Chapter 134. Testing the Magic

Both James and Nicole were dressed in the usual Academy uniform, which was a surprise, since I didn’t think either of them needed to wear it anymore with the kind of equipment that they had. They were also exempted from coming here for the same reasons as mine, but I wasn’t going to question it or tell them to stop it since they must’ve had their reasons.

James carried a rather deep frown on his face, quite unlike the confident expression he used to have up until the last mission. I didn’t need to guess or ask why that was since he was probably still worried about his performance against Eletha and the fact that he got pushed back, nearly killed, and saved in the end by Nicole, who he used to consider as below him.

As for Nicole, she quickly noticed where I was, and gave me a small wave with a wide smile that then turned to a bit of surprise when she noticed the few people inside the building. I wiped away my own soft smile and nodded to her so they would come over to me.

“Ah, I remember you,” Feng Liu said when he turned to look at them. “You were the one that carried Althea on your shoulders out of that building.”

“Eh… hehe, yeah, that’s me…” she said with a wry smile. “I’m Nicole Lain.”

“Feng Liu,” he replied, giving just a small bow of his head without looking away from Nicole. “I’m guessing that you and your friend know why we’re here?”

“Yes. Althea has mostly told me everything that’s happened,” Nicole replied, turning her eyes to both Super-Demon and Reeta. “Hello coach Reeta! It’s been a while!”

“It’s good to see you too,” Reeta replied with a short nod of her head, not quite as enthusiastic as Nicole, who in turn, wryly smiled.

Kang Hana and Qin Yue then introduced themselves in a similar fashion as Feng Liu did. James, on the other hand, appeared to not be too interested in whatever was going on here, so after a questioning look of my own and a slight shove from Nicole, he finally sighed and introduced himself.

“Well, then, now that everyone you wanted to have here is here, what do you plan to do?” Feng Liu asked, turning his attention to me, and causing everyone else to do so.

With a look of my own, I brought everyone’s attention to Super-Demon instead. “I wanted to know how Soul Magic works to use it on Eletha, but as you might’ve guessed, it’s not been easy to get anything out of Super-Demon…”

“Hey!” he exclaimed, snapping his head my way. “It’s not that I don’t want to help, it’s just that you’re asking me for something that makes no sense!”

“All magic can be taught, we just need to figure out the way to do it,” I said, walking over to where he was. “What do you do when you use your magic?”

“Err…” he replied, scratching the back of his head. “I don’t know. I just feel it, and it comes to me, y’know what I’m sayin’?”

“A feeling?” I asked, pinching my chin as I thought about it.

Could it be that Super-Demon’s knowledge and experience with basic magic is much lower than I thought it was? If that was the case, then he would need to practice much more on the basics before being able to teach others how to use Soul Magic, or even explain it.

“Why haven’t you recorded it on the system, made a spell out of it, and have it learned from the system?” Qin Yue recommended, tilting her head to the side as if it was the most obvious of things.

Kang Hana, however, shook her head. “It’s not quite that simple. We would need someone with knowledge of the system to be able to properly introduce that magic into it, and not only would that take weeks, but there might not even be a good result from it since there’s only one person that we know of that can properly use Soul Magic and—speaking of which—We still haven’t seen it in action.”

“Do you want to try it for yourself?” Reeta asked, hopping off the arena to stand some distance away, before smirking. “Go ahead, have a taste.”

Kang Hana returned a smirk of her own. “I think that would be interesting.” Without waiting for anyone else to say anything about it, she jumped into the arena, standing at the same place where Reeta had been before with her smirk directed at Super-Demon. “Come on! Show me what that magic of yours can do!”

Despite the challenge, Super-Demon didn’t immediately react to it, as he simply stood in place, fidgeting slightly. I called his attention to me by tapping him on the shoulder. “Is something wrong?”

“W-well…” He trailed off, looking at Kang Hana for a moment and then down to Reeta. “I’m not sure if it’s a good idea to be hitting people with that kind of magic. I don’t really want to hurt anyone with it.”

A loud laugh came out of Kang Hana as soon as he said that, but she calmed down after a couple of seconds to shake her head. “Who do you think I am? It would take something really big to hurt me, and even bigger than that to kill me. I’ve recently stepped into the S ranks, and that places me well above all of the mage’s population. Don’t hold back on me!”

I looked at Kang Hana’s confident expression for a moment and then to Super-Demon. “Reeta seems to be fine. I don’t think that you’ll hurt her if you do the same to her—Besides, she’s the one asking for it, so if anything happens, all of us will vouch for you.”

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“Hnngg…” Super-Demon reluctantly replied, making his way over to the other side of the arena. “Okay then! If anything happens, then it’s your fault!”

“Come on!” Kang Hana taunted, beckoning Super-Demon to attack her with one hand.

Like last time, Super-Demon summoned a light-purple aura around him, with his eyes glowing the same color. He then repeated the same action as before, by placing his hands to the side, charging the magic between them, and then firing the bright purple beam at Kang Hana.

The whole time, Kang Hana appeared to be unconcerned, or rather, her expression seemed to be one of expectation, like a kid who couldn’t wait to open a present.

As soon as the beam was about to hit her, a rock wall suddenly appeared from the ground, blocking the attack from Super-Demon. Usually a rock wall like that wouldn’t be enough to stop an attack that by itself could gouge out the ground, but Kang Hana’s wall was standing as if it wasn’t being hit at all.

