It took three and a half months for the human-monster war to reach Soul's School.

One and a half month for the Royal Mage of Noitaidarr to travel from the site of the Second Fusion's creation to the nigh-abandoned institution.

And two months for the tension between the Royal Mages and the Monster Mage to snap and break the flimsy trust that kept the war at bay.

"You still doubt me?"

Another three months or so had passed since then. The spacious rooms of the two-storied house Cter was confined to had become smaller and smaller with each day that had passed. After one week she moved the comfortable chair she had read leisurely in to a more effective spot in the study.

It had stood in the cozy place next to the fireplace she had let burn as humanely as possible for enough time to have made colored dents in the floorboards. Understandably so, as during the winter months the Monster Mage had very much enjoyed listening to the cracks and sparks from the fireplace calm her mind and soul down from the day's research.

After a week spent having to do her research in the two-storied house though she had begun to feel that she needed to have that comfort when she was working to. To help her focus and to make it so that she didn't just declare it all useless and give up on it all. The one-sided barricade magic helped since it was something new and something substantial she could work with. The range of her work needed more space than the small study meant mostly to prepare the occasional guest lecture provided for her though.

After two weeks spent having to do her research in the two-storied house the Monster Mage came to realize that she was trading the comfort of being able to completely move her mind and soul away from her research at the end of her confined days with having those confined days feeling just a bit less worse than how they'd otherwise feel.

Unfortunately it was not a trade she could undo as she had come to associate the cozy chair with doing research. It had become something she associated with doing work rather than relax in. Work that each day felt more and more like it was because of reasons of war and not reasons of furthering the knowledge of the human soul. Each new clue she found about the Soul Rainbow brought with it a small cloud of miasma hanging over the clue.

How could she use this to help the monsters win the war?

"I still doubt you, I'm afraid."

How could she use the clue to defeat the humans?

She did not enjoy those clouds, yet as much as she tried to swat them away they kept coming back. Each time she tried to read the clue in a way that wouldn't at all be relevant to the war the miasma still clouded her mind and had her think of how she would be able to utilize a clue akin that perhaps the Soul Rainbow was worshiped on Sundays to bring utter defeat upon the humans!

An all-out attack when they are most vulnerable on Sundays due to a long-forgotten religion!

Or something like that…

While she knew that the ideas were stupid they were also loud. They were there, and always there. A constant niggle. A constant thought and hum that she could not shake no matter how much she summoned a bubble of one-sided barricade magic around the miasma to try and prevent it from reaching her mind and soul.

She had hung onto those straws she had been reaching for so hard to find out more about the Soul Rainbow that even the faintest thought of how the next clue could bring victory to the war meant something to her. She had made mounds out of pebbles so many times during her relatively short time at Soul's School researching the Soul Rainbow that it had become habit for her.

"More or less than yesterday?"

Funnily enough though, the best solution she found was to do more work. Do more research so that the miasma was drowned out. Read more old texts. Contemplate how to make the next pebble into another mound so that the miasma cloud was hidden behind it. Do more magic to busy her soul.

It took the Monster Mage a few weeks to become adept with the one-sided barricade magic with it being all that she could focus on. Similarly to how ice magic and fire magic were not the opposite of each other, but two different types of magic who just happened to be opposite in the temperature sense, two-sided barricade magic and one-sided barricade magic were two types of magic which happened to do the same.

Sund's discovery of two-sided barricade magic was connected to how he discovered his own magic. With him having both Priestess Frioke's and Sir Gerson's influences within his sleeve he could see two sides of a situation. He could be in two minds about how he summoned his magic and also how he projected it. Prompted by Priestess Frioke, but projected by Sir Gerson, for an example. This gave him more insight into what it meant to be a Monster Mage. What it meant to be a monster with a human's soul and visage.

And more importantly, how to separate the two.

Sund's two-sided barricade magic was that of separation by having a distinct difference between two concepts. One side in one hand and another in another, separated from each other. That became his own magic. One there and another here.

That became his barricade magic.

Yet despite all that separation he became something that could not be separated into either human or monster. He became something that was distinguishably indistinguishable from either monster or human. He became part of the First Fusion.

Which was how Cter inherited his barricade magic.

Not via his influence, even though Cter told everyone else that in hopes that she would start believing it herself. She did have some quote-unquote help with it though as the First Fusion could not let her bleed out from the carves it had inflicted on her left arm. Maybe her soul got used to it, maybe it didn't, but how she came about the two-sided barricade magic for her to use were through fear. Fear about the First Fusion taking her over and about the White Flesh on her hand taking over more and more of it.

Her crystal magic did not work to separate as the First Fusion was already aware of that as it carved itself upon her left arm. She needed something new to her, and that was the barricade magic. She found it at the same destination that Sund did, but her road was different. It had been paved slightly by him though, probably with some flowers on the edges too. She would call hers differently. Sund's was barricade magic, and hers would be barrier magic. It was different enough to be called differently. It was different enough that she could finally stop sullying Sund's legacy.

