You Got Another Thing Coming - Part 5

If this guy was a character in Star Wars, he would be the Emperor. Except he’s like 7 feet tall, he has a gold robe over him, and he can take a punch. Otherwise, his evil ass face looks the same, and he has his hood over him the whole time. His mana color was dancing like a lighter flame during a ballad. I think that meant that he was getting ready to do some dangerous stuff.

Artium was the first to attack. He froze his scimitar and swung at the huge dude. The ice shattered all over his robe, but nothing cut the cloth. The creep just stood there, smiling at me!

“Face me!” Artium reached over to his left side and pulled another blade out. It lit on fire, but it was blue. The air around the blade froze as he swung that sword into the creep’s face. I saw that he looked at Artium, and caught the sword with his teeth. His face got iced like a windshield in Canada. That didn’t stop him though. He grabbed the sword with his bare hand and socked Artium in the face. I’ve never seen Artium in pain, but there he was, rolling around with his hands to his face and wailing.

Scott and Elki did another team up like in WWF, and they attacked this guy on both sides. Scott used his bow as a club, but he added these super spiky branches on both ends of the bow. Elki used her giant swords and made a triangle shape with them. The air lit up like a spotlight, and a huge ball of electricity shot at the creep from behind. The creep laughed, and he jumped super high to dodge everyone.

“You cannot achieve your goals with simple-” He shutted up after the electric ball was batted by Scott like a baseball, and it jumped and hit the creeper’s boot. One of his feet was blown to bits. If ‘Nam on TV taught me something important, it was the fact that losing your foot from stepping on a landmine sucked. I heard a weird grumbling from the guy from above. Of course he can fly.

He did a nose dive down towards where Scott was, and almost landed. Artium got up super quickly, and yelled “Ars Artica” as loudly as possible. He rammed his damn ice sword right into the head of the creep as he was flying down. This shoulda looked like a Mortal Kombat finisher, but this creep’s head was made of diamonds or something. Ha, Diamond Head. He definitely was evil.

The creep did this breakdance thing on the sword and spun around to kick Scott, Elki, and Artium right in the noggin with his unexploded foot. They all got knocked out pretty hard, even when they’re super strong. My dad and mom were gearing up to join, but Prof stopped them. She wanted to kick this creeper’s ass for hurting her former students. I saw Lara rush to Elki, Scott, and Artium to start healing them.

“You must be proud of yourself, fighting new adventurers and beating them close to death with only your fists. If you weren’t a coward, you would probably target the professors, and perhaps the principal. However, most of the professors are gone, and the principal escaped before you arrived. So why are you here? Who are you?” Prof was not screwing around. She had her hands in weird sign language shapes on her side.

“Ah, so you must be the one they call the ‘Golem Hunter’. You proved to be a hero amongst the cockroaches you worked with at the guild. My name is Altimer Vorus. I am one of the heads of the New Haronda Front. As my subordinate, Gretchel stated, we are here to capture the anomaly. I was not planning to show my face, but my sweet little Gretchel failed to defeat her opponents and execute her task, even when she is considered S rank. Now, please step out of the way. I must take the anomaly. If you don’t, you will know thousands of years of pain.”

“I will not step out of the way. I am a professor of the School of Technical Studies, Haronda, and I will protect my students with my life.”

“Then your life, I shall take.” Vorus started levitating like that redhead Carrie girl, and black lightning bolts came out of his eyes, ears, mouth, and probably everything else. After he did that weird thing, a huge pillar of black light crashed through the ceiling of the dining hall and covered him. This Elton John of black light began to charge a huge energy blast. My parents and some of the students and other parents helped carry everyone away and moved to the stadium. Andrus grabbed me with lightning speed and shot away from the blast zone.

“You underestimate me, Altimer Vorus.” Prof did this weird hand motion thing, and like a bunch of dark black hole looking things appeared in the ground around her.

“Ars Noirus!” Vorus boomed with his voice. The black light thing started moving towards Prof, and it disintegrated everything it touched. Holy shit, if anyone was close to it, they’d pretty much die.

“Ars Gravitas!” Prof yelled back, and the dark black holes started spinning, and combined into one big black hole. It ate the black light thing, and sucked it all away.

