A portal opened on the wall and Aefia came out running, only to slam onto the wall midair and bounce off. She opened her eye to see her bloody face print stuck on the wall she was leaning on earlier.
I am back! I am back at my present dimension!
Aefia sat up properly against the wall opposite to the wall she had slammed onto. She had chosen the hallway's entrance as a place to sit down and stay away from attention. While looking towards the court, it seemed like she wasn't gone for long.
She turned her head to face Nada, who was still training her skills. A sudden realization came to Aefia, her neck was still injured and so was her side and her eye. She thought about running to her room and deciphering a way to heal herself before anyone realized.
Her knife was still blood stained and her pistol still had bloody finger imprints on it. She also didn't have the missing casings except of two. Half of her right sleeve was missing and her white flock was still stained red.
Doesn't switching between dimensions heal ones injuries? I thought in novels, it worked that way. But anyway, I am still a sight and I will probably attract attention. And most of all, how do I remove my blood facial signature from the wall?
Aefia stared at it blankly. Her head was hurting and her knees felt like crumbling. She was still having difficulty breathing.
While panicking, Aefia tried to think of how she switched between dimensions. If she was lucky enough, she might end up in a dimension where she could find a medical aid box.
Before that, the only thing she could do was pull the hood all the way down to her chin so no one would notice her blood-covered face. She was also sure that none of her teammates would recognize her even with her hood down.
With the slightest amount of hope she had, she opened her skills menu. The demon magic she had absorbed appeared and one of its skill was 'Epic Cleaner'.
So demons are also clean species? If it were a meme, I swear it would go viral back on Earth.
She got up and touched the wall with her blood on. The skill activated and a few moments later, the blood was gone and in there was a plain yellowish fresh cover of paint. There was no signs of there being a bloody face print on it.
She sat back down and leaned against the opposite wall due to her injuries and continued thinking about ways to heal herself without anyone realizing. Using Helio's skill would alert him. The only thing she could think of was injesting more of the bullets.
She opened her box to check how many were left. There were twelve remaining. She took one out and broke it with 'Wolf'sStrength' and injested it. When it wasn't enough, she went to break another one.
"If I were you, I would stop breaking more bullets by now."
Alright, I am caught. There is no way there won't be much suspicion upon me now.
"I am sorry," Aefia said before coughing out more blood. She remembered that blood was flowing into her lungs due to her half sliced throat.
"You are seriously injured, who did you fight within that small amount of time?"
Aefia couldn't turn her head around to check who it was. She lifted her hood and stood up to get a more clear view.
"I accidentally entered another dimension." Aefia replied while coughing up more of her remaining blood and scanning the blurry features. A few of her memories were still processing, so she couldn't remember if it were the voice of a mentor or the voice of one of her teammates.
"There is blood in your lungs. I can grant you my healing capabilities if you want, but it may be a little unreactive to your current state."
So it's Helio the one who discovered me? I guess I was just lucky.
"How did you notice I was over here?" Aefia asked while trying to turn her head.
"A normal cough won't sound like that. And I recommend you stop talking to avoid the injury from worsening." Helio replied.
"I will take the share of your skill to heal myself then," Aefia quickly said while trying not to cough up any more. It felt irritating to do so in front of someone who barely knew her. They might think of her as a freak.
After she had intercepted the wave of magic she received from Helio, she concerntrated on healing her throat and her side. After she was slightly better, Aefia thanked Helio for the help and walked towards her room to check on the condition of her left eye.
She couldn't heal it in time due to the limitation of power that Helio could supply, therefore, she would need Helio to recover his strength to heal the rest of the injuries.
All through her journey back to her room, Aefia wondered what had happened and how she entered the dimension. If it was a skill, she would have to learn how to control it.
Nevertheless, the other dimension had provided her with the information she needed to learn a little about the Torture Cell and what they would do in the near future.
She had also learnt about the Demon King, and she knew about the power she would be granted if she accepted a certain position. All that information made Aefia wonder if a supernatural being sent her there.
She opened her room's door to find yet another note. She entered the room completely ignoring it and sat at her table.
She dropped water onto the surface to act as a make-shift mirror and untied her left eye. Drops of blood fell on the water, turning it red and more clear.
The sword had done a great deal of damage to her eye. A line crossed from the top of her eye socket to the bottom. The injury wasn't deep enough to damage her brain.
She cut off the half of her other sleeve and wet it with water to wipe her eye. The white sleeve soon turned red like the other sleeve, but the bleeding won't stop.
She looked at her detachable cape, she couldn't cut it but she could use it to wrap her eye to prevent the blood from falling. Since it doesn't spoil or get dirty, the cape would be good at making the blood unnoticeable.
She changed her white flock and wore a black one which was the same as the white, but it had gold buttons instead. She cut the remaining of the white flock and put it as a layer before the cloak to cover her eye.
She thought of writing down the informations she had collected onto her notebook before leaving the room again to tell Helio about what had happened.
