Chapter 72: The Depths of Brightsail Academy

Sen descended a flight of steps to find himself in what looked like an extension of the library. Darkness permeated the space, but each shelf of books had mana lights on the top and bottom rows to illuminate them. The shelves themselves stretched unreasonably high toward the ceiling. It looked as if someone had stacked four or five bookshelves on top of one another until they’d run out of space. 

And there was plenty of space.

This underground library was like a warehouse. The walls were lined with bookshelves that stretched from floor to ceiling, and additional rows of shelves filled the interior of the room as well. It stretched so far into the distance that Sen was reasonably sure that every square inch of Brightsail Academy’s basement was dedicated to storing whatever knowledge these books held. He wanted to investigate, but he sensed something powerful lingering further ahead, and Orttha was still missing. Every moment he spared could be the librarian’s final. There was no time to waste. He hurried, scanning for signs of life as he moved. Tutor didn’t redirect him or anything, so he knew he was moving in the right direction. 

He thought of his friends, Milim, Ilm, Samara, all taking their tests in these very moments. His own test would take place shortly. A test that he would fail if he didn’t make it in time. That realization annoyed him. He was on a timer.

[Thirty minutes until your final exam.] Tutor added helpfully.

Encapsulation wrapped around him like a blanket on a chilly night, and he picked up his pace under its effects. Books rushed by in a blur, and the colors seemed to blend together as he moved. He kept his attention straight ahead to avoid getting dizzy. So much knowledge underneath the school, it made him wonder why these books were being kept down here. If he had had an opportunity when all this was said and done, he’d come back to investigate. He’d already seen that Brightsail Academy had the tendency to hide its best artifacts. They might hide some of their best books as well.

He wouldn’t put it past someone like Dean Withershade. 

Talking up ahead brought his haste to a crawl. He stopped abruptly and got close to a bookshelf for cover, despite the fact that he was invisible and reasonably obscured as much as possible. It would take something powerful to detect him. Something with higher magic stats than his own. 

He crept forward, running a hand along the shelf and tilting his ear toward the noise. When that didn’t work, he added one more enhancement to the list. “Enhanced Hearing Maxim.” 

“They’re holding up better than you predicted.” The voice was unfamiliar; it sounded decrepit, and every word came out slowly and with intention. 

“Their matches were designed with them in mind. It’s a matter of time until we collect the necessary—what is it?” 

The second voice was familiar, and the implication left Sen reeling. 

The Dean of Brightsail Academy was underneath the school in some secret library talking to…who exactly? Sen pressed forward. He spotted a table, but Dean Withershade sat alone. Whoever he was talking to had disappeared. That was troubling. 

The dean didn’t seem to think anything of it. He sat perfectly still, with his hands crossed over the fine oak table before him. It looked like a work desk of some sort. Stacks of paper and piles of books covered its corners. Several quills and pens sat in a cup neatly within his reach. Why had he gone quiet all of a sudden? 

A thread of mana snapped abruptly. The illusion of Sen browsing in the library was destroyed. He caught a quick glimpse of his own head rolling off his shoulders and dissipating in a cloud of mist as it hit the ground. The body dissolved just as quickly. His connection to the spell gone in an instant. 

Sen’s brow furrowed. Had someone just tried to kill him within the academy? For all they knew, Sen had just been standing there browsing books, and they’d lopped off his head? What was going on?

[To be fair, I warned that your bad manners might get you killed one day. It’s just too bad your poor illusion was the one to pay the price.] 

The dean suddenly looked up across the table as if something had caught his attention. “What?” he said. He stood, and the chair scraped against the hardwood floor. He turned and looked in the direction Sen had come. 

Sen suspected the dean was expecting him now, and really, there was no need to drag this out longer than necessary. He wouldn’t overhear anything interesting now that the dean was on high alert. 

“Hello, Dean Withershade,” Sen said, stepping out of invisibility. He dropped his other enhancements as well, except for hearing. There was someone going around beheading people. He’d prefer to hear them sneaking up on him, even if his wards would handle it. 

To his credit, the dean only jumped back slightly. “What are you doing here?” he asked, recovering quickly.

Sen looked around. “I was browsing the library for my next read and stumbled across a stairwell. Next thing I knew, I was here,” he said. 

Annoyance overtook surprise, and the dean stared at him blankly. 

“What is this place?” Sen asked, and though he was playing up his ignorance to frustrate the dean, he was genuinely curious. 

Withershade thought for a moment and then looked at a bookshelf to Sen’s right. With the flick of a finger, a blue book flew off the shelf and towards Sen. It wasn’t an attack. There weren’t any hostile intentions lurking within the magic. So, Sen grabbed the book with his own mana, and it came to a halt, hovering in front of him. He waved a finger to flip through the pages until he saw a familiar spell. Not one he had learned himself, but one he had seen in action. 

