Chapter : 1421

  "Yes. Why do you carry it? You are rich. You are powerful. You could just... stop. You could go to your estate, close the gates, and live a life of luxury. Why do you fight so hard? Why do you let people attack you?"

  Lloyd looked at his reflection in the dark water of the pond. Why did he fight? Was it for survival? Yes. Was it for revenge against Firefly? Yes. But there was more.

  "Because I know what happens if I don't," Lloyd said softly. His voice lost its humor. "I know what happens when good people do nothing. The weeds grow. The walls crumble. And the monsters come out of the dark."

  He picked up a pebble and skipped it across the water. One, two, three skips.

  "I have seen a world where no one fought," Lloyd said, thinking of the bleak corporate dystopia of his past life's history books, and the ruins of this world's history. "It wasn't pretty. I have the power to stop the monsters, Airin. If I have the power, I have the responsibility. It's a curse, really. The curse of competence."

  "You sound like a guardian," Airin said. "Like the stone gargoyles on the roof. Watching. Protecting. Even when the pigeons poop on them."

  Lloyd burst out laughing. It was loud and startling in the quiet garden. "Yes! Exactly! I am a gargoyle covered in metaphorical pigeon poop. That is the best description of my life I have ever heard."

  Airin smiled, pleased that she had made him laugh. "I am glad I could clarify your existential crisis."

  "You have a gift, Airin," Lloyd said, wiping a tear of mirth from his eye. "You see things clearly. Don't lose that. The Academy... this world... it tries to make things complicated. It tries to make you choose sides. Don't let them. Stay simple. Bake your bread."

  "I will," she promised. "And you... try to put the backpack down sometimes. even gargoyles need to rest their wings."

  "I'll try," Lloyd said. "But no promises. The pigeons are relentless."

  They reached the edge of the garden, near the student dormitories. The walk was over. The bubble of peace was popping.

  "Thank you, Professor," Airin said, turning to him. "For the walk. And for not being a scary wizard."

  "Thank you, Airin," Lloyd replied. "For the company. And for not asking me about the Princess."

  "Goodnight, Lloyd," she said. She used his name. It was a breach of protocol, but it felt right.

  "Goodnight, Airin."

  He watched her walk up the steps to the dorm. She paused at the door, waved once, and disappeared inside.

  Lloyd stood there for a moment in the darkness. He felt lighter. The exhaustion was still there, but the crushing weight of isolation had lifted just a fraction. He had a friend. Not a political ally. Not a complicated lover. Just a friend who wanted to bake bread.

  It was a small thing. A fragile thing. But in a war of shadows and curses, it felt like the most real thing he had found in a long time.

  He turned and headed back to his tower. The work was waiting. The curse was waiting. But he walked a little faster, his step a little lighter, humming a tune he hadn't thought of in eighty years.

  The next morning, the sun rose over the Academy training grounds, illuminating a scene of organized chaos. It was "Practical Combat Application Day" for the first-year students. This meant a lot of teenagers were waving sharp sticks and shouting bad Latin at wooden dummies.

  Lloyd stood on the sidelines, holding a mug of coffee and looking unimpressed. He was supervising the "Misfit" class, along with a few other instructors.

  "Remember!" Lloyd shouted across the field. "The dummy cannot feel pain! You cannot intimidate it! Stop making scary faces at the wood!"

  A boy near the front stopped growling at his target and looked sheepish. "Sorry, Professor. I thought it would help my morale."

  "Morale is internal," Lloyd lectured. "Accuracy is external. Hit the target, then make faces."

  The training dummies were standard-issue magical constructs. They were made of enchanted oak, articulated with brass joints, and powered by a simple mana core. They were programmed to block, parry, and occasionally whack a student with a padded stick if they dropped their guard. They were annoying, but harmless. Usually.

  Chapter : 1422

  Lloyd watched Airin practicing her defensive wards. She was good. Her shields were solid and efficient. Next to her, a student named Jace was trying to set his dummy on fire.

  "Jace," Lloyd called out. "Fire is for the advanced class. Stick to kinetic bolts."