She couldn't leave a witness wandering like that or they would find out her identity as the King of Tyrants, and once that identity had been figured out, her elemental absorption skill would be figured out too.
She took out her pocket watch and read the time. It was almost three in the afternoon. It was time to get her lunch. For the past three or four day of her stay in Nikoan, Aefia had memorized the timetable for food and when to meet up with her mentor to summarize what had happened in a day.
She would have to face Ms. Avry within two hours. She couldn't do so with her injured eye, that would raise awareness amongst them.
She jotted down about the orb and the destroyed palace and the the demon named Marty. She wrote down about the revealations and how the demons were slaves of the Torture Cell and was forced to work and create a huge project.
The huge project, was probably part of a much bigger plan which was in particular, the destruction of an entire dimension and the murder of two Guardians. What felt confusing was that the Guardian of Space and the Guardian of Time, both worked with the Guardian of Wrath and the Guardian of Destruction, the two Evil Guardians to make such a revealation.
Which would mean, one of the four Guardians were sending notes to Aefia's room as warnings and one of the other three Guardians sent Aefia to another dimension, most precisely the fallen world of Hellas. She glanced at the note she had received.
'Congrates. You have successfully learned more about your powers. You have completed your first mission by the Guardians. Your reward will be given soon. In the meantime, prepare thoroughly enough to face more missions in the future, King of the Tyrants.'
There it is again, King of the Tyrants. I believe it is their way of luring the Demon King to me so I can defeat him in the future. After the murder I caused, he is most probably after me already.
She tore the note as always and hid it inside her notebook. She sat on her bed, which was still a mess and decided to lay down for a few minutes. She was completely drained from the battle earlier in Hellas.
She wrapped the pocket watch around her wrist and closed her eye. In her dreams, she was free falling through darkness again, but this time, she saw the process of it.
The scene in front of her broke and she was pulled into the hole like a blackhole while she would temporarily lose consciousness. When she wakes up again, she would be in another world.
In her dream, she landed on a place which looked like another palace. But she was in the throne room of the palace. There were two thrones side by side. The thrones were standing all the way on top of the stairs. Aefia didn't move towards it.
Someone from above muttered, "King of Tyrants, welcome." She stepped back while blocking her ears. Blood fell from them as she was covering them. Then another more feminine voice said, "You are quite popular now, a lot of Kings and Queens want you as their successor."
This ....voices are too .....strong for me .....to handle!
She turned around and fell on her knees as another voice erupted, "Make sure to use your skills wisely." She glanced up to see those who were speaking, there was no one. "Protect yourself... Aefia Tober." The last voice called and she fell backwards through void yet again.
Aefia jolted awake and realized her forehead was wet. She sat up and tried to recall what had happened. Her ears banged like crazy. She put her hand on her ears and realized they were indeed bleeding.
Did I travel through dimension again?! This is happening everytime I am trying to rest. Does that mean, I can enter dimensions like that? But the voices spoke like they had brought me to that dimension.
Aefia wiped the blood off with her torn sleeves that were resting on her table. She checked the time, it was four in the afternoon. There was exactly one hour left before the meeting with the mentors happened.
She thought again and again about telling Ms. Avry about the dimensional shift. Because everytime she did so, she would return injured and those injuries were not just tiny scratches, they were huge and dealt damage to internal organs.
She had to heal herself in full by the time she was told to see Ms. Avry. Aefia also wasn't sure if Helio was where she left him or had gone back to his room. Even so, he would also go down to the lobby to meet Ms. Avry at around five. By then, she could heal the remaining of herself.
She tied the cape around her eyes and used the hood to cover up until her forehead to make it seem like the cape was attached already. She walked out of her room with her keys and walked to the elevator. In her room, the bloody cloths were left on her table.
She waited at the lobby with a piece of paper explaining how she had shift between dimensions twice and that everytime, she suffered injuries. She wrote in bold, "I will need you to be silent about this matter."
The time they can get to talk about the matter would be too short to explain the situation in details, so Aefia wrote it down and didn't care about when he would read it. If he reads it, he would understand her situation.
In the lobby, every servant was gone due to their daily official meeting right before the students speak with their mentors about their days.
***
Aefia entered Ms. Avry's office and sat on the chair opposite to Ms. Avry. She was busy writing data about her academic performances and graded her based on her skill usage and power.
There was a test everyday after class where the students would show their improvements from the previous day to their mentors and they would be graded based on the improvements.
"Alright Aefia, your grade for today is eighty-three percent. Not bad, you are a pretty average student. Now tell me about your day." Ms. Avry asked.
Aefia hesitated for a moment before finally speaking up, "I seem to have intercepted a few confidential information about the Torture Cell and I have gone through a rare phenomenon."
"The phenomenon...is dimensional shift."
Ms. Avry slammed her glass pen down at what Aefia said, causing the pen to snap in half. "Explain in details."