Alkalians (9 page)

Unprepared for the unusual attack
method, Dante is bashed by Matt’s left shoulder, being flung off
his feet from the impact. Within the split second after the
collision, he looks with worried surprise as Matt raises his great
sword to bring it down at him, and desperately tries a side-thrust
of air balance to get out of the way.

While he doesn’t directly
hit him, Matt does leave his mark as his sword chops through
Dante’s right arm, causing it to pop off from his elbow and
disappear in a flash of red light. After he was wounded and rolls
away, Sean exclaims from the side-line, “Ah, look at that! It
appears that Dante’s been, heh,
disarmed
! Bwahahahahah!!”

Cringing with a numbing pain from the
severing blow, Dante lands on his feet a few yards away, quickly
checking what is left of his right arm, a glowing spot of bright
yellow marking its stub at the elbow. When he looks away from it,
he’s startled to see Matt coming back at him, his blade set to stab
into him like a lance. Reacting quickly, he side-steps to the
right, allowing the sword’s thrust to pass by him, reforms his own
sword from his left hand, and strikes back with a passing swipe of
his sword at Matt’s exposed side, cutting a thin line of green into
his armor.

For the next several seconds, Matt
would turn and swing his sword outward to try hitting Dante, who
swiftly avoids it and leaves a new cut in a new spot every time.
After he had put some cuts in Matt’s sides and upper legs, he then
dodges another great swing of the black sword and positions himself
behind him. Before Matt responds, he rapidly lashes his back,
causing him to flinch from the flogging-like blows. Dante then
leaps away as Matt rotates with his blade trying to clip
him.

The rapid swordfight slows to a pause,
with Matt and Dante staring down the other, each waiting for one to
reopen the fight with a lunging attack. Meanwhile, Sean looks
back-and-forth between the two, unsure of who yet had an advantage
over the other. Matt decides to make the resuming move when he
grips his sword’s base with his right hand, leaps straight into the
air, rolls forward once, and comes back down at Dante, the black
blade aiming to split him.

Seeing the attack coming, he simply
side-steps out of the way, letting Matt’s sword chop into the
ground, and thrusts his orange sword at Matt’s neck. Before the
katana finds its mark, Matt reacts by raising his left arm to get
stabbed instead. Not deterred by the instinctive response, Dante
begins another flurry of slashes upon his arm, hoping to keep Matt
pinned long enough to mutilate it in return for what he had done to
his own arm.

What happens instead, however, is
something Dante did not expect. Matt dissipates the energy of his
black sword, turns toward him, and reaches out with his open right
hand to grab Dante’s sword arm.

Shocked by his attacks stopping, Dante
looks desperate as he struggles to break out of Matt’s strong grip.
He, meanwhile, lifts Dante’s arm up to fully expose his stomach
area, the target for his great sword then reformed from his wounded
left arm.

Dante cringes as the blade enters his
abdominals and exits out his lower back, the crippling blow
wracking him with more numbing pain as orange wound energy gushes
from both ends of the wound. Matt then lets go of Dante’s limp
sword arm, clasps his sword’s base with both hands, and lifts his
sword, and Dante on it, into the air before bringing them down in a
half-turn, having Dante hit the ground head-first while the sword
carves into his chest area.

With red wounds breaking forth from
his snapped neck and chest cavity, Dante feels paralyzed by the
surge of numbness from the heavy damage as his katana turns off at
his left hand. After the black blade leave his body, lying face-up
on the ground, he looks up to watch Matt reposition it to point
downwards between his hands, the sun shining high in the sky behind
him. Matt, no mercy in his violet eyes, then deals the finishing
blow, planting his sword into Dante’s chest and the dirt beneath
him.

***

In a spouting flash of red energy,
Dante demorphs, causing Matt’s sword to be thrown up out of the
ground and send him a step back. In his human form again, Dante
looks like he was never harmed until he suddenly coughs violently,
gripping his chest with both hands and spitting up a little blood.
Seeing the blood, Matt worriedly demorphs and kneels down to help
him sit up, saying, “Earth Spirit, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to
literally hurt you that bad!” Meanwhile, Sean, after watching in
amazement how Matt defeated Dante, gets up and hurries over to
them, demorphing as well.

