Chapter IV.XXXII (4.32) - The Final Challenge

  Most of the other students struggled to get even a few meters off the ground. Between the aura of the chaos trees and the blasphemous concoction of alcohol in their systems, they were nearly all stumbling around at the roots of the ginormous trees.

  There were half a dozen exceptions though. Sene continued to rise on carefully controlled wind currents. She remained ahead of the pack on her tree, but Ulric was quickly catching up to her with his enhanced strength.

  On Kizu’s tree, two students were still in front of him. Harvey remained in the lead on their tree, but Yon was hot on his heels.

  Yon used some sort of enchanted chain with blades to help him climb. The chains extended out and wrapped around the back end of the tree, despite the trunk’s massive width. The fifth year student was entirely focused on attempting to pass Harvey and paid no mind to those behind him.

  Kizu decided he was far enough from curious eyes to avoid the worst of the gossip. He kicked off his shoe and flexed his reptilian foot. It dug into the tree, the grip helping propel him up and granting him additional speed.

  External magic was tricky this close to the tree. But Sene proved that it was very possible with enough concentration and skill. Kizu doubted his strength in elemental spells could match that of Sene. But that didn’t mean he was without a few tricks.

  When Yon finally looked down, Kizu was only a few meters away. But before he could plan any retaliation, Kizu launched a spell at him.

  Rather than exercise the finesse of Sene, Kizu went with a broader approach. He covered the entire area in front of him in a massive black blob of darkness. The illusion was sent off in random directions, creating a writhing mass of shadow tentacles, but they all sprouted from a central body that Kizu managed to maintain over Yon.

  He heard Yon curse and the fifth year attempted to use his chain to maneuver his way out of the illusion that obscured his vision.

  But Kizu doubled down, his blob of darkness expanded. The chaotic aura of the tree wasn’t antimagic. It simply made control difficult. A simple, low blood cost illusion could cover a lot of area.

  If Yon knew how to cast antimagic better, he might be able to disperse quite a bit of the illusion with minimal difficulty. But, like most students at Shinzou Academy, Yon seemed to have preferred learning how to create physical shields made from elemental magic rather than the antimagic alternative.

  Narrowly dodging out of the way of the flailing blade at the end of Yon’s chain, Kizu passed his friend and continued upwards. He left shadows and a cursing fifth year in his wake.

  “A fun fact about these trees is that they don’t have true bark!” Basil said. “According to notes given to me by the gardening club, it’s some sort of psydobark. In fact, palm trees aren’t really all that tree-like at all! This memo says they’re like grass. And they can bend in the wind thanks to their trunks! Well, a normal one can. It doesn’t say if giant palm trees like these can bend.”

  Basil continued to ramble about palm trees. It seemed like he was reading these notes in a random order, never really clarifying his points.

  “Kizu! Try bending one of the palm trees! I want to know if it works on these ones.”

  Kizu ignored Basil’s demand and focused on pulling himself up, hand by hand. His body was starting to protest the exercise. He was out of shape. But muscles built from years in the jungle would take more than a couple months to fully atrophy. And he hadn’t exactly been living an entirely sedentary lifestyle since moving out here. He ignored the pain of his fingers as he gripped into another handhold and lifted himself higher.

  The longer he climbed, the more Kizu realized how little this tree emulated a normal palm tree. The leaves above him weren’t spread like a bird’s wings, but instead thick and smooth like a banana tree’s. The trunk was thicker as well. Like Basil was saying during his rambling notes, palm trees were meant to be thin and flexible enough to bend with the wind. Kizu doubted these monstrosities would budge even in a hurricane. It was a mystery how the Gardening Club had cultivated this plant. And he couldn’t help but wonder what sort of potions he might be able to brew using it. He ripped out a chunk of the tree with his monster leg and passed it to his hand. Then he pocketed it in his jacket for further study later. He’d read about chaos plants. They were supposed to be extraordinarily dangerous materials. But maybe if he knew the exact details about the horticultural process….