By focusing my senses on it, I noticed that it wasn’t that the wall was sturdy, but rather that she was rebuilding any pieces that were destroyed faster than they were being lost. Super-Demon’s beam hit the wall for a couple more seconds, before dissipating like last time, and leaving a heated air in the place that it traveled.

Kang Hana’s wall stood without a scratch on it, and from the side of it, she popped her head to look at Super-Demon. “That’s it? I thought that Soul Magic was supposed to destroy the soul! To bypass anything that stood in its way to tear everything apart.”

“Hey! That’s not fair! I thought that you wanted to try it!” Super-Demon exclaimed, pointing a finger at Kang Hana.

She, however, simply placed a hand on her mouth and chuckled while giving Super-Demon a smug look. “Do you really think that I was going to allow myself to be hit like that? You have to earn it if you want to touch me.”

Super-Demon quietly looked back at her for a moment. “Is that so?”

Kang Hana nodded. “That’s right.”

It didn’t matter to me what they were doing, so I asked Kang Hana, “Did you learn anything from it?”

She placed a hand on her chin and thought about it for a moment. “Not really. I mean, yeah, it’s a bit strong and all, but it’s nothing that that girl we fought at Wang Kai Tower couldn’t do—in fact, I think that if you were to pit them against each other, that girl would tear this skeleton to pieces in a second.”

“Wh-what?! How do you know I’m a skeleton?!” Super-Demon asked, taken aback as he took half a step back.

“Are you serious?” Kang Hana asked with a narrowed-eyed look.

Super-Demon was still wearing the same clothes that he was wearing when I first met him, with the mask on top of it all as well, but somehow, he was still convinced that it was enough to hide his features…

“And you’re planning to take such a man to your next mission, Althea?” Feng Liu asked, his eyes set on the skeleton. “His powers are indeed special, but I can’t be sure about his character…”

“I don’t want to give up on any possibility to deal with Eletha without killing her,” I replied with a nod. “We’re just getting started here, so with enough time, I’m sure we’ll figure something out.”

“I wouldn’t be so certain about that,” Qin Yue followed up. “The mission is likely going to start soon, and from what I could tell in the time I’ve been here, I believe there’s a few people from the other side who are aware of the movements taking place. Either we go there fast, or they come looking for us. I don’t think you have as much time as you think you have to be experimenting.”

She was right in that it had already been a few days since the time I met with the president and his people, and I had been certain from all the times that I’d dealt with nobles that I still had more time to plan, nearly forgetting that this was another world, and that things are done differently here.

As I turned to look at both Super-Demon and Kang Hana, I realized that perhaps the best way to understand what I should do with that Soul Magic was to have a taste of it myself, and it appeared like Kang Hana didn’t want to try it herself, so with a hop I made my way over to where she was.

“I’m going to try it myself now,” I said, standing just a few steps away from Kang Hana.

She looked at me with one eyebrow raised. “I’m not done here, though.”

“Yes, but as Qin Yue said, we don’t have enough time to be testing everything. I need to have a better understanding of what that magic is like,” I replied, sustaining my look at her.

She looked back at me with her lips slightly pursed, but eventually shrugged and walked away from where she was, letting the rock wall that she created disappear into nothing as she brushed past me.

Once I was alone with Super-Demon, I looked at him. “Do the same again with me," I said. However, time passed and he didn’t react, with his white-glowing eyes set on me without saying anything. “Super-Demon?”

He heavily sighed and dropped his head down. “I don’t know, man. I feel like I’m not being taken seriously here.”

“I am taking you seriously, despite your best efforts not to be,” I said with a frown. “I’m not one to joke. If I didn’t want you here, I would’ve left you where I found you and forgotten about you.”

“What?! You’d forget about a superhero?! Nobody would ever—”

“Enough about that,” I interrupted, since I didn’t want to hear him talk about superheroes again. “Just help me with this. Remember: you might be saving someone else’s life with your help here, so don’t throw it away.”

His eyes glowed slightly brighter when I said that, before taking a fighting stance once more. “You’re right! I nearly forgot that there was a villain that needed helping! Okay! I’ll try to help!”

I readied myself as well, and watched as he, once more, charged his power and launched it at me. I saw how it was slowly getting closer, with some anticipation to what it might feel like, but I still covered myself with a thin shroud of darkness to make sure that it wouldn’t actually hurt me, since just looking at the hot air and the burning ground under it, I could tell that it could cause some damage.

With my arms raised similarly to Reeta, I received his power. Immediately, I felt a burning sensation all over my body, but it wasn’t anything that I couldn’t withstand, and nowhere nearly close to how it felt when I fought Salrak, or when I was betrayed by the Holy Gods, so this wasn’t a problem for me.

But right after, I felt as if something inside of me was being shaken. As if being hit to the side of the head unexpectedly and like something was being pushed out of my body. Because of that, my instincts reacted, and my Godly Powers were activated beyond what I wanted. A tornado of both Darkness and Hellfire swirled all around me, pushing away the Soul Magic beam away from my body, destroying the arena’s barrier, and creating a hole in the ground where I was standing.

I quickly realized the damage that I caused and stopped using my powers. The arena was half destroyed, and alarms were going off inside the building. Super-Demon was panicking at the place, his hands clutching his head as he looked everywhere, seemingly wanting to run away.

The people that were watching so far—save for Nicole and James, who already knew how my powers worked—were watching with widened eyes at what happened, and soon after, a handful of people rushed into the building. They were part of the emergency staff that the Academy had for these sorts of things, so with a sigh, I jumped off the arena, preparing myself to explain what happened, and… not really gaining any insight into Soul Magic.