“Mana Punch Echo,” he read aloud. Donovan had used this technique. The boy who had run from a duel with Sen, and later died during the invasion of the academy. It was a technique that created mana clone copies of an attack and delivered them simultaneously to your opponent. The book reminded Sen of the stone spell tablets from the special library. A clear explanation of how the spell worked was detailed in simple, easy-to-understand instructions. There were even drawings that further expanded upon it. In fact, unlike the stone tablets, he could see where Donovan’s innate understanding of the spell was detailed meticulously. He’d discovered the ability didn’t care about your strength stat. Strength might influence your physical strikes, but your magic stat influenced the magical copies of them. The mana strikes were more impactful, and by flooding them with additional mana, you could expand the fists in size, shape, or number. This was the most detailed spell tome he’d ever read. 

He flipped the page. The start of another technique was listed. But it was incomplete. The thought process behind Donovan’s unfinished spell, the elements he’d thought were compatible, even the ways he’d attempted to bring it into existence were all neatly labeled. 

Sen frowned. With a simple motion, the book closed, and he read the title. 

Donovan Erricks. 

“What…” He turned to the bookshelf on his left, and with his mana pulled five books at random off of it. They floated in front of him. 

He scanned their first names in rapid succession, looking for any that were familiar. Esmerelda, Noah, Yaro, Tiel, Samantha. 

The dean started to say something, but Sen held up a hand and quickly cast. “Silent Sphere.” 

Tutor, analyze these names. Cross-reference them with any pertinent information or data you’ve collected since coming here.

It took Tutor only a moment. [Esmerelda died during graduation exams several years ago. Noah was declared missing in action during a quest he took as a student during his time at Brightsail Academy. Yaro died two years after graduation on a quest with her guild. Tiel died during the entrance exams. Samantha grew sick during her third year and never recovered.]

Sen shook his head. “All these students are dead?” He whipped his head toward the dean, and the sphere of silence shattered to pieces. “What is the meaning of this? Did you kill them?” he demanded. 

The dean sighed. “Magical education is a dangerous pursuit, even in the most prestigious of schools.” He closed his eyes and pointed to his left. Then his right. Then he looked back and beckoned behind him with a finger. From each of the directions he’d pointed, three new books floated toward Sen.

Sen waved his hand, and the five books he’d taken a moment ago returned to the shelves. Donovan’s book still floated to his side. He didn’t know where it belonged, and it felt wrong to return it to the dean. The others might be strangers, but he knew Donovan. At least a little. Sen eyed the three new books that floated in front of him. They lacked titles. Instead, they had symbols on them.

The blue book was thicker than the others. It had a massive shield etched on its cover. Next to it was a green book. Its pages appeared made of dirt, and there was a flower pressed into its cover. The last book was void black and oozed ominous energy. Sen noticed smoke wafting from between the pages at regular intervals. The cover of this book was the emblem of a sickle. It looked as if it had been glued on with blood. 

Withershade pointed at each in turn. “The Shield Lord, the Queen of Garden, and Lord of the Sickle. All former students of Bright Sail Academy. All alive.” 

A pit was forming in Sen’s stomach. The situation was becoming clearer. “You’ve been collecting information on the students of Brightsail.”

The dean chuckled. “I said as much when I spoke during the first ranking reveal. Have you forgotten my words from back then?” 

Sen’s brows furrowed, and he remembered what the dean had said that day. “At Brightsail Academy, you are here not only to study, but to be studied. So we might bring out your full potential.” 

The dean smirked. “That’s an excellent memory. It explains how you’ve climbed so high in the rankings in your first year.”

Sen looked at the books floating in front of him. Two lord-class mages, and a queen-class? He flipped one open at random to its later pages. The Book of the Shield Lord. A lord-level shield spell was detailed within. It was a variation of something Sen was already familiar with, so he paid it little attention. But he noticed something: mana working within the book. He reached up and turned to the page it seemed to come from. Before his eyes, fresh ink appeared as if from nowhere at all and scribbled notes into the journal. His eyes widened as he realized the Shield Lord was actively working on a new technique. Somehow, even though he was undoubtedly nowhere near the academy, the book was still recording his thoughts. Something like this…if the contents of a library like this were released into the world, it would be no different from the notes that Sen had lost during his passage through time. He looked up at the library of books. Thousands of magicians of varying levels. Some dead. Some alive. Brightsail Academy had educated some of the most powerful people in the world. With the knowledge of their techniques embedded within these books, a few bad actors could bring all of it tumbling down.

Sen stared at the dean. “Why show me this?” he asked. 

The dean frowned at the question. “I thought you were already aware of it, at least vaguely. But the look on your face is too genuine.”

Sen tilted his head. “Why would you think that?”

“Because in all of Brightsail Academy’s history, only six people have ever been resistant to the eyes of the academy. One faculty member and five students. I thought surely you’d taken precautions intentionally,” the dean said. 

The numbers lined up too perfectly, and suddenly Sen realized why his friends had really been singled out for their final exams and why Orttha was missing. Whatever this magic was, its purpose was clear. The dean wanted their techniques. For whatever reason, he hadn’t been able to peer into their magic as he had others. If he couldn’t take it from them the usual way, he must have opted for a different route. He hadn’t escorted his friends to their final exams. He’d escorted them into danger.