I regressed and became the Sword Ice King-Chapter 416- Festival 147- Raid on a Rainy Night 86

Under the luminance of the metallic pipes, two figures descended a platform.

Their feet echoed in the silent air.

Landing and climbing against platforms and crevices suitable for human hold.

It was a solemn trip. One with whisks of stories unfolding in flesh and blood. Imprinted into the air, as the smell lingered like the burn in the throat after a gulp of whiskey.

It was a growing contrast to the aqua-blue walls and glowing structures of the conduit.

Its structural formation is locked in a constant state.

Some were arranged in symmetry, but many had been scattered across the board.

Created with the tendency of acting as a maze and easily throwing off any invaders– if any.

Ciara walked behind her captive. One hand held firmly on her handgun while the other lingered behind her footsteps.

Her attention was torn between two things.

One was their environment. The path they took for the masked male to lead her to the captured students.

The other was the man himself. The mask. The things he had said and things he had left unsaid.

He was far from deceived at this point. After all, she had broken every will within him and continued to do so in their little trek.

But that didn’t mean he had said everything he knew.

There were bound to be important notes.

Key references, perhaps, that could link her to the so-called Kingdom level threat. The Red Peacemakers.

They had been in the shadows for so long, and still were as most of their members were unknown to the Kingdom and the Great Families.

Ciara’s face wrinkled at the thought.

’That is the problem.’

They only acted when the situation favoured them.

Making subtle changes to events that don’t concern them.

As if they exist to assist.

’But they assist chaos...’

She tilted her head at the thought. Subtly.

Just then, they had come around a corner.

Making a sharp turn into a large opening leading further down a light-filled pipe.

She stared into it, then sighed.

The monotonous motion of their march to the captured students was getting to her.

It was slowly becoming more of a task than a mission. If it had a difference.

The pipes. The turns. The lighting.

It was all the same.

Just a different path leading down a different direction. Upwards, downwards and most times, forward.

Her gaze lingered on the sight.

Tracing down patterns of blue and white lining across the surface.

It held a glow to it. One that blossomed with natural vigour.

Injecting the world around with a brilliant mixture of white and blue.

Like the surface of the ocean.

The scene left a lasting impression on her.

Unlike a moment ago when she first stepped in, she was actually given the time and space to inspect the sub-space around her.

It intrigued her.

So much so that she narrowed down her gaze at it.

Just a bit more, she thought....when a voice cut through her focus.

"We’re almost there."

Ciara’s gaze snapped once, then shifted to the side, and there, the masked man stood.

Shoulders slumped in defeat, with an unwilling eagerness to do as he was told.

The impression he once had as a veteran of the battlefield was completely wiped away by her fearsome tactics.

Relentless.

That was the word he could only use to describe her.

"Hah..." She said slowly in response.

Her gaze shifted back to the walls of the pipeway, before returning to the man.

’I will have to look into psychic magic once all this is over....’

"Well. Let us be there." She said with a hushed tone while nudging him forward with her gun. "We don’t have all the time. Chop Chop."

The man groaned slightly before turning around and commencing their trek into the pipeway.

Leaving a moment of silence for the two to withdraw to their thoughts.

As well as contemplate the next matter at hand.

What do they do once they get to the captured students?

While one feared his life would come to an end, he searched for a means of escape.

The other wondered about a quick and effective method of ensuring her captive died.

Still, within the solemn walls, they continued to walk.

Footsteps echoing and drowning the silence in a tranquil rhythm.

****

The signs of battle had spread far and wide within the Academy.

So much so that it had become a skeleton of what it once was.

From the onset of the gate that led into the Academy, to the ending where the fields behind the Hostel Buildings lay waste.

Confrontations, underwent.

The rain continued to sizzle down the earth.

Lightning was rumbling through the clouds while thunder shook the skies.

It was a quiet night. A dark one.

One that would be recorded in both the histories of man and the gods. If they watched.

Homeric Academy for Gifted Children had stood in its own domain for years.

Years of peace, and years of scholastic learning.

