## CHAPTER 69: The Price of the Shield
Master Grey saw the sapphire blade embedding itself into the stone, and the panicked, frantic expression on her face instantly vanished. It was replaced by a wide, devilish grin, her eyes widening in twisted revelation. She had found it. She had found the crack in the armor of the boy. He had a weakness, and it wasn't a flaw in his technique—it was the people behind him.
Without a second thought, her purple beams intensified, the unstable mana crackling with a predatory hiss as they rained down once more. Caspian dropped into a low, coiled stance, preparing to dash forward and close the distance. Even without his weapon, his physical strikes were lethal enough to end the fight. But the moment his boots broke the stone to sprint, the trajectory of the beams shifted. They bypassed him entirely, curving through the air to target the paralyzed, helpless forms of Lyra, Elisa, and Casel.
Caspian's eyes went wide. For the first time since his duel with Grey began, a look of pure, unadulterated fear and terror washed over his features.
He didn't hesitate. He executed a violent, sharp U-turn, his boots grinding into the rock with enough force to shatter the ground beneath. He ran with everything his body possessed, pushing his physical limits until the friction left a chilling vacuum in his wake. Miraculously, through sheer, desperate speed, he outran the magical projectiles. He threw himself in front of his friends, using his own body as a human shield just as the chaotic barrage descended.
*BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!*
The courtyard lit up in a blinding flash of purple light. Pieces of burnt, ripped fabric fluttered through the air like black ash as his prestigious academy uniform was torn to shreds, scorched and dissolved by the high-density mana.
Lyra struggled against the invisible weight of the gravity barrier, forcing her head up just enough to see through the smoke. Her breath hitched. Standing right in front of them, tall and unyielding, was Caspian. He was taking the full brunt of the barrage, absorbing the agony meant for them.
"Caspian!!" she called out, her voice trembling violently with a mixture of grief and horror.
---
"Caspian!!!" Zerav roared, his beast-like patience finally snapping.
He lunged forward, his hand shot out, and he aggressively grabbed the collar of Silas's heavy cloak, jerking the leader forward. "We have to help him! Right now!" he yelled directly into Silas's face. Behind him, Louisa and Edna nodded in fierce, frantic unison, their mana flaring in agreement.
"I say no," Silas said. His voice was blunt, cold, and entirely indifferent to the violence.
"What?!" Zerav snarled, his fangs baring.
"Silas, he needs our help!" Louisa pleaded, her voice thick with worry as she watched the smoke clear below. "He can't take much more of that!"
"Don't you have human feelings? Don't you care about one of your own?!" Edna blurted out, her small fists clenching.
Silas went entirely quiet. The silence stretched for a few suffocating seconds, causing a heavy, suffocating uneasiness to rise among the remaining Grands. Finally, he looked down at Zerav's gripping hand, then slowly raised his eyes.
"You three are always so painfully predictable," Silas murmured, his voice cutting through their panic like iron. "Bending and bowing to your volatile emotions and impulses. That is precisely why I was chosen to lead in the first place. I have long since been stripped of such trivial feelings. And because of that, I see the board clearly."
"What are you mumbling about?" Zerav demanded, his grip tightening.
"Someone like Grey is hardly a mortal threat to Caspian," Silas explained, his crimson eyes gleaming beneath his hood. "He had multiple opportunities to end this fight early, but he wasted them by losing his composure to anger. That was his choice, and he is paying the price for it. To intervene now is to show our hidden cards to an enemy who is actively watching us. It would leave us vulnerable."
Louisa and Edna exchanged a bitter look, slowly lowering their heads. Deep down, in the thier heart , they knew Silas was right. But the emotional toll of watching a comrade bleed was agonizing.
Zerav's fingers trembled before he slowly let go of Silas's collar. Silas stepped back, adjusting his cloak, his blood-red eyes locking onto the beast-kin with absolute authority.
"The very next time you put your hands on me like that, Zerav," Silas whispered, a clear, lethal declaration of boundaries, "you won't have a hand left to use."
Without another word, the leader turned his attention back to the edge of the railing, his gaze freezing on the courtyard below.
---
The devastating barrage, which felt like it had lasted for an eternity, finally ceased. Master Grey stood in the settling dust, her chest heaving, her eyes wide with utter disbelief.
Caspian was still standing.
