Chapter IV.XXXIX (4.39) - Date’s End

  A warm weight lay on his chest. It took Kizu a few moments of sleepy confusion before he placed the weight as Ione’s head.

  After that insightful analysis, Kizu was about to allow himself to drift off again into blissful sleep. Then another thought occurred. Why was there so much purple light above him?

  That jerked Kizu awake.

  They’d fallen asleep. This was bad. He shook Ione awake.

  She mumbled something and swatted at him.

  “We’ve got to go!” he hissed.

  Unlike last night when he’d used the shadows to hide his illusions, it would be a great deal harder to hide with the lights turning on. There was a huge difference between staying within darkness versus guessing which swathes of darkness would remain.

  Kizu looked back at the previous rooms. He’d promised to return the key to Kevin.

  Ione was finally sitting up and rubbing her eyes. It would likely take a minute for her to be ready to move.

  “I’m going to run over and drop off the key with Kevin, I’ll be right back.” He threw on his jacket and dashed off. As he entered the room, Bob, the dire sea lion, dove into the water with a massive sploosh.

  Kizu crossed the room and phased his single finger with the keys dangling from the tip. His finger had just barely passed into the lobster tank, when Bob smacked his belly up against the glass wall, shaking the entire room.

  “Ah!” Kizu yelped as the glass suddenly returned, his phase spell interrupted. Blood splurted out from where the tip of his finger had once been. On the other side of the tank, plumes of red expanded out in the wake of a falling piece of his digit. He’d severed the first knuckle of his pointer finger.

  “Waoh! Gotta work on that concentration, buddy.” Kevin snatched up the bit of flesh in a claw. “Suppose you want this back?”

  “Yes! Please!” The missing piece of his hand throbbed with pain reminiscent of when he’d sliced off his leg. A deep mental pain mixed in with the physical.

  Kevin the lobster phased it through and dropped it into Kizu’s unwounded hand.

  Kizu’s entire right hand was now coated in blood, a streak of red on the tank’s exterior. He took a deep breath and cast an elemental spell.

  He quickly brushed an orb of water along the surface of the glass tank, absorbing up his blood and clouding his clear water spell scarlet. Then he cleaned off the tile floor.

  That out of the way, he pulled three of his biggest vials out of his storage ring and stashed the tainted water in it. He placed his severed digit in there too.

  He wrapped his wounded hand in his shirt and drank a weak healing potion. It should be the equivalent of an hour or two of natural healing. He wanted a scab, not smooth, new flesh. If too much healed, then the difficulty of reattaching it would be a nightmare.

  Kizu said a hurried goodbye to Kevin and quickly returned to Ione in the jellyfish tunnel. She was sitting up, marveling up at the creatures overhead.

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  “Ready?” he asked.

  “You’re covered in blood,” she commented.

  “I noticed. Messed up a new spatial spell I’ve been practicing.”

  “Do you still have enough blood in reserve to jump us out of here?”

  “That’s not an issue. But I’m worried there are wards in the building to prevent jumping in or out of it. Even with my necklace, it could lead to problems. I think we shouldn’t risk it and we should instead sneak out.”

  “I’ll trust in the expert infiltrator," she said. “If you can break in and out of the girl’s dorms without consequence, you can definitely handle this.”

  He spluttered. “That’s…damn. I shouldn’t have told you about that yesterday.”

  She grinned. “Come on. Let’s ditch this place and get some breakfast.”

  They’d explored the majority of the aquarium last night so Kizu felt he had a pretty decent understanding of the layout.

  They navigated over towards the normal exit. A part of Kizu wanted to just make a mad dash through one of the emergency exits, but he knew those would definitely be warded to make noise when used. No, the best way out was the normal way out.

  “You’ve really got to give those up,” a voice said. “They’re bad for your health. Kill you one of these days.”

  Kizu and Ione froze. They heard the front entrance door swing closed down the hall. The first of the employees had entered the building. That meant the front door was now open, which was good news. But it also meant stealth was imperative.

  Illusionary camouflage was made even more tricky by the constant movement of water and critters behind the glass walls.

  He barely managed to muffle another yelp as Ione took his damaged hand in her own. Kizu barely bit back a rebuke. That was incredibly painful. But she’d already pulled away, her hands now stained with his blood. She sketched on the tile floor, her hand a blur, then pressed down on the summoning circle.

  The invisible hanging monster they’d encountered in the World Dungeon appeared. It slowly began to scale up the wall.

  “Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it before,” a second employee said. “But I can’t go to work without them. Not this early at least. I barely fall out of bed in the morning.”

  Ione’s summon reached the ceiling, then its mouth descended down.

  “That’s because your body is dependent on them now! I get up every morning just fine. Those vigor potions are messing you up.”

  Kizu and Ione grabbed ahold of the creature’s jaw and let it drag them upwards.

  “If I stop, I’ll just be dead weight. And I’d need to take at least like a week off work to recover. Need the money.”

  Kizu cast an illusion over them, hoping that when the light popped over them that they were out of line of sight enough that it wouldn’t look too bizarre.

  “At the quantity you’re drinking, it has to be costing you at least a week's pay every month regardless. Take a week off. The animals can survive without you for a week. But those things are shaving years off your life.”

  The two employees passed under them. One of them was sipping from a glowing blue vial while the other continued lecturing.

  “Knew we’d be fine,” Ione whispered.

  As soon as she said it, the employee with the potion stopped and stared at the glass tank in front of them.

  “I’ve heard the brewing company refuses to even announce what ingredients they use. You have no idea what sort of harmful—”

  “Do you see that? There’s something in the reflection of Finley’s tank.”

  The two employees turned around. Clearly, they saw nothing there. Just an empty entryway. Then their gazes slowly ascended up, directly to where Kizu and Ione hid on the ceiling.

  “Time to go!” Kizu knocked himself and Ione out of her summon’s mouth and landed on the floor, his monster leg taking the brunt of the fall while he held Ione in a princess carry. He cast an obscuring fog illusion behind himself while he rocketed out of the room with enhanced speed.

  The moment he burst from the aquarium’s door, he jumped.

  And they were back at the academy. Home with time to spare until their first class of the day.

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