Chapter 534. Slime Facts With Clara (Not Suspicious At All)

Chapter 534: 534. Slime Facts With Clara (Not Suspicious At All)

By afternoon, the sun hung heavy and golden over the training grounds, casting long, deceptive shadows across the packed earth.

William decided his students needed a reprieve from the brutal mathematics of swordplay, the grinding of steel, and the sweat of exertion.

He told himself it was for their own good, a necessary moment of recovery, but the truth was more selfish. He needed to watch Ellie.

He needed to see if the fire he had felt burning beneath her skin last night had consumed her or merely retreated into the embers.

Standing at the edge of the practice field, he assumed the role of the detached observer, clipboard in hand, handing the day’s lesson over to her.

She was exceptional at it. That had never been the question.

Ellie stood before a small cluster of students, with Olivia positioned close enough to observe the technique, exuding a calm, effortless confidence that belied the exhaustion underneath.

Her voice was steady and soft but carried with absolute authority as she explained the delicate art of mana manipulation.

"Don’t try to force it," Ellie instructed, her hands raised. "You have to coax the mana to gather."

"Hold the pulse steady before you release it... Think of it as breathing through your fingertips."

A soft, emerald green glow began to coalesce around her palms. It was beautiful and perfectly even, pulsing with a rhythmic consistency that spoke of years of disciplined practice.

"Ten percent at a time," she reminded them, her eyes scanning the young faces. "Power is not an on/off switch."

"If you try to flip the switch all at once, you’ll burn out the channel before the spell even forms."

William felt a strange, bitter pang in his chest as he heard those words. He had taught her that exact line years ago, when she was little more than a promising spark of potential.

Hearing it echo back to him from her mouth made him feel ancient, a relic watching his own teachings return to haunt him.

’She’s holding it together,’ he thought, his eyes narrowing. ’But she’s holding it together with everything she has.’

Across the field, the afternoon was proving less serene. Lia and Kaela had been assigned the concept of ’training without fighting,’ a suggestion William had intended as a lighthearted suggestion of restraint.

They had clearly interpreted it as a test of psychological endurance. By the time he glanced over, they were stationed in opposite corners of the clearing, locked in perfect, agonizing horse stances.

Their eyes were fixed on one another in a silent war of wills, neither willing to blink, neither willing to break posture, each determined to prove their superior discipline through sheer stubbornness.

Then, the world seemed to stutter.

Ellie paused mid sentence. The lesson died in her throat.

Her left hand drifted backward, almost unconsciously, toward the base of her spine. It was a minute movement, a twitch that lasted less than a heartbeat, but to William’s trained eyes, it looked like a desperate attempt to soothe a wound.

She caught herself immediately, bringing her hand back forward with practiced nonchalance, but the damage to the spell was done.

The green glow around her right hand didn’t just flicker; it convulsed. For the span of a single, terrifying blink, the emerald light vanished.

In its place came something else: a searing, brilliant white radiance, shot through with a single, jagged thread of molten gold that seemed to pulse like a living vein.

It was too bright, too pure, too wrong. Then, as quickly as it had appeared, it snapped back into the familiar green.

The students blinked, confused by the momentary flash. Olivia, however, had seen it clearly. Her mouth hung slightly open.

"Ellie, your light just..."

"Sun reflection!" Ellie interjected, her voice pitching upward with a forced, manic enthusiasm.

She pointed dramatically toward the sky, though the sun was behind a thin veil of clouds. "The light hit the mana particles at an odd angle."

"Happens all the time with this humidity... Anyway! Okay, everyone, try pushing a little more pressure into this small scratch here."

She moved on immediately, her movements slightly too jerky, her smile too wide.

William didn’t correct her. He didn’t call her out.

Instead, he pressed his pen to the clipboard and marked the exact timestamp of the anomaly. He didn’t write words; words would be inadequate.

He simply drew a single, sharp circle. He had a grim feeling that this clipboard would be more ink than paper by the end of the week.

A sudden presence materialized at his elbow. Clara appeared as if she had grown out of the shadows themselves, her journal clutched against her chest like a shield.