  "But fire is cool!" Jace argued.

  "Burn units are not cool," Lloyd countered. "Kinetic bolts. Now."

  Lloyd took a sip of coffee. It was a peaceful morning. Boring, even. He liked boring.

  Suddenly, a strange sound cut through the noise of the practice. It was a low, discordant hum, like a bee trapped in a jar.

  Vmmmmmmm.

  Lloyd frowned. He lowered his mug. "What is that?"

  He scanned the field. The sound was coming from the far end, where a student named Kael (not the assassin, just a kid with unfortunate naming) was sparring with a dummy.

  Kael was a nervous kid with a weak wind spirit. He was casting small gusts of air at the dummy. The dummy was supposed to sway and reset.

  But this dummy wasn't swaying. It was twitching.

  Its wooden head jerked to the side violently. Its brass joints ground together with a sound like screaming metal. The red paint painted on its "face" seemed to darken.

  "Stop!" Lloyd shouted, his instincts flaring. "Kael, back away!"

  Kael froze. "Professor?"

  The dummy didn't wait. It didn't follow its programming. It didn't wait for an attack. It lunged.

  It moved with a speed that shouldn't be possible for wood and gears. It brought its padded club down not in a sparring tap, but in a killing arc aimed directly at Kael's skull.

  "Down!" Lloyd roared.

  He dropped his coffee. He didn't use magic; he used physics. He sprinted, kicked off a bench, and tackled Kael. They hit the grass rolling just as the club smashed into the ground where Kael's head had been a second ago.

  CRACK.

  The earth splintered. The club shattered from the force of the impact.

  "What the hell?" Kael squeaked from under Lloyd.

  Lloyd scrambled up, pulling Kael behind him. "Everyone back! Clear the field!"

  Stolen novel; please report.

  The dummy jerked upright. Its movements were wrong. They were jagged, unnatural. It turned its head toward Lloyd. The painted eyes seemed to be looking at him.

  "Target," the dummy rasped. It didn't have a voice box. The wood itself was vibrating to make the sound.

  "Okay," Lloyd said, dusting off his coat. "That's new. Since when do the training dummies talk?"

  Another instructor, a Fire Mage named Professor Horg, ran over. "Malfunction! It must be a mana surge! I'll disable it!"

  Horg raised his wand. "Fireball!"

  A ball of flame struck the dummy in the chest. Usually, this would char the wood and deactivate the core.

  The dummy didn't fall. It absorbed the fire. The flames swirled around its wooden torso and turned... black.

  "It ate the fire?" Horg gasped. "That is not standard protocol!"

  The dummy shrieked. It leaped at Horg.

  "Oh, for the love of..." Lloyd grumbled.

  He moved. He didn't use his spirits—too flashy, too many witnesses. He used his [Steel Blood].

  He manifested a thin, invisible wire of steel from his finger. He whipped it out, wrapping it around the dummy's ankles mid-air. He yanked back.

  The dummy crashed face-first into the dirt. But it didn't stop. It clawed at the ground, dragging itself toward the students with terrifying determination.

  "It's not a glitch," Lloyd realized, watching the black energy pulse under the wood grain. "It's a possession."

  "Someone get me an axe!" Lloyd shouted. "Or a very large beaver!"

  He tightened the wire, pinning the dummy's legs together. The construct thrashed, its wooden limbs snapping and reforming. It was trying to break its own bones to get free.

  "Students, run!" Lloyd ordered. "To the tower! Go!"

  The field cleared in seconds. Only Lloyd and a few pale-faced instructors remained.

  "We need to destroy the core," Lloyd said. "It's in the chest."

  He approached the thrashing machine. He needed to be precise. He needed to end this before it exploded or infected the other dummies.

  He formed a steel spike in his hand. "Sorry, Pinocchio. No strings on you."

  He drove the spike down into the center of the dummy's back.

  The spike pierced the wood with a sickening crunch. Lloyd twisted it, hunting for the mana core. He felt the crystal shatter.

