Return of the Runebound Professor

Chapter 577: Problem

Noah couldn’t describe the immense amount of relief he felt at seeing every single one of his students alive and kicking. They were bruised up and exhausted to the core, but none of their injuries were too bad. Isabel looked to have the worst of things.

He hooked the potion that Verrud had dropped from the ground with a foot and kicked it up into the air, grabbing it and handing it to Isabel. She took it with a weary smile, ripping the cork off and downing the healing liquid.

A dull tug pulled at the back of Noah’s mind. It wasn’t an unfamiliar sensation, but it was one he was unused to having while he was still within his own body. Noah grimaced and pushed the sensation away. He still had some time.

“Professor Vermil,” Emily said, wiping a few specks of blood away from her face with the back of her hand. “Where’s Moxie? Is she—”

“Safe.” Noah raised his hands to forestall any questions. They had so much to talk about, but this wasn’t the place. He sent his domain out in every direction, activating his tremorsense to see if there was anyone else nearby. A small grin tugged at his lips. It looked like Verrud had taken steps to ensure nobody would be around, and that had worked against him perfectly. He blew out a small breath. “And Lee is safe too. All of us are fine.”

“Can we bring them back as well?” Emily asked, swallowing heavily. “I miss Moxie.”

Emily’s matured a fair bit if she’s actually able to admit that. Damn. How much have I missed?

“We’ll all be back soon,” Noah promised. “It might be a few days or so, but we’ll be back.”

“We?” Todd asked. “Aren’t you already back?”

“Only for a bit,” Noah replied. He knelt by the grimoire resting beside Isabel and flipped it closed. “We had to do a bit of a stopgap. I couldn’t spend the time waiting to get here the proper way, so we had to accelerate things. I—”

“Your professor is a demon,” Yulin said, taking a step back as her features went as pale as a ghost. “You summoned a demon to the exam.”

Noah glanced in her direction. He’d almost forgotten Jakob’s student was still there. His head tilted slightly to the side as he studied her. Marley had been a little shit, but the boy laid dead at Jakob’s side, a hole between his eyes. Yulin hadn’t been nearly as bad as him, but she’d still been an opponent.

If anyone tells the Torrins or any other noble family about what happened here, we’re all fucked.

Alexandra stepped in front of Yulin. “Please wait, Professor. Yulin is the one that told me what Jakob was planning. She put her own life on the line because she disagreed with his and Marley’s actions. We can trust her.”

“She’s pledged herself to aiding me instead of Marley,” Emily said after a moment of silence. “I’m still Main Branch. That means she follows any direct orders from me or my mentor. Moxie is my only mentor, even if she got exiled. She’s thrown her lot in with us.”

Have I grown so cold that they think I would actually just murder a kid because she might report what happened to her family?

The thought caused a small frown to pull at Noah’s lips as a second one followed after it.

I would do that. When it comes to Lee, Moxie, and everyone here, there’s no life that I wouldn’t sacrifice to keep them safe.

“I’m not going to kill Yulin,” Noah said with a shake of his head and dismissing his thoughts. They weren’t something he could afford to spend time on right now — and he hadn’t been forced to kill anyone that the world would miss. Removing Verrud and Jakob had been a favor to everyone that had known them. “I saw her fighting to protect you all. If you trust her, then I’ll listen to you… assuming she doesn’t mind what just happened to her professor.”

“We are trained to prepare for death,” Yulin said, swallowing heavily. “Both ours and those of our allies. Jakob will not be missed. I am unprepared to work with a demon, but I suppose it will not be overly different from what I have experienced before.”

Noah snorted. “Good enough for me, but I’m sorry to disappoint.”

“Disappoint?” Yulin blinked.

“I’m not a demon,” Noah said. Another tug pulled at the back of his mind and he thinned his lips. “Which is why my time right now is rather limited. Summoning me doesn’t work quite the same as it does for a demon. I’ll be pulled back to the Damned Plains soon. Minutes at most.”

Isabel’s eyes widened. “But—”

“Don’t worry,” Noah said. “As I was saying earlier, we have a way back. We’ll return soon. All of us. There’s just a little bit more I have to take care of. What’s most important is that all of you are fine.”

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“How can someone summon you if you aren’t a demon?” Yulin muttered.

Alexandra put a hand on her shoulder. “You’ll get used to it.”

“To your dead professor getting summoned?”

“Not understanding what the fuck is going on,” Emily corrected.

Noah raised an eyebrow. “Someone’s had some bad influences.”

Emily winced. “Shit. Don’t tell Moxie, please. How long do I have before she gets back? She’s going to be so mad if she realizes I talk like this now. She spent years trying to get me to speak like a proper Torrin.”

