Chapter IV.XXIX (4.29) - Troll Piss

  The alcohol now expelled from Faible’s stomach, the gnome was now as sharp as ever. He apologized profusely as they raced forward and he continued to cast illusionary tricks to bamboozle their opponents.

  “End’s in sight,” Kizu said. “How’s the competition looking? Harvey and Tip recover?”

  Kizu didn’t want to look back and risk losing his footing. Faible though, still sitting on Kizu’s barrier, easily turned around to face the other competitors behind them. He tapped his glasses and took a few seconds to complete his examination.

  “The Tainted boy with the flute and the glass girl are battling. They seem to be holding up everyone else behind them. The other one is gaining on us. But he’s covered in a gray tar that is slowing him down.”

  “Tar? Where did that come from?”

  “If I had to take a gamble, not all holes were made equal in regards to their punishment.”

  Kizu glanced down at the closest hole. Now that he looked for it, it did seem to glow a slight shade of pink. Completely different from all the others. If there were unique punishments in each hole, he was incredibly grateful Faible fell in such a mundane one at the start.

  Basil’s voice boomed around them, talking about the different students tripping up others. All names Kizu didn’t recognize. Basil started rattling off their academic rankings in different fields as he talked about the spells they were casting.

  “How are your illusions holding up?” Kizu asked Faible.

  “Fine. Not as effective now that they know what to expect. Tip is cautious and they seem to slow him down a bit. Nothing like at the start though.”

  The final stretch. Kizu was a few strides away from the swirling mists obscuring the next section of the obstacle course.

  Then a screech behind him froze him in place. His body locked up and he tumbled forward and face planted into the sand. The piercing noise made every joint on his body quiver. Faible fell to the ground beside him, Kizu’s barrier evaporating into nothing.

  “Kizu?” Faible looked down at his prone friend, then back the way they came. “Ah. It seems to only be affecting humans. It’s that Tainted guy again. Spell like that must cost a lot of blood though.”

  Kizu tried to form words. His tongue was numb and his vision obscured by the sand. Even blinking was a chore.

  He felt something grab his arm. Then he was being dragged forward.

  “Almost…there,” Faible said. “Few…more…steps.”

  The beach shook with an impact and Kizu got a glimpse of Tip launching himself forward, right before they passed through the mist. He was greeted by the roiling sound of the surf meeting the beach.

  “Give me that,” Kizu heard Finn say. The noise of his brother gagging was followed up by the sound of him splashing into the sea.

  “Kizu! You smell terrible. What happened?”

  Someone flipped him over and he was then staring up at Sene.

  “Where is your cup at? I need it now!”

  “J..jack…” Kizu tried to speak but the words felt so clunky.

  “Jacket,” Faible said helpfully. “Inside pocket.”

  Sene immediately plunged into his academy uniform jacket pocket, feeling around on his chest before withdrawing the cup. In an instant, the cup filled with another disgusting alcoholic liquid. Sene gulped it down, scowled, then she disappeared into the tide behind her.

  The paralysis effects were thankfully fading fast. He needed to recover in time for the next round.

  “Well done,” someone new said. Kizu managed to bend his neck to look over at Tip. The bigger student was smiling down at him and removing globs of wax from his ears.

  “Thanks.” Kizu lifted an arm and slowly reached into his spatial ring. It took a few seconds of feeling up the objects inside before he found what he wanted. He brought out a copper colored potion and downed it. Immediately, he felt his body loosen back to normal. He sat up. rolled his shoulders, and stretched.

  Other students were now finally breaking through the mist and handing off their cups to their teammates. Harvey led the pack, but the glass mage was right behind him. Both were covered head to toe in sand. Harvey was grinning madly though while the glass mage glared daggers at him. And she wasn’t the only one. The majority of the students looked to have been hit by his paralysis charm. And nobody looked happy about it.

  “I need to get over to the next area,” Kizu said. “Air.”

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  “There are portals set up to instantly transfer us over,” Faible said helpfully, pointing over at a nearby active gate. The portal base was a simple wooden doorway that opened up to a swirl of blue distorted space.

  “Fancy,” Harvey said. He was cleaning out his flute of sand.

  “Not really,” Kizu said, examining the glyphs etched into the portal. They were pretty low quality. “I doubt these portals will function at all in a week. The glyphs are hastily carved and not even capable of covering a kilometer in distance.”

  “Good thing that’s as far as we’ll need to go!” Faible replied cheerily. “Let’s see how our teammates are faring in the water zone.”

  The gnome then stepped up to the portal and disappeared through the doorway.

  Kizu followed after him.

  It spit him out on a massive raft out on the sea. Nobody even looked over at him as he appeared, instead, their focus was all dedicated to the water below them. Their eyes fixated on the waves. Even Professor Arclight and Professor Oasaji were there, examining the water below.

