Chapter 65: The Reunion
Time shattered around Sarah as the corrupted student launched himself toward her, his Academy uniform reeking of decay and malice. The sigil seared into his forehead blazed with venomous light, shadows writhing like living serpents across his twisted features.
Her ability triggered without conscious thought, the world grinding to a crawl as terror flooded her veins. She absorbed every horrifying detail with razored clarity: the student’s eyes had become obsidian voids, his joints bent at unnatural angles as he moved, geometric patterns carved into his exposed flesh pulsing in rhythm with some alien heartbeat.
But even with time dilated around her, Professor Leo moved impossibly fast.
The combat instructor’s blade a weapon she hadn’t even noticed him drawing sliced through the air in a silver arc that defied her enhanced perception. For one terrifying moment, Sarah grasped exactly why Leo held the rank of Master. His movements transcended mere speed or technique, flowing with lethal precision forged from decades of life or death encounters.
The corrupted student’s head separated from his shoulders in a single, perfect cut. Black ichor sprayed across the chamber floor instead of blood, and the severed head rolled to a stop near Sarah’s feet, the sigil pulsing weakly before finally dying.
Time snapped back to normal speed, leaving Sarah gasping as the full impact crashed over her.
’That was... Professor Leo just killed someone who looked exactly like a student she knew from my Advanced Combat Theory class.’
"Listen to me, all of you," Leo barked, his voice cutting through the shocked silence like a blade. His eyes swept the chamber, cataloging threats with mechanical precision as more branded figures continued descending from the ceiling openings.
"Those things may resemble your friends, your roommates, your study partners. But your friends are dead. Whatever’s wearing their faces now is something else entirely."
He tossed Sarah a weapon a crude but functional blade carved from what appeared to be beast bone, its edge honed to razor sharpness. The bone felt cold against her palm, its surface rough with primitive tool marks. "That Academy training you’ve been clinging to won’t help you here. These things know every technique you were taught because they were taught the same things. You need to fight like your life depends on it, because it does."
Sarah caught the bone blade, her hands trembling as she gripped the unfamiliar weapon. The crude craftsmanship reminded her of the tools they’d seen scattered throughout this nightmare dimension, forged by survivors who’d learned to make weapons from whatever materials they could scavenge.
The branded students began their assault in earnest, moving with the coordinated precision of a military unit. Ice barriers erupted from the chamber floor, but instead of the clean crystalline structures Sarah remembered from Academy demonstrations, these formations wept a substance that ate through stone on contact. Earth spikes burst from the walls, but they carried veins of something that pulsed with its own sickly light.
Professor Leo moved through the chaos like a demon of war, his speed making him a blur of lethal motion. Each strike landed perfectly, each movement calculated to maximize damage while minimizing his exposure to counterattack. Within seconds, three more branded students lay in pieces across the chamber floor, their corrupted essence dissipating into the stale air.
But as Leo fought, an unsettling realization began forming in Sarah’s mind. The branded students were moving faster than they should, striking harder, enduring damage that should have been fatal. The sigils weren’t just controlling them they were enhancing them.
’Leo’s cutting through them because he’s Master-rank and most of these students were barely Novice when we arrived,’ she thought, dodging an ice lance that left smoking craters in the stone where it struck. ’But they’re stronger than they should be. Those marks are amplifying their abilities somehow.’
Professor Harold positioned himself at the center of their defensive formation, his healing abilities working overtime to tend wounds as the surviving students fought desperately against their corrupted classmates. His face had paled with the strain of maintaining multiple healing streams simultaneously, but his hands never wavered as green light flowed from his fingers.
"The brands," Harold called out between healing pulses, "they’re not just control mechanisms. They’re enhancement matrices. These students are operating beyond their original power levels."
The observation sent ice through Sarah’s veins. If the corruption could amplify abilities, then they weren’t just fighting their former classmates they were fighting improved versions of their former classmates. And if that was true ***
Then a massive transparent barrier erupted around the chamber’s perimeter, its crystalline surface shimmering with deadly energy. Professor Leo struck the barrier with enough force to shatter castle walls, but his blade stopped cold against the corrupted construct, unable to penetrate its surface.
"That’s impossible," Leo snarled, pulling back from the barrier as understanding dawned in his eyes. "That barrier technique... only one person in our group could weave protective constructs with that level of sophistication."
The branded figure that stepped through a gap in his own barrier made Sarah’s blood freeze. Professor Dirk moved with the same methodical precision she remembered from his Academy lectures, but the geometric patterns burned into his forehead and neck pulsed with malevolent energy that transformed his familiar features into something alien and terrible.
Where the branded students had been enhanced beyond their original Novice capabilities, Dirk retained his full Master-rank power. The barrier specialist who’d once protected the Academy now stood before them as a weapon in service of whatever entity controlled this nightmare.
