Ends of Magic - Book 3: Chapter 61: Contracted Duels

Nathan sprang into motion before either the enforcement mage or golem had done more than look towards him. His only chance to maintain his cover was to kill the mage and destroy the golem before either had a chance to summon help or send any messages. If they did get a message off, he’d be reduced to plan murderhobo. His aura lanced out ahead of him, stretching towards his target with a speed only achievable by the immaterial.

The golem immediately parsed his aggressive approach and leapt forward to intercept. Nathan’s aura sliced the connection in the same instant, preventing the golem from reporting what was happening to the rest of the Academy.

“Wha…” said the mage, blinking stupidly as he chewed on a piece of meat.

Nathan tried to dodge around a table to get to the man, but had to jump backwards when the golem kicked out. The attack destroyed the table in a volley of splinters that shot across the large hall like crossbow bolts. A few of them struck Nathan, leaving tears in his clothing but failing to do more than scratch his skin lightly.

The enforcement mage jumped to his feet at the sudden violence, panic sweeping over his features as he finally figured out that he was being attacked. The man’s training kicked in, and his raised arms resolved into a spellcasting gesture. He backpedaled to gain space and cast his first spell.

[Message]

Nathan slashed a tendril of antimagic through the spell, disrupting the communication and also breaking the man’s [Mage Armor]. Then Nathan flinched back from a pair of light spells that erupted out of the golem’s eyes, even though they didn’t penetrate his aura more than a couple of inches. He swept his aura over the golem, causing the eye-lasers to cut out, though the antimagic didn’t seem to hinder the golem’s movement in the slightest.

It’s an Academy golem. It’s powered by wizardry, and will take some time to destroy. The mage is the softer target, and he’ll probably try to get away to report me.

True to the prediction, the mage turned tail and booked it, aiming for the exit on the far side of the large room.

Nathan made a move to follow, but the golem lashed out again with a battering-ram of a punch. Nathan used both hands to push off solid air, swaying out of the way and letting the blow leave a crater in the ground behind him. He used the space to accelerate towards the mage.

The giant statue moved faster than any golem Nathan had seen before, blocking his path. It spat a useless fireball and held its arms out to the sides, ready to intercept Nathan if he tried to move past it.

With [Airwalking] I’m never committed to any movement. No matter how it moves, I can adjust to get around it. The key is being faster to adapt than my enemy. I can find a way through any obstacle that’s not a solid wall so long as I stay loose.

Nathan feinted left and right by kicking out with his feet, then corrected mid-flight to bounce off the floor between the golem’s legs.

Congratulations, you have developed the [High-Tier Tumbling] utility skill into [Parkour].

Utility skill: [Parkour]

This skill will help you rapidly change direction to navigate a complex environment.

Then he was speeding after the mage, who had almost managed to get out of the range of the antimagic. Nathan’s skills let him cross the width of the dining hall in seconds.

The enforcement mage tried to cast [Message] again, casting a fearful look over his shoulder just in time to catch a foot to the head. The blow was so hard that the man’s skull caved in and his neck broke. The body slammed to the floor and bounced a few times, leaving a trail of bloody gore before ramming into a table and coming to a halt.

Magekiller has leveled to 167! You have killed Gordol dho Satsik, an enforcement mage of Giantsrest as he patrolled the Ascendant Academy!

Nathan turned back to the golem and immediately jumped upwards, avoiding another floor-cracking blow as the Golem lunged across the room after him, leaving a trail of shattered and broken furniture behind.

Damn, that thing can move. It’s wizardry-powered, can cast several spells and seems smarter than the other golems I’ve run into. No way this was made by Giantsrest, it has to be part of the Academy. Left over from when it was a dungeon?

Now Nathan stood twenty feet in the air, considering the golem. He kept its link to the rest of the Academy severed, and watched to see what it’s next move would be.

It tried to hit him with the light spell from its eyes again.

Ok, it’s not that smart. Maybe it doesn’t really have any other options.

Then it crouched to leap, and he jumped up and sideways to get away from it. He was fifty feet in the air now, and it was a stretch to reach his antimagic down towards the animated statue. He probed at the wizardry, trying to figure out the best way to destroy it.

The golem responded by grabbing a table and throwing it at him. The launched the heavy furniture like a fifteen-foot wide spiked frisbee.

Nathan skittered out of the path of the projectile, gritting his teeth as he examined the spellwork that animated the golem. He was pretty sure he could mess up the wizardry in the limbs, but that wouldn’t kill it. He needed to wipe its memory in case it could report what it had seen. A couple of chairs zipped by at incredible speeds, and wooden debris rained down from the ceiling.