  Kizu walked over to the only person not staring down into the deep blue sea. Ione lounged in the center of the raft, her hands behind her head and her eyes closed. Kizu was about to ask her about her summoning plans for the sky stretch when he was cut off by a gasp from the crowd.

  “And just like that!” Basil’s voice boomed around them. “Just like that, an underdog team of first years somehow takes the lead! What an upset! Both Sene and Ulric caught in a whirlpool! The two favorites now lag behind! Every second the gap between them and victory increases!”

  That was bad. Kizu looked to Ione. She’d cracked open an eye at that last announcement, a slight frown on her lips.

  “Your summons?” Kizu finally asked after Basil finished regaling them in the names of the current placement of students.

  Ione lazily pointed up at the sky. Overhead, far above, Kizu spotted a pair of massive birds.

  “Birds are ready whenever. They can be down in seconds. Less time then it will take you to drink that slop Basil is serving us.”

  “What’s this?” Basil announced. “Sene has reversed the whirlpool current, freeing herself and Ulric! What a mastery of skill! Professor Oasaji himself set up that trap! She’s going toe to toe with one of the best elementalists alive!”

  “Come now, that was hardly my finest work,” Oasaji complained, not quietly. “It was designed with the intention of it being potentially dismantled by a student.”

  “Let them have their victory,” Arclight said. “You said yourself that you expected it to require teamwork! Unless Ulric has expanded his elemental repertoire substantially over the break, Sene accomplished that alone.”

  The turkey professor clucked, but didn’t disagree with his wife.

  “Out of all the possible options, I never saw this coming! The weakest link in one of the strongest teams holds his own and emerges in the front! Kaga Finn, the angry younger brother of Kaga Kizu is battling off those behind him!” Basil continued to inform them about the competition.

  Kizu decided to walk over to the edge of the raft and see if the water was actually clear enough to see anything, or if everyone was simply tense from waiting.

  To his surprise, the water wasn’t clear, but rather a divination reflection of the different contestants. Professor Grove must have designed it. He watched with fascination as Finn created icebergs of water to launch himself off of. While he lacked the ability to command water like a lot of the other students, he was able to keep a lead by creating massive chunks of ice as additional obstacles for those behind him to dodge. It wouldn’t have been nearly as effective if he was in the back, but he used the lead Kizu and Faible had gained for their team to not just maintain a lead, but extend it.

  Unfortunately, Sene was part of the collateral. She was cutting her way through the icebergs as she quickly ascended back up through the crowd.

  “She doesn’t have an air bubble around her head like nearly everyone else,” Kizu noted to himself.

  “An excellent observation.” Kizu blinked and looked to his side to see Professor Arclight beaming at him. “And why do you think that might be?”

  “Is she creating fresh air with a spell so as to only need to exhale out?” Kizu guessed.

  “That’s a theory!” Arclight laughed. “Not quite though. What Kajima Sene is doing is actually breathing in air. You see, even water has air inside of it, it’s how fish breathe. But where they use gills to filter out the air, Kajima Sene is casting a complex spell.”

  “And because it’s elemental manipulation rather than creation, it’s a more resource effective method?”

  “Precisely! She’s actually done a remarkable job of conserving her blood throughout this task. She’s relied almost exclusively on elemental manipulation rather than the more taxing methods of creation like many of the others.”

  “She’s holding back,” Professor Oasaji commented, waddling up to them. “Breaking free of my whirlpool was the only instance of her truly showing her full capabilities.”

  “I guess she’s saving it for the final section,” Kizu said. “We don’t know what’s ahead.”

  “Smart girl,” Arclight said. “And you, Kaga Kizu? How are your blood levels feeling right now?”

  “I’ll be fine.” He’d used more than he’d wanted carrying Faible with the barrier earlier, but Ione should be able to carry him through the next section with her summoned creature which meant very little blood usage from him.

  Before anything else could be said, someone burst up from the water. Everyone shouted and stepped back as Finn threw himself onto the raft and scrambled up.

  Instead of handing off his cup, Finn turned back to the sea and plunged his hands back into the water. He began casting a spell. In less than half a minute, a layer of ice surrounded the raft. Students cried out in complaint about their divination sight being obscured, but Finn ignored them.

  “Now that’s the opposite of conserving his blood,” Professor Oasaji commented dryly. “We’d better keep an eye on him in his next area.”

  Finn finished and quickly crossed the raft over to Ione. He thrust the cup at her. She yawned and pointed over at Kizu.

  “He’s heavier. I’ll catch up.”

  Finn grunted then tossed the cup at Kizu who caught it. It immediately filled with another liquid. This time, instead of the black merman muck from before, it was a sparkling yellow drink.

  “Damn it,” a nearby student cursed, looking over his shoulder at his cup. “Our group got stuck with troll piss?”

  All of the students on the raft groaned.

  He really, really hoped ‘troll piss’ was the slang name of the drink, not an actual description of it. But with no other option in his path, Kizu raised the cup to his lips and took in a mouthful.

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