"Mm… good morning. Is it morning?"

John rubbed his eyes, combing his messy hair with his fingers as he crawled out of his sleeping bag. Even though he was built such that temperature wasn't really a bother to him, he had to admit that the sleeping bags provided were incredibly comfortable.

Prota was waking up at the same time, her long, white hair strewn all over the place, getting in her eyes and mouth. She stretched, letting loose a wide yawn.

"Nn… good morning," she muttered, stifling another yawn.

"Come on, get changed. I'll get some food ready."

Prota nodded, slowly climbing out of her sleeping bag, getting ready to change out of her white flannel pyjamas. John, as usual, was dressed in his usual attire. He stepped out of the tent, his breath forming a white mist as he took in the cold winter air.

"Ah," he sighed, rubbing his hands together. "Nothing like a cold, fresh day to wake you up."

That was partially a joke. The cold wasn't really getting to him.

He pulled out a frying pan and some eggs, using the portable fire pit to get a hot fire going. A pack of bacon revealed itself, and by the time Prota had emerged from the tent they'd been staying in, the food was all hot and sizzling.

"All right, let's eat up quickly. I'm feeling a bit more motivated than usual today, so let's try exploring around the castle. Maybe the problem won't come to us. I'm thinking some kind of lab underneath, maybe? Some kind of secret experiments going on?"

Prota nodded, but it was mostly out of duty, rather than understanding. She was too focused on finishing her breakfast.

Eventually, the two cleaned up their campsite and continued through their exam. They'd occasionally stop to look at places of interest, ruined paintings or old, fancy furniture. Still, as the day went on, nothing really seemed to happen. The only thing John found mildly interesting was that the sky was still grey and cloudy, making it impossible to tell the time by the position of the sun, but their system's clocks did that for them anyway.

"Hm… really? Nothing?" John muttered as they stopped for lunch.

They'd picked up a few more treasures along the way, but aside from completing the exam as usual, there was really nothing interesting going on.

"Still, the castle's a lot warmer than I initially thought. It's… it's kinda warm, actually," John frowned. "Is there a flame trap nearby?"

Prota shook her head. She'd been able to sense any magic-related traps nearby, but there weren't any active ones at the moment.

"...hey. Stay on your guard."

The warning came too late. An explosion blew one of the stone walls nearby apart, and a large man burst through, grabbing Prota. His large, meaty hands were more than enough to scoop her up like a ragdoll, and he sprinted off, ploughing through the next wall, leaving a giant hole behind. As soon as he was gone, the heat dissipated, followed by a frigid cold.

"A shame I haven't been ordered to deal with you."

A beautiful lady stepped through the hole made by the man, with icy blue hair and blue lips.

"Well, if you're still alive by the time we've returned, I suppose we'll dispose of you. I heard about what you did to our comrades."

John froze, unsure of what to do. Did he fight? Run? He was so confused by how suddenly everything had happened that he didn't even know what to feel.

"I'll see you later."

The woman blew a kiss, then leapt through the hole to follow the man who'd kidnapped Prota. The lack of anybody nearby snapped John out of his thoughts. Right. He had to fight. This was what he'd brought the pills for.

Reaching into his bag, he took the medicine Arthur had made out, staring at it. Even though he knew he had to use it, he was hesitant.

"Oh, go ahead," he heard Zero say. "I wasn't going to get involved in this one, anyway. I'll sit back and read this fight."

"This… fight?"

John looked up. One more figure was stumbling through the mess. He frowned, squinting to get a better look. Something felt familiar about this one. It wasn't saying anything, though. And this person felt kind of odd. His skin tone was grey, something John had yet to see in this world.

"Who the fuck are you?" John frowned.

The figure stumbled through.

"That would be Aiden," Zero said. "The guy you killed back in chapter six?"

"Chapter… what?"

"Don't worry about it. That's a zombie, though. Unlike the last exam, you guys are the first to be targeted."

"...are we for real?"

"Nope! They're going after you guys specifically. Not a single student has been targeted. They were laying low this time. Seems they're a bit more wary of the teachers."

"Great."

"This castle also has a few blind spots. There's a few areas that won't be detected."

"This is some bullshit," John grumbled. "[Author's] just trying to get us to fight, right?"

"Hm… I'll leave that one up to you."

John grimaced, pulling out his bat. "Destiny's fighting too?"

"Yep!" Zero said cheerfully. "Good luck, John!"

The words seemed to be a sort of goodbye. The message was clear. Gulping, John looked at the pill one more time before popping it into his mouth, and he felt the fire in his chest activate once more.

