I sped past trees, utilizing Mana Step in quick bursts to move with as much speed I could muster. After Alessandro told me about mages’ having different affinities, I was rearing to learn the limits of mine.

The existence of magical affinities also answered a question I have had on my mind for months—why was it that all the mages I had delved with grew exhausted after casting but a few spells, while I instead didn’t? Initially, I had thought it was a matter of disparity between my rank and that of others—being higher ranked certainly helped—but maybe that was only a part of the answer. Maybe the person’s magic affinity also played a role. It was worth looking into.

Done with patrolling the camp’s perimeter, I returned among my companions. Most had already tucked in their sleeping bags, and I too decided to follow their example. The next few days would be exhausting—it was better to rest as much as possible.

As I retrieved the sleeping bag from the pack I had on my back, I crossed eyes with Alessio, who stood at the very edge of the camp on lookout duty. I smiled a cheeky smile at the man and wished him good night. He didn’t take to it too well, if his mouthing me back a ‘fuck you’ and showing me the finger—which, in my opinion, I more than deserved—was any indication of the fact.

Chuckling, I wolfed down the crackers and ham I had taken out along the sleeping bag and then went to sleep.

The next morning, I was startled awake by a kick in the shin to the smiling face of Alessio.

“That wasn’t very sporty of you,” I told him while my eyes adjusted to the morning sunlight streaming down from the gaps in the canopy.

“No, it wasn’t,” he admitted as he scratched at his scraggly beard. “But God knows if I needed it.”

“You stayed up the entire night?”

“No.” Alessio shook his head. “I could have, but Alessandro wanted us to all get at least some rest. Tommaso changed with me around four a.m.” he said, jamming his thumb at one of the people in Chiara’s group. “But that is enough chit-chat. Get up. Alessandro said we will be moving out on his word, and something tells me it will be sooner rather than later.”

As Alessio left to find Sara and relay to her what he had told me, I folded the sleeping bag and put it back inside my backpack. Just like Alessio had foretold, it wasn’t long before Alessandro guided him, Sara and me deeper inside the dungeon.

—|—|—

POV: The Cardinal

The hydra’s scales were an intense onyx, an unusual color for this particular breed of monster, but all Furiae were unusual one way or the other. Once, I had even fought one that had an additional head—a two-headed wolf the size of a building. A different shade of the scales was nothing to gawk at.

“Fall back,” I ordered to Luca and the others. There was nothing they could do against a rank S hydra after all. Its scales made it invulnerable to even most S-rankers’ attacks. The plates’ resilience wasn’t on the same level of those of a rank S behemoth, but even if they weren’t, it wasn’t something an A-ranker could hope to scratch.

“Yes, your Eminence,” I heard Luca say.

As the four retreated, I began gathering the mana in the atmosphere, all the while keeping an eye on the beast. It was taking its time to emerge, relishing in the warmth of the morning sun, not wary of me at all.

It was funny in a way—cute even. I had fought and won against monsters much scarier than this newly ascended Furia, and they had been afraid to face me. Its inability to perceive threats must be the result of living a life without anyone capable of challenging it. It was comprehensible; the monster lived inside Villa Doria Pamphilj’s lake after all. Which person in their right mind would dive to its depths to hunt monsters?

I stepped forward over a slate of hardened mana, and then again over another, ascending in the air one step at a time like I had been on a staircase until I was on eye level with the hydra’s nine heads. Facing my palm forward, I took my time in building a spell matrix, shaping it out of the mana I assumed control over.

“Song of Imprisonment,” I chanted when I felt the work to be done well enough. “6th Poem; 6th Stanza—Temple of the Sun.”

Four shimmering walls of sunlight coalesced around the hydra, trapping it in a translucent, golden pyramid.

The spell couldn't and wouldn’t hold the monster still even for a second, but that wasn’t my objective. When you fought something on the same level of an S-ranker, be it a monster or a person, using Stanzas of the first seven Poems was like tossing snowballs at a forest fire in the hope to quench the flames—it just didn’t work.

There was a vantage to using them all the same, however. The lower poems were quite efficient at attuning mana to an element, which in turn allowed a mage to cast a spell of that same element with less difficulty. In other words, using Stanzas of the lower poems helped with casting those of the higher ones.

Fissures spread across the luminous surface of the spell as the magic, incapable of trapping the monster, failed, breaking into thousands of motes of light.

The hydra hissed ominously, incensed by my attack. Its left-most head sprung in my direction in a retaliatory strike, its mouth wide-open and fangs dripping with venom—not that the monster needed either to kill me, it could easily swallow me whole.

I Mana Stepped away—careful to give the jaws of the beast a wide berth—weaving the mana I had around me in the matrix of my next spell.

“Song of Protection,” I called out loud from behind the beast, catching its attention. “7th Poem; 2nd Stanza—Light Field.”