My left arm throbbed with pain. The heat radiating from my upper arm to my elbow was intense, like the kind of burn you’d get from scraping your skin after falling while running full speed.

“Itsuki! You’re hurt!” Nina-chan’s voice rang out, full of panic.

I could only think,

of course

. The wound was from the magic that the Theater Troupe Actor had launched at me just moments ago.

The puppet-like figure of the Theater Troupe Actor spun like a ballerina on the table, laughing as it spoke.

“You’ve got some sharp eyes, huh?

True

, right? That trick of yours sure makes it hard to catch you off guard. Kinda unfair!”

As the Theater Troupe Actor cackled, the bell signaling the end of lunch break rang throughout the school.

At that very moment, I shot two threads of

Silveit

. One wrapped around my injured left arm, and the other headed toward the Theater Troupe Actor.

“

Homura Mayu

!”

I ensnared the Theater Troupe Actor with my threads and ignited them. Instantly, the fire alarms in the room blared with a piercing siren, triggered by the flames filling the room.

“Hot! Hot! Ahahaha!” The Theater Troupe Actor writhed in agony, thrashing across the table, unable to cast any more spells. I took the opportunity to heal my left arm, focusing on the human anatomy and using

shaping magic

to fix the damage.

“Nina-chan, get out of here! Go find an exorcist and bring them back!” I called out to her as I continued my spellcasting.

But before Nina could even move, the flames surrounding the Theater Troupe Actor vanished.

“Hmm? Nah, I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” the Actor said, a sly smile creeping across its face. “You see, even if you leave, it’s pointless. I’ve got plenty of friends already inside the school! Isn’t that right?”

The “friends” the Theater Troupe Actor was referring to were clearly monsters. I wasn’t naive enough not to catch that.

But knowing that didn’t help the situation. I couldn’t afford to leave the Theater Troupe Actor here unattended. If I didn’t deal with the root cause, more and more monsters would keep showing up.

In the next instant, the Theater Troupe Actor brushed off my flames and jumped into the air, laughing maniacally.

“Ahahaha!”

With a loud clap of its hands, the furniture in the room—both the table and the sofa—began to

move

.

“This is how easy it is to make friends! Maybe I’ll make a hundred friends today—can I?!” it taunted.

From within the sofa, a long, pale arm emerged. The table sprouted jagged yellow teeth, and a massive tongue snaked out, slithering toward Nina and me across the floor.

“Oh, look, you’re so popular, Itsuki-kun,” the Actor sneered.

But before the monstrous furniture could close in, I clapped my hands and summoned fairies with

Fairy Magic

. Unlike my thread-based magic, these fairies were ethereal, pure white beings.

“Take them away!” I commanded.

The fairies responded to my request, disappearing briefly, and with them, the monstrous sofa and table vanished as well, sent off somewhere far beyond this world.

The room was quickly filled with black mist, the telltale sign of defeated monsters dissolving into nothingness.

But amidst the thickening fog, I heard a scream pierce through the air.

…This was bad.

Someone in the school was being attacked by monsters.

And I was the only exorcist here. Though I had heard rumors of a part-time exorcist teacher, I had never seen them myself. That left me as the only one capable of handling the situation.

“Terrible! I was just making friends, and now I’m so sad… so sad I could cry. My heart is a green light of sorrow,” the Theater Troupe Actor mocked, but I didn’t bother responding. I was too busy preparing my next spell.

As I formed several small magical cores, I coated them in mana. More fairies, called Pixies, appeared from the cores, created through my

Fairy Magic

.

“Find the monsters in the school and exorcise them,” I commanded.

The Pixies, like the fairies before them, obeyed my command and scattered throughout the school.

I couldn’t summon as many fairies as Ireena-san could, but over the past year, Nina-chan and I had trained hard. Now, I could call forth enough fairies to keep watch over the entire school.

As I watched the Pixies fly out of the reception room, my gaze landed on the discarded skin of the health food company’s president lying on the floor.

“…Was the president just a puppet for you?”