"You… killed me…" Aiden mumbled, his words slurred.

"Yeah, I thought we left nothing but your ashes behind," John said, flipping his bat in his hands.

A meter showed up in his system. Oh, good. A way to track how much of his future energy he'd used up. That would come in handy, right?

"How the hell did they reconstruct you?"

"You'll… pay…"

"Damn. You're boring as hell."

John tapped the ground twice, the clinking of the metal ringing out as it made contact with the cold, hard stone.

"Well. I guess I have to put you down one more time."

~~~

Prota gasped as she was roughly dropped. They were in some kind of outdoor area, although this wasn't the courtyard she'd been looking at earlier. She was still shaking from having been manhandled so roughly, but the adrenaline pumping through her body was more than enough to help her get back to her feet. Without hesitation, she used mana recovery, immediately refilling her core with the mana from her staff.

"Leon, you didn't have to be so rough with her. If you were gonna fight her, then at least treat her like a lady."

"Sorry, Betty," the hulking man grinned. "I just got a little excited. Soul Steal, huh?"

"Yes, yes, I'm interested, too."

Betty, the lady John had briefly spoken to, was slowly walking down, a staircase of ice forming beneath her feet. Heat continued to radiate off the man named Leon, who was still facing Prota.

"Alright, little girl," Leon grinned. "Here's the deal. We're supposed to bring you in. But I don't think we need any weak test subjects. So you're gonna fight me, and then you're gonna fight her. If I think you're strong enough, then we'll bring you in alive. Got it? Oh, and if you're not up to snuff…"

He drew a line across his neck.

"Capiche?"

Prota didn't respond. All she did was grip her staff a little tighter.

"Then, let's begin."

The man immediately surrounded himself in flames, charging forward like a raging bull. She quickly sprang out of the way, using wind magic to propel her movement. There was no way she could pull her punches here.

"Good, good! You shouldn't be taken out by something like this!"

The man stopped himself with surprising agility and raised his hands. Prota was confused. He wasn't getting any closer. What was he—

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"Ka-boom!" he yelled, clapping his hands together.

A wave of flame flew forward, and Prota was barely able to block the attack. Ah. She really might die. She would lose this fight if she held back for even a moment.

"Keep it up, little girl!"

She formed a couple of icicles, flinging them at her opponent, but they simply melted as soon as they got close. They didn't even touch him, let alone leave a mark.

"You'll need something a little colder than that to breach my flames," Leon grinned, getting ready to charge again.

With that, he once again began rampaging, charging all over the place, smashing through columns, benches and railings, the old stone turning to dust before his power. Prota tried firing off fireballs, but those didn't do anything either. They simply merged into his flames and dissipated.

Soul Steal was next on the list, but she found she couldn't take anything from him. Right, if they knew about her power, they were surely prepared to defend against it, right? While trying to overpower their mental strength was possible, it wasn't worth the effort.

"Come on! Don't tell me that's all you've got?" Leon roared.

"She's a child, Leon. Surely you don't expect too much?" the woman called out.

"She's a demon child, Betty. Come on, aren't you also excited?"

The lady just grinned. Prota was relieved that she wasn't fighting against two opponents at the same time, because she wasn't sure she could handle something like that.

Still, she had a few more things to try. She whispered something, and a Blossom began to form, the flower completing in just a few seconds. She flung it forward, and while it kept its form through his flames, upon making contact, it simply melted away. The shards, normally capable of freezing anything they touched, weren't able to go anywhere.

"Wow, I felt something there. So you did have something up your sleeve! Come on, show me what you got! Anything else?"

Such a thing would've taunted anybody else, but Prota was too busy figuring out how she'd make it out of this mess. Frozen Flame? Well, it was worth a shot. Like before, her signature spell formed far faster than it had in the past, but she wasn't quite imbuing it with the power that had deflected a Final Stand. Once again, the ice made it a little past Leon's flames, and the explosion managed to make him shake a little, but in the end, it didn't do any damage.

"Wow! So, you're a caster, huh? I thought you were a fighter, the way you dance all over the place."

He grinned, raising his hands again. Prota braced herself for another clap, but it never came. Instead of using his ranged attack, Leon charged forward again, leaping forward, arms still extended. Landing on the ground, the explosion of flames made such a large shockwave that it sent Prota flying, slamming her into the wall. A thin stream of blood trickled out of her mouth as she got back up, casting mana recovery again and again.

"Well, fighter, caster, it doesn't matter. You won't be beating me any time soon."

~~~

"Where are you?!" Destiny yelled, slashing wildly.

