"Well now, you've given me quite a conundrum," Anguis mused, looking over the bodies. "After all, one would have to be quite a monster to leave such gouges in the bodies of five students, especially with only a knife."
Anguis considered it for a while, then lightly chuckled.
"Well, I had been toying with it, but it looks like I will be this city's bogeyman. Or rather, we will."
His eyes raked over the shadows of the street. It was dark enough here that his entire body was in shadow. Interestingly enough, the alleys closest to the center of the city were the darkest. It spoke to a fundamental truth of the world.
The greater the money, the greater the corruption.
Regus had chosen to travel to the south, to one of the four nearby cities to the Academy, this one ruled by a noble family whose last name was Reicten. Each of these cities were entwined with the Academy's culture, and allegedly they rented the Academy's ground in return for giving students experience in social situations and providing easy access to many materials.
As Anguis emerged from the alley onto the main street next to the central Reicten manor, he turned and studied the massive copper statue that sat just behind its gates.
The Reicten family had established dominance here by having the best and the largest foundries. The south city quickly became the City of Metals as minor nobles who specialized in similar fields flocked here to try to upset the order, or learn from a Reicten, or sometimes just buy Reicten steel for their wares.
Of course, those who came to learn from a Reictan had no business being there. The only one with any skill was a woman named Lady Lucretia, sometimes called the Steel Widow. After her husband, Endel Reictan, had perished a mere three days after they were officially married, without consummating their marriage, she had gone on to take the steel industry by storm through a secret ability, which Anguis believed was some form of transmutation, alongside a healthy dose of serious skill and near unparalleled talent, and had then constructed her home next to the place that the Academy would eventually be built, helping to form the third largest corporation to exist at that time, the Crucitress, which she left after being the only member to disagree with the founding of the Academy.
She had been right, in the end. Although she and her family still remained the foremost manufacturers of metal, with the founding of the Academy strength in combat once again began to rise to the top of society, and she fell from the most powerful woman in the world to a low fourth place, and her decline continued until the four women who ran the cities around the Academy formed an alliance with the headmistress, putting her back in fourth place. After all, her position was now recognized as one of the five greatest influences on young minds, especially those with powerful abilities, which were the future of the continent. At least, in this current society.
Her story wasn't exactly unique among the four city leaders. Born and raised as polite little noblewomen who never spoke out and always submitted to men, when they awakened their powers they were among the first to upturn the social order and set themselves above the rest of their house.
For Headmistress Elvira, it was different. After all, she had been the princess, before the king was stricken with an unknown disease and died a day after the doctors came. After that, with her mother in mourning, she took control of the palace in the absence of the crown prince, who was regulating some rebellious peasants in the west at the time.
Because of this, Elvira already ruled the continent in all but name by the time she awakened her powers, and then she swept into Crucitress as soon as she heard about it, quickly rising to the top and then proposing the idea of the Academy. All of this only served to strengthen her hold on the power of the continent, and when the crown prince returned, he found that his status had been stripped from him. Just before she had died, the queen named Elvira the ruler of the continent in the place of her husband and the crown prince, who she saw as having abandoned them to their strife.
Anguis thought it was awfully fortunate, that all those events would just happen to coincide. But that didn't necessarily mean that the princess was the one behind it. After all, it could have been any one of her countless admirers, either that she manipulated into giving her control or that wanted to impress her by making her a queen. If that was the case, though, then they had failed, as Elvira wanted nothing to do with any man after she became the queen, and even renounced the institution of marriage entirely, claiming it was a crutch for the weak. And she did have a point.
And while Anguis could dissect the intentions of the five leaders here all day, it was more important right now to discover exactly what his ability did.
But first...
Anguis cocked his head. A single long, spindly leg emerged into his vision, then hit the cobbled main street with a dull clank. More soon followed, until there were five in front of him. The pattern on them was quite delicate, swirls of a deep purple in black with the occasional splash of red to break it up.
Then the head of the spider emerged.
But when he saw it, it was not a head. Instead, it was the upper body of a woman with dark grey skin, red eyes, and a simple white tunic that hung down and hid the point where her skin melded into the carapace.
A shriek came from behind him as people began to notice. Anguis thought quickly, then raised his hand and felt at his ability. There was power there, but he couldn't reach it. It felt a lot like the others' abilities. Regus was the closest to him, so he reached out to feel his ability. Sure enough, just like his own ability, he could feel it, but not use it. But when he focused back on his own ability, there was a difference. This one followed his mental commands. He could move the energy, but not use it.
Anguis pushed a small amount of the power out of himself, and it quickly drifted up into the air, obscuring his form like a glimmering haze of heat. The loss was barely noticeable, as the sun above replenished it before he could even feel it was missing. The only unfortunate thing was that he had a limited space to store the power. Regus wanted to hold on to Ardena's power and experiment with it, which Anguis was also curious about, so he didn't try to get more space for storage. After all, out here in the sun, he didn't need it.
He let out a low grumble to adjust his voice. He could feel the people creeping closer. They wouldn't be afraid to fight if there were enough of them, and humans had a tendency to be arrogant, especially when they thought they had an advantage. Of course, the numbers would be an advantage, had it mattered. Aside from that, in the City of Metal, a large percentage of the people had fire or heat abilities that could easily be turned to offense. The simple fact that his ability was unknown was the only thing holding them back from attacking him right now.
"We thrive in the shadows," he said. His voice was low, but a careful amount of power that he let loose in front of his lips caught it and helped it to carry, which along with the silence made sure that everyone there heard it. And just like he had hoped, that grumble had given his voice just the right aspect of rasping growl to seem like a nightmare in human form.
Perfection. He couldn't have asked for a better scenario if he had made it himself.
"We hunt the shadows," he continued in the same tone. The approach had stopped. The people were afraid now, but still determined to destroy the spider monster. After all, if they did, they would likely get accolades.
Now, the climax. The finale of the scene. As they slowly started to creep forward once more, he spoke again.
"We own the shadows."
With that final declaration, Anguis forced all of the power out of himself, and he vanished to the people's sight in a blurring fog. If he was lucky, they wouldn't have gotten a close enough look at his uniform, so they wouldn't know he was a student at the Academy.
Anguis slipped into the shadowed alley, then listened. The power still floated in the air despite the visible effects having dissipated, so their low whispers carried to his ears. That was an interesting feature.
Anguis smirked.
They were saying he wasn't afraid, even of a spider monster.
But he would always have the final word. And he knew just what it would be. Even the whisper carried the same hint of a rasp as before as it traveled across the central square at the same low volume.
"Arachnotharia."