Chapter 114: The Weight Of Seventeen Lives (III)
The carriages hadn’t come for them even after three hours of waiting.
Kai knew this because Henrik had sent Mira who was currently the only student with enough essence left to sustain a transmission crystal to signal the academy. Three hours was the optimistic estimate.
Reality, factoring in the remote location and the academy’s bureaucratic response time to a student field exercise gone wrong, probably meant four or more.
For four hours he had been sitting against a tree with zero essence reserves and a body that had been pushed past collapse twice in one afternoon.
He could think of worse situations. He had lived through most of them.
"You’re doing that thing again," Lin said from beside him.
"What thing?"
"The thing where you stare at nothing and look like you’re doing math."
"I’m resting."
"You have never rested a day in your life." She handed him a strip of dried meat from her field pack. "Eat something. You burned through everything you had."
Kai accepted it without argument. Nutrition was probably something he needed right now. He chewed slowly, watching the tree line while the rest of the group recovered in scattered clusters across the clearing.
There were telve students remaining in total. Three still couldn’t walk unassisted. Thomas was sleeping which meant the poison neutralization had worked.
Henrik’s arm had been splinted with straight branches and torn cloth, it was an improvisation but it worked pretty well. He sat upright on his stretcher, refusing to lie down, issuing quiet instructions to whoever came near him.
Roland had positioned himself directly next to Derek, sitting close enough that Derek couldn’t shift without Roland noticing. After what had happened in the chamber, Roland’s dislike for Derek had bome harder and less forgiving than dislike.
Seraphina stood at the eastern perimeter of the clearing with her back to the group, watching the ruins entrance.
She hadn’t moved in forty minutes.
Kai respected that. She understood the same thing he did: the battle was over but they were still in a very dangerous situation wasn’t.
Four elite assassins with a contract didn’t mean they were four assassins in total. It meant four assassins in that wave. Contracts had fulfillment clauses. If the assigned team failed, the terms didn’t evaporate rather they escalated.
He was doing math again.
"Seraphina," he called, keeping his voice level.
She turned immediately. "You feel something?"
"Not yet. But we’re exposed staying out here."
She walked back toward the group with her characteristic precision, her bandaged leg barely affecting her stride despite the fact that Kai could see the cloth was already damp through. She stopped in front of him and looked down with a thoughtful expression.
"You want to form a proper perimeter."
"I want to form a perimeter, yes. But I’m essentially useless right now." He said it without self-consciousness, just factual acknowledgment. "That means you’re the most capable fighter here until I recover some reserves."
"How long for any meaningful recovery?"
"An hour, minimum. Probably closer to two."
"And if something comes in the next twenty minutes?"
"Then we would have to improvise."
Henrik had clearly been listening. His voice carried the dry quality of a man who’d been teaching combat students for years. "Kai. Walk me through your threat assessment."
Every student nearby turned to look. Kai considered deflecting then request then decided that Henrik had earned directness.
"The assassins had a contract. As we were taught in the academy assassination contracts don’t dissolve when the hired team fails. Whoever placed the order will receive a failure report, and they’ll have a decision to make." He paused. "If they’re cautious, they pull back and reassess. If they’re desperate they would send a follow-up team within hours."
"I don’t even remember that...," Henrik said.
"I read a lot."
No one laughed this time. The terrible lie was wearing thin, and they all knew it.
"Best case scenario," Kai continued, "we wait three to four hours, the carriages arrive, and nothing happens. Worst case—"
Boom!
The tree line on the western edge erupted with essence.
A wave of suppression energy rolled across the clearing like a physical pressure, and suddenly seven students gasped and clutched their cores. The suppression was targeted and designed to compress active essence reserves and prevent technique execution. Kai felt it too even though his core was depleted, the pressure against his essence core was distinctly uncomfortable.
"Essence suppression field!" Seraphina shouted, her hands up and fire burning against the interference. As an A-rank prodigy, she had the raw power to push through it, but her reserves were still critically low. "The origin of the attack is at the northwest, about two hundred meters!"
From the eastern tree line, two figures emerged.
From the western, three more.
