After finishing Loki's lesson, Harley and Helen had wanted to return to their dorm for a rest, mainly because Harley needed to rest. They could have a twenty-minute nap, then go to their other classes, so they had ample ti to look up resources at noon.
Harley yawned and headed back to her dorm. Her vision blurred to utter darkness when a figure burst from the end of the corridor. It was a disheveled girl who looked slightly older than Harley, holding a wand with a magic glow lingering over her hand.
"Harley! Look out!" Helen shouted.
Harley instinctively dodged to one side, and a flash of magic zapped the wall behind her.
Instantly, the platinum-haired girl's face turned vicious. She bared her fangs like a beast at her attacker, rolled on the spot to dodge a second magic glow, and rushed at her attacker with incredible speed.
The very next second, the girl who had attacked Harley was seized by the wrist. Exhausted yet fueled with maximal aggressiveness, Harley held onto her attacker's wrist and stabbed her eyeball with the sharp wand.
"Aaaaaaaah!!!!"
A scream of pain sounded out as Harley gripped the wand tightly, even prepared to pierce her attacker's brain. Fortunately, Helen rushed over in ti to stop Harley, and Barry had already rushed to the staircase.
"Harley! Are you all right?!"
Harley seed to regain her senses, slowly releasing her grip, not even glancing at the girl covering her pierced eyeball and heaped onto the floor screaming. A little tired, she sighed, shook her head, and said, "No, I'm fine."
Then she turned to look at the attacker, squeezing out a disgusted hiss from her throat and cursing, "Trash."
Barry and Helen were both shocked; they had never seen this side of Harley before. Jennifer who was standing on the first step of the staircase hesitated for a mont before she turned and fled.
Barry looked back but didn't see Jennifer. So, he said, "Quick, help her. The professor should be here shortly."
As expected, Loki rushed over with a bunch of students. Seeing the student who had been attacked lying on the ground with a wand stuck in her eye socket, he paused, then said, "Did soone stab themselves in the eye with a wand again? I heard there was a student going crazy trying to attack others, where's the victim?"
Helen rushed over and pulled Loki's sleeve. Loki bent down as Helen whispered into his ear, his brows furrowing deeper and deeper.
Loki kneeled down, bypassing a few children to check on the injured student. Harley leaned against the window with her arms folded, seemingly unaware of her victim's presence. Her gaze lay on the attacker struggling on the ground.
Undeniably, the attacker's one eye was pierced and beyond saving. Although magic might create another one for her, the original eye was certainly useless. Yet what amazed Harley was the madness revealed in the intact eye.
Indeed, she was crazy, Harley concluded. Yet, this wasn't her own madness but imposed on her by soone, unlike Harley's madness, which was deeply ingrained in her heart and only occasionally peeking out.
It peeked out just then, Harley thought, each Gothamite was like a monster in human skin. Endless nights of cold rain had rendered what lay beneath their human skin disordered and alien, unrelated to humans, resembling a congloration of madness.
Finally, school doctors and a few Grand Mages sward over to inquire about Harley's condition. With a slight turn of her smart and sensitive mind, Harley imdiately lowered her head and said apologetically in the deanor of a victim, "I'm sorry, my parents died early, and I grew up amongst relatives who wanted to snatch the inheritance. My self-defense chanism is quite strong, and I can react aggressively when provoked. I really didn't an to."
Master Song, leading the group, imdiately showed a sympathetic expression. She gently touched Harley's head, held her in her arms, and said, "Don't be afraid, child, no one is allowed to hurt others without consequences here. We will get to the bottom of this soon. Everything will be alright."
But everything was far from alright.
After the last mandatory class, a boy who looked no older than a fourth-grader burst into the classroom of the Blue Spirit, screaming in terror, "Third floor, the third-floor corridor! Soone has written on the wall!"
From Little Bruce's slightly unreal perspective, everyone in the room, led by the parasite living in the human body, rushed to the scene.
He was a parasite, Little Bruce could see. These horrific and filthy factors were living in a human who might be an agent. How could they allow such a creature in the school and even brazenly make it a professor?
A sense of disgust and crisis arose in Little Bruce's mind for the first ti. He had never found himself so hostile towards non-human creatures.
Under Barry's vigorous push and pull, Little Bruce still followed the crowd to the corridor and saw a row of bizarre and chaotic text on the wall of the third-floor corridor.
It was not in any known language, but Little Bruce knew that everyone on the scene, regardless of nationality, race, or education level, could read this line—
"The Chamber of Secrets has been opened. Beware those who stand against the Heir!"
