Chapter 15
The road out of the southern gate was quieter than Mai expected.
Not peaceful — never peaceful, not anymore — but quieter in the way a held breath was quiet. The Academy disappeared behind them in a slow retreat of stone walls, ward-lights, and red-tinged smoke, until only the faintest shimmer of its protective barrier remained visible through the trees. Ahead stretched the world beyond school: a narrowing trail, overgrown grass, wind-bent shrubs, and the dark line of forest waiting like a judgment.
Mai kept her hands close to her sides as she walked, her fingers still tense from the last hour of argument and fear. The Arch Duke’s distant pressure had finally faded behind them, but the memory of that overwhelming presence still clung to her skin like cold sweat.
“We should have taken a cart,” she muttered.
Okama, walking a half-step ahead, didn’t look back. “And miss the chance to wander into something horrible on foot?”
“That is not funny.”
“It wasn’t meant to be.”
Despite herself, Mai huffed a small breath through her nose. Puss rode in the crook of her arm, her black fur warm against the wind. The cat’s amber eyes were narrowed, alert, her tail twitching in sharp little jerks whenever the leaves rustled.
Puss had been unusually quiet since they left.
Mai glanced down at her. “You’re being creepy on purpose.”
Puss blinked at her, then turned her head away as if deeply offended by the accusation.
Okama’s mouth twitched. “That’s basically her personality.”
Puss immediately bristled.
Mai would have smiled if the feeling in her stomach wasn’t still so uneasy. The three of them had set out with a purpose: find the scattered class, find the truth behind the attack, and survive long enough to do both. It sounded simple when phrased like that. It sounded almost heroic.
In reality, it felt like stepping into the dark with only one lantern and hoping nothing was waiting just beyond the light.
They traveled until the terrain shifted from managed academy land to raw wilderness. The path became rougher, roots pushing up through the dirt, moss creeping over old stones, the trees crowding closer overhead. Birds had stopped singing some time ago. Even the insects seemed to have gone silent.
Mai noticed it first.
The air had changed.
Not colder exactly — though it had grown colder too — but heavier, as though the forest itself was leaning down to listen.
“Do you feel that?” she asked quietly.
Okama stopped walking.
For a moment he said nothing. His green eyes sharpened, scanning the trees, the undergrowth, the slope of the earth ahead.
“Yes,” he said at last. “Something’s here.”
Puss’s ears flattened.
A low sound rolled through the forest.
Not a growl.
Not quite.
It was deeper, like something immense shifting its weight far beneath the roots.
Mai swallowed. “Please tell me that’s not what I think it is.”
“It depends what you think it is,” Okama said.
She shot him a look.
He sighed and reached for his sword. “Fine. I think it’s a very bad thing.”
The ground trembled.
Then the monster emerged.
Mai’s breath caught in her throat.
It was enormous — far too large to be natural, far too wrong to fit any category her mind could comfortably name. Its body was a tower of muscle and warped scale, all jagged angles and unnatural bulk, with limbs that looked built for crushing rather than moving. Thick armor-like ridges covered its hide, and its eyes burned with a cold, merciless intelligence that made her skin crawl.
This was not a beast.
It was a calamity given shape.
Mai’s pulse thundered in her ears. The creature opened its mouth, and the sound that came out was enough to make the leaves shiver.
Okama moved first.
“Mai, back!”
She did, stumbling a step, but the monster was already charging. Its first strike shattered the ground where he’d been standing an instant earlier. Dirt and broken roots sprayed outward. Okama rolled to the side, sword flashing up to parry the creature’s second blow.
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The impact almost sent him flying.
Mai felt the fear hit her so hard it turned her limbs cold.
Puss hissed sharply in her arms.
“No,” Mai whispered, tightening her hold instinctively. “No, no, no—”
The monster swung again, and this time Okama was forced back several paces, boots digging furrows into the earth. He was strong — stronger than most people she knew — but not strong enough for this. Not against something like that.
The creature lunged toward Mai.
Puss’s body went rigid.
Then, before Mai could even scream, the black cat twisted in her arms and leapt free.
“Puss!” Mai shouted.
The cat hit the ground, landing light on her feet, and for one breathless second Mai thought she was simply trying to get away.
Then the air around Puss changed.
A dark pulse radiated outward from her small body, thin as smoke and sharp as a blade. Symbols flickered in the space around her, too fast to read at first, then locking into place in a circle of shadow and red light.
Mai stared.
She had never seen Puss use a skill before.
Never.
The cat’s fur bristled, and her eyes were no longer soft or irritated or catlike in any ordinary sense. They were focused. Dangerous.
“Puss?” Mai whispered.
Puss didn’t respond.
A window flashed in Mai’s vision, as if some invisible system had decided she was permitted to witness what was happening:
SKILL [[Status Ailment]]
Mai had no time to process it.
The monster struck again, but this time Puss moved like she had been waiting for the opening.
The dark ring around her snapped outward.
A wave of debuffing force slammed into the creature’s body. It recoiled, its massive limbs faltering for the first time. A jagged sheen of something almost like illness spread over its scales. Its movements slowed, then stuttered, as if reality itself had started to misfire around its joints.
