Internet Mage Professor-Chapter 56: Kill

The estate sat at the edge of the city’s outer-west perimeter, isolated behind a wrought iron fence wrapped in thorny vines.

The mansion—if it could be called that—was large, sure.

Three stories. Tower spires. An open courtyard.

A forge annex. But it was painted in deep black and charred brown, streaked with years of neglect.

It looked less like a home and more like a haunted fortress that only appeared during blood moons.

Nolan stared at it from the gate.

"Charming," he muttered. "Perfect place for a friendless noble like me."

Lirazel hovered beside him, arms folded. "Told you. Death trap. You just got gifted a monster nest wrapped in prestige."

He sighed and pushed the gate open. It screeched like a dying banshee.

Inside, the mansion’s air was heavy with cold. The entrance foyer was dimly lit, and long chains of preserved magic shimmered faintly in the rafters, probably still attempting to contain the spawns.

Nolan stepped carefully down the hall, his boots echoing against the tiled floor. He passed ancient portraits, cracked windows, a room with an unused alchemy table, and shelves full of dust-covered tomes.

Then, he reached the door to the holding chamber.

It was slightly ajar.

A low humming sound vibrated through the crack.

"Don’t open that," Lirazel warned immediately. "If the temporal casing failed—"

He pushed it open.

The room was huge—probably once a ballroom—but now it was dark except for the eerie blue glow from the containment circles.

Two of the three creatures were inside, upright and twitching. Their flesh moved unnaturally—liquid-like patches crawling over shattered bones as they rebuilt themselves from the inside out.

Their heads hadn’t fully formed yet, and jagged spines erupted from their backs like broken trees clawing at the ceiling.

Nolan’s blood ran cold. "They’re... rebuilding."

Lirazel screamed behind him. "I told you so! You think I don’t know spawns? I told you not to leave the body! I told you to burn the nest! I told you they adapt! You think some mages with cryo-locks could stop that?! They evolve through death!"

She was nearly screaming now. "They’re in your house! Your house! You brought them home! Who does that?! You might as well have adopted a hydra and invited it for dinner!"

Nolan backed away, one hand reaching for his mana focus, eyes wide, sweat starting to bead down his temple.

"That calming shit didn’t kill them?" he exclaimed.

But then... he saw the third creature.

The one Calien had killed.

It wasn’t rebuilding.

It was still lying in the containment circle, perfectly still, utterly intact. No twitching. No movement. Not even mana ripples.

Nolan narrowed his eyes. "Wait... why isn’t that one moving?"

Lirazel froze mid-rant.

Her mouth closed.

She blinked.

Then, slowly, she floated toward it, her face gradually draining of color.

"That’s not right," she whispered. "That’s... that’s not how it should look..."

Her wings trembled. She moved closer.

And closer.

Her hands passed over the containment line, carefully scanning.

Then she saw it.

And she froze solid.

Dead silent.

Eyes locked on the creature’s chest.

It hadn’t rebuilt... because it had never died properly.

Looks like something—something worse—was sleeping inside.

But then suddenly, Lirazel’s eyes flared, slitted pupils narrowing to a thread. She leaned closer, her expression twitching with disbelief as she examined the unmoving corpse of the spawn Calien had killed.

"No..." she whispered. "No. No, this isn’t right..."

She hovered down, crouching beside the creature, her clawed fingers hovering just over its blackened hide, never quite touching. Her breath came shallow. Her wings had stiffened.

"This... this shouldn’t be possible," she muttered, voice suddenly brittle.

Nolan, still staring at the creature from a few feet back, tilted his head. "What do you mean?"

"It’s... dead."

She said the word like it hurt her mouth.

"Properly dead," she continued. "There’s no rebuilding. No core preservation. No recursive mana traces... How come?"

She floated up a little, turning to Nolan, eyes now glowing with alarm. "Do you understand what this means? These creatures—spawns—can’t be killed. Not in the way you think. You can obliterate their bodies. Tear them apart. Freeze them, burn them, crush them with mana-imbued rituals. Sure. But that doesn’t kill them. Their soul anchors don’t reside in this realm. They’re avatars—extensions—from higher beings. You can stop them temporarily, but true death only comes one of two ways."

She held up two fingers, slowly.

"Either they’re killed by one of their own. A spawn of another Demon God. A sibling predator. Or..." Her expression darkened, voice dropping to a whisper. "They’re killed by a native of this realm—but only with borrowed power from the same cursed bloodline."

Nolan blinked. "Cursed bloodline?"

Lirazel shook her head. "The point is—it’s impossible. No lower realm human can kill a spawn unless—"

She paused. Her words hung there, trembling in the air.

She turned sharply back to the body and stared.

Nolan’s eyes widened as realization bubbled behind his thoughts. He remembered it. The knife Calien had used. The moment was faint in memory, chaotic, but he’d seen it.

The glint of a curved blade, the handle jagged and wrapped in bloody cloth, like something torn straight from a cursed RPG inventory screen.

