The punch from Zero-G didn't put Sticky Sperm down for good...it only pushed him completely over the edge into a blind, vengeful madness.
"You lower-class bastards!" Sperm shrieked from the floor.
He violently thrust his hand upward, his face contorted in rage.
"Slime Spike!"
A thick, jagged spike of hardened white slime erupted from his palm, flying straight toward our table.
Zero-G tried to raise a gravity shield, but the projectile was too close. The spike slammed dead-center into the wood, completely shattering our table in an explosion of splinters, crushed cinnamon toast, and spilling water.
Panic instantly swept through the canteen. Screaming students scrambled over benches, abandoning their trays and rushing for the main exit to avoid getting caught in the crossfire of an illegal upperclassman brawl.
My hunter instincts flared. I could kill this guy in a millisecond, but with the entire cafeteria watching and faculty guards undoubtedly on their way, any high-tier physical output would completely blow my cover to the Archivist. I had to play the defenseless student.
"Get out of here! Move! Leave the canteen, now!" I shouted to the girls, grabbing Amelia by the waist and pulling Aisha and Cindy behind me.
"Zenni, come with us!" Aisha cried out, but she obeyed, sprinting beside Amelia and Cindy toward the crowded hallway exit.
But Sticky Sperm wasn't about to let me walk away. Sweeping his gaze through the dust and chaos, his bloodshot eyes locked onto my retreating back.
"Crimson Phantom! Where do you think you're going, you cowardly slum rat?!" he roared.
He clapped his slimy hands together, molding a massive, pressurized arrow made of slime. With a malicious flick of his wrists, he launched the projectile at terminal velocity...not just at me, but aimed directly at the backs of the running girls.
"Dammit." I couldn't dodge. If I let that hit them, the impact would break their bones.
Forced to act, I bit the inside of my cheek hard, drawing a mouthful of blood, and spun around, thrusting both hands outward to shield them.
Then I used my blood manipulation to make a blood bubble where the girls were inside, this is without a doubt, the same bubble that protected me from the explosion.
A dense stream of dark red blood erupted from my palms, rapidly expanding and weaving together into a swirling, pressurized bubble of fluid that completely enclosed the girls and me. A split second later, the heavy slime arrow slammed violently into the outer shell of the blood bubble.
"THUD!"
The crimson fluid rippled violently, absorbing the kinetic impact and dissolving the sticky slime before it could penetrate the sphere.
Inside the dim, red-tinted protection of the blood dome, the chaotic noise of the canteen became muffled. I dropped to one knee, panting heavily to sell the illusion that casting the shield had completely drained my freshman-tier mana.
I looked up at the three girls, my eyes filled with genuine concern.
"Are you okay? Did any of the impact reach you?"
Amelia, still trembling slightly from the near-miss, immediately hugged my neck from behind.
"I-I'm fine, Zenni... because you protected us."
Aisha wiped a bead of sweat from her forehead, nodding quickly.
"I'm okay too. That was too close."
Cindy gripped my sleeve tightly, her breath hitching but her voice steady.
"I'm fine, Zenni. But your shield... can it hold against him?"
Outside the pulsing walls of my blood bubble, I could hear Sticky Sperm's heavy, squelching footsteps drawing closer, his laughter echoing maliciously through the ruined canteen. He thought he had me cornered. Little did he know, he was just making it easier for me to orchestrate his downfall without anyone ever realizing it was me.
Outside the vibrating walls of my blood shield, Sticky Sperm was growing increasingly frustrated.
"Break, you stupid shield! Break!" he screamed.
"THUD! THUD! THUD!"
A barrage of slime arrows slammed relentlessly against the exterior of the crimson bubble, but my manipulation kept the fluid dense and durable. To the outside world, it looked like a desperate, max-power defensive spell from a cornered prodigy, but in reality, I was barely using a fraction of a percent of my true mana pool.
Before Sperm could completely overwhelm the shield, Zero-G recovered his footing amidst the canteen's wreckage. Creeping up from behind, the sophomore delivered a vicious, heavy-handed punch right into the center of the third-year's back.
"CRACK!"
Sperm gasped, stumbling forward as the wind was knocked completely out of him. Zero-G wanted to lock him down with a gravity spike, but his mana was clearly running low from the tournament and the initial fivefold cast. Unable to increase the gravity directly on Sperm's body, the tactician adapted. He thrust his hands outward, casting a localized gravity pull on dozens of heavy metal lunch trays scattered across the floor.
The trays flew into the air, swirling like a metallic hurricane, and came hurling down on Sperm from all angles, creating a chaotic, clattering distraction.
"Now's our chance," I whispered to the girls.
While Sperm was frantically swatting away the flying trays and trading blows with Zero-G, I deliberately cut the mana supply to my spell. Instead of letting it fade smoothly, I caused the blood bubble to violently pop outward like a bursting water balloon.