"Professor Dirk," Harold whispered, his healing abilities faltering as shock overwhelmed his concentration. "How is this possible?"
The corrupted professor’s response came in a voice that held traces of the man they’d known, but filtered through alien intelligence. "Barriers protect what matters most. Now I serve something greater than human understanding."
Leo’s tactical assessment was immediate and brutal. A Master-ranked barrier specialist under alien control, commanding a force of enhanced former students, in an enclosed space where retreat was impossible. The mathematics of survival had just shifted dramatically in their enemies’ favor.
Without warning, a second barrier snapped into existence this one trapping Leo and Dirk together in a transparent cage while separating them from the rest of the survivors. The other branded students pressed against the barrier’s outer surface, but couldn’t penetrate the construct that now contained both Masters.***
The battle that erupted between the two Masters was unlike anything Sarah had ever witnessed, but not for the reasons she expected. This wasn’t an elaborate display of barrier construction it was something far more terrifying in its simplicity.
Professor Dirk stood perfectly still in the center of the crystalline prison, his corrupted features calm as Leo launched his first attack. The combat instructor’s blade honed by decades of Master-rank experience struck with enough force to cleave through steel.
It stopped dead against empty air, inches from Dirk’s throat.
"Twenty-seven years of Academy service, Leo," Dirk said conversationally, as if they were discussing curriculum changes in the faculty lounge. "Did you really think I never learned to protect myself?"
A shimmering distortion surrounded the corrupted professor not a visible barrier, but a field of pure force that turned the air itself into impenetrable armor. Leo’s follow-up strikes met the same result, each blow deflected by the invisible shell that encased his former colleague.
But the real genius of Dirk’s strategy became apparent as Leo pressed his assault. The outer barrier containing both Masters wasn’t just a prison it was a weapon. Every attack Leo launched that missed its target, every technique that Dirk’s personal shield deflected, ricocheted off the crystalline walls with amplified force.
Leo barely rolled aside as his own sword strike came whistling back at him, the redirected energy carving a smoking trench through the barrier floor. The prison had become a death trap where every missed attack became a hazard that could kill him.
"You always were too direct in your thinking," Dirk observed, still not moving from his position. Around him, the force field pulsed with steady energy, rendering him completely untouchable while the redirected attacks turned the enclosed space into a chaotic maelstrom of reflected violence.
Leo found himself fighting not just his corrupted colleague, but the accumulated force of his own techniques. Each strike had to be perfectly controlled, perfectly placed, because anything that missed would return to threaten him moments later. The tactical mathematics were brutal he needed to penetrate Dirk’s personal shield while avoiding the increasingly dangerous environment their battle was creating.
"The barrier redirects everything," Sarah whispered, watching in horrified fascination as Leo adapted his fighting style in real time. "He doesn’t need to attack directly. He just has to wait for Leo to make a mistake."
The corrupted professor heard her observation through the transparent walls. "Intelligent girl. Barriers aren’t just about blocking attacks they’re about controlling the battlefield itself. Every force applied has an equal and opposite reaction. I simply... choose the direction."
As if to demonstrate, Dirk raised one hand and the outer barrier’s surface rippled. Suddenly, every reflected attack in the prison converged on Leo’s position simultaneously a dozen of his own techniques returning to strike him from every angle at once.
Leo’s reflexes saved his life, but barely. He emerged from the coordinated assault bleeding from multiple wounds, his movements noticeably slower as the accumulated damage took its toll.
’He’s going to die in there,’ Sarah realized, the bone blade growing slick with sweat in her grip. ’Dirk doesn’t even need to move. He’s turning Leo’s own skill against him.’
"The head," Dirk said, his academic tone unchanged despite the violence surrounding them. "Take off the head, and the body falls. But first, you must reach the head."
The impenetrable force field around the corrupted professor pulsed with steady energy, while outside their crystalline prison, the branded students continued their coordinated assault on the surviving Academy group. Sarah realized with growing horror that Leo wasn’t just fighting for his own survival he was racing against time before Dirk’s controlled students overwhelmed everyone else.***
In the chaos of clashing abilities and desperate survival, one terrible truth became clear: whatever entity ruled this dimensional space had been collecting awakened individuals for a very specific purpose. And now, with a Master-ranked professor under its control, it was ready to demonstrate exactly what that purpose was.
The branded students pressed their coordinated assault, their corrupted abilities weaving together in patterns no human tactical doctrine had ever conceived. Sarah gripped her bone blade tighter, her ability held ready, as the chamber became a battlefield where the stakes were nothing less than the survival of their humanity itself.
But how do you defeat an enemy you cannot touch, in a space where your own strength becomes your greatest weakness?