Chapter 21: Hidden Infiltration in the Treasury

The students were running.

It was not a rout, not yet, but it was no longer order. Every direction had become panic with a thin skin of discipline over it. Academy bells were ringing from all four towers, a low, rolling alarm that vibrated through the white stone. Groups of first-years sprinted across the sky bridges in tight, terrified clusters, their new robes flapping, hands clutching Grimoires that had not yet learned how to fight. Second-years were more practiced - they leaped from bridge to bridge, using short Wind Steps and Light Foot techniques to clear the gaps, herding the younger ones forward.

Even some third-years who had been enjoying the spectacle of the instructors’ fights from the upper balconies were now moving. They had come to watch instructors and the others spar, to study and cheer, and now they were being pushed toward the dormitories by junior instructors shouting evacuation orders. Shouts for help mixed with the distant clang of weapons and the sharp crack of offensive circles detonating in the main courtyard. The entire academy had turned into a controlled evacuation, the kind they drilled for but never expected to use.

Arthur moved at the very back of the crowd.

He did not run. His training blade was half-drawn from the scabbard at his hip, not enough to threaten anyone, just enough that the steel caught the light. His eyes were not on the dormitories ahead. They were scanning every direction - the bridges above, the arches below, the shadows between pillars where someone could be hiding.

Most of the students gave him a wide berth now.

A week ago they would have bumped him, laughed, told him to move faster. After the duel on the platform, no one dared call him trash anymore. They had seen the way he fought, the unnatural control, the terrifying speed that did not match his rank. He had not just won. He had dismantled his opponent like a senior instructor picking apart a novice. Some of the students whispered the word "monster" in low voices as they passed him, and they did not mean it as a joke. He was no longer invisible. If anything, he was too visible.

But his gaze kept drifting sideways, away from the crowd.

Talia Vane was still fighting.

She had not moved with the evacuation. Down in the lower training ring, Garrick had broken his hammer - the shaft had snapped clean in half against her Wind Wall - but he was still standing, breathing hard, his massive frame covered in shallow cuts. He was an instructor of pure strength, and he was refusing to fall.

Talia’s green sword moved like liquid wind. It did not look like it was cutting. It looked like it was flowing. Every technique from the Heavenfall Cyclone Grimoire was being used with terrifying precision, chained together without pause. Wind Step to close the distance so fast she blurred. Wind Wall to turn his wild, desperate haymaker aside at the last second. Wind Fang, a crescent of pressurized air that opened a line across Garrick’s chest. Cyclone Edge, where the whole blade seemed to vanish inside a screaming spiral.

She danced through his pure strength attacks, never meeting them head on, always turning brute force against itself. Her crimson scarf whipped like a living blade behind her, snapping with each pivot. Sweat glistened on her dark skin, catching the light from the runes. Her black beast ears twitched at every sound, swiveling independently to track footsteps, incantations, the whistle of displaced air. Her fluffy tail lashed behind her, low and tense, adding another layer of chaos and balance to the fight. The spell that hid it had come undone, she was going all out. She was beautiful in the way a storm is beautiful.

Mimi’s voice suddenly spoke directly into Arthur’s mind, bright and teasing and far too close.

"Look at her. The sexy beast is actually enjoying this. She’s been waiting years for someone who can actually make her move. Look at that tail. She’s happy."

Arthur glanced sideways again before he could stop himself. Talia spun under Garrick’s arm, her sword kissing his ribs, and came up smiling. Not a kind smile. A sharp, hungry one.

"The way she moves," Mimi went on, "the way she turns raw power into something elegant. You like it, don’t you? Don’t lie. I can feel your heart beating faster."

He did. It was beautiful and terrifying at the same time. He could feel the massive mana pool under her skin even from up here, the way Heavenfall Cyclone let her operate at a completely different level. Her mana was not just large. It was refined, compressed, sharpened over years until it obeyed her like a limb. Every gust, every step, was perfectly controlled.

He was still far behind.