Was his opponent invisible? How were they attacking him? How were they seeing him? Were they hiding in the shadows, somehow? But then, how was the darkness creeping up on him, pushing past his light? He'd been attacked by spikes over and over, and his energy was running low.

Spikes shot out from everywhere once more. Destiny's mana went to his nervous system, slowing down time, allowing him to analyze the direction of each and every attack. Unfortunately, there was just no way to dodge them all. He could avoid most, parry a few more, but in the end, he was grazed, cut and pierced. Blood poured out from his wounds, the attacks somehow making it through his mana reinforcement.

"Oh, little boy. Would you like to play a game?" the strange voice called out.

From the darkness came a little bunny. A bunny? What? It was pitch black, as if made from the shadows themselves, but otherwise looked like a stuffed animal you could find in any child's room.

Destiny frowned. "What the-"

Suddenly, it grew in size, its mouth distorting into sharp, terrible teeth, and it became a horrifying beast. If the spikes were any indication of how strong this thing would be… this wasn't looking good. Would it even be possible to take something like this down? The weak point. There had to be a weak point, right?

"Damn! What the hell?!"

Destiny leapt back, but his foot tripped up as his leg became tangled by a shadow vine. The monster roared and leapt forward, forcing Destiny to fire a volley of fireballs. They melted through the beast as if it were made of snow, and it began to vanish as it melted.

"Bravo! Bravo! But a circus can't just have small animals, you know?"

A growl let Destiny know what was coming next.

"You've gotta be kidding me."

From the darkness came a lion, but this was no ordinary lion. It was at least three times as large as the animal was meant to be, towering over Destiny. How was it even fitting in the hallway? No, no. Think, again. A weak point. There had to be something, right?

"Think, man, think!"

This had to be a clue. Bigger than the hall. Animals. Circus. What? What was the connection between all of this?

He had no time to think. In an instant, the lion's claws were all over him, and he was forced to block with his blade. Again, though, it cleaved through the shadow like snow, the flames seeming to melt the darkness away.

"Illusion. Is it an illusion? But how?"

"Illusion? Reality? What's the difference? It's all just a big show, isn't it?" the voice taunted from the darkness. "Fear is all that matters. Your fear feeds my joy. Stupid little boy. You'll never figure it out."

Figure it out. Something about that snapped Destiny out of his thoughts. Since when did he need to think like John? John was John. He was Destiny. John looked for weak points, looked for information, because that was all he had. He was weak, and he needed every advantage he could get.

But Destiny wasn't weak. He was strong.

And wasn't that what he'd asked for? Strength. Enough power to protect those he wanted to protect. There was no need to figure all this out. He knew that there was no illusion, at least not one affecting his mind. And he knew he was in a corridor. These shadows weren't hitting him. They were just tricks, illusions to scare him off. They took the form of giant beasts, but they really weren't anything at all. Not before him. Not before his blade.

The dark had never scared him before. Why should it do so now?

With a fierce cry, he charged forward, brandishing his sword before him. The hallway didn't seem to get any shorter, and the end wasn't in sight. But he knew there was an end. It didn't matter if it looked like there was nothing left. He trusted in what he knew.

Bursting through the dark, he was back in the room he'd started in, and sitting in the center of it was a strange man with a clown mask.

"Oh. Oops," the clown chuckled.

Destiny pointed his blade at the enemy. "You. What did you do?"

"A magician never reveals his tricks! But, just for you…" The shadows around the room began to grow again. "The demon cult sends their regards."

Destiny's eyes widened.

"Oh. You're part of them, then."

His blade began to glow, but this time, it wasn't from the flames.

[God Slaying Sword: 10%]

He would cut through everything. Not just the enemy. But through space. Time. Mana. And even though his sword wouldn't be the one to cut through it, he would cut through the lies, the hesitation, the doubt.

He didn't need to be John. He would do things the way he needed to do them. Maybe he didn't have the knowledge, but he had the intuition, and that was more than enough.

"I won't show you any mercy."

"W-wait!"

The cultist realized something was wrong. The shadows retreated, and Destiny saw how he'd been tricked. The pure blackness had given the illusion of a never-ending hallway. Laughable. Had he just continued walking, he would've been out of the trap in no time. The animals had all been a facade.

In the end, this had been mere shadow magic. The opponent was nothing more than a caster. Now that Destiny could see the enemy, it was just a normal man, not even a demon.

"Goodbye."

The cultist tried to raise some tendrils of shadow to block the attack, but the God Slaying Sword was stronger. It cleaved through the shadows and sliced through the man's neck, ending the fight. He staggered forward, still bleeding, still tired, but if he fell here, then everything he'd told John about finding his own way through would be meaningless.

