Manaless Mage-Chapter 305: Any disturbances are to be eliminated

Everything ached. Muscles that had once felt like steel now throbbed with a dull pain.

His chest rose and fell shallowly, barely able to take in enough air.

His vision blurred at the edges, but he didn’t have the energy to blink it away. He just lay there, still... breathing... fading.

Then, a low chuckle suddenly sounded beside him.

It was soft, almost dismissive. But it wasn’t his, neither was it Bonny or anyone he would recognise.

Trent’s eyes shot open. Despite how heavy his eyelids were, they widened in alarm. His pulse, sluggish as it was, suddenly surged, pumping panic through every inch of his drained body.

"W-What...?" He barely breathed out, his voice a coarse rasp. He turned his head to the side instinctively, and there, a shadow stood beside him.

A tall figure draped in a thick, dark coat that seemed to absorb the reflection of light.

The hood of the coat concealed his face entirely, only a hint of a twisted grin visible beneath. His arms were folded into the large arms of the coat, and he stood there... watching.

Trent’s throat was dry. Still, he mustered every ounce of strength left in him to form a question, even if it came out broken and hoarse. "Who... are you...?"

The figure tilted his head slightly. That same unsettling chuckle escaped his lips again—soft, but now tinged with something sinister.

However, the strange figure didn’t answer his question.

Instead—

Five more appeared.

Just like that. There was no sound, or even footsteps. It was like they simply appeared around him, seemly born from the air itself.

They stood in a wide circle, surrounding his weak, beaten form. Their long, dark coats swayed gently, as if touched by a breeze that didn’t exist.

Trent’s tired eyes darted from one to the next. He didn’t know how, but he could feel it—these weren’t people from the academy. They weren’t instructors. They weren’t from the student body.

They... didn’t belong here.

And they weren’t friendly.

The auras they carried... it wasn’t just strange. It was wrong. Like something twisted had been stitched together into a human form and then taught to mimic normalcy.

Trent clenched his teeth, fighting against the nausea rising in his chest. His entire body trembled—not out of fear, but frustration. Powerless... he was completely powerless.

"Who the hell are you...?" He growled this time, the last of his anger bleeding through.

But again, they didn’t answer.

Instead, they turned to each other, as though his presence was hardly worth acknowledging anymore.

"He’s already exhausted," One of them said in a flat, almost bored tone. "I’m glad he made our work easier."

The others nodded in eerie silence.

Trent’s heart thundered within his chest. ’Work? What work? What were they here to do?’

He didn’t have time to ask.

Because one of them—taller than the rest, with sharp shoulders and a noticeably stiff gait—stepped away from the circle and slowly made his way toward Sonny.

Trent’s eyes widened.

Sonny still lay unconscious a few feet away, his body limp, shallow breaths escaping from his mouth. He hadn’t moved once since the tentacle attack that nearly drowned him.

The cloaked figure stopped above him.

"Any disturbances," he muttered coldly, "are to be eliminated."

Then—

Schlrrk.

From his hand... a long, silver blade materialised.

It didn’t seem like he conjured it, or summoned it through an incantation since there was no glow or even a pulse of mana.

The hand itself shifted—flesh twisting, bones lengthening, skin hardening into gleaming metal.

It was silent and unnatural, like watching a nightmare take physical form.

Within seconds, the end of his arm had become a long, silver blade, sharp and thin, hovering directly over Sonny’s vulnerable, unprotected head.

"No...!"

The cry didn’t come from Trent, it was Bonny.

He had turned, despite the blood coating half his body and the grave wounds along his side. He was trembling, pale, but alive.

His arm rose sluggishly, fingers twitching with desperate purpose.

"Don’t... don’t you dare touch him!" He shouted.

He quickly casted a a spell, summoning the last of his mana, but what emerged from his palm was a thin, withered spike, barely even the size of a needle.

It fizzled and crumbled mid-air, and with a violent cough, Bonny spat out a mouthful of blood.

"Bonny!" Trent wanted to yell, but the words never left his lips.

His body refused. His limbs, unresponsive. He could only watch—paralyzed by exhaustion and helplessness—as the scene unfolded in front of him.

But there was something that didn’t make sense.

Trent’s eyes locked on the man’s blade-hand. There was no mana. No elemental signature. No ripple of energy.

Nothing.

It was just his body that changed.

His fingers twitched slightly.

’That’s not possible... how was that possible...?’ He thought, trying to make sense of what he just saw.

’That’s not a transformation spell. That’s not shape-shifting. That’s... that’s something else entirely.’ He mumbled inwatdly.

Another part of his brain screamed to move, to react, to do something. But his body was dead weight. He was trapped within his own flesh.

The blade gleamed in the dull light as the figure looked toward Bonny, who had dropped to one knee and was shaking.

"Hm," The figure said, amused. "Even though you’re so injured, you can still talk."

There was something almost... appreciative in his tone. As if impressed.

"But," The figure added after a short pause, voice turning cold, "it’s unfortunate. Our orders were to kill everyone else."

Bonny’s eyes widened in horror.

"No—!"

He pushed off the ground with everything he had left, trying to charge forward.

However, his legs stumbled, and his knees buckled.

He couldn’t even get too far before he collapsed, falling face-first into the ground.

"Bonny!" Trent wanted to scream again, but it was no use. His voice refused him.

He looked at Sonny.

Then at the figure raising the blade again.

Everything felt like it was moving in slow motion.

The silver blade caught a beam of light.

And descended—