Void Lord: My Revenge Is My Harem-Chapter 207 : The First semester XXX

---

Dawn came honest and early, washing the trampled clearing in a flat, pewter light. Proctors made their last circuits with ledgers and chalk; wardens compared tallies; seniors in sashes counted again for the pleasure of being right twice.

At the center table the head proctor drew a fat line and read the results aloud so the jungle could hear it too.

"Team Lord Fizz," he said. "Five points awarded to each registered member for successful completion of the initial hunt requirement."

He tapped the names as he spoke them, scratching chalk beneath each.

"John — plus five. Rhea Flame — plus five. Ray Flame — plus five. Contracted spirit Fizz: contribution recognized under John — plus five noted and applied."

Fizz lifted both paws like he was receiving a coronation. "At last," he said gravely. "An institution that understands bookkeeping."

Ray blinked between the chalkboard and John. "We... each get five," he confirmed, like numbers might be a trick if you did not look directly at them.

"We do," Rhea said, already tying her red ribbon tighter. She accepted her mark without a grin or groan, a soldier’s nod to a fair wage.

The head proctor clapped the ledger shut. "The training window remains open for three more days," he announced. "You may stay to hunt or you may return. Your choice. If you stay, you stay under rules. If you go, you go with your skin."

The clearing loosened. Some teams cheered and shouldered their packs to chase a few more cores. Others sagged with relief and pointed their boots toward the road. A thin boy with blood still on his sleeve stared at his one hard-earned core like it was a medal, which in a way it was. Team lord Fizz can now return to the capital city.

Rhea traced the map in her head. "We can fill another two or three easily," she said, not bragging. "Ray needs a cushion."

Ray’s jaw went set at the word need, then set a different way at the word cushion. He exhaled. "I will stay," he muttered. "Not because I need cushion. Because I like the woods. I want to train a bit on my own."

"You like not failing," Fizz said kindly. "We all do. Even trees."

John’s gaze slid to the east, where the line of ironwoods rippled toward the road and the road rippled toward the city and the city rippled toward a temple and a shop and a girl who had said meet me without moving her mouth. The new circle inside him hummed steady. The little egg in the void turned, patient as a seed under snow. The communication stone at his belt sat quiet and certain, heavy with promise.

"I am going back," he said.

Rhea studied his face for a problem and found none she would forbid. "Take your five points and your skin," she said. "Sleep in a bed that smells like soap. Try not to become a rumor on the road."

"I will avoid fame," John said.

Fizz clasped his paws with theatrical sorrow. "Tragic. We bear our burden of celebrity with grace."

Ray made a face like grace was something you put on a pastry. He stuck out his hand to John and then, remembering himself, made it a fist for a quick bump instead. "You were... useful," he said, which in Ray-language was praise with the serial numbers filed off. "Try not to die in the city. I hear the cobbles bite."

"I will walk softly," John said. "Try not to set the forest on fire while proving a point."

"That was one time," Ray protested, already following Rhea’s shadow toward a fresh hunt.

Rhea clasped forearms with John the way people do when they have bled near each other and intend to do so again later. "We reconvene at the academy gate before the horn on the seventh day," she said. "If you are late, I steal your bed."

Fizz floated between them with a solemn nod. "Approved. I have always wanted bunk-bed chaos."

They parted cleanly. Rhea and Ray turned back toward shadows and green teeth. John and Fizz angled for the road that wore caravan ruts like old scars.

They did not show off when they left. John kept the Gravity Pull laced tight to the bone, small and obedient. The air around his coat did not lean too obviously. His boots did not become fashionable to pebbles. If a vine chose to twitch toward his knee as if it had suddenly remembered he was handsome, that was between the vine and its god.

When the trees thinned and the packed earth of the road took over, Fizz spun once in the open light and then leaned in conspiratorially.

"So," he said. "We are returning early for no reason except certain reasons."

John did not pretend otherwise. "Two days in the city," he said. "Sera."

Fizz put a paw over his heart. "Romance. I support it. Also I support paved streets. And bakeries. And beds that do not smell like regret."

They walked until the trees hid them from camp eyes and the last proctor’s lantern became a careful idea rather than a rule. Then John stepped off the road into a little pocket of scrub and bracken where only a stubborn cricket could witness a miracle.

He closed his eyes, reached into the quiet cupboard where the system storage let him keep tools, and touched the shape he had been itching to touch since the day words on invisible paper had told him, you are strong enough now, take this.

The mana bike was not conjured so much as remembered into the world. It arrived with a hush like silk against stone. Matte black, blade clean, all lean lines made by someone who believed in speed as a moral stance. Along the side, just above the repeating sigil that looked like a neat argument, the little stamped mark read: M15.

Fizz squealed. There was no other word for the high delighted sound he made. "My beautiful two-wheeled destiny," he breathed, circling the bike with the reverence of a pilgrim who had finally found the right shrine. "John, you have kept this... you didn’t let me ride it alone like a ring kept from a proposal."

"You would have crashed it into a bakery," John said. He ran one hand along the saddle, feeling the hum under the skin that meant stored mana acknowledging him. "Or married it."

Fizz threw him a look. "I can be faithful to more than one love at once. Now. Where does the snack compartment go."

"There is no snack compartment."

Fizz stared at him with pity. "Primitive."

John swung a leg over, the motion clean and practiced in dreams if not yet in days. The bike settled under his weight like a loyal animal. He breathed, fed a pulse of mana into the core, and the sigils along the spine breathed back — one, then another, until the whole frame glowed with a soundless yes.

"Front with me," John said.

Fizz zipped to the handlebars, planted himself on the bridge in the crook of the lights, and immediately conjured a pair of goggles that were absolutely unnecessary and absolutely perfect. "Do I look windswept," he asked.

"You look like trouble with a hat."

Fizz beamed. "Correct."

John rolled his shoulders and nudged the throttle. The engine took the mana and turned it into movement the way a magician turns a scarf into doves: smooth, unapologetic. They slid out of the scrub, kissed the road, and ate distance.

He didn’t gun it. The academy monitors had long eyes and longer memories. But even at a gentleman’s pace the M15 was the quickest thing on that road. Gravity Pull did its part: a soft, controlled cup ahead of the front wheel to draw the path clean, a tighter hand at the back to press the tire into confidence. Roots that would have jostled a cart simply decided not to exist for them. Loose gravel thought about mischief and then rolled out of the way.

"John," Fizz shouted over the quiet hum, because he had never learned the difference between outside voice and inside voice. "I feel alive."

"You felt alive an hour ago," John said, smiling despite himself.

"Now I feel differently alive," Fizz said. He leaned into the next curve like a pilot, tiny paws out, goggles catching blue. "Faster."

"We are being watched."

"We are always being watched," Fizz said, but he let the request turn into a compromise. "Faster but also safe."

The road unfurled. Hills made promises and kept them. A merchant wagon stacked with saltfish appeared in their lane and then was behind them, the driver’s jaw hanging in a draft. A patrol on gray horses clattered past in the other direction; their captain turned his head, snooped, decided two boys on a very nice machine were none of his business, and returned to inventing reasons to be bored.

On the long flats John let the M15 taste its own teeth. Wind wrote its hurried letters across his face. Fizz whooped so hard a flock of starlings misread it as a warning and changed direction. When the road bent into a line of shallow stone bridges, John narrowed the Gravity Pull to a neat rail, and the bike took the crossings in smooth, swallow-like arcs that would have made a poet regret never learning to repair a carburetor.