"Haah… John. Prota. I need to find them."

~~~

"Seriously, though. How the hell did they reconstruct you? There wasn't anything left to reconstruct."

Aiden, if it really was him, had no response. John reached deep into his memories and found that he did sort of remember the guy—an assassin of sorts, wielding daggers. The problem was that he didn't know enough about magic or mana to remember what kind of skills the man had. Aiden wasn't an important [Character]; that was all. There had been no need to remember the skills of a dead man.

Unfortunately, that assumption was currently wrong.

"What am I supposed to do here?" John muttered, holding his bat.

He was in a situation he wasn't entirely comfortable with.

There was no one to protect him. He was used to watching other people fight the enemy first, then going in based on the information he'd gathered by watching the battle. This time, he was the one who had to dive in headfirst, and to make things worse, it was to be done using an ability he'd used once.

What were his limits? How far could he push himself? Those were questions he was used to knowing the answer to, and he hated not knowing.

"Zero, something like this. Would that-"

He stopped mid-sentence. Right, Zero wasn't here to advise him. There was truly nobody but him and the enemy.

"You'll… pay…"

"Yeah, yeah, I heard you the first time!"

This time, though, the zombie didn't wait. He flung himself forward, knives flashing in the light as he threw them forward, barely grazing John, who managed to raise his weapon just in time to avoid a fatal hit.

"Damn," he cursed.

He could feel the mana pill really kicking in now. The heat in his chest was strong, and once again, he felt more alive than ever.

Using [Infinity] was different. He felt no different than normal, because the ability didn't actually change his body in any way. That was why he still took damage like a normal human; [Infinity] wasn't a logical power. Sure, overwhelming strength made one feel invincible, but his body didn't actually feel any different.

But now, he felt strong. Too strong. And that was an issue. He was forcing himself to remember that [Resets] were out of the equation, and given that, if he went unconscious as soon as this fight was over, there was no telling what would happen. He had to finish it without exhausting too much of his mana, or—

"Wait. Hold on. Mana. Mana is what powers- ha."

He started to laugh. It was contained at first, but then it grew louder, more energetic, until it was full-blown amusement, his voice ringing through the stone corridors.

"I don't have to be nervous here, do I? I can go all out."

He grinned, forcing a burst of mana through his arms to strengthen them momentarily, pushing Aiden off of him.

"Yeah. I'm not gonna lose now that I can stand on equal ground."

This wasn't the time to be rational. This was the time to push through.

Thankfully, he was familiar with how to fight with this kind of energy. His body instinctively understood how to use mana, even if he himself did not. All he had to do was visualize it. He was a [Writer]. The ability to imagine something was one of his greatest traits. If he could imagine mana flowing through his body, empowering his muscles, then his body would do it.

Mana was ultimately a power that required the mind to work. It required you to believe in something you couldn't see, feel or touch and to direct it in the way you wanted to, without really understanding it.

That was what John had done all his life. [Deus Ex Machina] wasn't a power he understood. It was a power nobody understood. Maybe not even the [Author] themselves. But John used it nonetheless, because he understood what to do with it, and that was all he needed.

"Kill… you!"

Aiden leapt forward, throwing his knives this time, and they were on path to hit their target. John had no way to block or dodge. Suddenly, though, his body twisted as if propelled by an outside force. He pushed through and swung his bat, sending Aiden flying back, smashing into the stone wall.

"Hm… a burst uses a good chunk of mana, huh? I can do that… twenty more times, and then I'm out."

It was the same style John had used against Haze. While he couldn't bend the laws of physics with mana, he could still utilize the burst-like function of switching back and forth between a normal human body and a mana-amplified one. This would not only save on the mana he would use during the fight, but it would also create an unpredictable, unstable environment. Of course, it wouldn't break the laws of physics.

But an undead Aiden wasn't at the level that something like that would matter.

"You… fight back…?"

"That's right, zombie." John was smiling now, tapping the bat against his hand, slowly, rhythmically. "No one expects the manaless guy to fight back, right? Man, this brings back memories."

He held up his hand, showing off his palm. He was beginning to remember what had happened that day.

"Look. No cut this time. That means you don't get to catch me off guard."

"Where… girl…"

"Prota? She's…" John frowned.

Right, he had to get to her. Maybe he did have a reason to win this fight after all. Well, he should focus on surviving first.

"She's not here. That means neither of us gets to catch each other off guard. Just a clean, honest fight."

The zombie seemed to think about that one.

"I… kill you…"

John brandished his bat.

"Yeah. You can try."

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