Vane had discovered a new, far more lethal way to use his dagger. With a flick of his wrist, he hurled the rusty metal straight into the shadow of one of the faceless statues in the corner of the courtyard.
Clang!
The metal struck stone, but the dagger didn't fall. Vane merely gave a mental command. The dagger melted into the shadows and instantly reformed right back in the palm of his hand.
"I hate stalkers," Vane called out, his voice echoing with biting sarcasm in the dark courtyard.
A silhouette slipped out from behind the statues. It was a girl with blue hair falling to her shoulders. Her academy uniform had been boldly modified, leaving her cleavage exposed. Her skirt was so short that, for a second, Vane thought she might as well not be wearing it at all.
"Hey, I'm no stalker," the unnamed girl replied casually. Her footsteps were completely silent as she glided toward him. "I was merely analyzing you... Your Highness." She offered a mocking curtsy, making it perfectly clear she didn't take his illegitimate status seriously.
Vane's purple eyes locked onto hers. "Cut the crap. What do you want from me?"
"I don't sense any direct bloodlust from her right now, Vane," Lysandra said in his mind, her voice ice-cold.
And in that exact moment, the girl practically teleported right in front of him.
Too fast... I didn't even see her react, Vane thought. Without blinking, he kept staring at the blue-haired girl standing inches away from him. He didn't shift his stance a single millimeter.
"Impressive, Vane. Truly impressive." She slowly circled him, her eyes trailing over his taut, newly defined muscles. "This version of you is way more interesting than the coward from the rumors. I'm Kristina Poporin, from the Fourth Pillar. I was watching you on behalf of my master, Mirabelle Robshaw."
Mirabelle Robshaw... The Fourth Pillar's heir in the academy. The Pillar of Plants and Insects, Vane recalled, narrowing his eyes.
"What business could your master possibly have with me? I'm just a guy trying to graduate in peace," Vane replied, doing his best to sound pathetic and calm.
She stopped directly behind him. Trailing her delicate fingers lightly down his spine, she whispered, "This body doesn't exactly look like it was built to graduate in peace, though? My master overheard you in the dining hall. You know... bugs are very good at hiding."
She shot him a condescending look. "Apparently, you want to team up with Julian in the upcoming event. At first, my master thought you were out of your mind. But then, she assigned me to keep an eye on you... just in case of that one-in-a-million 'what if?' chance."
Vane noticed her hand suddenly reaching over his shoulder toward his throat. He recalled his own dagger in a split second and caught her wrist mid-air. Twisting her arm upward ruthlessly, he brought his lips close to her ear.
"What exactly... does your master want from me, Kristina?" he whispered. The pathetic tone was gone, replaced by pure, unadulterated darkness.
Her cheeks flushed. She quickly composed herself and yanked her arm free. "You probably don't know this yet, but Prince Julian is hosting a small tournament among the vassals. The winner gets to be his 'Shield' for the event. The turnout is insane. Everyone is convinced that whoever becomes his shield will win the event alongside the Prince."
Lysandra hummed with satisfaction in his mind. "Julian's moves are aligning perfectly with what you envisioned, my pawn. Let us hope the rest goes just as smoothly."
"Initially, my master wanted me to enter that tournament and become his shield," Kristina said. "Vane... The Pillar Heirs want to get rid of Julian completely."
Vane masterfully suppressed the savage grin trying to break onto his face and slipped on a flawless mask of shock. "What do you mean? How could they dare! Don't they know my father and the Queen would never let the Pillars breathe if they committed such treason?"
Oh, you foolish Pillars... Please... Please tell me you've found a way to get away with this, Vane silently prayed.
She sighed deeply, and from her mouth spilled the exact, perfect sentence Vane's twisted mind wanted to hear: "The Pillars will unanimously claim it was a stray casualty during the all-out brawl of the event. Every single Pillar is in on it. Even Lady Kaelia of the Second Pillar and Lord Theron of the Fifth."
Vane widened his purple eyes. He was so committed to the act that his voice even trembled. "B-But they were childhood friends!" He swallowed hard, pretending to force himself to pull it together. "So... if everyone wants Julian, what do you want from me?"
"It's simple, Vane. Win Julian's tournament, become his shield, and when the time comes, lure him to the ambush point we've set up in the arena. The Pillars will handle the rest." Kristina was incredibly relaxed as she said this. She even walked over, picked up Vane's water bottle from the bench, and brought it to her lips.
Vane suddenly reached out and snatched the bottle right out of her hand. "To confirm this entire suicide mission... I'll need to speak with Mirabelle face-to-face, at the very least."
Kristina's eyes suddenly flashed dangerously. "Master Mirabelle," she hissed.
Vane rolled his eyes. "I don't address an heir who's on my level—someone who isn't even valued as much as a 'bastard'—like that."
Vane grabbed his bottle and gear. He turned his back and took exactly one step before a thick, thorny vine coiled around his arm, rooting him to the spot.
He summoned his rusty dagger from the darkness, severed the vine in a single, clean strike, and instantly dropped into a fighting stance.
"I'm not done talking to you," Kristina said. Her voice wasn't playing around anymore. "Take that back, Vane."
An energy shield in the shape of a lotus flower suddenly materialized on her arm, glowing with streams of green aether.