“Impressive. You know how to hide your S rank mana bank well. But how do you fare against an S+ rank?” Vorus shot a bunch of black light from both of his hands, and clapped them together. He held one of his hands out towards Prof, and fired a million bullets of black at her. Each one had the same strength as the huge light pillar!

Prof easily deflected them with some of the floating black holes. One deflected across her cheek, and it didn’t just make a scar… It took out part of her cheek bone with it. She looked unfazed. She was truly badass. She used some bigger black holes and shot the bullets back to Vorus. This time, the bullets were white. Vorus was surprised, and he flew away for a second.

“You are not escaping!” Prof made a black hole under her and flipped it upside down. She blinked across the hall, chasing Vorus. She sent flying black disks at Vorus, and he dodged them like the jets in Top Gun dodging missiles.

This kept going on for like 5 minutes. While they were dogfighting, most of the students and parents made it to the stadium, and I kept watching this fight using Arg’s vision like I was watching Muhammed Ali on TV.

Vorus looked like he got tired of being chased, so he dropped his golden robe. He was wearing this tight black leather suit that Alice Cooper would drool over, and he landed on the floor. He was balding, but he had a ring of white hair around his head like an Italian monk. Human ears too? I guess he's just Andre the Giant, but super skinny. 

He looked around, and he noticed that everyone was out in the stadium, even Gretchel and her grey robe minions. He smiled right at me, and began walking to me. Prof wasn’t having his attitude though. She made another huge black hole right under him, and he fell through. She jumped in with him.

I looked around at all the people in the stadium. Some of the students were holding each other, their parents were doing the same thing, and my crew was trying to heal each other. I never thought that being reborn in another world was this stressful.

Well, I guess my old life was stressful too. Who knew what was gonna happen between Russia and the USA? Until the wall fell, we thought about hiding in underground shelters and using Mad Max as a guideline for survival. Hell, Red Dawn came out when I was 15, and that’s all my buddies and I talked about when it wasn’t The Exorcist 3 or the next Judas Priest album. In a way, this thing at the school was just the next step from what we were feeling back home.

If this war was about upstaging the King, why couldn’t they just focus their damn powers on the King? Why did they try to kill a buncha kids just to try and kidnap me? It didn’t seem fair for them. And my friends’ asses got kicked because of it too.

God - I mean, Galaka, I’m so pissed about this. If I could still cast my humongous spells without killing myself, I would do it to end this damn war. I totally get why they were rebelling though. Gally told me that the refugees in the outer district construction areas had no food for months because one of the lords “forgot” to pay the delivery caravan. If the lords were just like those crooks in Washington or in Wall Street, they deserve everything coming for them.

But involving kids? No way, Jose. These rebels were totally bogus.

Lara came up to me to check on my mana bank or whatever. She looked so tired and stressed out. She and Andrus beat that Carrie girl, but it must have been hard. Peter was also treated by her, which meant that he got hurt too. Everyone was relying on Lara to heal because apparently she’s the only cleric that graduated this time.

“Gal, are you okay? How are you feeling?”

“I’m chillin’, Lara. How ‘bout you? Do you need some help healing?”

“No, I’m fine. You need to save your body too. You casted some insane magic earlier, but you can’t overdo it.”

“I’ll just knock out though, right?”

“No, you can die.”

I felt Gally and Arg agreeing.

“Okay, I don’t wanna die again, so I won’t do anything right now.”

“Honestly, Gal, I feel like a failure. I couldn’t help anyone fight the tall elf. I couldn’t heal anyone right away. I wish I had helped Professor Schmutzal in her fight as well. I wish there was a spell that could calm everyone here. It’s been so scary. We’re in the middle of a war when we should be drinking mead at the tavern after our graduation.

“We should be laughing, dancing, kissing… I wanted today to be the day I try one more time to convince you to be with me. But it’s not the time anymore. We have all of these people to protect because the guild left them behind.”

“Don’t worry, dudette. You’re doing just fine. This fight is way over all of our heads. Also, let’s try again with romance after this blows over. I think I’ll have things figured out by then.”