Chuckling through his coughs, Dante
tells him, “Shouldn’t you be apologizing to me, instead of the
Earth Spirit? But seriously, don’t worry, it’s fine. It’s nothing
permanent. A good night’s sleep, and I’ll be fine.” Coughing
roughly again, he forces himself to his feet while Matt yet looks
concerned. Turning to him, he wipes the blood from his mouth and
chin with his right sleeve and tells him, “Well, thanks to that
battle, which you fought better than I expected, I now know for
sure that my suspicion about you is correct.”

His worry for him becoming curiosity,
Matt asks, “And what would that be?”

After another cough and groan, Dante
admits, “Sorry, but I can’t explain it while it feels like my chest
is going to cave in. Perhaps I’ll tell you the next time we meet.
But now, if you will excuse me, I’ll go escort myself to the
school’s infirmary.” Turning to limp back toward the college, he
glances at Sean, nods courteously to him, and then slowly walks
away, occasionally coughing a little and leaving a confused Matt
and Sean in the open field.

***

Later, after the sun has
set and the sky is black with night time, Matt, Sean, and Rose are
back in their cabin, eating their dinner consisting of pizza at the
kitchen counter. Once half of the pie is gone, Sean says to Matt as
he is biting into another slice, “Well,
now
you know what pizza is! How do
you like it?”

“
Hmm, it’s pretty good! I
could just keep on eating it!”

“
Haha, yeah, just don’t
try to. I want leftovers!” After all three of them laugh, he turns
to Rose and asks her, “So, how did the training with Professor
Serpanz go? Did she put your face to the floor and make you kiss
it?”

Rose glares at him before suggesting
rather than answering, “If you’re still trying to flirt with me,
you should probably not ask me how much I suffered in training.”
When Sean realizes his mistake and smacks himself in the face, she
then answers, “And it wasn’t that bad. Just a lot of running and
battle morph sparring.”

“
How so?” asks
Matt.

“
Well, it went like this.
We’d do a duel, and then we’d run three laps around the arena. But,
if I lost, which I did in all of the duels, I had to run
six
laps instead. Heh, I
will admit, it was quite a workout!”

“
You call that ‘not
bad’!?” exclaims Sean. “Yeesh! I’d hate to know just what exactly
is ‘bad’ for you!”

“
Ah, well, I may find out
just what that could be, eventually. What about you guys? How did
your training go?”

Getting excited, Sean almost jumps out
of his seat when he says, “It was wonderful! We did it, Rose! Me
and Matt figured it out, and now, I know how to fight! Isn’t that
great!?”

Startled by his loud exclamation, Rose
replies, “Oh, uh, yes, that’s great.”

“
Isn’t it!? Oh, and we
figured out what Matt’s battle morph is. He’s a
Paladin.”

“
A Paladin, eh? Yeah, I
thought that’s what it was.”

Sean has an awkward expression on his
face before he spits out, “You already knew what his battle morph
was? Why didn’t you tell us earlier!?”

“
Because, I didn’t think
it was such a big deal, and I was keeping Or, er, Prof. Serpanz
waiting! I figured I would tell you guys later.”

“
Pff, well, it was a big
deal for me! How could you, keeping Matt in the dark like that. He
should have known what he is a long time ago, from the moment he
could first morph! Plus, that means we wasted a trip to the
library.”

As Sean calms down with a pout and
sits back in his seat at the kitchen counter, Matt says, “Uh,
that’s not all. While we were training, Dante Goros showed up and
challenged me to a duel. And, well, I beat him.”

“
You did!? Wow, well done,
Matt! Was it a close match?”

“
Hah, far from it! Matt
literally impaled him and sent him crawling to the infirmary, with
him spitting up his own blood! Heh heh, serves him right, I’d say,
thinking he’s so cool and perfect.”

