Chapter IV.XXXIII (4.33) - Akira’s Suspicions

  The moment the liquid touched Kizu’s lips he felt his mind clear. He took a gulp and felt his body relax and his senses sharpen. Even the bile taste in the back of his mouth from the troll piss earlier was replaced by something minty and cool.

  “A cleanser.” Kizu recognized the concoction immediately. He’d researched and attempted to find something like this in his first semester. Granted, at the time he’d been looking for a hangover cure, which was trickier since it involved removing symptoms after they’d settled into his system, whereas this was removing something more recent from his body. Still, as he took another sip, he tried to parse the ingredients based on the flavors. After getting a rough idea, he drained the rest of the drink and sat back.

  “Damn.” Harvey looked forlornly down at his cup. “Guess it makes sense the professors would kill all the fun in the end.”

  Basil was announcing Kizu and Harvey’s achievement of being the first to reach the objective on their tree. But that was only a quick note before he returned to his previous talking point. Ulric and Sene.

  “There’s only enough in the bowl for two cups on this tree! And one has already been guzzled down by the transfer student! Whoever fails will have to go climb and fight on the third tree if they want a chance at victory!”

  Kizu frowned. What transfer student? Faible was on his team and not competing in this challenge. He squinted to make out the figures on the other tree.

  Then he pulled out a potion from his ring and downed it. It should be safe now that he’d had the cleanser to remove whatever alcohol Basil had poisoned him with.

  A blink later and his vision zoomed in. Sene and Ulric were exchanging blows, fighting on top of their tree. And behind them, smugly reclining with a now empty cup, sat Akira.

  “Basil, I’m going to flay you for inviting him,” Kizu muttered darkly.

  “Who?” Harvey leaned forward, trying to see what Kizu was looking at.

  “A prince I met over spring break. Here.” Kizu passed him one of the potions.

  “Woah! This is amazing! I can count the pores on Ulric’s nose!”

  That was a bit hyperbolic. Maybe if the big student was standing still that might be possible. But at the moment he was lunging at Sene, trying to hurl her off the edge of their leafy canopy.

  The potion not only allowed him to zoom in his vision, but also refocus his hearing. A difficult combination of ingredients and fermentation was required for the combo, but it made him into an incredible scout. At the moment, it let him hear everything in the battle around the two combatants.

  Air currents threw Sene skyward. She hovered up there, out of range of the chaos tree’s aura, but that allowed Ulrich a chance to dash towards the cup.

  Sene rapidly chopped downward with her arm three times and blades of air sliced through the chaos tree’s leaf, cutting a triangle out from under Ulric’s feet.

  The big student’s feet moved so quickly that Kizu couldn’t track them, even with his empowered sight. But the burst of speed only lasted a second, then Ulric stood, glaring up at Sene from beside the hole.

  Her next move was familiar to Kizu, he’d seen her strike down opponents with lightning before. It took a few seconds for her to charge up the blast though, and Ulric was equally, if not even more, familiar with her spell. He launched himself at her.

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  The wind carried her up higher, out of reach, all while she finished charging up the spell. But the moment she cast it, Ulrich, at the arch of his leap, hurled something at her. The object met the lightning before it connected to her.

  Kizu nearly fell over as his tree shook with the impact of the explosion from the next tree over. When he recovered his footing and looked back, Ulric was dashing toward his pedestal’s final dose of the liquid. The leaf behind him was ablaze and consumed by a dark smoke.

  A whoosh announced the appearance of a cylinder tunnel of clarity through the smoke. It went from Sene, directly targeting Ulric.

  The big student looked over his shoulder, just in time to catch the lightning with his face.

  He tumbled backward, barely managing to punch down and puncture the leaf under him, precariously close to plummeting back to the roots below. His legs dangled over the edge.

  Sene zipped through her air tunnel and fell to the leaf below. Dashing forward the final dozen steps to the bowl.

  “Stop.”

  And Sene stopped, mid-step, eyes wide.

  Not a demand from Ulric, like would be expected in this situation. Instead, it was an amused request from the boy who’d already completed his task.

  Akira held the bowl, tipped slightly to the side in the threat of overturning it. He wore his patented amused smirk, with an eyebrow raised, as if curious what Sene would do next.

  “A stalling tactic for your teammate,” Sene said, after a few seconds of hesitation.

  Akira chuckled. “Hardly. I think my other teammate is still back in the sky getting batted around by the sprites.”

  “Then…why?”

  “Stop goes for you too, big guy,” Akira warned. He raised the bowl higher in threat.

  Ulric, back on his feet behind Sene, halted in place, eyes narrowing.

  “To answer your question,” Akira said, turning his attention back to Sene. “I was wondering if you’d tell me about your interactions with my uncle. Inari Kusatta.”

  “The warlord?” Sene frowned. “What does that have to do with this?”

  “Eh. Nothing. But I saw an opportunity to pin you down for a question and thought I might as well snatch it up.”

  “I spoke to Warlord Inari twice. Both very brief. The first time, I got the vague impression he found me a dull conversationalist when I questioned him about his political endeavors. The second time I attempted to ask him about the upcoming academy dance and he flipped the conversation over to talk about new people arriving on campus. I gave him a quick list of the transfer students and dropouts on the top of my head. He asked if I found any suspicious and I replied, ‘in what way?’ He did not give me further details. He simply smiled, much as you are doing currently, and went on his way.”

  Kizu swallowed. Akira snooping about the circumstances of his uncle’s death was bad news. But, far worse than that, the entire academy overhearing that there might be more to Inari’s assassination attempt of Aoi could spiral into a full-fledged disaster.

  But as he refocused his hearing on his current location, he realized that Basil was speaking. The shapeshifter had the sense not to let this conversation be broadcasted to the entire academy and was talking over the conversation with pointless rambling about the weather.

  Back on the other tree, Akira shrugged then dropped the bowl back on the pedestal. Both Ulric and Sene lunged forward. But Sene was close enough that Ulric, even with his enhanced speed, stood no chance at reaching the objective first. In a single fluid motion, Sene dipped her cup and tossed back a huge gulp of the cleansing potion. A second later Basil announced the results to the academy. Kizu felt a smile on his lips. Despite a number of hiccups along the way, the Student Council Team had emerged victorious.

  “Finally, it’s over.” Harvey let out a sigh. “Don’t know what that was all about. But it sure took forever.

  “Aren’t you upset?” Kizu asked. Your team lost.”

  “I mean, yeah. But I’m just glad it’s over. Now the scrying will finally end.”

  He walked across the leaf they lounged on and went to the other side of the pedestal.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Kizu, we just drank like two liters. I really, really need to piss.”

  Prismatic Spiral! So that means another bonus chapter over here on BCA. Hope you all enjoyed this arc! Next bonus chapter is at 300 followers.

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