Chương 24: Book 2 Chapter 5: Doom!!!

Just because Jim had agreed to helping Harry root out Alice didn't necessarily mean much changed in his day to day life. The thing was, it had slowly been getting more and more obvious that he was just a student in terms of magical competency and that he and many of the challenges facing him during an ongoing investigation were mismatched.

In this sense, despite knowing that he likely wouldn't be getting any more visions, or at least, any visions that Harry would remember, Jim was simply part of the duo as a consultant who was aware of some of the context and as someone who might have a vision in regards to the context. Also, well, as Harry had said.

"Despite your well-… You're the only one I can trust. The fact that you came to me with this information proves you're not part of any of the factions that would try to use this knowledge to their advantage rather than using it to save lives."

"Aren't we all our own faction?" Jim had replied philosophically at the time, at which Harry had pulled a face as if having stepped in dog shit, then he perked up.

"There is one thing you can help me with, actually," the man had said.

"You are very welcome," Jim had replied.

"I can't go to the bank to withdraw money in case it's being watched and I lost most of everything in the fire. Give me some money, enough to stay at an inn and eat some real food for the next few weeks." Jim had instinctively grasped his coin purse, not to donate generously, but rather to protect it from the deprivations of the world.

"Don't you have friends?" he'd complained. A roll of the eyes.

"Adventuring group, took a long term mission in Mitelos." A pause.

"Actually, I haven't heard from them in a while. Fuck."

"Fine," Jim had said with a sigh.

"But you'll pay me back after the calamity is over. 10% monthly interest."

"That's usury! I could get a better deal off a loan shark!"

"It's called capital leveraging, you should look it up," Jim had muttered, handing over his full purse after counting every copper in it.

"Let's meet at the end of the week, same pigeon. They know I found the tunnels, but I get the feeling that Alice is in the middle of everything. If we find her, we find the conspiracy… A bit problematic considering she's likely a shapeshifter from the way you described her facial reconfiguration talents, but I'll manage."

"Just go already," Jim had said with a pinched face, not wanting to be reminded of the time he'd gotten his face bitten off. Literally.

"Next week, don't forget." And that's why Jim found himself once again sitting in the library in the history section, wanting to learn more about these so-called cultists of the calamity, Black Ouroboros, or whatever they were calling themselves these days.

"People of means don't join revolutions, they bankroll them," he said self-satisfiedly after realising that paying for a detective's room and board was preferable to being out and about every day and potentially dying.

"I've been gone for four days and you've started talking to yourself," a female voice suddenly complained from behind him before Katniss came into view and sat down with a sigh, carrying her own stack of books.

"I felt you coming," Jim said instinctively, a clear lie, but necessary to preserve his ego. His mana sensing had improved recently, but he was still far off from being able to feel things without concentrating.

"Sure thing," the girl said with a roll of her eyes.

"A question then, why did you say the thing about revolutions if you knew I was there?" Jim raised an eyebrow, unwilling to give up a verbal sparring opportunity in which had a high chance of victory due to an asymmetric information advantage.

"I said it as a way of asking if you enjoyed your days in the clanker," he said bitingly, before looking the shabby girl up and down.

"Although considering your origins you probably felt perfectly at home." Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website. Katniss stilled in her wooden chair, like a cat who'd just seen her prey. The bright lamps of the library cast half her face in a dark shadow from her messy hair.

"You don't know anything," she said quietly.

"I know enough," Jim replied angrily.

"Maybe you have information, but you don't KNOW. You don't know about the forced labour camps, you don't know about the discrimination and you most certainly don't know how long and how hard I've had to fight to just sit at the same table as you," Katniss said quietly. Jim pursed his lips and stood up.

"Nobody, if they had the ability to choose where to be born, would choose Mitelos. However, considering how many taxes and exemptions are being funneled into bringing dregs such as yourself into the academy, I fail to see why I should care about your so-called journey." Katniss stared at him coldly.

"There is no point in talking to people like you," she eventually decided.

"People like me?" Jim asked in a low voice.

"Someone who has to go because they have Combat Magic 2? Someone who has more education in their pinky than you have in your entire filthy body? Nobody cares about your pity party and your self-inflicted misery. That Black Ouroboros invitation was as suspect as five Mitelosians in front of a daycare. A whole cavalry regiment couldn't have dragged me to attend that sting operation." He stood up and took his book.

"You may be sitting at the same table as me for the moment, but after we graduate you'll fall back into the very same pigsty you crawled your way out of. Society has no use for people like you." He turned around and walked off and thus didn't see the sheer hatred that emanated from Katniss' eyes in that moment, and the raised hand that was pointing right at his back. Nor did he see the way the hand lowered itself reluctantly, powerlessly, shamefully.

