Chapter 42: Conclusion [1]
Voices echoed from outside.
Alden straightened and looked at the entrance.
"They’re coming."
He turned to Seris.
She was sitting against the cave wall with her academy uniform perfectly neat and her hands folded in her lap, looking like she’d spent the last twenty minutes waiting for a meeting rather than taking a scythe to the back and sending a man through three walls and a mountain peak.
She looked back at him.
"I suppose we should decide what we’re telling them."
Alden clicked his tongue. "About Vincent being a vampire spy working for your father?"
"That’s one of the things." She held his gaze. "We leave out the part about my father."
"I know. I’m not a fool."
"You’re not? That’s great."
His eye twitched. He looked away from her and at the destruction behind them instead.
The first hole where Vincent had gone through the wall. The second. The third. And beyond all three of them, visible in the distance through the open mountain air, the collapsed peak.
"...We’re going to have a hard time explaining this."
"I suppose we are."
He turned toward the entrance.
"Alden." Seris called.
He stopped. When he looked back, something in Seris’s expression had shifted.
"Thank you."
He stared at her for a moment.
Then looked away. "Don’t mistake that for trust."
"I know." The corner of her lips moved. "But you’re helping me hide my father’s plans regardless."
Before he could answer that—
"ALDEN?!"
Leon came through the entrance at a near run, clothes torn, hair a disaster, carrying an impressive amount of mountain snow on his jacket. He made it two steps inside and stopped completely.
His eyes moved across the cavern.
Holes torn through the walls, the ground shattered beneath them. Through all three openings, the collapsed peak was visible—a perfect display of how much had gone wrong while he was away.
"...What happened in here?"
Nicholas came through behind him, sword still drawn, in similar condition. Roselle right after.
All three of them took in the destruction.
Then looked at Alden.
Then at Seris sitting against the wall with her hands folded, completely unbothered.
"Vice-President Seris!" Roselle immediately crossed to her and crouched down. "Are you alright?"
"Perfectly fine." Seris unfolded her hands. "I was resting after the battle."
Leon was still staring at the walls. Or what used to be the walls. "...Did you two do this?"
"Yeah." Alden glanced back at it. "Kind of."
"Kind of?!" Leon pointed at the third hole. "You sent Vincent flying through ALL of that?!"
"Something like that."
Nicholas sheathed his sword slowly. "What happened after we were separated?"
Seris stood from the wall and looked at the three of them and began talking.
She laid it out cleanly. Vincent working as a spy, his transformation into something between human and vampire that let him handle the Core without losing himself to it. His reason for targeting Alden that Alden had been moving too fast toward the truth, understanding things he shouldn’t, making himself a liability to whoever had sent Vincent here. She kept the details concrete. She kept her father’s name out of it.
"During the battle," she finished, "Vincent used the Helion Core to enhance himself. Considerably stronger than expected. But we dealt with it." A short pause. "He must be dead by now."
Nicholas stared at the holes.
"Professor Vincent." He said the name slowly. "Working with vampires. Stealing the Core." He shook his head. "It’s still hard to believe."
Leon and Roselle looked the same, processing it.
Leon turned toward the biggest hole and looked down through it.
"Then the Helion Core’s gone too, right? It went with him when he fell."
Seris nodded "Yeah, it probably—"
"No." Alden cut her off.
Everyone turned.
He was already walking toward the edge of the hole.
"It’s not gone."
He stopped at the broken stone edge. Looked down. Then turned his attention to the wall beside the opening.
A single thread of spider web was still attached to the stone, barely visible, running from the surface out through the hole into open air.
He crouched and took it between his fingers and started pulling the thread.
The thread stretched taut for a moment and then something came back with it.
The Helion Core.
It rose over the edge of the opening and floated toward his palm, surrounded by a thin skin of mana where the web had kept hold of it.
He caught it with mana without touching it physically.
Same golden light, pulsing slowly.
Nobody spoke.
"When did yo—?" Leon’s mouth was open.
Alden held it up slightly.
"Before Vincent fell off the third wall, I aimed and shot a thread web that hit it and anchored to the wall." He looked at it.
"Thread web," Leon repeated.
"Didn’t want it to fall into a hole."
Another few seconds of silence.
Then Leon launched himself forward and grabbed Alden around the neck.
"YOU’RE INCREDIBLE. You were thinking about THAT while all of THAT was happening?!"
"Get off." Alden pulled his arm away.
Leon laughed anyway, stepping back and shaking his head.
Roselle was still looking at the Core in Alden’s hand. Her expression had been doing quiet work since it appeared.
Alden looked at her.
"So, Roselle."
She met his eyes.
He held the Core up slightly.
"Are you going to ask me how I knew where it was again? Whether knowing too much makes me a suspect?"
Her expression stiffened.
He kept going.
"Or are you going to admit that knowing something doesn’t automatically make a person the villain?"
Roselle was quiet for a moment. Then she looked down and sighed.
"...You did a great job, I guess."
Alden raised an eyebrow. "That’s it?"
"What else do you want me to say?"
"Nothing. That’s fine."
Nicholas had been looking at the wall the entire time. "I agree with Roselle." He said it without turning. "We have the Core because of you."
Alden looked at the side of his head and said nothing.
Seris turned toward the entrance.
"We should return to the academy and report everything to the Headmaster."
Nobody argued.
Nicholas, Roselle, and Leon started out through the entrance. Alden followed.
Seris fell into step beside him.
Her eyes drifted to the Core in his hand. The golden light catching the snow outside.
’That idiot Vincent ruined everything.’ She looked ahead at the path.
’Still. Better than having everything exposed. Better than this group knowing what I am and who my father is.’ Her expression didn’t change.
’And to think the Core which is just in front of me is actually going back to the academy with me unable to do anything...’ A quiet breath left her.
’What terrible luck.’
Alden glanced at her sideways. He was smiling.
’Did you think I’d let it fall?’ His grip around the Core shifted slightly. ’Vincent goes off the edge, Core goes with him, your people spend three days searching the base of that mountain while you pretend you had nothing to do with any of it. Clean and simple.’
His smile didn’t move.
’Hell nah.’
He looked at the path ahead.
’I may have pulled you out of that cave. I may be keeping your secret right now. But I am not letting you do whatever you want.’ His eyes sharpened.
’Your father’s plans, whatever you’ve been building inside this academy. I’m going to find all of it and then I’m going to take it apart.’
The mountain path stretched ahead. Snow still falling. The academy somewhere far below them, waiting.
Neither of them said anything.
Both walking in the same direction.
Both thinking in completely opposite ones.
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Wolf Blueprint: 90%
Spider Blueprint: 69%
Firefly Blueprint: 96%
Dragon Blueprint: 12%
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