"SPLASH!"
Dark, liquefied crimson sprayed in every direction. Since I was pretending to be an exhausted, amateur freshman, I couldn't perfectly control the splatter. A significant amount of the blood completely drenched our clothes, leaving deep, wet, crimson stains all over my uniform and the girls' pristine ivory skirts and blouses.
Aisha looked down at her ruined clothes and let out a horrified shriek.
"Oh my gosh! My uniform! Zenni, it's completely stained!"
Amelia pinched her wet fabric, her face twisted in a mix of disgust and annoyance.
"Ugh, it's so sticky! This is going to take forever to get out!"
Cindy was frowning deeply, trying to wring out the hem of her sleeve.
"My favorite blouse..."
They definitely weren't happy about the impromptu blood bath. I, however, had to keep my eyes on the bigger picture. I needed to act exactly like a panicked, law-abiding student who wanted no part in an illegal upperclassman brawl.
"Hey, no need to complain right now! Wash them later! We need to leave and report this to the faculty immediately!" I said quickly, grabbing Amelia and Aisha by their hands and pulling them toward the exit.
Saying it out loud was the perfect cover. It made me look completely defenseless, reliant on school authority, and utterly detached from the lethal crimson phantom who usually handled problems by leaving a trail of bodies.
The girls, realizing the danger of the ongoing tray-and-slime war behind us, stopped complaining and ran. We bolted through the shattered doorway, leaving Zero-G and Sticky Sperm to tear the rest of the cafeteria apart. As we broke out into the main hallway and blended into the crowds of fleeing students, I glanced back one last time, a cold, hidden smirk playing on my lips.
"Keep fighting, upperclassmen. The more chaos you cause, the less the Archivist looks at me."
As we burst out into the grand hallway, the distant sound of crashing metal and squelching slime still echoed from the canteen. I was scanning the corridor for an escape route when I suddenly spotted two imposing figures walking briskly toward the commotion.
It was my older sister, Principal Elicia, and right beside her, the Archivist himself.
My heart did a quick, dangerous flutter. I wasn't expecting the Archivist to be walking the halls during lunch. If he analyzed the residue of the blood bubble I had just popped, he might notice the unnatural density of the mana. I had to instantly lock into my helpless, panicked Zenni persona to completely shatter any suspicion.
Leaping forward with a look of pure, terrified desperation, I threw myself right at my sister.
"Principal Elicia! Thank goodness you're here!" I wailed, reaching out and clinging tightly to the fine, expensive fabric of her royal dress.
In my engineered panic, I deliberately smeared my blood-stained hands all over her immaculate skirt, leaving messy, dark crimson streaks across the fabric. I pointed back toward the canteen doors, my voice shaking.
"Inside... the canteen! The two seniors, Zero-G and that slime guy, they've gone completely crazy! They're destroying everything and attacking people!"
I peeked up subtly to gauge her reaction. Elicia didn't show a single sign of disgust or anger at her ruined dress. Instead, her sharp eyes bypassed me and locked onto Aisha, Amelia, and Cindy standing right behind me, their ivory uniforms heavily drenched and dripping with my crimson blood.
As the principal, she instantly pieced the scene together: the third-year had attacked, and I had used a messy, desperate freshman blood manipulation spell to shield the girls from harm.
"Calm down, Zenni. You did well to protect your classmates," Elicia said, her voice dropping into a calm, commanding tone that befitted the head of the academy.
She gently patted my shoulder, ignoring the wet blood transfer.
"Stay here with the girls. I will handle this immediately."
She turned her gaze toward the canteen doors, her aura flaring with authority as she prepared to march inside and put an end to the brawl.
But before she could take a step, the heavy, ominous voice of the Archivist cut through the hallway air. He had been standing just a few paces back, his dark robes pooling around his feet as his calculating eyes locked onto me, then onto the blood dripping from my hands.
"Hold on a moment, Principal Elicia,"
The Archivist called out, his voice smooth, cold, and dripping with an underlying curiosity that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. He stepped forward, the ambient temperature in the hallway seemingly dropping as he approached our group.
I didn't stick around to see what the Archivist wanted. The moment he called out, I grabbed the girls' hands, put on a perfectly terrified face, and bolted down the opposite corridor like any normal, panicked freshman would do. We ran until we were safely around the corner, blending into the crowd of retreating students.
Behind us, Principal Elicia marched directly into the chaotic canteen.
"ENOUGH!" her voice boomed, laced with an overwhelming pressure that instantly shushed the entire room.
Zero-G and Sticky Sperm froze mid-strike, their hearts dropping into their stomachs. Looking at the furious expression on the Principal's face, they hesitated and immediately lowered their magic. Elicia scolded them ruthlessly in front of the remaining staff, her words cutting through their upperclassman pride like a knife. She made it completely clear that their little turf war had crossed the line, declaring that both of them were to report straight to detention for the rest of the week, effective immediately.