“I think we’ve got slightly bigger problems to worry about,” Noah replied with a chuckle. “But back to business. Until I make it back, I want all of you to… well, keep doing what you have been, I guess. I didn’t get to see all of your fight, but I saw enough to say how proud I am of how far you’ve come. We have a lot of stuff to talk about.”

“Please don’t make us wait too long,” Todd said. “I appreciate our other teachers, but they kind of suck. Jalen has been making us play darts with him, and Bird keeps trying to get us to strip.”

“She’s doing what now?” Noah asked, his train of thought running straight into a wall and crashing in a ball of flames.

“Ignore him,” Isabel said, flicking Todd in the shoulder. “He’s just being an idiot. We do miss you though, Professor. Lee and Moxie too. I hope you didn’t break anything too important while you were gone.”

If only you knew.

Noah scratched his chin. “Eh. Just the usual.”

“So the Damned Plains are gone,” Todd said.

“What? No. They’re fine. Mostly. Why would you think that?”

“Didn’t you blow up Dawnforge when you went there on vacation?”

“What? No!”

“Yes,” Alexandra said. “You definitely did.”

“That was hardly my fault,” Noah protested. “And I didn’t blow up Dawnforge. Just a few underground passages inside it.”

“Wait. You were responsible for the explosion in Dawnforge?” Yulin asked. “I heard about that. It practically took out an entire section of the city because of how extensive the damage was to the underground.”

“Time for a change of topic,” Noah said, clearing his throat. “This exam is still going, isn’t it?”

“You still care about that?” James asked. He glanced around the destroyed clearing, his gaze lingering on the corpses behind Noah. “Doesn’t it seem a bit… I don’t know. Irrelevant?”

“An education is always important,” Noah replied. “And why would you turn down the chance to get more resources? These two idiots are dead. It’s going to take time for people to realize what happened, which means the rest of the exam is safe.”

“So what do we do about them?” Isabel asked. “Isn’t someone going to find out?”

“As far as you’re all concerned, you never heard from Marley, Jakob, or Verrud today.” Noah grabbed Verrud’s body and dragged it over to Jakob’s, then repeated the process with Marley to add him to the pile. “Just pretend all of this never happened.”

“Then what are you going to do about…”

Isabel trailed off as Noah extended a hand toward the pile of bodies. Grey energy crawled out from his palm and swallowed the corpses, cubic fractals twisting across their forms as they were consumed. When the magic faded away, all that remained was a jagged dent in the ground.

Yulin swallowed again as she stared at the spot where her former professor and fellow student had been. There was no trace of them left.

Noah flexed his fingers and shook his hand off. Using Warped Matter was still a pain. He’d drained just about every scrap of magic he had within the Rune. It was powerful, but it ate magic like no tomorrow.

Another tug yanked at the back of his head, this one stronger than the last. The connection between his body and his runes wasn’t powerful enough to let the demon summoning ritual actually keep him bound to the mortal realm.

The connection would soon snap and send him back to the Damned Plains — where, ironically, his way right back here would soon be ready.

Noah’s fingers shimmered. Their tips turned translucent, and Mascot butted up against his leg. He crouched down and picked the cat up, setting him on his shoulder as he rose back to his feet.

“My time is almost up,” Noah said. He scooped his grimoire off the ground and slung it over his shoulders.

“You’ll return in a few days?” Isabel asked. “You promise?”

“I swear it,” Noah said with a firm nod. “In fact, I’ll get more specific. In a day, come to the place we first trained in. I’ll be waiting for you there.”

“We’ll be waiting,” Todd said with a grin.

“I just have one request for you all,” Noah said.

They all turned to him.

“What is it?” Alexandra asked.

“Crush the rest of this exam,” Noah said, his eyes growing dark. “Nobody else is going to be interfering any further, so you can focus entirely on winning. I want to take every damn scrap of resources that the Advanced Track has to offer.”

“You got it, Teacherman,” Todd said, a grin pulling across his lips as he cracked his neck.

More of Noah’s body turned translucent. He took one final look at the students around him, then at the destroyed remains of the clearing they all stood in.

They were safe.

“Good luck,” Alexandra said.

“You better tell us what happened in the Damned Plains when you get back,” Todd said.

“I will,” Noah promised with a chuckle. His body shimmered, and then the world twisted like it had been put into the blender. The clearing vanished and darkness swallowed his vision as he was ripped through time and space, pulled back toward the Damned Plains.

As he went, there was only a single thing left on Noah’s mind.

There was just a single task he had left to do before everyone could return from the Damned Plains.

He had to make a Rune — and every Rune required three components. Energy, an inciting incident, and intent.

Noah had the Fragment of Sticky for the energy. Lee’s desires as a demon would be the inciting incident, and her intent would be the guide. Every single piece was finally in place.

It was time to fix a problem that had stumped a god.