You know, this isn’t that different from what I put my antimage students through. Asking questions while throwing things at them to teach them to dodge.

Effortless Dodge 3 achieved!

He was pretty sure the right way to kill it was to break its artificial mana pool, but that would take time. It would also point towards an antimage as the vector of attack. But he didn’t have a better option, and he was wary of other golems or mages being drawn by the sound of smashing furniture.

The golems are complicated enough, and what I’m doing is weird enough, that I bet it’ll be really confusing for whoever investigates.

He got started, drilling into the mana pool and beginning to stuff his antimagic inside. Partway through the process a chair clipped him at fastball speeds, breaking his hip. But the golem’s mana pool held enough mana to completely refill his Stamina a few times over, making it trivial to heal the injury. Nathan redoubled his attention on dodging, using his new skill to erratically change directions and throw off the golem’s aim.

Parkour 2 achieved!

The statue slowed down as mana was replaced by antimagic, seeming to flag as it was drained of energy.

Nathan got closer to speed up the process. He finally drained the last of the mana, and the golem keeled over with a crash. It wasn’t dead, just dormant.

Damn, that thing was scary. I’m not sure I could take more than one of them in an enclosed environment.

Nathan carefully lowered himself to the ground, cautious that the golem was only playing dead. But when he approached it only twitched slightly, and a glyph illuminated on the sculpted leg. It looked like a place to input mana to charge the golem up again. That implied it would simply reactivate with all of its memory. He couldn’t allow that, but didn’t know how to stop it other than breaking the golem’s magical tether with his antimagic.

I don’t know what other options I have. From what Yelun said, Giantsrest doesn’t understand these golems very well, so hopefully they won’t understand what happened, or that it was an antimage that did this. I don’t have the time to figure out another solution.

He laid a hand on the golem’s chest and flexed his antimagic, shattering the mana reservoir and cutting it off from mana as he had previous mages of Giantsrest. The statue gave one last twitch and the glyph dimmed. There was still wizardry inside the golem, but it was fragmented and broken. Unrecoverable.

Magekiller has leveled to 170! You have destroyed an irreplaceable giant-golem of the Ascendant Academy!

Void of Magic has leveled to 325! You have killed an enforcement mage of Giantsrest and the last remnant of an ancient Giant!

Nathan stepped away from the prone statue but paused on seeing the level-up notifications.

The last remnant of an ancient giant? And irreplaceable. Hmm.

He looked back at the golem, grimacing. There were mysteries here for sure, but they didn’t change his near-term plans. He still needed to stay hidden while learning how to navigate the academy. He looked around the dining room, seeing that only a tiny fraction of the furniture remained intact.

Breakfast tomorrow is going to be interesting.

Nathan spent a minute replicating his feat of antimagic to open the door before departing the dining room at a run. He returned quickly to the suite, wanting to avoid being around when the bodies were discovered. He looked down at the robe, noticing several splinters were still stuck in the fabric from where the golem had demolished the furniture around the room.

He sighed, and took off the robe, folding it and putting it at the bottom of the stack of clean clothing. It would stay hidden there. He didn’t want to leave any clues behind for any investigators.

Then he went to bed to catch a couple hours of sleep before the next day.

I’m finally inside a magical academy with a hidden danger on the loose. Just like those books I read on Earth. But this time I’m the danger, and wow is it stressful.

—

The main entrance to the breakfast dining hall was blocked off by an enforcement mage, who was yelling for the low-tier students to climb the stairs to the dining hall they usually used for lunch.

“Follow me!” Hibor said before leading the group through a side corridor to another entrance.

From there they looked across the room carpeted in a layer of shattered wood, with the body of the golem standing out of the wreckage like an island in the sea. It was surrounded by various blue, yellow and orange-robed mages. There was also a tall man in a complicated orange-and-red wrap who seemed to be supervising as the other mages examined the fallen golem.

Archmage. Should I break cover to take him out?

A few heads looked around when the opening door revealed Hibor, Roni, Yelun and Nathan. A grating stomp to the side betrayed the presence of another golem, and Nathan quickly slid back into the hallway so it wouldn’t see him. He heard a voice yell in their direction, tinged with irritation.

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“Low-tier students to the upper dining hall! I want to see your heels!”

“As your words command, archmage Seacos!” Yelun called out, turning and nearly sprinting past Nathan in her rush to follow the command.

Nathan and the other boys followed, only slowing when they got a notable distance away from the ruined dining hall.

“What in the Giant’s hairy ballsack happened there?” Roni asked, his voice bewildered.

Yelun glared at him. “Watch your words. Clearly whatever’s been killing people has attacked again, and struck down a golem!”

