Tales of a Ninja Magician: Of What Defines Us

Heroes Don't Use Cheat Codes

It was dark around, granted, it was tough to say exactly just what time it could've been outside the thickness of Forest of Death due to the dense cover of trees above. Insects of every sort, flying and crawling have started their nocturnal procession to fuel their further existence. That suggested a later part of the day, maybe past even the climax of the night. Time was running out.

A couple of times Mana dashed to the location where the straws of her sensory picked up ninja to be. The previous tip turned out empty as the ninja had moved on past their stop. A handful of more wild goose chases like that followed. As wet and frail spray of rainwater began weighing down the leafage that shielded the grounds below from it, Mana had begun to wonder if her quest was entirely pointless.

The cold didn't matter, even if the rain soaked her entirely. At least it helped to numb the pain in her chest, her wrists and just above her feet. It didn't do jack squat about the inner pain though, the desperation to do whatever it took to save her friend's health and fulfil the stupid promise she never should have made in the first place.

The next tip of Mana's sensory picked up on two signatures moving her direction from the southern entrance to the Forest of Death. While it would've been unfortunate and very unlikely that Kouta's team would be reduced to just two members so soon, missing checking it was still a luxury the magician couldn't afford. For that reason she moved their general direction to meet them sooner than they ran into her.

Her sensory was beginning to define itself as a new feeling, to sharpen somewhat. Each time she closed her eyes and tried to broaden the scope of her mind's eye it came off easier and easier. The ability must've been unlocked for the longest time, every time Mana remembered being exposed to these spacial views of giant stars whizzing past her floating body must've been it. What she took as a failure of meditation – something she usually excelled at, was truly just misinterpreted awakened ability to sense chakra.

It was a very raw and unsharpened sense. The magician needed training to make it available without meditation, just as a default feeling of hers, as usual as seeing with her eyes. Feeling up those large glowing stars of chakra, seeing their vibrant blazing colors and their immense or smaller sizes was not unlike seeing new faces. If this ability was ever trained and defined it would have been immensely valuable as Mana would've been able to remember and tell apart entirely different people by their chakra signatures alone.

Saving Meiko this way wouldn't have been a mistake. As much as Mana wanted to hate on the promise she had made to her best friend – subconsciously she knew it was the right thing to do. Meiko was someone with damaged self-worth, she lived a cheerful and goofy life but when she was reminded of the disappointment and sadness from the times she failed, such as she'd be reminded of if she was eliminated like this, she just shut down and gave up. Never seeing her friend crushed like that, crushed as she looked all those times she failed a simple ninjutsu technique or failed to concentrate on Mana's training, was worth all this. It had to be...

Hearing rustling beneath her Mana stopped and looked down. She had purposefully moved on the upper levels of the branches to be able to move quietly and survey the owners of the signatures if she ever ran into them as she predicted to be able to. A familiar young lady slowly walked down on the mossy floor of the forest raising Mana's suspicion.

A feeling of cold sharp steel pressed by her cheek from behind alerted her that she was caught.

"What are you doing here? I thought the two of you could restrain yourselves from all of this during the Exams..." a firm masculine voice spoke up.

A clang and black blur surprised Kouta's teammate as in a flash Mana had pushed the blade's edge aside from her face, stood up and pressed a steel tipped card by the young man's throat.