Mai’s eyes widened. “She’s affecting it…”
Puss darted in, too fast for something so small. Another pulse flared. The monster shuddered, one of its front legs buckling. A pained bellow ripped through the forest.
The skill kept spreading.
Debuffs layered over debuffs, each one sliding into place without the usual drain of mana. Puss was not merely attacking the creature — she was loading it with every status condition she could safely force onto it, one after another, like a living catastrophe. Its balance broke. Its movements slowed further. A winged shape might have been impressive, if not for the fact that every motion now looked half a heartbeat away from collapse.
Mai stared in disbelief.
“She can just do that?”
Okama had no answer. He was already moving, trying to get around the monster’s flank, but Puss was faster than either of them expected.
The creature managed one last violent swipe.
Puss was hit hard.
Mai heard the sound more than she saw it — the sharp, brutal impact of something small and fragile being thrown against the earth. The cat tumbled across the ground and came to rest in a heap of black fur and motionless limbs.
“Puss!” Mai screamed.
Her heart stopped.
Then, slowly, the black cat twitched and pushed herself up.
She was breathing hard. Wounded. Shaken. But alive.
Mai nearly collapsed from relief.
The monster, meanwhile, staggered sideways.
Puss had done it. Whatever she’d unleashed had clearly taken effect. The creature’s body was riddled with visible damage, its movements jerky and unstable. Its roar had become rough and uneven, the strength behind it bleeding away.
Okama saw it too.
His eyes narrowed.
“Mai,” he said, his voice suddenly sharp, “stay back.”
He surged forward.
Mai barely had time to cry out before he was on the monster. His sword flashed once, twice, cutting through the gaps Puss had created. The beast tried to retaliate, but it was too slow now — every movement delayed, every strike dulled by whatever nightmare of status effects Puss had inflicted.
Okama planted his feet, twisted, and drove the blade upward through the monster’s weakened guard.
The creature let out a final, choking roar.
Then it fell.
Silence crashed down over the forest.
Mai stood frozen for a second, unable to move, unable to think. Then everything hit her at once — the fear, the relief, the shock, the fact that she was shaking so badly her knees almost gave out.
“Okama—”
He was already turning away from the monster’s body, breathing hard, sword lowered but still ready.
“You okay?” he asked.
Mai laughed once, weakly and disbelievingly. “You ask that now?”
Puss, still on the ground, gave a faint irritated sound that was somehow very much herself.
Mai rushed to her and crouched, carefully lifting the cat into her arms. Puss was trembling, but she didn’t pull away. Her ears were flattened, and her fur looked a little singed in places, yet her amber eyes were open and sharp.
“You scared me,” Mai whispered, pressing her forehead briefly against the cat’s. “Don’t ever do that again.”
Puss blinked at her like that was not a reasonable request.
Okama, meanwhile, had gone still.
A new notification flickered at the edge of his vision. Mai saw his expression shift as the system finished processing the kill.
“What is it?” she asked.
Okama stared at the invisible words for a moment longer, then slowly exhaled.
“I got a skill,” he said.
Mai frowned. “Already?”
He gave a short, incredulous laugh. “Apparently.”
The words settled into place in his sight:
SKILL [[Coded Hologram]]
He raised a hand experimentally. Pale light gathered in the air before him, forming a thin rectangular wall made of solid, luminous force. The barrier hummed softly, stable and clean, as if it had been engineered rather than conjured.
Mai stepped closer, eyes wide. “That’s… a barrier?”
“Yes.” Okama’s brows knit together as he inspected it. “And apparently I can put codes onto it.”
He tried it again.
A line of glowing script appeared across the barrier’s surface.
The moment it locked into place, the light shifted.
The wall changed function.
Mai blinked as the barrier thickened, then stretched, then sealed into a shape that looked less like magic and more like deliberately written structure. It wasn’t just a wall. It was a system. A command made visible.
“It gives the barrier a function based on the code,” Okama said, sounding both excited and deeply cautious. “But if the request is too overpowered, it won’t work.”
Mai stared at him. “That is somehow the most you thing possible.”
He shrugged, but there was a spark in his eyes now. The kind of spark that meant he’d already started thinking three steps ahead.
A dangerous skill.
A useful one.
And, if Mai was honest with herself, exactly the sort of thing they needed.
She looked down at Puss again, stroking the cat’s fur while her own heart slowly began to settle.
They had survived.
Barely.
But surviving wasn’t nothing. It meant they could keep going. It meant the road ahead had not ended here.
Mai glanced toward the forest, where the monster’s body was already beginning to fade under the weight of the world’s rules.
“Come on,” she said softly. “Let’s keep moving before something worse shows up.”
Okama sheathed his sword and gave a short nod.
Puss huffed once in her arms, as if agreeing only because no one had asked her opinion.
So the three of them set out again, deeper into the wilderness, carrying with them one newly revealed monster, one wounded but dangerous cat, and one new skill that might just be the difference between survival and death.
And somewhere beyond the trees, beyond the road, beyond the scattered lands waiting for them in all their broken distance, their classmates were still out there.
Waiting to be found.