“But you can’t kill them! They’re immune to… everything! The defenders of the Academy!” Roni protested.

“It killed a mage too.” Hibor said, shakenly. “I saw a bloody body near the wall.”

Nathan decided to contribute. “The question is, did the golem attack the mage and was damaged enough to fail, or did something manage to kill both the golem and the mage at the same time?”

The three low-tier students shivered, considering the options and finding neither one appealing.

—-

Bran dho Jast, the lecturer who ran the practical classes, was pissed. He’d stormed into class that morning and proceeded to tear through the students, disparaging their magic and insulting everything from their parents to their magic.

Nathan tried to deflect attention away from them, but he was unsuccessful. The furious lecturer stalked into their pod with a gleam in his eyes, then demanded each of them run through [Force Block] and [Mage Armor].

Yelun earned an approving snort, but Bran’s expression grew meaner as both Roni and Hibor failed to cast a stable [Mage Armor]. Then Nathan pretended to cast [Mage Block] without any effect, and Bran exploded.

“Waste from a steel screamer! You don’t deserve the lowest robe. I should see you removed from the Academy, because I have seen no magic from you!”

Ah, well somebody noticed. Well shit. Time to start plan murderhobo?

The man held up one finger, eyes boring into Nathan. “I give you one day. Come back tomorrow able to cast [Force Block], or I will see you expelled and enslaved!” Then he spun to Roni and Hibor. “If you cannot cast [Mage Armor] tomorrow, then I will break apart your suite and send you to other groups, because they are more helpful than you are to each other!”

He looked at Yelun and narrowed his eyes. “You can do better. Come see me, and I will place you with true peers.” Then the orange-robed mage spun on his heel and left them behind to go yell at other students.

Hibor looked down and kicked the stone floor in frustration. “Giant’s blood. I don’t want him to break up the suite. I like you all.”

“It’s ok.” Roni said glumly. “Yelun’ll be fine. Sorry for not being able to help, Natad. We tried.”

Yelun’s expression grew stern and a bit angry as she looked around at the rest of them. “We can do this. We’ll skip the theory class and go practice all afternoon. We’ll get there.” She nodded to Nathan. “You’ll get there.”

Not likely. Does this mean my time pretending to be a student is done? That’s a shame, it’s a great way to hide in plain sight. Well, I have until tomorrow to think of a solution, even if it’s just disappearing in the night.

He looked back and shrugged with a faint grin. “First I need to duel Eban.”

Which I actually expect to help cement my cover.

Yelun’s eyes widened in surprise. “Ah. It’s nearly time, isn’t it?” Then her expression grew wry. “If you lose and get expelled, his month of service won’t carry much weight.”

“He can use it to demand that Natad is enslaved to him.” Hibor said with a faint snarl. “Don’t lose.”

“I won’t.” Nathan said, trying to be reassuring.

Half an hour later he stepped into the dueling ring, careful not to disrupt the shielding that contained dangerous magic while allowing people to clearly see and hear the duel. He glanced over at Eban on the other side.

The mid-tier student was joking with his friends, laughing about the expected victory and the ridiculous stakes. A small crowd had gathered to watch a mid-tier duel a low-tier, and Nathan caught snippets of conversation about how unbalanced the rewards were, given the power disparity. A few people were shocked that the stakes weren’t the other way around. But nobody intervened, since Eban was well-connected and nobody had a clue who ‘Natad’ was. They just assumed he was a stupid new student who was about to learn an important lesson the hard way.

Eventually Eban turned and squared off against Nathan, before calling the start of the duel. He followed it up with his first probing spell.

[Paralysis]

“Dispel.” Nathan replied, swinging his hands and cutting through the spellwork with a finger of antimagic.

The crowd reacted with surprise, multiple people gasping at his use of the rare magic. He saw multiple evaluating glances sent his way.

On second thought, this might cause more problems than it solves. I need to not appear too exceptional. But I also don’t want to let it draw on too long. [Dispel] is supposed to take a lot of mana, so pretending to cast it until he runs out of mana is going to raise even more eyebrows.

Eban eyed him with a thoughtful expression, cocking his head as if inviting a returning shot.

“Dispel.” Nathan said in response, giving his opponent’s [Mage Armor] the faintest poke. It shattered into visible shards that dissipated into thin air.

The other student seemed to panic a bit, despite this exact thing happening the first time they’d met. He started casting spells rapid-fire, trying to get through Nathan’s defenses.