While Elicia was handing down the punishments, the Archivist slowly stepped into the ruined canteen. His sharp, calculating eyes scanned the massacre of the room...the shattered tables, the lingering gravitational distortions, the white slime dripping from the ceiling, and the puddles of my faded, low-density blood residue.
The Archivist leaned in close and whispered to Elicia, asking about the students' specific human skills.
"The sophomore possesses gravity manipulation, and the third-year possesses slime manipulation. He can harden the fluid into solid shapes." Elicia whispered back, keeping her composure.
Hearing this, the Archivist's eyes widened slightly beneath his hood. He stood completely still, his mind instantly recalling the gruesome events from the midnight jailbreak on the bridge. He remembered looking at the corpses of his elite clan members. Several of them had deep, jagged lacerations...cuts that didn't match any standard steel blade, but looked like they were sliced by an unknown, dense, synthetic substance. He remembered seeing Sticky Sperm mold a hardened slime sword earlier in the coliseum.
"A dense, shape-shifting substance..." the Archivist thought, his internal logic completely twisting the facts.
Because I had strictly used basic, watery blood manipulation and a sloppy defensive bubble, my magic looked entirely amateurish and completely disconnected from a cold-blooded killer. But Sticky Sperm? He had the motive, a rude, unhinged personality, and a magic affinity that could create hardened, unnatural blades matching the wounds on the bridge.
The Archivist's eyes locked onto the trembling third-year. A dark, satisfied smirk spread across the old man's face as he leaned back toward Elicia.
"We found him, that third-year... he is Oksana's apprentice. He is the one who slaughtered my men." the Archivist murmured coldly, pointing a slender finger directly at Sticky Sperm.
Hidden just down the hallway, peeking around the corner with the girls, I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing out loud. The arrogant, foul-mouthed senior who had just threatened my girls had just accidentally taken the fall for the crimson phantom. The trap had sprung, but it had snapped shut on the wrong mouse. My cover was completely safe.
The air inside the shattered canteen instantly turned to ice. The moment the Archivist pointed his finger at Sticky Sperm, the remaining staff and the few lingering students held their breath, realizing this was no longer a simple school disciplinary matter.
Principal Elicia's eyes widened slightly, her protective instincts as a headmaster kicking in. She stepped between the Archivist and the trembling third-year.
"Wait, your Excellency, he is not Oksana's apprentice. I have his records. He is a loudmouth, yes, but he is innocent of such a high crime."
The Archivist's expression darkened, a suffocating, oppressive aura radiating from his robes as he glared down at my sister.
"Do not shush me, Principal, I am a high-ranking member of the Grand Council, and I will speak the truth. Last night, an undercover operation occurred near the bridge to claim Oksana's supposed apprentice. But it quickly backfired. All of my elite men were slaughtered in the dark. The investigation knights reported that the killer was a student from this very academy, Sisiphon, and that they wielded a highly specialized manipulation magic." the Archivist hissed, finally revealing his true authority to the room.
He took a slow step toward Sticky Sperm, his eyes gleaming with cold certainty.
"I did not know the exact element at the time. But seeing him today... it is clearly him. The slime sword he used in the ring matches the bizarre, unknown substance that sliced my men to pieces. The evidence is right in front of us."
Hearing that the terrifying old man was a member of the ruling Grand Council, Sticky Sperm's face drained of all color.
"N-No! I was in my dorm last night! I swear! It wasn't me! I just have a stupid name and a stupid clerical error!" he wailed, his white slime dripping uncontrollably onto the floor out of sheer panic.
But a principal, no matter how powerful, could not openly defy a direct accusation from a Council member without hard proof. Elicia looked at the Archivist, then down at the blubbering third-year. She knew she had to take control of the situation before the Archivist's guards dragged the boy away to a torture dungeon.
With a tight, serious expression, Elicia stepped forward and firmly grabbed Sticky Sperm by his uniform collar, hauling him up.
"You… you are coming with me to the disciplinary office for a full, secure interrogation. And you, second-year," she snapped,
Elicia commanded coldly, her tone leaving no room for argument, my sister then prepared glaring at Zero-G, who was standing frozen in shock.
"You are going straight to isolation detention. Move, both of you."
Watching from around the corner of the hallway, safely hidden out of sight, I leaned casually against the stone wall. I let out a very quiet, slow breath, a dark and entirely satisfied smirk spreading across my face.
"Perfect, the arrogant prick who threatened my girls is being dragged away to a black-site interrogation room, the Council thinks they've solved the mystery, and the Archivist is completely blind to the actual Phantom standing right down the hall. My cover isn't just safe...it's ironclad."