Little Bruce truly couldn't understand the language everyone was using to discuss this sentence. He felt that he might be angry because of a language barrier. So, without any further comnt, he quickly left the corridor with Barry.
"What's the matter with you, Bruce? Since you woke up, you've seed out of sorts. Are you okay?" Barry followed Little Bruce and asked him.
"I'm fine, but I must go to the library now. I plan to spend a day and night learning Chinese and Japanese. I'm fed up with not being able to communicate."
Barry was montarily uncertain whether Little Bruce's sudden, unfounded anger, or his plan to learn two languages in a day, was more surprising.
"So strange things have happened."
In the dining hall of Kamar-Taj College, Helen gently stirred the translucent grains of rice on her plate with her chopsticks, expressing her worry: "Like I said, the elephant is in the room, but everyone is ignoring it."
"What do you think that ans?"
Harley asked. Her plate held a pan-fried mackerel, clearly prepared in the Japanese style. Between the two of them were a few Chinese dishes, simple ho-style stir-fries consisting of a random combination of vegetables and at cooked with a light flavor.
However, neither Helen nor Harley could be described as preferring light flavors. Their common preference was for at, well-cooked. Their lack of appetite that day had led them to grab so random dishes.
"First and foremost, what exactly is this 'secret room'? A hidden room? Why was it opened? What's inside? Who is the heir? And who needs to be careful?"
Harley paused in her use of the chopsticks, trying to analyze logically: "The student's sudden violent behavior must be related to the ssage on the wall; that's one thing."
"Based on what we know, the question we must address is whether this incident is related to the book we found in the lowest drawer of our dorm room's wardrobe."
"Of course, it is." Helen sounded very certain. Her recently developed intuition for conspiracy was quickly becoming refined. She was almost absorbing Harley's wisdom across the air, keeping up with her at an alarming speed.
"We had just started thinking about studying this book when one strange thing after another began to occur. Nobody would believe they're unrelated. But we didn't open this book, so how did the elephant get out?"
Faced with this question, Harley fell silent, then raised her eyes to Helen, saying, "You're Loki Odinson's daughter, aren't you?"
Helen nodded. It was obvious, as the two looked very much alike; there was no disputing it, despite appearances.
"Then, in this college, the only person who could be called an heir is you. You carry royal blood, don't you?"
"But I won't inherit Asgard."
"Won't you?"
Helen paused slightly, then said, "Firstly, my birth is quite peculiar. I do have the royal blood of Asgard, even the power of the reigning Divine King, but my other father...he probably doesn't want to beco the queen of Asgard."
"Has he the power to prevent it?" Harley hinted at the might of Asgard.
"Of course, he does." Helen was hinting at the power of her other father, but she still hesitated to ask: "If I am the heir referred to here, who is against ? And why would they stir up so much trouble in the school?"
"That's what we're trying to find out."
As the two were speaking, a student walked past their table with a tray of food, but changed course to avoid them, not taking the shortest route. The following students also did the sa.
It was obviously not just Harley who regarded Helen, with her Asgardian royal lineage, as the 'heir.' She did have a throne to inherit at ho, after all. If she wasn't the heir, who could be?
There was one exception, though. Sheryl took a seat across from Helen, next to Harley, looking into Helen's eyes as she said, "Don't worry too much. Your father and the other professors will handle everything."
"I don't think I'm the one to inherit." Helen shook her head gently, saying, "Since the implications are too obvious, all of this might just be a blind eye technique. I never considered such things before, but now my thoughts are clear and sharp."
"The upcoming intramural competition will add fuel to this ss." Harley asserted: "More and more students will respond to the Demon God. Even if the Supre Magician is present, the Demon Gods wouldn't dare do much. But there would surely be more chaos if there's a mismatch of temperant or power."
"Why is this happening?" Helen seed sowhat dispirited. Her mind was filled with the writing on the Book of the Dead. In her imagination, she opened the book and saw an elephant standing right there, right there in the room.
Do you have to open the book to see things that ordinary people can't?
The mont this dangerous thought appeared, Helen banished it. She took a deep breath, went back to their dorm room with Harley, threw herself into the soft bed, and soon fell asleep amidst a whirlwind of thoughts.
After Helen fell asleep, Harley crouched down, opened the drawer, and took out the big black book that radiated an eerie and terrorizing aura.
She slid her finger between the heavy cover and the first page. With a slight exertion of force, the book opened.
User Comments
0 comments from readers