  Harvey ripped open the leaf above him and pulled himself up, disappearing from sight. Soon after, Kizu started to hear rustling and one of the massive palm leaves shook. Good. That meant that this wasn’t over yet. Some final challenge waited for them on the tree’s crown.

  It only took Kizu about a minute before he was also at the edge of the top. The hole that Harvey helpfully left behind looked like what a caterpillar might chew through on a normal sized leaf.

  The entire tree shook.

  Harvey flew across the leaf, tumbling across its surface but catching himself before he fell off the edge. The Tainted boy’s opponent stood on a wooden pedestal at the center of the tree, where all the leaves converged.

  A massive skeleton. An agglomeration of bones structured to create a behemoth of death. Even its skull wasn’t a single object, but dozens of different skulls sprouting from several spinal cords and grafted together.

  “It looks like Kaga Kizu has joined the battle against my love’s latest little experiment!”

  Of course this was Aoi’s doing. This must be where all those barrels of bones she’d acquired had gone. And ‘little’ was a joke of an adjective. Even with its hunch, the thing stood at least four times Kizu’s height.

  On the pedestal behind the skeleton was a table with a large wooden bowl at its center.

  “We need to drink whatever’s in there?” Kizu asked.

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  “That’s what I’m thinking,” Harvey replied, climbing back to his feet.

  “The two contestants at the top of the tree have guessed correctly!” Basil announced. “You must submerge your cup in the liquid and drink a full glass of my surprise concoction. Only then will your side of the challenge be completed. The team who has both teammates finish their drinks first, wins!”

  Kizu wondered how Sene was faring on her tree. Knowing her though, she probably was wiping out any competition with a wave of her hand.

  He gave Harvey a side-eyed glance. The Tainted boy wasn’t acting aggressively towards him. In fact, his body language and attention appeared entirely directed toward the enemy skeleton. Kizu probably could blast him off the edge of the tree with a sudden wall of force. Even with the chaos tree disrupting his magic, a broad objective like that should still be possible.

  But he desperately didn’t want to. He wanted to beat Harvey, but not like that. Kizu wanted a fight where they could both perform to their peak. Not a backstab for a stupid competition.

  “Oi. Kizu,” Harvey said. “You keen on teaming up to take this thing down? I got a good look in that bowl earlier before it launched me back. There’s more than enough for both of us.”

  Kizu smiled. “Let’s do it.”

  The skeleton, as if sensing their alliance, widened its stance and stared them down.

  A thought occurred to Kizu and he fingered his ring. Even despite pressing it up against the tree in his earlier climb, the spatial compartment appeared completely unaffected by the tree’s aura. That might change if he dropped material from the tree into it, but as it was, the enchantment remained the same as ever. There was a good chance that meant his potions would be similarly unaffected.

  Still, best to play it safe and attempt to use anything too dangerous. The last thing he needed was to take out a firebomb potion and have it blow up in his face and light the tree on fire.

  Tentatively, he palmed a vial and took it out of the ring. No noticeable reaction from the liquid inside, good.

  Before he had a chance to use it, a femur flew in his direction. Kizu dropped as it soared over his head.

  “What the—”

  The skeleton monstrosity had just thrown one of its bones at them. And it looked to be readying a second throw.

  “Behind!” Harvey called out.

  Kizu barely had time to even turn his head. By the time he processed the return attack, it was too late for him to act. The femur spun at his head at a terrifying speed.

  Only to stop, less than a meter from his face.

  And then suddenly there was someone between him and the attack.

  Harvey’s tattoos glowed as he struggled to maintain his grip on the bone. It clearly wanted to rejoin with the bone collective guarding their objective.

  Kizu flicked the cork off the vial with his thumb then splashed some of the liquid over the femur.

  Harvey stumbled as the magic completely dispersed from the bone. His grip cracked the now nonmagical bone.

  “What just happened?” Harvey asked, raising the femur up to eye level.

  “Here,” Kizu passed him an identical vial. “It’s a potion designed to help separate two souls. Still a prototype, but it looks like it’s good enough to cut the link between this necromantic abomination."

  “What do you want me to do with this?”

  “Throw it.”