Lara looked at me with a smile. “Thank you, Gal, or should I say, Ricky. Despite your crude behavior and humor, you are the man I’ve wished for since I was a child. I feel respected and validated by you. And protected. You have a heart of gold.”

“Aw shucks. You’re pretty chill yourself, you know. You’re smart, pretty, strong, and you respect all of the souls in me.”

Lara hugged me tightly, and I ended up just giving up and hugging back. Yeah, my soul may be 25, but I’m sharing a body with a 15 year old and a 400 year old. Who cares? During war, love is the only thing that keeps people alive.

During our hug, a huge rumble near us shook the stadium. Everyone was freaking out and putting up magic shields everywhere. The ground of the stadium opened with a black hole, and out came Vorus with Prof’s neck in his hand.

Oh shit, she got beat up. Vorus threw prof down on the ground, and she spat a bunch of blood. My parents and Lara stood up, and Gretchel tried to stand up, but she couldn’t because of her injuries.

“Playtime is over. Anomaly, come towards me, or your cohort of graduates will disintegrate with my black light in front of your eyes. Would you like that?”

“You know what dude? I’ll come with you. Just leave everyone alone. No one has to die tonight.”

“Gal! NO! You stay here, son. We’ll protect you.” My dad was summoning his axes from his hands, and he began to sing, just like in our training.

“Ars Nova!” He sounded like King Diamond! He’s copying my crappy attempt at sounding like King Diamond, but he actually sounded great! A huge sideways tornado came out of his mouth, and it was covered in all 5 elements. The pressure from his mouth blew everyone around him down. Vorus was clearly spooked, and he braced himself. When the tornado hit, my dad successfully summoned his axes, and jumped into the tornado.

Vorus was covered in cuts and bruises after that attack, but he was able to block the axes with his fingers. My dad smiled, and he screamed in his face.

“Ars Voca Extremus!” A three word spell?! What the hell?!

Yup, Father is a secret S rank.

There’s a lot of S rank people around me, man. I thought they were rare!

After my dad screamed in his face, a huge boom of sound hit the giant elf’s face like Lemmy’s bass rig during soundcheck. Trust me on that. You did not want Lemmy’s bass sound right next to your ear.

Vorus screamed in pain, and he started bleeding out of his ears and eyes. The axes he was blocking then started falling onto his shoulders. They slowly cut into his shoulders, and he screamed even more.

Suddenly, my mom appeared behind him with a really weird looking knife I’ve never seen before, and sliced his neck open. Blood started shooting out like a Morbid Angel concert. He fell to the floor, coughing hard.

“Agggh… you mongrels… You think you can kill me with mortal flesh wounds? I’m exalted!”

He slammed his hand on the ground, and spikes of black light impaled his body all over. Did he just commit suicide?!

No, he just healed himself?! The spikes retreated, and he was back on his TWO feet, like he never fought anyone. He didn’t have the cuts in his neck or his shoulders. Arg and Gally were freaking out deep inside. Actually, everyone was freaking out. I’ve never seen anyone get chopped up like that and survive enough to act like nothing happened.

Ricky, this is getting serious. Vorus is using dead magic, which is strictly forbidden in the world of magic, and he’s using it on his own body. Usually, you use that magic to resurrect people from the dead, but never have I seen someone use their own living body to host dead magic.

What do I do then, Arg? I can’t just sit here and do nothing!

You do exactly that. We can’t have you damage the vessel that houses all three of us here. You need to protect yourself. Let me take care of this.

How do you do that as a Spirit Guardian?

Arg began to climb out of my chest like a chest burster, and he was completely visible to everyone. He didn’t look like the usual ghost from Ghost Busters. He looked just like how we saw him right before he died, but see-through. Vorus looked at Arg, and smiled so wide.

“Traya Argus, the famed Half-Elf magician! That was completely unexpected to see you serve someone else as a Spirit Guardian. How did you die? Did your own selfishness kill you?”

“Vorus, I have no words for someone who quit school early to join the Dead Circle. I have no interest in letting an ambitious idiot take over Haronda over paper-thin logic and painfully obvious political narratives. Valien and Yoki, stand far back! I’ll end this monster’s reign before it ever begins.”

What the hell, they knew each other? And this whole time, Arg didn’t tell us? Why?!