed in Rosalie’s grip, forged from pure holy power.

  It was a mid tier divine art, fourth ring, known as Divine Forgeblade.

  Rosalie lifted the sword and moved back to back with Enid, both of them watching every flicker of movement, every shift in the air.

  For reasons Enid couldn’t explain, their coordination felt natural.

  They guarded at the same time, trusted each other with their backs, moved like partners who’d fought together for years.

  Maybe it was some old habit she’d forgotten, something carved so deep into her body that it didn’t need memory to function.

  Rosalie felt it too.

  There was some invisible thread between him and Professor Innis.

  Otherwise, why would he so instinctively shield her back, and place his own in her hands without hesitation?

  But whatever they thought, that presence in the dark kept shifting, circling, sliding from one patch of shadow to the next, ready to strike at any second.

  Enid and Rosalie stayed coiled tight, waiting for the moment it showed hostility, ready to hit back.

  It didn’t take long.

  With a sudden roar, the thing lunged.

  Enid snapped a low tier earth spell and yanked a slab of stone up from the ground, taking the hit head on.

  In that split second, she finally saw what had attacked them.

  Calling it a living creature felt wrong.

  It was closer to a beast that had been forcibly reshaped by warped mana, a monster.

  It had horns, a tail, and it moved on all fours. Its front limbs were heavier than the back, its eyes burned a deep blood red, and its whole body leaked that nauseating, twisted pressure.

  It was at least three times a man’s height, huge and thick with muscle, yet it moved far too fast and far too quietly for something that big.

  When its ambush failed, it sprang back and began pacing around them, testing, probing, looking for an opening.

  Enid knew better than to give it a breath.

  She fired off three mid tier lightning spells at once, three spear like bolts of electricity.

  They shot in from different angles like meteors, leaving the monster no clean route to dodge.

  Just as the lightning was about to hit, the monster’s body collapsed into shadow.

  That enormous frame simply melted into darkness and sank into the surrounding night.

  The lightning spears tore through empty air.

  Enid clicked her tongue.

  “Great. It can turn into shadow and slip my spells. Is that some kind of dark element trick?”

  Even as she thought it, she started cycling mana again.

  Her plan was simple, flood the area with light element magic and strip the shadows away, force it to show itself.

  But the monster in the dark was quicker than Enid under her curse.

  Before she could cast, the shadow surged straight at her.

  It burst out of the darkness in a heartbeat, claws flashing, going for her throat.

  “Watch out!”

  Rosalie moved without hesitation, stepping in front of Enid and catching the strike with his holy sword.

  Holy power was poison to a creature like that.

  The moment its claws met the blade, they crumbled.

  Its entire forelimb detonated into shredded flesh and splattering fragments.

  Rosalie held through the first impact, then drove the sword up to shove the monster back.

  He twisted his grip and swung in a clean, fast backhand slash, cutting from upper left to lower right.

  The monster snarled in pain and dove back into the darkness.

  Rosalie exhaled hard.

  “Professor Innis, are you okay?”

  While Rosalie kept it busy, Enid threw out a mid tier light spell, Sustained Flare.

  Blinding light flooded the area.

  Without the cover of darkness, the monster’s shadow form stood out like ink spilled across a white cloth.

  “I’m fine,” Enid said. “Thanks to you. It’s been a long time since I fought for real, so I’m a little rusty.”

  “That’s fine,” Rosalie said, steadying his stance. “Keep pressuring it with spells. Force it out of the shadows. I’ll look for an opening and end it.”

  With their plan set, Enid switched to quick, low tier spells, rapid fire, high frequency strikes meant to harass and pin down that moving shadow.

  Rosalie kept adjusting his position, cutting off angles, making sure the creature couldn’t slip away.

  They both knew how dangerous a shadow hiding monster was inside the academy at night.

  If it escaped into the campus, the fallout would be ugly.

  Enid’s Sustained Flare didn’t just light the area, it was bright enough to work as a beacon.

  Sooner or later, guards and other mages would notice and come running.

  So they held the line, focused on staying alive and keeping the monster trapped until backup arrived.