Chapter 35: The Academy’s Biggest Stage
This isn't the time for a magic lesson.
He shelved Tian’s lesson for later. Right now there were bigger problems.
"Where did they take the students?"
He got to his feet, brushed the last clumps of dried juice off his shirt, and scanned the area.
"Not sure. Didn't get a clear look."
"No idea where Kai and Leo are either," Uriel frowned as he said that. "Or what's happening to them right now."
Tian tilted her head, her gaze softening.
"Thinking of your friends when you're in danger... Little Uri is such a good boy."
"Okay, okay, enough with the compliments." He pointed toward the academic building. "Roof. We need eyes on the situation first."
He took a step toward the building and asked, almost as an afterthought:
"That invisibility thing — can it carry me too?"
"To the roof?"
Tian's voice came from right behind him, as if he’d asked her something painfully obvious.
"We don't need to sneak there."
Uriel turned around.
Tian stood where she was, eyes already closed. Her expression stayed perfectly relaxed, the kind of look someone wears doing something completely routine. A faint crease formed between her brows as her focus narrowed toward something.
Something in the air tore open.
The space in front of them simply... unzipped.
No dramatic tearing sound, no blinding flash. Light folded inward, and a vertical seam opened in the air, its edges shimmering like heat distortion. A doorway.
A door.
Tian opened her eyes, turned her head toward him, and reached out with her free hand to take his wrist.
"Let's go."
The grip was familiar.
As he stepped through the spatial fold, a sudden memory floated up in his mind—the bustling market near the Old Cottage, years ago.
Back then, he barely came up to her chest. The crowds had been thick, and she had kept his hand locked in hers so he wouldn't get crushed. Her palm had felt massive. Warm. So soft it seemed to swallow his entire hand.
Back then, he had to tilt his head straight up just to watch her hair catch the wind.
He blinked.
Without him noticing, their eyelines had almost leveled out. If he actually measured it, his hand might even be slightly bigger than hers now.
...Don't think about it.
He forcefully clamped down on the sentimentality.
The texture under his feet changed. Stone tile, rooftop wind hitting harder, scattering the thought clean out of his head.
"Here," Tian said, releasing his wrist.
---
The view from the roof was wide open.
The whole academy spread out below — corridors, the plaza, the connecting walkways between buildings, and the black-clad figures scattered across the grounds in loose clusters. More of them than he'd estimated earlier.
He crouched low and swept the scene below.
Several small squads, each escorting a group of students, all moving in the same direction.
"All heading for the main hall. They're consolidating everyone."
He thought it through, working backward.
Why consolidate?
Checking people one at a time is too slow, so they're pulling everyone into one place to sort through them.
Sort for what?
He turned it over.
They're looking for someone specific.
A thought hit him out of nowhere — one he really didn't want to entertain.
Could this be about me and Mom?
The thought hit him like a bolt from the blue. He didn't dismiss it outright — worked through it instead. Was it possible?
Possible. But unlikely. If this whole operation was built around the two of us, they wouldn't need an operation this size. A lockdown on the dorm would've been enough.
So it's someone else. Someone here they're after.
He sat down on the rooftop, elbows braced on his knees, eyes closed, and laid the whole situation out in his head.
Problem one: these people had a clear objective. This wasn't random chaos.
Problem two: a large-scale barrier cutting off mana output meant planning, resources, and time invested in advance.
Problem three: what to actually do about it.
Do nothing, and the students get taken. Move wrong, and the investigation will snowball.
Step in directly, and the moment Mom goes all-in, this academy probably loses a few buildings. Too much noise.
Neither option works.
He pressed his fingers into his temples.
Then a third direction surfaced.
His brow furrowed slightly as he turned it over, and the longer he sat with it, the more it held together.
The fastest way to put out a fire isn't always water. Sometimes it's lighting a second, bigger fire right next to it and burning through the oxygen until the first one chokes out on its own.
Win the chaos by making more of it. If the goal is to stay hidden, the move is to manufacture a louder, more obvious target and pull every eye in the building toward it. Whether or not this whole thing was ever aimed at him and Mom stops mattering — because now everyone's looking somewhere else entirely.