Before he could even offer a greeting, she began speaking in a rapid fire whisper that carried the weight of a death sentence.

"Did you know that parasitic monsters almost always settle near the spine of their host?" she asked, her eyes fixed on the horizon rather than on him. "It’s the most strategic location."

"The nerve cluster gives them immediate, direct access to the entire nervous system."

"They can puppet the body from within... And the vertebrae? They provide perfect protection from external trauma... The bone acts as a fortress for the parasite."

She paused, her knuckles whitening around her journal. "I’m not saying it relates to anything... It’s just... a biological theory."

William turned his head to look at her. His expression was unreadable, but his gaze was heavy with the exhaustion of a man who was beginning to see patterns in the chaos.

"Clara."

"Mm?" she hummed, though she refused to meet his eyes.

"Out of every possible topic in the world—every creature, every spell, every historical event—why that one?"

Clara finally turned her head. For one fragile, unguarded second, the defensive armor of her expression cracked.

The stiffness in her jaw faltered, and William saw the raw, bone-deep exhaustion that mirrored his own. Her eyes weren’t just tired; they looked haunted, as if she were carrying the weight of every secret she refused to speak.

Then, as quickly as it appeared, the mask snapped back into place. She lifted one shoulder in a shrug that was far too rigid, far too controlled to ever be casual.

"I’m reading a book about it," she said flatly.

"Of course you are," William replied, his voice carrying a dry edge of resignation.

"There are three distinct classifications of slime, actually... Did you know that?" she continued, her words spilling out with increasing velocity. "The common green subspecies is intellectually the least interesting."

"But the grey ones? Their cellular structure is far more complex."

"They don’t just consume; they mimic."

She launched into a relentless monologue. She spoke with the frantic, desperate energy of someone who knew exactly what she was doing and knew she could not stop.

William simply let her. He stood there, clipboard forgotten at his side, listening as she dissected slime reproductive cycles and cellular mimicry with clinical detachment.

It was objectively fascinating, and William felt a flicker of genuine irritation at himself for finding the lecture so engaging. He knew why she was doing it: she was building a wall of words to keep the silence at bay.

On the far side of the training field, Olivia had taken it upon herself to officiate a contest she had absolutely no authority to oversee.

The two horse stances had evolved into something resembling two living statues. Lia and Kaela had become so still, so utterly locked in their positions, that they seemed carved from stone.

Olivia paced between them like a seasoned referee, calling out scores in a calm, unnervingly professional voice.

"Seven for Kaela," Olivia announced without emotion. "Seven and a half for Lia, due to superior spinal alignment and tidier posture."

"Seven and a half?!" Kaela roared, her voice cracking the afternoon serenity. "That’s blatant favoritism!"

"My calves are screaming louder than yours!" The protest was so vehement that her legs finally gave way, her stance collapsing in a heap of indignant fury.

The round was over. Lia didn’t say a word; she simply offered Kaela a small, razor-sharp smile of smug satisfaction, a look William decided he would pretend not to see, for the sake of maintaining some semblance of instructor authority.

By the time William arrived at Catherine’s house that evening, the air was thick with the comforting, domestic scents of cinnamon and warm yeast. He knew immediately, with the certainty of a condemned man, that he was in trouble.

He had brought Ellie with him under the transparently flimsy excuse that Catherine wanted to teach her the proper preparation of a medicinal pain relief tea.

It was a lie they both understood. Catherine had known the real reason for the desperate need to check on Ellie, to see if the girl was breaking from the moment he had asked.

She had agreed without a single question, a silent pact of understanding that was one of the primary reasons William had fallen in love with her. It was also the reason she could dismantle his defenses with such ruthless, terrifying efficiency.

Catherine met them at the door, looking like the very picture of hearth and home. She wore an apron dusted with flour at the wrists, and one stubborn lock of white hair had escaped her braid to cling to her flushed cheek.

She smiled at Ellie with a genuine, welcoming warmth that seemed to momentarily chase away the shadows clinging to the girl’s shoulders. Then, she turned her gaze to William.