Calien had got from Nolan’s ’cheat internet’ yesterday—that mysterious space he had summoned that is called the Arcane Special Realm that Mana Specialists can conjure.

A knife from the digital game of Earth.

A weapon that never existed in this world.

His mouth went dry.

"You mean..." he murmured, stepping closer, "that knife Calien used... if it wasn’t from here, but from there..."

Lirazel snapped her head toward him.

"What knife?" she asked sharply.

"The one he used to kill that thing," Nolan said, staring at the corpse. "It wasn’t his. It wasn’t from this world at all. It came from... the Internet."

Lirazel blinked, clearly not understanding. "Huh? From where? I didn’t see it. I left, remember?"

Nolan had his mouth open. Right, she disappeared yesterday. So he just muttered, "It’s complicated," while rubbing his temple.

"I have this thing—never mind. Point is, if Calien could kill it with something I pulled from that... cheat space, then maybe it can be done."

But before Lirazel could respond, the temperature in the room shifted. Subtle, but wrong.

The two wriggling creatures at the far end of the chamber suddenly convulsed—ribs cracking and reforming.

Spines slithered back into shape. Eyes—three for each—burst open, lidless and glowing with inner mana.

With a gurgling hiss, both beasts reconstituted into their full forms. No more frozen stasis. No more temporal lock.

The icy shimmer that had coated their bodies moments ago shattered like glass, falling as harmless frost to the tiled floor.

Nolan stumbled back instinctively. "Ah, crap."

Lirazel’s panic came sharp and immediate.

"They’re reforming—get back!" she shrieked, her wings flaring with urgency. "You need a weapon! Not any weapon! Here—"

She thrust a black sickle toward him. Its curved blade pulsed with ancient runes, and the handle felt unnaturally warm even before it reached his hand.

"Hurry!" she shouted. "Pour your lifespan into it! It’s the only way! The only way!"

"Lifespan?!" Nolan recoiled, eyes wide. "Like, literal years of my life?"

"Yes! It feeds on your vitality! But it can cut their essence! Do it!"

But Nolan didn’t take the weapon.

"No way!" He said.

Immediately, he glanced to his right and raised his hand.

Lirazel froze mid-flight, brows tightening as she watched his next move.

Suddenly, a holographic shimmer burst into life beside him—an interface of glowing panels and icons.

To her, it looked like a summoned spellboard, strange and abstract, with labels and pictures floating in the air. But to Nolan, it was just his familiar cheat Internet screen—dark mode on, ping perfect, loaded with folders.

He reached into one of the custom inventory slots, fingers sliding into the interface like it was liquid.

With a flick of his wrist, he pulled out two massive kukri machetes.

Each blade curved forward with brutal elegance.

The edges were serrated near the hilt and gleamed with a dark green sheen, almost infected-looking, like they had been dipped in venom or carved from decayed metal.

The handles were wrapped in tattered black bandage grips, the pommels jagged, like broken teeth.

Lirazel’s mouth opened, stunned. "W-What... Where did—?!"

Seeing her expression, Nolan would grin.

"These are from the lower realm," he said calmly with a teasing tone, testing their weight with a few practiced swings. "They’re called Pathogen Kukri. I unlocked them after finishing 27 Days Later, a zombie game. Completed it just before all this... academy chaos."

He twirled the machetes in each hand, then grinned. "In the game, these bad boys are designed to infect undead enemies with hyper-mutagenic virus strains. Turn the plague against itself. I figured if they worked there, they’d work here."

Lirazel was frozen in disbelief. "I don’t understand..." Quickly, she would shake her head and explain, "no weapon from this realm can kill a spawn. None! Not even your city’s relics—especially not something from human craftsmanship!"

Nolan narrowed his eyes as the creatures lunged forward in tandem, their limbs grotesquely stretching, mouths unhinging with tendrils of ichor snapping between their fangs.

"For real?" he asked teasingly, stepping forward, "then watch."

He moved like a blur.

The first spawn struck with a cleaver-like claw, but Nolan ducked under it, sliding forward and slashing in one clean, crescent motion.

The blade sang through flesh and bone, and the creature collapsed mid-motion, its upper torso dissolving into black smoke.

The second one came from above, pouncing like a rabid beast, but Nolan flipped both machetes backward in his hands and drove them up in an ’X’ slash that cut through its chest and neck in one go.

SWOOSH.

No screaming. No flailing death throes.

Just silence.

The two spawns disintegrated, their forms flickering briefly—like broken holograms—before vanishing completely.

No rebirth. No twitching. No mana echo.

Gone.

Nolan stood still for a moment, machetes dripping with black residue that evaporated into vapor within seconds.

Lirazel hovered in place, her expression blank.

Her lips moved, but no sound came.

She blinked.

Then blinked again.

Then stared at Nolan like he was a walking contradiction.

"Okay," Nolan finally said, resting the kukris against his shoulders. "I think now you owe me a very long explanation."

He turned to her, raising a brow.

"What the hell are these things? What do you mean ’Demon Gods?’ And why are they trying to set up shop here? I thought your sisters were fighting for leadership, but what are these?"