Yes.
Right here. Right now. This exact moment.
This is when the Witch makes her return.
He pulled a small notebook out of his pocket, along with a stub of pencil he'd been carrying, flipped it open, and pressed it against his knee.
"I need to write something," he said, without looking up. "Go find anyone who's split off from the groups. Take them out."
Tian crouched down beside him, her brow creasing.
"…Kill them?"
Her voice was quiet, but completely serious, carrying a note of something almost painfully earnest.
"But they're bad people... don't they still have families, though?"
Uriel tapped her head with his pencil.
"Mom, I know you've got a good heart."
"But that kind of kindness can get more good people killed. As long as you move fast enough that they don't feel anything before it's over — that's fine, isn't it?"
Tian's frown didn't fully clear. She was working through it seriously, trying to make the logic fit.
Uriel looked back down, pencil moving across the page again, avoiding her eyes as he added:
"Also — these are the first real friends I've managed to make. If something happens to Kai and Leo, I'm back to having nobody to hang out with except you."
The moment he finished speaking, the air around them practically rippled.
Tian — who had been mid-mourning for the bad guys two seconds ago — snapped upright. Both hands curled into fists, and something fierce and overprotective ignited behind her usually placid eyes.
"Oh!"
She nodded once, hard, voice flooding with purpose.
"Leave it to me! I will absolutely protect Little Uri's friends!"
That's some serious motivation.
Last time I saw her this fired up, she was talking about scouting out a future daughter-in-law.
She stood, walked to the roof's edge, looked down, expression settled and calm.
"Watch Mommy take out every single one of them."
Uriel didn't answer. He was already back in the notebook.
Beside him, Tian raised a single finger.
Mana gathered at the tip. A thin beam of light shot out, narrow and precise — the kind of move that belonged to someone who'd eaten a Flash-Flash Fruit.
Down on the path below, an isolated operative dropped instantly, like a marionette with its strings cut, folding to the ground without a sound.
Tian adjusted her angle. Finger shifted slightly.
Another beam.
Another body down.
Uriel sat cross-legged on the roof, paying no attention whatsoever to the count below. He had his eyes locked on the notebook in his lap, pencil scratching fast across the page.
At the top, in heavy, deliberate strokes, he wrote: I AM THE HOLY SWORD WITCH. SLAYER OF KINGS. GOD OF GODS.
A full-body shudder violently possessed him.
A wave of secondhand cringe so weaponized, so physically agonizing, that his toes curled hard enough to nearly drill through the rooftop tiles.
He stuck his tongue out and scratched the whole line through.
No. No, absolutely not. Way too humiliating. I cannot physically say that line out loud. Let's start with the actual entrance plan first.
Wind moved across the rooftop, carrying the distant, blurred noise of the chaos below.
Uriel kept the notebook pinned under one hand, pencil moving in quick, even strokes.
If the goal is to pull every eye in the building, it has to be loud. Overwhelming. Completely unreasonable.
Drop straight through the hall's ceiling — boot first, right through the roof? Yes. Time it for the exact moment they move on the students. Reinforcements falling from the sky! Landing has to come with a shockwave, flatten every operative in the room on impact!
Everyone in that room needs to walk away soaked in pure terror and awe, the name Holy Sword Witch burned into the back of their skull.
"…What are you writing?" Tian asked, without turning, lining up her next target.
"A script. You're going to need it in a minute."
"My script?"
"The Witch Brigade. New chapter, just dropped. Huge set piece, guaranteed to knock them flat —"
Tian opened her mouth to praise him.
"Little Uri wrote his own story? That's amazing."
Whatever Uriel had been about to say in response caught in his throat.
He looked up. His gaze landed on Tian.
She was wearing the same school uniform as him today, and something faintly floral still clung to her, the way it always did. However he looked at it, what stood in front of him read, at most, as a slightly delicate-looking student. Even in a dress, the absolute ceiling of what that disguise could pull off was 'androgynous girl.'
The entrance was planned. The overwhelming power was already a given. The humiliating catchphrase was sitting right there, ready to go.
Ah.
Uriel's grip tightened on the pencil. His eyes went wide.
The Witch’s image！