'What is this?' from the highest point of the academy, Nilrem saw something that didn't make much sense.
He had thought the blood sea to be one endless mass of blood, the wavesfrom the crashing of the academy and its stillness the rest of the times seemed to indicate that but, in the distance, he could see a large perfectly round pit, in which the blood was flowing.
Way above it, a diamond shaped mass was floating in the air, some part sparkling brightly and others as dark as the abyss, it certainly seemed like an important place.
This didn't look like something that had been devoured as is but rather something that had formed here.
Nilrem knew where to go, now that he was at the top of the academy, he wondered if he shouldn't just use magic to get down rather than get through the whole place again, it would be noticeable in term of mana usage though.
Thankfully for him, sometimes, it wasn't necessary for one to make their own decisions, sometimes, someone else would help.
The helper this time, looked like a gigantic arm protruding from the ground it had just broken through, wrapping its bouquet of hands around one of his feet, the brute threw him right off the ledge, leaving a large gash in the wrong with its movement.
The descent wasn't how he would have imagined it but Nilrem still managed to reach the ground without breaking his neck, just a few bruises from the unkind landing.
He stood up and quickly noticed a sharp pain in the foot that had been grabbed.
'Is something broken?' before he could check on his condition, the large monster he had been trying to avoid all this time, appeared by walkig through the wall some meters in front of him.
Its chest maw widely open with its mace-like tongue swinging around, it smashed it into the ground before slurping it back in and roaring loudly.
Rather than attracting the nearby craving ones, the few around turned away from them, walking away as if they hadn't seen anything.
"Alright, you have my attention, what now?" spoke Nilrem, the brute seemingly didn't like his attitude and roared again before literally throwing itself at him.
With his injured foot, he had to rely mostly on magic to dodge, surrounding himself in the magical winds to move away, the monster crashed into the academy's reinforced steel fences, bending it and seemingly dazing itself with its reckless charge.
Rather than attacking during that window, Nilrem eyed the damage done to the fences as the brutish monster thrashed around wildly in its confusion.
"Seems like he only got the combined strength of all of those monsters, rather than their intelligence" seemingly insulted by his outloud comment, the monster turned to look at him as it growled.
'Wonder whether he understands or if he just feels what I convey...' wondered Nilrem as he kept a close eye on the monster, which was slowly approaching, since its charge had resulted in self-inficted damage, it went close more typically and raised its arms, its many fingers clenching into something that hardly ressembled fists.
Nilrem kept on dodging the attacks as most of them ended up crashing right into the ground, the brute seemingly growing more and more infuriated as its attacks kept missing.
Nilrem dodged while rotating around the monster, forcing to spin around as the young mage kept getting outside of its vision.
At one point, Nilrem suddenly increased his speed, returning right in his original spot by doing a full rotation around the craving one, it was already trying to find him and thus, looking away, the monster was slightly confused since this little game of spinning around had been going on for a few minutes, it had become the status quo in its eyes.
Its mild confusion and brain output allowed Nilrem to catch it off guard and cast a spell of simple dirt right into its eyes and blinding it for a few moments.
The monster attacked blindly around him as it tried to shake off the dirt, now seriously pissed off, the creature saw Nilrem a good distance away from him, seemingly running away.
Indignant, the monster expressed its anger by once again, roaring as loudly as it was possible for it and then charged forward, forgetting that it could most likely end up in the fences again to catch the mage.
Instead of that, the brute suddenly halted halfway through, a huge earthen spike stabbing it right through its chest and maw, almost severing it in half.
Seeing the mage not so far away, the creature ignored its wound, clasped both its monstruous hands together and shattered part of the spike, leaving a large portion still stuck it its body.
Being that it was earth created purely out of mana, Nilrem had great control over it, allowing him to keep on remodeling it, especially when his opponent was as amateurish in mana control as it was possible.
The spike cracked and exploded outward, like a bomb filled with shrapnel, the brute was severed in half and a debris even lodged itself into its skull, travelling from the chest up into his brain.
Nilrem didn't stayed still, now that it was dead, the others would surely not have any problem attacking him now, so he focused and flew away, out of sight.
Nilrem couldn't really fly with his magic, he really could only hover a bit above the ground, otherwise, he would have just flown high into the air and bombarded the brute with spells.
Retreating inside of a floating building further away, he took a look at his foot, it seemed like it was only sprained, not that he could fully heal it either but it was certainly better than having a broken bone.
Ripping off part of his pants around his injury, he wrapped the material around it and used his rudimentary healing spells on it.
He would stay here for a while, he didn't want to go that what seemed like the heart of this place injured, he needed to be at one hundred percent but that begged another question.
'What am I going to eat? Or drink? My water magic is just mana, I can't actually conjured up real water...' he looked at the blood sea and the figures that patroled it and scowled.
The answer was simple but not very appealing.