These weren’t wearing the same masks as the assassins in the ruins. Their masks were black with gold trim, it was a different symbol entirely, and Kai recognized it with a cold drop in his stomach.
’It’s not the same organization.’
Derek made a sound. When Kai looked at him, the boy’s face had gone from pale to the specific gray of someone who had realized they out of time.
"Derek," Kai said quietly. "Who is that symbol?"
"I don’t—"
"You know. Talk."
"It’s the Hollow Court." Derek’s voice cracked. "I didn’t—they weren’t supposed to be involved. I hired the first group through a broker. I didn’t know who they worked for."
"The Hollow Court doesn’t take contracts from brokers. They take contracts from patrons." Kai kept his eyes on the approaching figures. "Someone hired them directly. Someone used your contract as cover."
The five figures stopped at the edge of the clearing. The one in the center who was taller than the others, with a gold accent stripe across the mask’s left side indicating rank raised one hand leisurely.
"Second attempt," the figure said. The voice sounded feminine, it was calm and almost pleasant. "The first team was sent for containment but not for completion. We are not the first team."
"Evidently," Kai said.
Seraphina stepped up beside him. Her fire essence was guttering but present. "I have maybe one strong technique left."
"Don’t use it yet."
"Kai—"
"I said don’t." He planted one hand on the ground and pushed himself to his feet, which took more effort than he would have liked to admit. His legs were shaking. His essence core was scraped clean. He was running on physical conditioning and the particular stubbornness that came from having died zero times across seventeen subjective years of living.
He was not going to let that record change today.
"You came for a contract completion," he said to the gold-striped figure. "That means you have a primary target. The contract isn’t for twelve random students—it’s for someone specific."
A pause. "Perceptive."
"Tell me who, and we can negotiate."
"You’re in no position to negotiate." But the figure hadn’t moved yet. They were assessing him which was a good thing.
It meant they were uncertain and it bought them time.
"I just defeated four of your organization’s elites with a broken sword." Kai made sure his voice carried across the entire clearing. "I would advice you think about what you’re about to do carefully"
The gold-striped figure was very still.
"You have five people," Kai continued. "Your suppression field is effective against the injured students, but it’s not stopping me or Seraphina completely which tells me it’s a standard-grade projector, not an S-class installation. That means It’ll drain the person maintaining it if we last long enough." He took one step forward, and despite everything, managed to make it look strong. "I have time."
A long silence.
The figure in the center turned slightly toward the one on her left and made a subtle hand gesture.
Kai read the signal easily.
It meant they were confirming the primary target status.
The figure on the left made a small negative motion.
’Primary target unverified among current group.’
Kai filed that away. Whoever the Hollow Court was actually after, that person either wasn’t here or hadn’t been identified yet. The original contract which was Derek’s contract had been piggy-backed onto something larger.
"You don’t know which of us you actually want to kill, do you?" Kai said with a slight smirk.
"This conversation is not a standard procedure," she said.
"No. But killing twelve students from a prestigious academy because you couldn’t identify your target is also sloppy. The Hollow Court’s reputation is built on precision." Kai was genuinely talking on fumes now, both essence and mental capacity. "Walk away. Reacquire your target through cleaner intelligence. This becomes a massacre of innocents, and you’ll have an entire academy and regional authorities tracing every detail back."
Another longer silence followed this time.
Then the suppression field died.
The five figures melted back into the tree line with the kind of coordinated silence that professional organizations spent years developing.
They were gone.
The clearing was utterly quiet.
Seraphina let out a long, controlled breath. "You just... talked those assassins into leaving. Just like that?"
"I reasoned with them. There’s a difference."
"You were bluffing."
"Partially." Kai sat back down heavily against the tree. His hands were shaking badly now, and he let them. No one was watching for weakness anymore, they were all staring at where the tree line had been. "Thirty percent was a bluff. The rest was accurate."
Henrik’s voice came from the stretcher, quieter than before and rougher. "You knew their hand signals."
"I’ve studied many things."
"Kai." A pause. "What are you?"
Across the clearing, twelve students were looking at him with varying degrees of awe, confusion, fear, and something that was beginning to look uncomfortably like faith.
He looked at his shaking hands.
"Someone who’s very tired," he finally said.