[Force Blade]

“Dispel”

[Paralysis]

“Dispel”

[Force Push]

“Dispel”

[Fire Bolt]

Nathan gasped out a desperate breath and stimulated his sweat glands as the little ball of fire flew towards him. He needed to pretend that rapid-casting was absolutely exhausting, and that he was barely holding on. He spent some Focus to draw attention to how much difficulty he was having, acting the part of the exhausted mage holding on by his fingernails.

High-tier Noticeability 6 achieved!

At least he finally had the opportunity to end the duel, it was the perfect time to pretend to be on his last legs. He’d been using a single thin tendril of antimagic to intercept the hostile spellwork, but now he guided it to narrowly miss the incoming spell.

“Spell Redirection”

The tendril caught the fire bolt in its orbit, and the spell spun around the antimagic before shooting back in the direction it had come.

Nathan’s suitemates had been waiting for this after they’d helped him practice yesterday, and they cheered as the spell hit Eban in the chest. The mid-tier student went down with a scream.

A few other students dashed into the arena, already casting [Moderate Curing] on their downed friend. They gave Nathan poisonous glares as they hauled a wounded Eban away. He didn’t seem badly hurt, though there was a hole burned through the robe over his sternum.

The audience broke up and started dispersing now that the excitement was done, but Nathan caught a few other people studying him carefully before walking off. They seemed to be noting down his appearance for future use.

I underestimated how impressive that would be to a bunch of mages, even pretending that was the very limit of my ability. I hope none of them connect my [Dispel] magic to any of the deaths happening around here. [Forgettable] needs to pull its weight.

He put his hands on his knees dramatically, panting as if he’d just finished running a few miles. Then he wiped sweat from his forehead and faced his friends as they rushed to congratulate him.

Mid-tier Disguise 7 achieved!

“We’ve seen his heels!” Hibor exclaimed excitedly. “No more Eban dho Gliz!”

Yelun was beaming, excited for his victory. “What a sharp joke. He’s had his reach cut short today.”

Nathan merely nodded at them, then staggered off towards lunch. He was subjected to additional attention there, but given that the terms of the duel demanded he be left alone, nobody seemed to want to come over and talk.

—

Yelun called in a favor to get somebody to turn in their homework and pick up any new assignments for the afternoon lecture. Then they all returned to the suite to practice for Bran dho Jast’s demand.

Nathan was torn about the whole thing. He was pretty sure the solution was just for him to assassinate Bran before class the next day. It wasn’t a permanent solution, but it would hopefully let Nathan stay hidden for another few days, giving him more time to learn about wizardry. Also, Nathan was sort of looking forward to killing Bran and maybe getting a different teacher who wasn’t so much of an asshole.

I’ve decided to kill him because he’s going to expose me. Not because he’s an asshole. If being an asshole was a death sentence then I’d have to kill a number of Adventurers too. And maybe myself, given some of my methods.

He’d found what he thought was the man’s office on previous excursions, and was pretty confident he could get through the door. If he went now, he could probably be waiting for the lecturer when he returned from teaching. But that would be a bit obvious. He’d probably have to do it before class tomorrow morning, and try to set up an alibi. For now he had to play along, and do his best to learn to cast [Force Block], and help his suitemates learn to cast [Mage Armor].

He looked attentively to where Yelun was standing like a lecturer, starting to cast in an exaggerated manner while she reiterated some of their basic instructions on how to cast [Mage Armor].

Utility skill: High-Tier Tumbling

This skill will help you use unorthodox movements to take advantage of your momentum. Especially useful to avoid attacks and compensate when you are struck.

Utility skill: Parkour

This skill will help you rapidly change direction to navigate a complex environment.

Status of Nathan Lark:

Permanent Talent 1: Aura of Antimagic 9

Permanent Talent 2: Perfected Body 10

Permanent Talent 3: Airwalking 5

Class: Void of Magic level325

Deepened Stamina: 10050/10050

Void of Feeling

Antimagic Momentum

Raging Thrill

Implacable Inertia

Unarmored Resilience

Magic Anathema

Airborne Agility

Hand-to-hand Expertise

Voluminous Aura

Denial of Wizardry

Mana Severance

Class: Magekiller level 170

Regenerative Focus: 1312/1800

Catastrophic Blows

Battle Stealth

Mage Infiltration

Forgettable

Unsuspecting Strike

Antimagic Stealth

Spell Redirection

Lethal Index

Utility skills:

Battle Meditation 10

Inspiration 1

Acceleration 4

Wizard Senses 8

Alertness 6

Wizard’s Intuition 9

Effortless Dodge 3

Mental Fortress 9

Tutoring 2

Parkour 2

High-tier Noticeability 6

Mid-tier Disguise 7

Mid-tier Battle Cry 7

Mid-tier Aura Manipulation 8