The Protagonist Already Knows

Chapter 17: Lily’s Laboratory

Finding myself in a room filled with white tiles and bright lights, I immediatly shielded my eyes and slowly glanced around.

Microscopes, scales, countless test tubes filled with liquids that covered every color on the rainbow, and various beakers.

There were testing rooms, made of material strong enough to survive explosions, as well, with glass doors for you to look through.

In one of those very rooms, I spotted a familiar figure...punching the obsidian walls with her right arm, which was covered in a metal armband.

Her ungroomed, snow-white hair swirled around like a whirlpool, hiding her expression, and even through the glass door, I could hear her curses.

"DAMN"

"WHY WON’T YOU WORK!?"

Blood painted the white-tile floor below her a crimson-red, and the light in the test-room had been destroyed, shrouding her in darkness.

*BAM*

*BAM*

Recalling the calm and neutral Lily playing with her rapier earlier, I couldn’t help but pause for a moment.

...Was now really the correct time?

"...now or never, I guess."

If I got pummeled, so be it.

Taking a deep breath, I closed my eyes as a tingly sensation flowed through my body.

Unlike casting spells or imbuing a weapon with mana, using abilities didn’t require any internal mana control.

As long as you had enough mana within your body, your ability would automatically absorb it and activate.

I instantly felt my body become as light as a feather, but that was to be expected with the description of "Anubis’s Ferry."

It was what I saw...that made my body freeze.

"Blue...so much blue."

Thousands...no, perhaps millions of blue particles became visible to my eye, flying through the air.

It was as if millions of blue fireflies surrounded me, sparkling and highlighting my surroundings in a dark blue.

As I slowly glanced forward, peering through the glass door of Lily’s test chamber, the particles were a lighter shade of blue, resembling ice.

"Her element..."

It seemed she had successfully cast a spell, as the ice-mana particles had been expelled from her body and into the air.

Had she...suffered from an elemental reaction in the process, then?

As I took a step forward, I distinctly noticed I was floating, my shoes levitating a few centimeters above the ground.

Additionally, my entire body was in an ethereal state, a ghost-like, translucent hue outlining it: the lines that defined my body...wavered back and forth like a candle flame, making it look as if my body was constantly expanding and contracting.

I flew forward, simply phasing through countless tables and heavy machinery in the way, and arrived before the glass door in a matter of seconds.

Interestingly, though, the items with me prior to my ability’s activation, such as my clothes and the things in my pocket, remained with me and became intangible as well.

As I looked behind me, I noticed an empty area of mana particles, the shape of the space exactly resembling my body’s figure.

Although a moment later, the other mana particles around swarmed into the empty space, refilling it.

I was...removing the mana particles that touched me?

Snapping me back to reality, the mana particles before me began flickering in and out of existence, as my body solidified.

As I dropped back onto the ground, no longer floating, I reached into my pocket, grabbed a cold water bottle, and raised my hand to the glass door.

Behind the door, Lily, with her back facing me, was silently gazing forward.

*KNOCK~KNOCK*

As my hand banged against the glass door, Lily’s head suddenly snapped backward like an owl, almost causing me to fall back in shock.

Awkwardly coughing, I cracked open the glass door and threw the ice-cold water bottle at her, asking with my voice as solid as I could force it to be.

"Mechanical Magic?"

Her cold blue pupils frighteningly still, Lily caught the water bottle and instantly began gulping down the water.

After a moment, she silently pointed behind me, prompting me to look behind and at her glasses resting on a nearby table.

Nodding my head, I grabbed the glasses and threw them to her.

As she put on her circular-rimmed glasses, Lily finally spoke, her voice calm and robotic.

"You have 5 seconds to leave."

Not even sparing me another glance, she turned back around and pulled a screwdriver out of her pocket, dismantling the metal armband.

I watched as she took the armband off her right arm, revealing bloody and scarred skin all over her arm beneath.

Beneath the metal wrist band, there were multiple bloody sharp points, embedding themselves in the skin and allowing the device to split the user’s blood stream.

After a moment of silence, I turned around and finally responded.

"You’re doing it wrong."

Instead of attempting to attract the mana particles to the top half of the user’s bloodstream with the armband, Lily was attempting to pull her red blood cells to the bottom half of her bloodstream, isolating them.

She was intentionally harming her underarm to have the red blood cells rush there to repair the skin. However, that only caused more chaos, with more red blood cells in their arm to collide with mana particles.

As I found a stool at a nearby table and sat down, Lily’s voice, now seemingly tinged with venom, sounded.

"Leave."

Grabbing a nearby notebook and pencil, I simply responded while drawing.

"This is a public space for all dorm residents, isn’t it?"

Now, finally looking back at me and away from the metal armband, Lily’s eyes narrowed as she simply answered.

"I don’t know who you are, but I can and will make your life and living hell. I can blacklist you from all guilds’ recruiting systems and get you expelled from this very school with a simple call. Your hero career will be over."

Shrugging my shoulders, I answered.

"It’s Ash, and I didn’t intend to join a guild, anyway."

"..."

After a moment of silence, Lily...smiled, a smile full of pure venom like that of a snake when it’s found their prey.

"Fine then. I’ll just torture you. I’m pretty angry now, anyway."