Homework Can Wait

[Author's Note: Don't Google Translate stuff in this chapter. Besides maybe being quasi-spoilery, there's just no duty or even need to do so. Trust me.]

As much as he'd like to answer "both", pushing his luck in her barrier seemed unwise. He came to her for one thing, and he already had a hard time demanding it amid the radiance of a thousand candles that probably didn't exist; a further demand, for knowledge or power, would have to wait. "This is a request to help me fulfill an objective of... a kind of spell that demands particular events or things?" He didn't mean for it to come out as a question.

[UNKNOWN]'s [UNKNOWN] attempted to [UNKNOWN], but you're immune.

John tensed, and her eyes briefly widened as if surprised. "You've improved since last we spoke," Wentworth sighed, leaning back into the velvet cushions of her throne, "but it doesn't take much to know you're still lying."

John swallowed hard, and did his best to ignore the Game's warning. "It's just- I mean, it's difficult to put in terms you would believe."

"Humor me."

John closed his mouth, and contemplated his offer. "I want to give you several magical components I've harvested, in exchange for you helping me fulfill a quest requirement."

"A quest, now?" She pursed her lips in a sneering smile. "Is that what they call their tasks for you? Soon they'll be fitting you for your own suit of golden armor."

Every pronoun attached to the Brightons (it could be no other "they", of this much John was sure) seemed to dim the candles. He put his hands on the table as he leaned towards her, giving her as stoic a face as he could manage. "This has no bearing on them; it's connected to my power, and mine alone, which is why I want discreet help from as few sources as possible... possibly just one or two, if you're willing to help. You're strong, even stronger than any mage I've met or fought before-"

A droplet of pale wax fell on John's hand, and though it fell short of his threshold of pain it still shouldered with smoke around its edges.

-9hp

Given his resists, it was obviously no mere candle wax. As he regarded the droplet, its quivering surface solidified to form the signet of a skull half-drowned in bubbling alabaster.

"Do not flatter me, child; there is dust on a windless cliff in a place you can no longer visit, of men no one remembers, that has worn out the pleasure of it."

The visage suddenly cracked, and the entire seal of wax blew into dust, leaving a burn-like redness on his skin to mark its passing. "... Jesus-"

The candles flared back to life. "Language."

"... Eh, sorry."

"What do you need, then?"

"Well, I... should probably show you what I have to trade first-"

More wax droplets fell near John: three patches of white that sizzled until they fell through the holes they left in scorched oak of the table. Small flames burned in their wake. "Your need, child: out with it." Her order did not move her lips, and a rolling cacophony turned John's head away from his host.

At the other end of the room, almost dark for the poor reach of candlelight, grew dark as droplets of wax become a shower, and that shower became a torrential rain centered at the other end of the hall, eviscerating the opposite end of the table, its chairs, and the candle racks surrounding that portion of the hall.

The rain slowly approached, and John did not wish to wager at how long he could last under such an . "R-Right! Look, I need to cause 100 orgasms in school, today, and with students and faculty." No reaction. More droplets rained around John, sizzling as mason stone melted to slag underneath the building torrent of burning, waxy . The first half of the table collapsed as it disintegrated into the pool of spreading wax. Hundreds of skulls and skeletons began reaching out towards the two living souls present, and their hunger urged the wax to remain fluid. The growing wave was mere yards away, now. "But I also need the sources to total up to 100 levels, and you've clearly got more than 65 levels yourself-" John winced as a drop fell onto his jacket, setting it on fire before sizzling on his flesh, hotter than the last one. He slapped the flames as he continued, his voice rising as he tried to ignore the acid-like fluid now eating away at his skin beneath the cloth, "-a-and if that's too much, then just once is also fine, and then I'll leave you alone and just get the rest from someone else-!" The table under his hands began to shiver as the wave approached-

The rain ceased. John's jacket still smoked, but the wax cooled to dust inside his shirt. The encroaching ooze, with the table neatly shoved into its wall, with wax skeletons grasping and pulling on it, solidified, and then cracked and disintegrated into a fine powder. One half of the room seemed covered in lye, and the small bursts of white dotted the now-pitted stones of the floor. The mostly consumed table fell onto the edge that was now legless, and broke away to reveal that, either all this time or only just now, the table was actually two: one centipede-like length of wood that was now mostly eaten away, and a simply, square table upon which John's hands were still planted, before which Wentworth sat.

The civics teacher sighed as she took off her spectacles. "Where do I even begin with you?" He stared wide-eyed at her, and then at the candles still floating peacefully overhead. None of them threatened to spill over, for now. "Let us proceed with the premise that I believe this absurd formula. Let us presume, then, that you could... afford such a humiliating boon." He winced at that. "What do you offer me, in turn?"

"W-Well," he began, still glancing up at the candles as he restored his health, "I have..." He glanced at the table, suddenly unsure of letting the items out of his inventory, where at least they appeared safe. Deciding he had no recourse now, he let the first three items appear on the table under his hand. If nothing else, the act earned an intrigued twitch of her brow. "... three bottles of warlock blood."