  Harvey grinned, his sharp teeth glinting in the sunlight. The tattoos on his arm began to glow again as he shifted his stance and took aim.

  In the background, Basil was telling everyone what Kizu had just explained to Harvey. Just as Harvey hurled the potion at the skeleton, the bones burst apart. They spewed out in a wide area, completely lacking the force of the earlier attack. Instead, when the vial shattered against the monster, its contents only hit a few of the bones, rather than spilling over the body as a whole.

  It only took Kizu a second to understand what had just happened. Aoi had heard what he’d been about to do and commanded her skeleton to fall apart to minimize the damage.

  “Basil! You just screwed us!” he shouted into the air.

  He didn’t bother to listen to the shapeshifter’s response. The skeleton was already reforming. They had mere seconds until it was back, sans half a dozen bones.

  He only had a single dose more of soul separating potion on him, but that didn’t mean he was utterly without resources.

  “Thow this now!” Kizu shoved a swirling light blue potion into Harvey’s hands.

  The Tainted boy acted immediately, not questioning Kizu for even a second. Before the skeleton managed to finish regaining its structure, the potion burst into its chest. Ice rapidly spread from the point of impact. Unfortunately, while the ice locked its left shoulder in place, the skeleton was too large to be completely subdued by the potions effects. And the next potion Harvey threw was countered mid-air by a humerus. It burst into a ball of ice encompassing the bone and falling uselessly down between them and the skeleton.

  Rather than waste more of his limited resources, Kizu next handed Harvey a vial of sea water. When Harvey threw it, Kizu launched himself forward, his reptilian leg propelling himself forward and leaving gashes in the massive leaf under his feet.

  The skeleton prioritized countering the potion that Harvey hurled at it, giving Kizu a few precious seconds to close the distance.

  When the skeleton turned its attention over to Kizu and threw a bone at him, Kizu finally cast a spell.

  A blast of force emanated from him. Not in the direction of the bone, but instead downwards. It felt like his entire body was slamming into a wall as he tumbled skyward. The spell hadn’t been fully structured thanks to the aura of chaos, but he still managed a smidge of control, vaulting himself in a diagonal direction towards the skeleton. With the ice slowing it down, it lacked the dexterity to disrupt his flight.

  Bones erupted out all around him as he rammed into its ribcage. The skeleton stumbled and the bones all around Kizu attempted to knit themselves back together and imprison him within.

  But it was too late for that. Kizu uncorked his final bottle of the soul separation prototype and spun on his monster heel, splashing the liquid all around himself. The rib cage ceased moving. Then they began to fall apart.

  The skeleton wavered. It tried to shift and grab him with its arm. But the core no longer supported it.

  In a spray of bones, the top half fell from the bottom, separating at the chest and exposing Kizu to the open air.

  Kizu’s eyes were on the bowl of a milky liquid. So close now. Brushing off bone splinters he scrambled to his feet and took off in the direction of the wooden bowl.

  Mere meters away, a skeletal hand made up of thousands of bones snatched him in its grip and dragged him away from the goal.

  Unlike normal living creatures, the skeleton didn’t need the use of its lower body to remain functional. It was simply an inconvenience. It had Kizu’s arms pinned to his sides. He prepared another force blast to pry apart the skeleton's fingers. He had to be careful though, the last thing he wanted was to accidentally throw himself off the side of the tree.

  The skeleton pulled him closer to it and Kizu finally got a good look at its main skull. It was made up of a hundred fused together shattered craniums. The cracks sealing everything together glowed a sickly green. But the gaping holes of its eye sockets and nose exposed only a deep shadowed darkness.

  Then it exploded.

  Harvey stood amidst the wreckage, smiling ear to ear. Blood dripped down from his arms from his knuckles where splinters of bone had embedded themselves. But his arms were still raised in a fighting stance, ready to swing another punch.

  “Nice work, Kizu.”

  “Thanks.” Kizu shoved aside the skeletal hand. Its grip had loosened when Harvey burst through the undead’s skull.

  “I dunno about you, but all this exercise has me parched. I could really use a drink.”

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