The prestigious Althelgard uniform was completely gone from his upper body, leaving his bare, muscular chest and arms exposed to the biting cold. The skin was marred by jagged, smoking burns and superficial lacerations, his breathing heavy and hectic. The pain coursing through his nervous system was intense, a white-hot agony that would have incapacitated a lesser sorcerer—but compared to the torturous trials of his hidden past, this was merely a collection of flesh wounds.
"Caspian Vane," Master Grey spoke, her voice shaking slightly before she managed to stabilize it. "You truly are a freak. To remain conscious after taking a direct, concentrated barrage like that... it's absurd. And yet, a specimen of your extraordinary caliber wastes his life protecting worthless nobles. It's pathetic, don't you agree?"
"No," Caspian grunted. He reached up, clutching his bleeding left shoulder as a sharp, stinging pain flared through his body.
"You stand to protect the very system that oppresses you," she continued, gesturing broadly with her bleeding hand. "The same nobles who want to see your kind gone, the same ones who look down on you day after day after day. Yet you willingly act as their shield. Why?"
"Because it's the right thing to do," Caspian said, his voice strained, filtering through gritted teeth. He looked at the trembling forms of his friends behind him. "What you are doing... ... it's wrong. Don't you see that?"
Professor Grey's face darkened instantly, his moral stance visibly offending her internal philosophy. "Right and wrong?!" she shrieked.
With a savage wave of her arm, a single, condensed beam of purple mana materialized instantly. Caspian, slowed by the lingering shock of the burns and the intense pain in his shoulder, couldn't react in time. The beam struck him square in the center of his forehead.
*BANG.*
His head snapped back, and he staggered backward, his footing slipping on the loose rubble as his vision blurred. He was on the verge of collapsing.
However, for the sake of his friends, for the sake of the fragile warmth he had fought so hard to protect in this new life, he refused to fall. He forced his trailing boot to lock into the stone, halting his momentum after only two staggering steps.
Blood began to well from the ruptured skin of his forehead. It flowed down the bridge of his nose, hot and crimson, passing over his left eye and staining his cheek.
"What makes you think you know anything about right or wrong?" Master Grey hissed, her manic rage entirely visible. But after a few ragged breaths, she forced herself to calm down, a soft, unsettling smile settling back onto her lips.
"I think this little charade of ours has gone on long enough," she said, looking past him to the balcony. "You cannot win this fight in your present state. And since there are five of you commoners... I can only imagine how troublesome the other four might be if they decide to ambush me together. You will make an exceptional hostage, don't you agree?"
Caspian remained silent, the blood dripping from his chin onto the stone.
"Will you be a willing hostage, or do I need to break your legs first?" Master Grey asked, her tone conversational.
Caspian didn't utter a word.
"Well then, I'll take that as a no," she said, her voice dropping into a lethal register.
She raised both hands high into the air. The atmosphere within the barrier began to warp violently as a massive, towering fireball began to manifest above her. It stretched wide, absorbing the ambient heat of the courtyard until it turned a deep, apocalyptic white-gold.
"**Catastrophic Fireball 2: Improved.**"
"**Fire God's Wrath!**"
Lyra, seeing the colossal, roiling mass of flames forming in the sky, knew the terrifying truth. This wasn't an attack Caspian could tank with his bare body. If that spell connected, there wouldn't be enough of him left to bury.
"Caaassssppiiiaaannn!" she screamed, her voice cracking with pure despair.
Caspian stood perfectly still. The frantic, painful chaotic state of his body seemed to fade away, his face returning to a dull, unreadable mask that was as cold as ice. He wasn't conflicted. He wasn't afraid. He knew the precise moment had come, and he was entirely certain of his decision.
Time itself seemed to slow to a crawl. The roaring of the flames above became a distant hum. Slowly, deliberately, Caspian turned his head over his bare shoulder to look back at them one last time. Lyra. Casel. Elisa.
He knew that after what he was about to do, after what they were about to witness, they might never look at him the same way again. The warmth he had cherished would likely turn to fear.
But this was to protect them. And he was more than willing to pay that price.
He turned his head back to face the approaching apocalypse, the towering white-gold flames reflecting in his bloody, sapphire eyes. He took a very deep, steadying breath.
"I'm ready," he whispered to the ghost of his past.
"Crest Lock: Release."