She sniffed, as if offended. "Low quality," she suddenly declared. "Harvested from... a goblin blood-grumbler?" John raised his eyebrows in surprise, and she allowed herself a smirk. "Only rare if they manage to kill themselves off in tandem, I'm afraid. What else?"

He saw no indication of magic and got no warnings thereof, but she had hit it on the head: the loot had come from that diminutive, seemingly suicidal addition to his temple. The goblin, and his loot, remained suspect in application. The fact that I know so little by comparison... He had to impress; he had little room for bare-knuckle negotiation. A fistful of essence crystals came next. "Essences of fertility, life... and Sakeshii."

He hadn't a clue about the essence the strange bear had given him, save that it came in what felt, like a spool of dense thread, of which John could not cut and could find no end to pull. "Essence of Sakeshii? An odd phrase for the only one you didn't mention properly: twine fiend essence. I'm more impressed that you managed to acquire it, than its actual properties." John did his best to seem unimpressed with her dismissal. "Can I presume these baubles constitute the kind of tribute you would offer for this... distasteful favor?"

"I-I have soul gems, small crystals that-"

"I've no use for grains of sand whilst walking the dunes, Mr. Newman." John glanced down at his offerings, and shifted as he weighed his alternative plans. She seemed to detect his hesitation, and added with a smile, "... but perhaps a glass of water will do."

John began to scoop the essences back into his inventory with brief touches, and her eyes never left his hands as he did so. "What," he carefully asked, ready for an attack, "do you mean by that?"

"That depends on you," she whispered, rising. Her hands fell upon the table, and he backed away from the same as if it had caught fire. Her palms raised and began to dance around one another, letting her fingertips drag on the wood with twitches of the joints from which they hung, gnarled and pronounced with age or practice. John's eyes could not follow, nor did his interface offer advice. A glowing, pink sigil appeared underneath her fingers, and was joined then by an inversion in green. Both seemed like waning moons, and blue spikes burned into existence to form the line of symmetry, or an axis, between those slivers of light. This odd symbol's formation seemed to slow her hands, which then stopped and spread her fingers flat as they hovered over the pockmarked table.

"Fujus akalashe." She had barely whispered the words, but it was the first evidence John had that she had to do anything for her magic at all. Her hands drifted down to the table as she retook her seat, and a glowing circle exploded between them over where the sigil once rested. She flipped each hand in turn, palms raised to the ceiling, and two new palms rose from within the circle to match.

John's eyes rose to follow the delicate, human-looking hands, followed by outstretched, bared arms, and then the rumpled sleeves below them. The table began to sink into the floor, and John backed away from it as the chairs all joined in the descent... all save the gilded throne of Wentworth, as she sat back and watched. The table descended at the speed the new guest manifested, and so the arms never moved from their positions as the rest of the body was revealed: a hunter-green, one-piece outfit that John might've called a kimono, for it matched nothing of the cheongsam known in popular culture. Its wide sleeves, long enough to reach the wrist and possessing multiple layers of wide, white cuffs, covered the stranger's head and hair, and hinted that they too were embroidered with flowers and stems rendered in silver thread, as was the full length of her outfit from her shoulders down to the hem of the skirt that flickered near her ankles. When at last the table vanished into the floor, as if it had clipped through the world proper, the circle vanished and the woman dropped her arms, revealing her face: petite, Chinese features bereft of paint, and yet pallid as if sick. Her eyes remained closed, and she seemed to almost swoon perpetually as if refusing to fall asleep, though no sound came from her. Her hair, obviously marvelously long and with the black sheen of health, was knotted and tied into an impressive, golden headdress and adorned with charms and baubles that fussed as her head swayed.

Despite this illustrious wear, her feet were bared and misshapen horribly, though John couldn't spare much attention to such details now, not as Wentworth rose once again from her throne to stand behind her apparent creation. John checked the card over the young woman's head, grateful that this, at least, could be detected:

薩克達氏(孝德溫惠誠順慈莊恪慎徽懿恭天贊聖顯皇后)
Level 16 殭屍
<Summoned by [UNKNOWN]>
HP: 1,003/1,003
MP: 504/504
Relationship: 0
元妃的伊竹爱信( 顯皇帝 ) 。一個牧師將邪惡的精神放在她身上，直到她在她的母親的命令死亡，以防止她的婚姻。她回來了一個殭屍，但永遠不會報復。
Status Effects: 殭屍穩定性 (100%)

When the Hell did the Game get unicode characters?!

The girl could not have been much older than John, though she look malnourished and frail, and the way her head leaned made him wonder if the headdress was perhaps too heavy for so fragile-looking a lass.

John observed the ritual quietly, waiting for some sign of what his civics teacher intended.

"This should do," Wentworth affirmed.

Magical item: ritual kris of the ninth bride. This dagger causes aggravated wounds that slowly disintegrate flesh by turning it to ash. Aside from intense pain, these wounds are cursed, and cannot be healed normally. The initial damage is otherwise that of a regular kris.

John couldn't be sure when Wentworth had pulled the knife, but surprise was hardly allowed after all that had transpired.