If Jim had seen it, he probably would have smirked and said something along the lines of…

'See, it's not that hard to know your place? Now stay there and maybe you'll earn a treat like a good dog.' But he didn't. He had Combat Magic 2 and even if he arrived early, he was too anxious about the upcoming detention with Professor Quatzel to think of much else. -/- Jim scrabbled backwards on all fours as magic missiles formed over his shoulders and shot forward, barely colliding with and dispelling the incoming bullets of water shooting down students around him like pigeons in a hole.

Through sheer coincidence, or perhaps due to the professor's threat categorisation, he was left as one of the last few standing in the biting cold and snowy mountain peak. Eventually however, all things came to an end and one of the bullets pierced his hastily formed shield before another buried itself deep in his guts, rearranging them in an unpleasant way that reminded Jim of a meatball being crushed with a spoon. Combat Magic 2, as always, was a bloodbath.

One interesting thing of note was at least that something about the Lich's system was randomised, a scenario never repeated itself even in the visions.

"Unlucky that the water specialisation was combined with a snowstorm," Dew lamented next to Jim after getting up and shaking off the illusion of death imposed by the 'classroom.'

"Shut up and run," Jim grunted after managing to get up himself, immediately turning around and starting to run away from the lich who was busy calculating the next scenario. Annoyingly enough, Dew kept pace with him very easily, her black robe she wore to classes fluttering from the movement as the environment around them shifted to a lakeside beach.

"You'll finally do something useful?" Jim asked bitingly as Chemirk, Evergreen and Herus joined them to form a group of five.

"Using snow and ice with my spells is beyond me," Dew answered with a self-satisfied smile, as if being a failure was something to be proud of. She looked to the left, at the small blue lake that had formed from nowhere and at the Lich standing atop the water while the students who'd been unlucky enough to have been laying down or standing where the lake appeared flopped around in the water and started fighting their way to shore.

"But a lake? I can do something with that," Dew finished.

"Then I suggest you do something fast," Chemirk, the lazy prince commented as he crouched down to the wet earth beneath and put his palms down in preparation for a quick earth wall.

"He's done calculating." Waterflower, for her advantage, did manage to quickly create a duo of hard water spears that looked like they could kill an elephant each if they found a vulnerable spot.

"Cool!" Herus commented while forming his own mana missiles. Evergreen, for his part, simply grunted, and gestured in the air with his fingers to generate a strong gust that Jim knew would help propel whichever projectiles their group threw out to a much higher velocity. The students lucky enough to stand atop the shore all formed their own spells, fire dogs, earth balls and lances of arcane shooting towards the lich like a particularly murderous welcome party.

Professor Quatzel simply raised two palms to his sides.

"Haven't gotten this one in a while, watch carefully! Gravity Push!" the lich shouted before the lake he was standing atop of suddenly disintegrated into singular molecules as an all-powerful barely visible force spread out with the creature as the epicentre. All the conceptual attacks heading the lich's way were blown apart and disintegrated midair with bright showers of sparks while the physical manifestations were crushed to dust and sent outwards alongside droplets of water from what had previously been a lake.

Jim raised his arms to shield his face, leaving just a small gap in-between through which he observed the students who'd been floundering in the water getting crushed into chunky salsa. The Gravity Push barely stopped at the edges of the lake.

"I hate gravity magic," Jim complained as he idly shot off two more magic missiles just in case the lich's defense had a cooldown.

"What do you know, he's never used it before," Evergreen retorted bitingly.

"I know stuff, Evergreen, maybe you should try it," Jim said as he watched the second wave of attacks by those still alive enough to use them crash uselessly against what must have been a Gravity Barrier. The lich held out a palm facing upwards in front of him as he impassively watched the attacks disintegrate. A small black and red dot formed atop the palm before slowly floating upwards.

"Doom!" Professor Quatzel shouted before cackling as the dot rapidly expanded until it was the size of a house floating all the way up in the sky. Dust particles slowly started rising up towards it, before quickly being followed by smaller objects.

"Doom?" Herus asked questioningly with a tilt of his head.

"Doom," Chemirk deadpanned before quickly disappearing beneath the earth like a fish in water.

"Doom!" Waterflower shouted with wide eyes as her robes, and then she herself started gently floating up at an ever accelerating pace towards the black hole.

"Doom," Jim said with a sigh as he felt gravity shift, taking the newly formed swirling singularity in the sky as its endpoint. He didn't even try to fight it, just letting gravity take him where it wanted. He did watch with satisfaction as Waterflower, a girl and thus the lightest of the group was the first to disappear in the newly formed dirt moon with a beautiful artistic swirl, all the while shouting, "Doooooommmmm!?!