An ancient laugh echoed in his mind. "Hey... The opportunity walked right up to you. You have a pure source of aether standing right in front of you. Take advantage of it. There is no one around. Go all out."
Vane gave Kristina that chilling, predatory smile of his. And he made the first move, hurling his dagger straight at her chest.
"The same cheap trick again?" Kristina raised her shield. But the split second the dagger was about to strike the barrier, it vanished into thin air.
Her attention broke for just a fraction of a second, but by the time she refocused, the man in front of her was already gone. She snapped her head up.
Vane was descending on her from the sky like a hawk; his heel was locked dead onto her head.
She threw her shield up and blocked the massive kick at the last second, but the sheer force of the impact dragged her backward for several meters. Her arms went numb. How the hell is this bastard so strong? she thought in horror.
The moment Vane landed, he re-centered himself and lunged for his second strike, only to halt mid-way when he saw the blinding flash erupting from her shield.
"Aether Arts," Vane muttered.
Massive, snake-like vines erupted from her lotus shield, whipping toward Vane one after another, trying to snare him.
With agile, mind-bending speed, Vane deflected and slashed the vines with his dagger, backflipping toward the academy's high stone wall.
"Beneath you!" Lysandra shouted in his head.
Suddenly, thick vines tore through the earth Vane was standing on, shooting up like massive spears. Vane vaulted toward the wall at the very last second. As he ran parallel along the wall's surface for a brief moment, his eyes flicked down to the girl.
Kristina hadn't moved a single inch from the spot where she was controlling the vines.
When Vane dropped down from the wall to a safe distance, all the rabid vines attacking him stopped dead in the air. They twitched, but they couldn't reach him. There were exactly seven meters between Vane and the girl.
Vane broke the silence with a burst of laughter. "Your vines have a range limit! On top of that, you can't even take a step while using this damn thing! And they call me the flawed one in this academy!"
Kristina's entire face flushed red with shame and fury. She extinguished the aether in her shield and broke into a dead sprint straight at Vane.
So it's close combat now, huh, Vane thought, flipping his dagger into a reverse grip.
Using that lotus shield as a blunt weapon, the girl began unleashing a flurry of lethal blows at him. "You might have figured out my flaw, bastard! But I don't need those vines for close combat!"
"I don't really think so," Vane whispered, slipping past every one of her heavy strikes like a phantom.
Vane suddenly ducked under a wild shield bash. Dropping his body almost parallel to the ground, his rusty dagger carved a dark arc through the air.
His target wasn't a lethal point; it was the Achilles tendons on her ankles!
Two sharp slashes. Two shallow cuts.
Kristina's legs instantly gave out, and she collapsed to the ground. She let out a pained groan. But within seconds, that groan twisted into a feral scream. Driven by the fear of death, a massive, out-of-control surge of green aether erupted from her lotus shield.
Now... It's time, Vane thought.
He narrowed his eyes and, without a second of hesitation, dove straight into the heart of her savage attack range—right into the storm. He raised his dagger.
Absorb... Come on.
A dark, purple beam of light erupted from the cracked surface of the rusty dagger. The wildly thrashing vines and all that green aether were converted into pure energy, getting sucked directly into the rusty metal like they were being pulled into a black hole.
"Enough!" Lysandra warned a few seconds later.
Vane cut off the energy flow instantly. All the surrounding plant life crumbled to the ground like dead ash. He slipped like a shadow behind his trembling opponent, who was paralyzed by terror and severe aether depletion. He brought the pommel of his dagger down on the back of her neck in one final, ruthless strike.
Kristina's eyes rolled back, and she crumpled to the ground like a lifeless puppet.
Vane stared at the vibrating dagger in his hand. This was the first time he had experienced Aether Arts in such a savage way. "I'm not too thrilled with the result," he muttered. "I don't know how this girl uses her aether arts, but it wasn't anywhere near as dense as a Pillar Heir's."
The mind-bending aether clashes between Julian and Theron flashed through his mind.
"You got what you wanted, Vane. It's too early to get greedy," Lysandra chuckled. "Still... It was a good performance. You actually impressed even me with that Black Hole ability of yours, my pawn."
This time, Vane didn't even bother trying to hide the sociopathic smile spreading across his face.
"You awake?"
When Kristina barely fluttered her eyes open, she heard that familiar, calm voice. Her consciousness was still blurry. "Master... Mirabelle?" she whispered.
"Mirabelle?" replied Vane, sitting in a chair by the side of the bed. He slowly closed the book he was reading, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
The blue-haired girl turned her head. "Y-You..." she stammered, staring at Vane's calm face.
She frantically scanned her surroundings. She was in the academy's infirmary. Then, her gaze slowly dropped to the white sheet covering her, the bandaged wounds underneath, and... her own bare skin.
Wait a second. Was she naked?
SLAP!
The sound of the slap echoed through the entire infirmary. Kristina had planted a solid slap right across the middle of Vane's smug face.
Vane slowly turned his head back, rubbing his cheek with a grin. "Hey... wasn't that a little uncalled for?"
Her cheeks flushed red, and she was just about to hurl a massive curse at him when the infirmary door suddenly slammed open.
Someone burst inside with a frantic, angry voice.
"Kristina!"