“I…thank you. I don’t know what to…”
“Don’t attack my group again. Period.”
The other student nodded weakly.
“Good. I’m going to go check on the others now.”
I started to head toward Marissa.
“Wait.”
I turned my head. “Yeah?”
“One of the traitors in your group is one of the second-years. Kathy.”
I opened and closed my jaw, but no sound came out. One of the second-years? That wasn’t even close to fair.
But of course it wasn’t.
They must have known we wouldn’t consider the second-years an option. That made discovering them much less likely.
And we didn’t even know what Kathy’s attunement was. It hadn’t been listed.
I took a breath. “Thank you. Do you know if there are others?”
The student shook his head. “No, sorry. Kathy was our contact.”
“Got it. Take care of yourself.”
“Thanks… I’m Ryan, by the way.”
“Corin. I’ll see you later.”
I waved and headed over to where Marissa was, weirdly, still facing off against the third student.
I’d expected it to be over with one punch.
Upon arriving at the scene, I could see why it wasn’t. Marissa had just finished pummeling two more monsters into a pulp.
This third student was not only a Summoner, they were a strong one if they still had enough mana for more at this point.
They weren’t even breathing hard. They just stood on that rock, arms folded as Marissa and I approached.
“Fools. This land belongs to the Tails of Orochi. And, like our master, if you cut off a single head—”
“Punching you now.” Marissa slammed a fist into the student’s stomach.
I was mildly disappointed. I’d been enjoying the evil monologue.
The student doubled over, coughing. “Ow.”
“Sorry. Looks like it’s going to take one more.”
Slam.
The student’s shield shattered.
“Ugh. You could have at least let me finish my speech.”
Marissa scoffed. “That is literally never a good idea.”
I walked over. “You both okay?”
“Just a couple scrapes and bruises. Nothin’ yer phoenix sigil won’t fix.” She jerked a thumb at the other student. “And I didn’t hit this guy too hard.”
“Your standards for ‘hard’ are absurd,” the student complained, then broke into a cough.
“All right. Looks like everyone is alive.” I considered casting a lesser regeneration spell on each of the students to help them recover faster, but I still had no experience at actually casting healing spells on other people. Even though regeneration spells were ostensibly safe, they didn’t seem injured badly enough that I should take any sort of risk. I needed to practice healing in a controlled environment first.
“Okay, Mara. Any idea where the horses went?”
“Off the trail. Monsters spooked ‘em.”
“You want to try to follow them into the woods?”
“Nah.”
“Neither do I. Let’s head back to the others. Thanks for coming to help me.”
Marissa grabbed me in a hug.
I froze.
Marissa pulled off. “Somethin’ wrong?”
“Little warning next time, Mara. I’m…sort of sensitive about people grabbing me.”
“Oh. Uh, sorry. I uh, thought it was okay. We’re friends, right?”
“It’s not… Of course we are, I’m just not good at dealing with being touched. I have trouble even with Sera.” I sighed. “It’s nothing personal.”
She frowned. From her expression, I wasn’t sure she believed me. “Oh, okay. I’ll try to be a little more careful, yeah?”
I nodded. “Thanks.”
“Do you, um, want to talk about it?”
“It?”
“Why you’re like that?”
I shook my head. “No. No, I do not.”
“Okay. I understand.”
I doubted that, but I wasn’t going to argue further.
We walked back to the others in silence.
Maybe I should have talked to her.
It might have helped keep the intrusive thoughts — and memories — from running through my head.
“You made it back!”
Patrick’s excited tone was a sharp contrast to the tone of my thoughts.
I tried to focus. But sometimes the more I tried to ignore something, the more it forced itself into my mind.
Fortunately, Mara did the talking. “Got jumped by three students on the Orochi team. Got to thinkin’ that this wasn’t a coincidence.”
“We concur.” Vyers said as he approached. “In fact, Corin is suspected of working with them.”
“Unless their team wins by bein’ punched, I doubt that.” Marissa folded her arms. “Ran right out and helped me, unlike the rest of you. Not that I needed any helpin’, mind you.”
Vyers turned to Kyra. “We only have their word for it. She could be one of them, too.”
Kyra nodded. “I’ll go check it out and see if there really are other students out there.”
“You shouldn’t go alone,” I suggested. “Assuming their teams are structured like ours, three of them being there means there are still at least two others out there.”
“Unless those two others are already inside our group,” Vyers pointed out.
Possible, I considered, but more likely they’d have a full five and then the infiltrators on top of that.
Still, I couldn’t know for sure.
“All right.” Kyra gestured to Rupert. “Kent, you’re with me.”
Rupert gave Marissa a long look as the pair of them walked past us. Her hands balled into fists, but she didn’t say anything.
“I need to talk to Roland.” I started heading back toward the rest of the group, but Vyers stepped in front of me.
“Don’t think so. Not by yourself, at least. You’ve been having a lot of one-on-one conversations already. That’s more than a little suspicious.”
I nodded. “Sure. I’ve had time alone with Roland, Jin, and Marissa. You can’t honestly think we have four infiltrators, though, can you? That’d be an absurd ratio.”
Vyers shrugged. “I’m not dismissing any possibilities at this point. Could be half of us for all I know.”
“That’d be patently unfair.”
“Do we even know we have an infiltrator?” Marissa asked. “I mean, couldn’t someone have just fireballed that wagon from a distance?”
“You missed it. We found an explosive device in the wagon,” Patrick explained. “But that doesn’t mean it was any one of us. Maybe they had someone who was invisible that planted it.”
“Oh.” Marissa frowned. “Huh.”
“Not impossible,” Vyers turned toward Patrick, “But extremely unlikely.”
“Okay, Vyers. Why don’t you come with me to talk to Roland? You can hear what I have to say.”
“Acceptable.” He nodded. “Let’s go.”
“Any reason why we couldn’t come?” Patrick asked.
I hesitated, but Vyers answered for me. “Information control may be important if we do have an infiltrator in our group. Corin must have something he wants to keep confined for now.”
I made an apologetic expression. “Sorry, Patrick. My intent is to let everyone in on this soon, but I’m under some restrictions right now.”
“Okay.” He raised three fingers in a symbol of good luck. “You’ve got this.”
“Thanks.”