“Hmm? Oh no, I only got to know him yesterday,” the Actor responded, hopping off the ground with a gleeful little leap.

“After I promised at the amusement park to kill you, I started wondering how I’d get close. I figured this guy would be my ticket in!”

I clenched my teeth and unleashed my next spell.

The Actor continued, completely unbothered. “Originally, I wanted to visit your house, kill everyone there, and then invite them all to a fun little wonderland! But there was a barrier around your house, so I couldn’t find it. That’s when I thought this guy might get me closer.”

Grinding my teeth, I cast my binding magic.

“Jubaku!”

This was a binding spell I’d learned that used

wood-elemental magic

. The vines created from it grew stronger the more mana they absorbed from their target, making it nearly impossible to escape once ensnared.

“Whoa! It’s all tangled up! Tangled up!!” The Actor’s body was engulfed by the rapidly growing vines, which soon burst through the room’s windows, dragging the creature’s body outside.

“…I don’t have the right magic to exorcise things in confined spaces,” I muttered to myself as I prepared my next move.

I barely knew the real president, but I’d spoken with him, so his death left a faint yet unsettling feeling within me. It wasn’t grief, exactly, but it stirred something inside.

“I have to push you out,” I continued, tightening the magical threads in my grip.

The Theater Troupe Actor thrashed within the binding spell, yelling, “My mana! It’s stealing my mana! Mana thief!!”

“You came here to kill me, didn’t you?” I asked quietly, my voice steady as I summoned more

Silveit

.

Five threads in total, created for one purpose only: to exorcise the monster before me.

“If that’s the case, then you should have focused solely on me from the start…”

“Huh? But that’s exactly what I did,” the Theater Troupe Actor said, sounding genuinely confused.

“…?”

“I snuck in here, came all the way to this school, and released my friends—all of it to kill you, Itsuki-kun.”

“Then why disguise yourself as the president?”

“Well, I needed to get close to you, obviously! Come on, smile! Smile big!

Nipa

! Ha!”

I couldn’t muster a response. I was done speaking.

“Priorities first! My motto is to go straight for the goal! Ahaha!” the Actor laughed again.

Without another word, I sent the five threads of Silveit flying toward the Actor.

This was it—this would end it all.

“Ah, wait! Are you really going to exorcise me right here? Really? You know if you do, I won’t go quietly. Are you sure?” The Actor, now finally realizing its imminent fate, thrashed wildly in the binds, but there was no escape from

Jubaku

.

The threads wrapped around the puppet’s body tightly.

“

Oborozuki

.”

In the next instant, my spell activated.

No matter how powerful the monster, this spell ensured there would be no escape.

The Theater Troupe Actor’s body was torn apart, bit by bit, into tiny fragments of smoke that were sucked into the black sphere I had created—a complex magic ball infused with

night-elemental magic

.

“This is amazing! Incredible! I’m actually gonna die! This spell is going to kill me!”

The Actor’s frantic voice echoed across the schoolyard, growing fainter and fainter as it was consumed by the sphere.

“I have no choice now… I’ll use my final spell! I’ll summon the Master of the Troupe… oh, wait, I can’t use magic anymore. Ah.”

With that, the Actor’s laughter was abruptly cut off, and the remnants of its form were completely consumed.

In its place, a black mist hung in the air, swirling briefly before being carried away by the wind.

The Theater Troupe Actor was dead.

Dead.

“…Itsuki, are you alright?”

“Yeah.”

I turned to see Nina-chan peeking through the shattered window, stepping carefully over the broken glass.

“…I’m fine,” I replied, trying to reassure her.

But there was no time to rest. I had to return to the school building to check on the fairies and make sure the remaining monsters were being exorcised. There was also the matter of dealing with the president’s skin, and I had destroyed the reception room in the process.

There was so much to clean up.

So, despite the unsettling feeling in my chest, I forced myself to focus on what needed to be done.

“I’m fine, Nina-chan,” I repeated, more to convince myself than her, as I stepped back into the reception room.

My mind was already crowded with things i have to do.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep