Return of the Runebound Professor

“Hullo!” Tim called cheerfully as Noah’s body slammed into the iron cage, rattling his throbbing brain in his skull and sending spikes of agony coursing through him. “I see your clothes survived the trip this time.”

If only you knew.

Noah grunted in agreement, unable to muster the energy to give a better response. He gave Tim a weak smile, just to make sure the man wasn’t too offended by his sudden lack of interest in communication, then stepped onto the lift.

His head thumped its anger at his death the entire way back to his room, intensifying with every loud noise or bright light. By the time he finally stumbled into the room, it felt like he’d had a migraine for at least a month.

Cursing under his breath, Noah stumbled into his bed and buried his head under his pillow, muting the faint chirps of the birds and distant conversation from below his window. He screwed his eyes shut and focused on the rhythm of his heartbeat, using it like a lifeline to try and pull himself out of the pain.

It didn’t work too well, but he couldn’t think of anything better to do. Noah remained there for several hours until the pain finally started to abate and he was able to take grasp of his facilities once again.

Noah slipped out of bed and took a detour to his bathroom to splash cold water on his face. He ran his hands through his hair and sighed, leaning on the sink and resting his head against the mirror.

“Idiot. You let yourself get too cocky.” He pressed his lips together and pushed back. There was no point promising himself that he’d avoid it in the future. It had been a painful reminder, but his advantage had been hammered back into his head.

The monsters were deadly, but he had infinite chances to fight them. Nobody else did, which might have been why the students didn’t realize how simple it was to defeat the Slashers. If that went for everything…

A tiny grin tugged at Noah’s lips, but it wasn’t quite enough to pull him out of his annoyance. He shook his head and closed his eyes, reaching into his mind to check on the progress of his Runes.

They greeted him like an old friend, the seven glimmering patterns blinking to life in the darkness around him. Pressure from the Sunder Rune above Noah bore down on him, but he pointedly avoided looking up at it.

There was just too much to deal with, and he didn’t dare fiddle with the massive Rune any further until he at least had a rudimentary grasp of his normal ones. Noah’s eyes caught on the edge of the darkness in his mental space.

Bright patches of white void were appearing as a small section dark energy crumbled away. Noah approached it with a nervous frown, watching as a tiny fragment of black vanished into the white nothingness.

It wasn’t in the same spot that the previous damage had been in, but it was close. For that matter, a portion of the previous damage had healed over again, but it still hadn’t completely patched over.

“So that’s it. I take some form of soul or mental damage whenever I die,” Noah realized. “Not permanent, from the looks of things.”

He let out a sigh of relief.

“Thank god. There’s a limit. That means it’s not completely out of my control. Anything with no real limit is just limited by something you don’t understand, and the price for this one doesn’t seem too bad. Still… I want to know why I come back to life, and why it’s at the gourd. Did that demon curse me? Did it also have a gourd that it just carried around? Damn. Too many questions.”

Noah watched the tiny pieces of white void, but they weren’t getting any larger. He was fairly certain that they were what was causing his headache as well. The fragmentation of his mind or soul – whichever he was currently in – couldn’t have been painless.

Judging from the rate of healing on the previous damage, Noah was fairly certain that it took a few days to patch up a single death. As long as he kept himself from kicking the bucket more than that, he was pretty sure everything would be fine. It couldn’t have been healthy to die more than once every few days anyway.

Noah returned to the center of his mindspace and approached the Vibration Rune. It let out a gentle hum as he approached. The Rune was brighter than it had been before, and Noah could feel the energy within it.

There was more without a doubt, though he still couldn’t tell exactly how much. Noah’s other Runes had all gained some energy as well, the full Wind Runes notwithstanding. He smiled in satisfaction.

Making progress felt good. Much better than the godawful rat race of being a teacher on Earth.

A faint pang of longing echoed through Noah’s chest. He didn’t miss the administration or the awful pay in the slightest, but his students had been one of the few memories that had actually kept him company during his long wait in the line.

He was sure they’d probably all forgotten him and were long dead by now, but that didn’t change things in the slightest. Noah’s hands clenched. It didn’t matter whether he was on Earth or whatever planet this was.

Any students of his were going to have the best shot at life that they could.

Noah opened his eyes to the bathroom and turned away from the sink, heading back to the main room. He needed to –

A Slasher’s ugly face peered at him from just beyond the window. Noah launched himself to the side and summoned a blade of wind to his hands, rearing back to throw it –

There was nothing in the window. Noah’s heart bucked in his chest, beating violently as he stood still for several seconds. He slowly approached the window, the blade of wind still readied above his palm. There was nothing.

Noah let out a slow breath and tried to calm his racing nerves. He let several minutes pass and slowed his breathing, focusing on releasing the tension in his body.

I’m fighting too much if I’m starting to see things. Who would have thought that the human mind isn’t exactly psychologically prepared for constant fighting and dying.

Noah remained there for a few more minutes before he was confident that he had complete control over himself again. There wasn’t anything he could think of to do about the vision, so he turned his attention to more productive tasks. Noah sat down at his desk and pulled his grimoire out and set it down in front of him.

A thought struck Noah. He blinked, then started to smile.

Why didn’t I think of this before? They’re going to be in for quite the surprise after their week of training is done.

Noah closed the grimoire and tucked it back into its holster. He cleared his throat and kicked his legs, twiddling his thumbs. He scanned his room, finding himself with down time for the first time since he’d arrived on this world.

It didn’t feel good.

Noah’s eyes landed on the pile of papers in the corner. He’d still yet to reorganize them after mistakenly throwing them everywhere with his wind magic. Noah stood and walked up to the pile.

At its top was the paper warning for Skinwalkers.

Skinwalker group spotted in the area. Be wary of colleagues or students that you recognize that speak or move in an odd manner, especially those that have been missing for more than three weeks. It takes Skinwalkers time to completely merge with a body and absorb the residual memories within it. They are especially attracted to people with powerful Runes and can occasionally be well spoken.

Take extreme care when running into anyone that makes you feel uncomfortable, or who simply seems ‘off’. Skinwalkers are not especially dangerous after they have been discovered, but they are insidious killers that often have more kills than vastly more deadly monsters.

If you suspect someone you know to be a Skinwalker, seek out another professor or confront them immediately.

“Makes me wonder who’s at the top of the food chain here,” Noah mused, setting the paper down. “Is it powerful mages? Or are there monsters that are even stronger than them? Those Great Monsters, maybe?”

He wasn’t about to get the answers to those questions in his room. Noah sighed and gathered a stack of papers. It was as good a time as any to sort through Vermil’s stuff with a more careful eye and see if there was anything important that he’d missed.

***

Going through the pile took considerably longer than Noah had expected. He’d guessed that it would take the rest of the day at most, but it ended up taking him all day and then a good portion of the next morning.

To his great annoyance, the vast majority of the information within the paper could have been boiled down to roughly one sentence.

Vermil was a lazy, entitled brat of a rich family that had peaked in high school and had absolutely no plans of doing anything about that.

He had dozens of letters from girls that Noah suspected to be his former students, trading a variety of favors in exchange for passing grades. Amongst them were several complaints from other professors and teachers directed to Arbitage, all of which had been rejected.

The Linwicks just donated too much money to the school, and Vermil had known it. The smug bastard had literally been given the complaints, which he’d saved as some form of stupid memento.

“You definitely had this coming,” Noah informed Vermil’s body. “Don’t worry. I’ll put your body to much better use than you ever could have.”

I just hope your family feels the same way. Moxie implied that they clearly cared about reputation, though. Something just doesn’t add up. Why would Vermil be allowed to be such a scumbag if he was representing this rich family?

With that, another thought struck him and Noah’s frown deepened even further.

Wait. Vermil was in the Scorched Acres, but he was planning on letting Isabel and Todd cheat their way through the exam. How does that make sense? I’m missing something. I’m missing a lot of somethings. 

Unfortunately, whatever he was missing didn’t seem to be in the now-organized piles of paper before him. Noah pursed his lips. There were all too many things that he couldn’t quite put a finger on, and that wasn’t even mentioning whoever had tried to kill him.

Noah stood from the desk. The questions would still be waiting for him when he got back, but there were more monkeys to train against. If he wanted to make sure he could demonstrate everything to his students, his form would have to be immaculate.

And I need to find that bastard that chucked the rock at me and send him to wait in a line for a few centuries. I wonder how many different kinds of monkeys there are in the forest. Actually, for that matter, why aren’t there other monsters? Monkeys can’t possibly make up an entire ecosystem.

 Noah grabbed a spare set of clothes from his dwindling supplies and swept out of his room, locking the door firmly behind him before striding down the hall and heading for Tim’s tower. The more he thought about things, the more questions he got. Perhaps the older man would answer a few things while he got the cannon prepared.

Before long, Noah had reached the tower. After a short wait in line, the lift rattled him up to the dome at the top and Tim greeted him with a wide grin.

“Hullo there. You’ve been using the Travel Anywhere In No Time system quite a bit now. It’s damn useful, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Noah agreed. “I’ve been doing a lot of preparation for the exams next month at Scorched Acres.”

“Dedicated bloke, you are. You giving the monkeys the good ole one-two?”

“Doing my best to,” Noah said with a chuckle.

“At least someone is,” Tim said, rolling his eyes. “Same place, then?”

“Yeah, same place. What do you mean by that, though? Don’t the other professors go there a lot as well, especially as the test gets closer?” Noah asked.

Tim let out a snort. “Certainly not with me, but I’ve ferried a few students to it. Most of the time people don’t really go down there.”

 “I see.”

“It ain’t just that the monkeys, you know,” Tim said with a panicked wave. “There’s also that great beastie in the area. The Hellreaver.”

Didn’t one of the mages that saved me mention something about that? I remember that name.

“Expand on that?” Noah asked tentatively.

“You know, the Great Monster,” Tim said, holding his hands out to his sides, then frowning as if disappointed by his inability to properly show how large the monster was. “The giant ape thing. Nobody wants to run into that.”

“And we still have the test in the forest?”

Tim shrugged. “It doesn’t go after students. Not enough magic in ‘em. Also, the thing is usually asleep. As long as you don’t go too close to it, you’re fine.”

Noah opened his mouth, then closed it. If that was really the case, it wasn’t exactly a terrible idea. Powerful animals on earth were usually pretty territorial as well, so if the Hellreaver kept other strong monsters away, it might have actually been beneficial.

Might have been. He wasn’t convinced.

“Interesting. I never thought about it like that.”

There was a loud clunk as the cannon aligned itself. Tim gave Noah an expectant look, and Noah climbed into the tube.

“Say, do you know why the forest is just full of monkeys and nothing else?” Noah asked before Tim could fire him off.

“We corralled them there a few years back. It’s how the forest got scorched. Nothing else can survive, and they just eat each other,” Tim replied with a chuckle. “You really are new, aren’t you? It was huge news a few years ago.”

“Good to know,” Noah said. “Thanks, Tim. See you tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow,” Tim agreed, tipping an imaginary hat to Noah. Energy swirled and prickled at Noah’s skin before enveloping his body. The world snapped into shades of blue and Noah was launched into the Ether and sent hurtling toward the Scorched Acres.