  The dummy convulsed once, violently, and then went still. The black flames that had wreathed it dissipated into smoke.

  Silence fell over the training field.

  Chapter : 1423

  Professor Horg wiped sweat from his forehead. "By the stars. What was that? A localized animation error? A curse?"

  "It was aggressive," Lloyd said, standing up. He pulled his spike out; the steel dissolved back into his skin before anyone noticed. "Too aggressive. That thing wanted blood."

  "We must report this to the Headmaster," Horg said. "We need to check the supplier. Maybe it was a bad batch of oak."

  "You do that," Lloyd said. "I'll handle the cleanup."

  As the instructors hurried off to file paperwork—because in academia, paperwork followed near-death experiences—Lloyd knelt back down beside the destroyed dummy.

  He looked around. The coast was clear.

  "Activate," he whispered. "[All-Seeing Eye]."

  His vision shifted. The world became a wireframe of energy and matter. He looked at the dummy's shattered chest.

  The mana core was broken, but there was something else. A residue.

  It looked like a slime mold made of shadow. It was coiled around the fragments of the core, pulsating faintly. It wasn't just dark magic; it was... alive.

  "Parasite," Lloyd whispered.

  He watched closely. As the mana in the core faded, the shadow-residue began to move. It detached itself from the crystal shards. It slithered through the wood grain like a worm.

  It was looking for a new host.

  It reached the tip of the dummy's wooden finger, which was touching the grass. The shadow seeped out of the wood and into the earth. It moved through the soil, heading toward...

  Lloyd tracked it. It was moving toward a rack of spare practice swords a few feet away.

  "Oh no you don't," Lloyd hissed.

  He slammed his hand onto the ground in front of the moving shadow. He channeled his Void energy, creating a small, localized seal. A barrier.

  The shadow hit the barrier and recoiled. It hissed—a sound only Lloyd could hear in his mind. It tried to go around. Lloyd expanded the seal.

  Trapped, the energy writhed. It looked angry. It looked hungry.

  "It's not a spell," Lloyd realized, his heart pounding. "Spells fade. Spells are static instructions. This... this is hunting. It's a virus. A magical virus."

  He understood now. Valerius had said the curse was spreading. That it adapted. This was why. It wasn't a blanket curse cast over the school. It was an infection. It jumped from object to object, corrupting the enchantment, draining the user, and then moving on to a fresh battery.

  "It eats mana," Lloyd analyzed. "It uses the object's own function against the user. The training dummy fights. The pen writes. It inverts the purpose."

  But the most terrifying part was how it moved. It was seeking. It had intent.

  "It's sentient," Lloyd thought. "Or semi-sentient. Like the Golem Heart, but malicious. It's a bio-weapon made of mana."

  The shadow, realizing it was trapped, did something unexpected. It evaporated. It simply dissolved into the ambient mana field, dispersing like smoke in the wind.

  "It can hide," Lloyd noted. "It can go dormant until it finds a new host."

  He stood up, deactivating his eye. The headache returned instantly.

  He had a clue. A real clue. This wasn't just a traitor sabotaging things. The traitor had released a living plague into the school's armory.

  "If this gets into the main mana well," Lloyd thought, looking at the huge tower in the center of the Academy, "it will infect everything. Every wand, every light, every door lock. The school will turn against us. The building itself will try to kill the students."

  He needed to contain it. He needed a quarantine. But he couldn't just tell everyone "Hey, there's an invisible shadow virus eating your wands." They would panic.

  He needed a sample. He needed to catch one of these shadow-worms and study it. He needed to figure out its biology—or necrology.

  "Mina," Lloyd thought. "I need Mina. And a really strong lamp that can seal a genie."

  He turned and walked towards the Old Tower. The morning wasn't boring anymore. It was terrifying. But at least now, he knew what the enemy looked like.

  It looked like nothing. And it was hungry.

  "Class is dismissed," Lloyd muttered to the empty field. "But the homework just got a lot harder."