Even with the large mana pool he had woken up with and the new abilities he had printed from the others, Arthur knew he could not match an instructor. Not yet. Not even close. The gap was the same as it had been in the Hall of Binding on his first day - one was a student who had stumbled into power, the other was a weapon that had been forged for decades. He could win against other students now. He could even surprise a careless upperclassman. But against someone like Talia or Garrick, he would be dismantled in seconds.

His eyes continued to sweep the battlefield, forcing himself to look away from her fight. That was when he saw them.

In the chaos of the main training grounds, while everyone was looking at the instructors or running, two black-cloaked figures with silver lining along the hems were slipping away. They moved wrong. Too low, too fast, too deliberate. They avoided the bright combat zones, kept to the blind spots of the towers, avoided the gaze of the evacuating instructors. One headed toward the central tower with long, gliding strides. The other stayed low, moving along the outer bridges, using the fleeing students as cover.

Arthur felt the decision form before he consciously made it.

"Do you really want to involve yourself in this?" Mimi asked, and her voice was suddenly serious. The teasing was gone. "I can’t use magic to save you, Arthur. You know that. I am only allowed to use my magic on you. If those are real infiltrators, they will kill you."

The students around him kept running. No one noticed the boy in the back who had stopped. The bells were still ringing.

Arthur slowed his steps until he was standing still while the river of robes flowed around him. He thought for a second. He thought about the treasury. He thought about what would happen if whatever was in there was taken while the instructors were busy.

Then he turned and slipped into the shadows behind the fleeing crowd, into the narrow maintenance gap between two pillars that led down toward the central tower.

Mimi’s wings beat once inside his chest, a flutter of warm light. "Fine. But if we die, I’m blaming you. Completely your fault."

He followed.

The two cloaked figures moved with purpose, and that was what chilled him more than their speed. They knew the academy layout. They avoided every checkpoint, every rune-lit arch that would have scanned their Grimoires. They slipped toward the central tower - the oldest building on campus, the one that housed the academy treasury. The vaults where the empire’s most guarded artifacts and Grimoire fragments were stored, things too dangerous to leave in the capital.

Arthur stayed at a safe distance, maybe forty feet back, keeping to the shadows of the sky bridges where the blue rune light did not reach. His training blade was still in his hand, but he kept it low against his leg so it would not catch. The large mana pool inside him hummed quietly, ready, warm against his ribs.

He told Mimi to use her power on him. If he needed to hide his presence from these intruders, she was the only one who could.

Mimi’s voice came through again, softer now, concentrated.

"Yes. I can use magic on you. I can make you invisible to normal senses. I can even mask your mana signature so those half-baked detection circles won’t see that big pool of yours. You will look like a shadow to them."

She paused, and he felt a faint warmth spread across his shoulders, like invisible silk being draped over him.

"But I can only use it on you. You understand that, right? That means I can’t fight them. If it comes to a fight, it’s your ugly training sword and your big mana pool against whatever they have."

Arthur nodded to himself, even though she could not see. A faint, cool veil settled over his skin, and the hum of his mana dulled to almost nothing.

I understand.

He slowed even further as the two figures reached the outer wall of the central tower. The tower was made of darker stone than the rest of the academy, and it had no windows on the lower three floors. They pressed against the stone, perfectly invisible to any normal observer, their cloaks blending with the shadow. One of them reached into a pouch and pulled out a small crystal, milky white and pulsing. The other began whispering an incantation, his hands moving in a small, tight circle.

Arthur moved closer, keeping to the shadows of the sky bridges, his heart beating steadily now, not from fear but from focus. He was not sure what he would do if they opened the treasury, but he could not let them steal whatever artifact they had come for. Not after everything that had happened. Not when everyone else was looking the other way.

The two figures slipped through a side entrance that should not have existed. The crystal in their hands flared, and the ancient lock on the service door - a door sealed for a hundred years - opened without resistance, without even a sound.

Cold air breathed out from inside.

Arthur followed them in, silent, blade ready, Eros Codex warm against his ribs.

What am I even doing?