Chapter 19: The Anomaly

“Unbind him.” The headmaster’s voice snapped Isis out of her reverie.

“S—Sir, I don’t think that’s a good idea—”

“Isis Perosperone. Unbind. Him.” The headmaster repeated word for word, glancing at Isis with a frown.

She gritted her teeth, but remained hesitant. “He’s not what you think. He just needs some blood for him to regain—”

Clang!

The chains binding Finn abruptly shattered into a thousand pieces of black, shadowy mass without the slightest trace of a cause. And instantly, Isis spat out a mouthful of blood, receiving an intense backlash from the total and abrupt destruction of her chain summon.

But her attention wasn’t on the backlash, she already knew the headmaster was the cause, so instead, her attention was fully on the imminent danger closing down on her — Finn.

He was upon her within a few rapid steps, lunging straight for her neck as she tried to evade in her backlashed state.

He’s fast! She thought in alarm as Finn followed after her in a fluid motion, with extreme control of his momentum. It was at that moment she realized… she was truly in danger. Her eyes widened as Finn smacked away her hands, held up in a last ditch effort to defend herself. And with the opening he created, his wide open jaws shot for her neck in a snarl.

But with a sudden rush of air in a blur, she found herself somehow pulled to the headmaster’s side, leaving Finn to snap his jaws at the empty air, losing his balance totally from the abrupt loss of his target.

“So you still refuse to manifest your embodiment even when threatened to such an extent.” The headmaster chided, looking down at her frazzled figure right next to him. “I would have thought you’d outgrown caring about what others think of you, considering the unhinged teacher you have.”

Isis’ eyes flickered at those words, looking as though she wanted to speak, but after a short second, she hung her head low, unable to retort.

“But that’s besides the point,” the headmaster sighed and turned his attention back to Finn, who looked utterly furious at having his prey taken from him.

He rushed straight at the headmaster, who was looking on passively. “Is this the ’talent’ your teacher insists is on the level of Sepulchre Scions?” He chuckled. “All I see here is an animal without reason.”

Finn leapt up into the air, spinning instinctively to pack more momentum behind his hand coming down in a swipe, much to the amusement of the headmaster who looked very pleased at the progression of the current event.

Finn’s hands came down like lightning, barrelling straight at the headmaster’s neck like a magnet.

But just as he was about to reach, his hand slammed against a hard, shadowy-black shield that materialized between them in the blink of an eye.

The force deformed his fingers immediately, but that wasn’t the end of it. Like a mirror reflecting every bit of force from Finn’s attack, the shield sent Finn crashing into the bed and furniture behind, his whole right hand bent at an unnatural angle. It had borne the full brunt of the reflected force that sent him careening haphazardly into the furniture.

“How unelegant.” The headmaster tutted, reaching for the large, black shield he summoned. He hefted the shadowy bulk with a strain that showed it weighed a lot, and walked slowly towards Finn.

The boy in question wheezed on the floor where he lay, sunk deeply into the broken wooden wreckage of furniture.

The impact had knocked the breath out of him, causing him to pause even in his current state.

Isis watched in trepidation from behind as the headmaster walked up to Finn slowly like a judge about to pass a sentence. She mentally screamed at Finn to stay down, knowing fully well the headmaster would only go as far as Finn allowed.

But she knew it was impossible for Finn to regain enough sense to know when to stop unless he got the blood his body craved.

She glanced at her arm, and for a second, considered slashing a cut to spill some blood so he could ’feed’, but she decided against it as quickly as the thought came. For Ossuarists, especially those extremely parched to fulfil the craving of a soul debt, taking on such a risk to satiate their craving was pure stupidity.

Not to mention the fact that the soul mass causing Finn’s current state was a beast’s soul — and not just any beast soul, but one that was a predator when alive, giving Finn a taste of human blood to satiate the craving of his new soul debt was the equivalent of giving a natural predator the taste for human blood.

It was a doubly stupid idea. And that was why she killed the thought immediately when it crossed her mind.

Knowing that, now, the problem of how to quickly procure an animal’s blood to satiate Finn’s craving arose.

“How utterly disappointing.” The headmaster shook his head as Finn remained mostly still, trying to shake off the pain searing his entire back. “That was enough to immobilize you? Has Micah lost his eye for talent, or has the definition of ’talent’ simply changed overnight?”

“Get up boy!” The headmaster stood before Finn, watching him growl and shift between the wooden wreckage.

He’s already down? Isis watched, slightly confused but also kind of happy since it worked in favour of Finn anyway.

But back in that old building…? Her mind went back to the wreckage she’d seen of Finn’s fight with the Revenant back in his city. There were signs of his body crashing into the wall, and taking more damage, yet she’d seen him move normally afterwards. So how come this was enough to take him down now?

Wait! Isis’s eyes widened in extreme shock. Is he still somehow able to retain control?!

But she wasn’t the only one. The headmaster had already come to the same conclusion the more he watched Finn. The struggle he saw in the boy’s blank, unfocused eyes was no longer one of pure mania. It seemed the previous impact had knocked some sense back into his head.

It was a conclusion that might’ve seemed straightforward, but for soul mages like Isis, and especially the headmaster, who had a deep-set, established world view of what was normal in the Ossuarist world, it was anything but straightforward.

The headmaster’s mind struggled to accept the conclusion that lay before his very eyes.

From the steady reports he’d received about Finn, he knew the boy had just recovered after somehow force-changing the clause of his soul debts. That in itself was a crazy feat that spoke of his talent, even as the headmaster denied to acknowledge it.

But this?! Suppressing the new clause of the same soul debt he had just battled to change…

It was not possible!

That was an immutable fact! They weren’t called soul debts just for the sake of it! This was the law that grounded the progression of every soul mage, be they an Ossuarist or a Revenant!

Arcanists strived towards deepening their knowledge of the arcane to enhance their magic, while Ossuarists strived towards full assimilation of their soul mass. An endeavour that took years upon years to achieve.

It was the law of the very world itself. Unchangeable.

So what the hell was happening before his eyes? The headmaster knew in his heart that the first time could be chalked up to talent. Genuine talent. But a second time…? And within the span of a few days?

That was no longer talent. It was an anomaly.

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