  He walked fast. He had to update his team. The war in the shadows had just entered the classroom, and Lloyd wasn't going to let his students become collateral damage. Not again.

  Chapter : 1424

  Lloyd stood in the faculty lounge of the Royal Academy. It was a very serious room. The walls were covered in dark wood. The carpet was thick and smelled like old dust. There were paintings of old men with long beards staring down at everyone. It was the kind of room where fun went to die.

  Lloyd hated it immediately.

  He was there to meet his new colleagues. The "Special Response Team" for the curse investigation. Headmaster Valerius had hand-picked them. Lloyd hoped they were better than the furniture.

  "Professor Ferrum," a voice said.

  Lloyd turned. Standing there were four people. They looked like a diverse group of adventurers from a bad storybook.

  First was a woman with sharp eyes and a notebook in her hand. She looked like she was calculating the cost of the air they were breathing. This was Rubaiya. She was the Professor of Magical Theory and Strategy.

  Next was a woman who looked like she floated instead of walked. She wore a dress that cost more than Lloyd’s first car (if he had a car in this world). She had a smile that didn't reach her eyes. This was Tulip. She taught Diplomacy and Social Etiquette.

  Then there was a man who was looking at his own reflection in a silver tray on the table. He had blonde hair that was perfectly styled. He wore a sword that looked like it had never cut anything but cheese. This was Jamie. The fencing instructor.

  Finally, there was a man who looked like a brick wall that had grown a mustache. He stood perfectly straight. He didn't blink. This was Daniel. The instructor of Discipline and Order.

  "Hello," Lloyd said. "I am Lloyd. I like long walks on the beach and not dying from curses."

  "We know who you are," Jamie said, flipping his hair. "You are the one who caused a scene in the library. Princess Isabella was quite upset. I, of course, would never upset a princess."

  "Good for you," Lloyd said. "Do you want a medal?"

  "I have several," Jamie replied seriously.

  Rubaiya stepped forward. "Professor Ferrum. We have been assigned to assist you. However, I have reviewed your preliminary reports. They lack data. You claim the curse is a parasite, but you offer no mathematical proof."

  "It's a feeling," Lloyd said. "And also, I saw it eat a training dummy."

  "Feelings are not facts," Daniel boomed. His voice sounded like rocks grinding together. "We need procedure. We need rules. If we are to fight a curse, we must do it by the book."

  "The book is on fire, Daniel," Lloyd said. "The curse eats books. That's the problem."

  Tulip laughed softly. It sounded like wind chimes. "You are all so intense. Perhaps we should discuss this over tea? Or perhaps wine? Tension is bad for the skin."

  Lloyd looked at them. They were stiff. They were formal. They were in the Academy. If they tried to solve this mystery here, they would spend three weeks filling out forms and arguing about protocol.

  "No tea," Lloyd said. "And definitely no forms. We are leaving."

  "Leaving?" Daniel frowned. "It is school hours. We cannot leave the grounds without a permit."

  "I am the permit," Lloyd said. "We are going for a field trip. To 'The Broken Wand'."

  "That is a tavern," Rubaiya stated. "A low-class establishment frequented by students who skip class."

  "Exactly," Lloyd grinned. "The best information is found where the ale is cheap and the people are loud. Follow me. Or stay here and stare at the paintings of dead old men."

  Lloyd walked out. He didn't wait. He knew they would follow. Curiosity was a powerful thing. Also, he was technically their boss for this mission.

  They walked through the Academy grounds. Jamie complained about the mud getting on his boots. Daniel complained about the lack of marching formation. Rubaiya complained about the inefficiency of walking when they could have used a teleportation circle. Tulip just smiled and watched everyone.

  They arrived at 'The Broken Wand'. It was a noisy, wooden building on the edge of the campus. It smelled of roasted meat and beer. Lloyd loved it.

  He pushed the door open and walked in. The place was packed. Students were laughing, drinking, and playing cards. When they saw the five professors walk in, the room went silent.

  "Carry on!" Lloyd shouted. "We are just here for the nachos! Or whatever the fantasy equivalent of nachos is!"