Chapter 24

Mei caught him as he slipped through the door, catching it just as it was about to close behind him.

“What are you doing?” She asked. “We’re not supposed to evacuate yet.”

The sword shrugged. “I want to go see [Thorn Liege].”

“Who is that?” Mei asked, stepping into the corridor with him, and letting the door close shut behind her.

“Ms. Lopez’s sword,” the sword said. “It’s a good one. Not as good as me, I think, but still, definitely the best that I’ve seen on Earth.”

“Stay here,” Mei said, then corrected herself. “I mean, we’re supposed to stay here.”

The sword shrugged and kept walking. After another moment, Mei joined him. They walked in silence. A few moments later, the sword heard a faint booming sound, coming from by the main entrance. He started running in that direction.

Arthur caught them a few moments later, “Better do a fast walk instead,” he said, “makes it look like you know what you’re doing. Running makes you look guilty, trust me, I’ve had a lot of experience.”

Then he saw Mei. “Oh hey, wasn’t expecting to see you here.”

“We shouldn’t be here,” Mei said again. “We should go back.”

“No one ever got themselves a fresh corpse with that attitude,” Arthur said cheerfully.

The booms grew louder.

The sword slowed to a brisk walk, it meant less sweat anyway. Mei, despite her words, did not go back either.

“You can’t summon anything right now,” the sword observed, pointing to the collar around Arthur’s neck.

“Yep!” Arthur agreed, not sounding bothered.

“So what do you need a body for?”

“I just like looking at em,” Arthur said. “Nah, figure once I get one, I just have to hide it somewhere until they feel guilty enough to take the collar off. And then it’s show time.”

“That sounds like something that would be hard to hide,” the sword said. “Because of the smell.”

“Not according to the countless successful murderers scattered across the world, not to mention the ones in our own delightful class,” Arthur said. Then he paused and looked at the sword seriously. “I know you don’t like it here very much, but I hope you realize what an absolute miracle the refrigerator is.”

Mei made a gagging sound.

“Are they…uncommon?” The sword asked, he couldn’t recall seeing one on his old world, but he hadn’t paid much attention to food back then.

“Rare as dragons,” Arthur said, “and by far the best place to store a corpse ever invented.”

They were near the front entrance now. They could see both lizardmen and humans on the campus lawn, some distance apart still, exchanging fireballs and lightning strikes at a ferocious pace.

“I’m going up to the second floor,” the sword said, “better views.”

“Mmm,” Arthur said. “Harder to get a corpse from up there, though.” But he and Mei followed the sword anyway as he started for the second floor.

This close to the action, the building shook as they climbed the stairs. Up another flight of stairs, as the walls vibrated. Was this, at last, the last battle? Surely it must be soon, if the adventurers’ world was slowly slipping out alignment with Earth’s. They would have to commit sometime. That would be exciting. The sword would be able to see their full strength.

He found a balcony, and heedless of the danger of stray debris or a misfired spell, he hung over the stone rail, taking it all in.

It was not a large battle.

In fact, it was only eight lizardmen, against some twenty or so humans, including Ms. Lopez.

Most relevant to the sword, None of the lizardmen were warriors of any kind. That was disappointing. Instead they all seemed to be [Wizards], each carrying a long carved stick of white wood emitting sparks of purple lightning from their gnarled tops.

The sword frowned. This made no sense. Why were they here? What were they hoping to accomplish? Was it possible they still had patrols wandering in by accident?

But no, there was their glowing blue portal floating just above the lawn. They were here on purpose.

To what end?

Lightning crackled through the air, and the scent of singed grass was everywhere.

The pristine lawn of the main campus was rent with burns and upturned furrows of dirt.

The defenders already outnumbered the attackers, the sword could see Ms. Lopez, [Thorn Liege] drawn and whirring. The sword leaned forward hungrily. He had only gotten to see it in action a little before losing consciousness last time.

[Thorn Liege] was clearly like the sword, it could use skills independently of Ms. Lopez. He watched as she charged at two of the mages, while [Thorn Liege] summoned spikes of iron into existence that countered the lightning strikes of the wizards aimed at Ms. Lopez.

“Wizards might go down a bit rough, but the fat content should be nice,” Arthur mused. “And some demons might like that sort of fizzle pop feeling from the lightning. You know, now that I think about it, lightning wizards are sort of the soda of corpses.”

“Do you always talk like this?” Mei asked.

“Pretty much, yeah. Why, was cannibalism a no no? Bit surprising honestly, I feel like royals often love a taboo treat.”

“You’re disgusting.”

“I get that a lot.”

[Thorn Liege] seemed to have absorption powers as well. It spun faster every time it connected with one of the wizards’ strikes. It changed different colors for different kinds of magic. Was the magic then being used to power the thorns it summoned into the air?

Maybe. Although perhaps it was just limited to absorption, or simply didn’t have enough advanced skills to do more.

Ms. Lopez, the sword thought, was only a middling wielder. She was not using her advantages as much as she could, she had not yet managed to close the gap between herself and her targets.

Or was she doing it on purpose?

Well, at the least it meant the battle wasn’t going to end, so the sword could keep watching [Thorn Liege].

“Where’s the dinosaur?” Arthur asked, “Don’t tell me they only had one. Who cares about a bunch of nerds with staffs?”

As if in response, all eight of the wizards raised their staffs high.

The sky crackled with lightning. Thunder boomed, a new boom beginning again as soon as the last one faded. The noise grew louder and louder, the sky flashing so bright that it was possible to see what was happening in only brief moments.

A giant circle of purple light was forming in the sky.

“Ok,” Arthur yelled above the sound, for the first time starting to sound interested. “That is a summoning circle. I don’t think it’s good news its in the sky, do you?”

“Why?” The sword heard Mei yell back, as the circle began to spin.

“Angels,” Arthur roared. “Angels come from the sky.”

Something began to emerge from the spinning circle. A single long spire of metal, pointed at the end like a needle, and carved with intricate lines and symbols that glowed with a deep golden light that made his eyes sting as the sword stared at it.

Then everything went bright orange, so bright the sword shut his eyes, and even through his closed lids he could still see fiery flaming orange, as if the whole sky was burning. What was the point of lids if they couldn’t actually stop his eyes from seeing things?

It was hot too, a crackling heat, hotter even than the ovens in the kitchens, so hot it felt like the sword was sweating and then dry over and over again.

The light vanished, the heat following it a moment later. The sword cracked his eyes open. He could see again. The long metal spire was gone, and the lawn was covered in bits of melted metal, some of it still burning with that bright orange fire.

The purple summoning circle in the sky was shrinking, no not shrinking, disintegrating, flinging bolts of lightning into every corner of the sky as it spun itself out of existence.

“What was that?” Mei asked.

“That,” Arthur said, after a coughing fit to clear his throat, “was [Cadmarius] when he gets mad.”

While that had been exciting, the battle hadn’t ended. Just resumed to its former cadence. The sword looked around for signs of Ms. Lopez, and out of the corner of his eyes saw as one of the last stray lightning bolts from the summoning circle flung itself in their direction.

It hit just below the balcony with hot boom. The balcony crumbled as whatever was keeping the balcony in place cracked, and they fell to the ground with a stomach lurching jolt.