Rather than giving Sean
another dirty look, Rose becomes concerned and asks Matt, “You mean
you actually
injured
him? Will he be all right?”

“
Oh, uh, yeah, I guess. He
was able to walk himself, rather than crawl as Sean put it, back to
the college. He said something about a good night’s rest was all he
needed.”

“
Ah, that’s good.” Looking
back to Sean, she asks, “So, is Dante a boss student?”

“
Hmm, a good guess, Rose,
but not exactly. He’s got a small group of guys loyal to them, but
he’s not as, oh, motivated as the other boss students. He’s
more
laissez faire
.”

Matt tries to repeat the words. “Lay,
lay what?”

“
It means he’s lazy,
nonchalant, unmotivated. He’s not into the whole deal of trying to
‘rule the school.’ ”

“
Is that so?” Rose asks.
“Well, then, just who are the boss students?”

“
Ah, yes, now I can tell
you! Where to begin? Okay, from what I’ve noticed already, and
remember from last year, there are a total of five boss students at
the college this year. Probably the most popular, and notorious, of
them is Cain Incarein. He’s rich, spoiled, and cruel. He’s so
bad-natured and hot-tempered, even other seniors, as well as the
other boss students, stay out of his way. So, if you see this guy,
with brown, gelled hair, a nice, expensive green suit, and evil
green eyes, either be as unnoticeable as possible or get as far
away from him as you can. Oh, and you’ll want to watch out for his
goons. The most of them act as volunteer officers for the college,
which gives him all the more power over the student
community.”

“
Wait, you mean he can use
the school officials to bully other students around? That’s awful!
Wouldn’t the college’s administration do something about
that?”

“
Eh, well, believe me,
they
wish
they
would. However, the student community is so affected by his
influence that they don’t fess up to the scandals he and his
cronies commit, nor could anything be proven if someone told on
them. Plus, he’s from a noble, wealthy family up in Tirez, so the
school staff and actual officers have to be lenient with him.
All-in-all, he’s got control of the student community through
collaboration and intimidation.”

“
Uh huh. So, I guess we’ll
just have to avoid causing trouble with him,” Matt complies. “What
about the other boss students?”

“
Well, let’s see. Then
there’s Cain’s cousin, James Iroshen, another noble from Tirez. In
fact, he’s got a higher place in the family than Cain does. He’s
the son of Tirez’s prime minister, and his good looks and charm get
him much of the women and school staff’s support.”

“
James Iroshen?” Rose
asks. “Blue suit, long purple hair, blue eyes?”

“
Yep, that’s the one!
How’d you know?”

“
Because Matt and I have
already seen him. He’s in our alchemy class.”

“
Alchemy, huh? …Oh! Yeah,
makes sense he would be in that class again. What, with his
reputation in the community.”

“
Reputation?”

“
Yeah. See, with his noble
background, looks, and charm, he has a way of infatuating the
ladies. He could hook up with a girl one day, dump her for another
the next day, and then pick her up again the day after! Oh, and
you’ll also want to know that he likes going after the, uh…” Sean
directly nods at Rose to include her as he says, “Pretty
ones.”

Smirking at his attempt to get on her
good side yet, Rose replies, “Of course. In other words, he’s a
womanizer, right?”

“
Exactly, so you in
particular gotta watch out for him, especially since you both share
a class! Anyway, another boss.” Sean thinks a moment. “Ah yes, then
there’s Cynthia Volvaron! While James gets all the ladies, she’s a
temptress of love for the men. Red hair, red dress, pink eyes,
tanned red skin. She’s the living incarnate of a ruby, beautiful
and priceless! Oh, and she comes from the same family who owns the
famous Volvaron Resort down in Saratu, so that gives her some perks
as well.”

“
The Volvaron Resort?”
Matt asks. “My parents and I have gone there on vacation a few
times. I wonder if I may have seen her there before.”

“
Oh, trust me, Matt, if
you’ve seen her, you’ll have not forgotten her! Now, my advice for
you about her is to not make the same mistake I did.”