Warriors, Knights, Mages, Scholars, Politicians.

The number was numerous.

They bred chosen after chosen.

A generation of leaders.

Yet, that Academy of prestige and reserve had been brought to its knees.

A mere shadow of what it once was under the conflict of its own limbs and feet.

Students battled against their forgotten Lecturers. Humans of knowledge who turned their backs on the system and chose to create one of their own.

Lecturers fought against themselves.

Forming a thin line between what they stood for and what they stood against.

All this, while forgetting the history of the name that preceded them.

In the distance, one of these conflicts could be seen reaching its climax.

A form of finality that had spread through the air with the crackling intensity of mana reflux.

Its effect had reached here as well, as much as it had done, the entire Academy.

Leaving their enemy for waste while giving the defenders the upper hand.

Raffaelo Jun. Rita Vinci. Elsie Darkpelt.

The once flourishing fields had been burnt and frozen to a snap.

Leaving a contrasting land of burning and freezing that continued to linger even with the pouring rain.

The intensity of the battle was laid bare for all.

Destruction.

Large craters. A plane of darkness that hung in the balance, suffusing the air in small amounts.

Signs of collapse from great artworks.

Broken statues. Knights with lances scattered across the broken battlefield.

Pillars of crayon, Swords and Spears of ink. Mass creation of arts, unnatural to the real world, yet proving an existence that was bare to human eyes.

All testament to the nature of the Vinci Household.

The soil was loose. Burnt. Caked in a form that felt warm to the feet, yet burned when stepped on for too long.

But it didn’t, because a cold shiver ran through that field.

One that spread to its very core.

Reaching and cracking as it froze in place.

Cutting off the flames that seemed to never blow off.

It was like winter but colder.

And the air felt it.

The rain embraced it.

As each drop reached the surface of the decayed land, it would freeze to a near-dead temperature.

Forming pellets of ice that landed like sand.

Forming grains of ice that shattered on landing.

Its broken edges formed trinkets of sparkling white, like pieces of diamonds scattered across an asphalt road.

The coldness was unnatural.

Vividly so, and the faint hushness of darkness that lingered with it only intensified the pressure of the coldness.

It was especially so, in the middle of the field. The three defenders stood around their fallen enemy.

One with white hair. A male, with colourless eyes that seemed to sparkle with the brilliance of the night.

His presence seemed to weigh on the world.

Leaving a dashing hole that was yet to be filled.

The coldness emanated from him. No, it dwelt with him. Existed from him.

Spreading in slow amounts like the fumes from a boiling pot of oil, simmering with the intensity of the flames.

His gaze, unfazed by the world around him, was fixed on the fallen enemy.

An obstacle they had fought with great disparity, only to obtain victory with a final showcase of power.

His body was covered in cold ice and burn marks. Scars and bruises that lingered like a rotting fruit.

A once well-reserved human was now half the man he was, half replaced by the demon tied to his soul.

The cloud of Miasma that once enveloped his body had been completely wiped out.

Erased like it was never there.

Leaving only the remnants of his transformation. Half broken by the strain of his body.

Pillars of ice, Spears that bore flesh and dried, frozen blood at the tip pierced through his body.

Pulling him into a rigid position, like a pin cushion.

While his chest rose and fell from the fatigue, his cold, dull eyes held something more.

The resistance and urge to fight.

Raph saw it. Observed it and ignored it.

Morris, the Burly man, had fought past his limits, and it had become more apparent with the onset of the sudden explosion.

The sound that had turned the battle completely in their favour.

Raph could still recall it. The feeling.

The sensation that spread through his skin with the sudden clash of mana in the air– No, the entire Academy.

It was like an outburst.

A mana surge capable of so much more than just destruction.

It was a familiar sensation too.

One that he had felt multiple times in his past life. Mostly in the war.

’Mana collision...a clash of Transcendent...’

It was an easy conclusion, yes, and not as much of a problem as his next thought.

’...But who?’

Still, it was thanks to this sudden clash that they were able to bring down their enemy to this extent.

Just enough for them to cut him off from the world. Completely.

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