God…

"The same as yesterday."

Cter did not wish him back though, for what was the world that he would return to? A world where the world was separated between humans and monsters not because of an understanding in how the human soul differed from the monster soul, but instead due to how the human spirit differed from the monster spirit.

The monsters had always known the fear of being powerless against something and lived with it and flourished despite it. The humans had never really known that fear, and once it came knocking as hard as the Fusions did, it all became ablaze. Too much in too short a period of time. It was understandable that the humans reacted the way they did.

But that didn't mean that Cter agreed with it.

"Same as the day before yesterday as well?"

Cter's one-sided barrier magic was similarly found in relation to the concept of a human soul fusing with a monster soul.

Hers and Idyll's.

They didn't become a fusion together though, but it did let Cter find a way to make a different type of barrier magic. She had managed to make Sund's two-sided barricade magic one-sided, but that meant her breaking the two-sided barricade magic in a rather explosive and unsafe way. It was a proof of concept that unfortunately had her confined to the two-storied house afterwards, but it was proof enough that it was possible.

To begin with she had first to understand what the two-sided barricade magic was, and what made hers different from Sund's, if it was different to begin with, which it eventually became. A few days of quiet and respectful remembering about Sund and his barricade magic had Cter figuring out what separated hers and his barrier magic in her mind and soul.

Whether is was true or not did not matter. As long as she had an idea how to separate the two then she could work with it. It paid respect to her view of Sund's barricade magic too by managing to put her barrier magic in one hand and his in another, making them distinctly different from the other.

And while thinking back on it, that faithful night sprung to Cter's mind. Thinking about the concept of the fusion with Idyll in the back of her mind it was inevitable, really.

But not that it would hint at her barrier magic being possible to do one-sided.

For Idyll's soul was trying to absorb Cter's soul, wasn't it? It tried to take in what was human into what was monster, but not giving anything back. It was unlike the Cooperative Connection. There wasn't any communication, no dialogue between the souls. Cter might have experienced Idyll's memories, but she did so as her soul was being siphoned away from her. It wasn't Cter's soul being given the memories of Idyll's soul. The process was one-way.

Instead of two hands holding separate in each, the two hands were connected together by arms and shoulders. There could be a transfer between the two. One could go to the other one, for they were connected. Both could go in one hand or they could go in the other. This might have been something minuscule from the outset, but it wasn't in how Cter sought it. If she saw it different, if she thought of it different, then she could manifest it different.

By channeling that inequality and exposing and focusing on the imbalance the Monster Mage managed to put a twist on the magical balance she needed to summon her magic. She needed it to be both human and monster to manifest it. It still had to adhere to the concept of the Cooperative Connection. However though, like Rasliela had scorned her about, she could put all the weight on one end of the seesaw. Make the barrier magic considerably human or considerably monster. Human being weighted much more inside, such as the human soul. A monster's soul is their exterior, what they show to the outside world.

When it finally clicked for her she found it as easy to summon her newly found one-sided barrier magic as it was for her to summon Sund's two-sided barricade magic. While they were different in concept and underlying thought and purpose, their executions were the same. It was similar to how Idyll adapted quickly to Terri giving her advice about her ice magic.

"You know that full well without asking already."

With the one-sided barrier magic Cter was allowed to use her magic more freely than what the Royal Mages had told her she had to confine herself to. Not allowed from them though.

For they did not know.

Or at least, they didn't know enough to have grounds to doubt her more about it. Cter's one-sided magic kept her magic and aura within it without any spillage outside of it. She could have done the same type of magic that had her accidentally creating one-sided barrier magic by force and none outside the barrier magic would have been the wiser had they not been looking. All of her magic was kept inside like the roaring boil within a lidded pot.

Which was a problem.

A problem with a simple solution, but a problem nonetheless. If all of her aura disappeared then that would raise suspicion, and did so the first time she summoned her newly formulated, one-sided barrier magic around her to test it out. It looked the same as the two-sided barricade magic, albeit with a slight warp while looking through it. A bit like how when looking at your arm dipped into a lake your arm looked to have shifted when underwater.

Such wasn't the case with the two-sided barricade, and Cter hypothesized that it was due to the change in the thickness of the barrier, so to speak. The two-sided barricade was like a window pane, equally thick throughout. The one-sided barrier in contrast was like a piece of armor when monster-weighted, soft on the inside and hard on the outside, and vice versa if it was human-weighted.

When she stuck her arm through the one-sided magic her arm visually shifted very similar to how it was when dipped underwater, but at an even sharper angle to the shift. It looked to be broken with how much it was visually bent. As she dragged her arm back she could also confirm that all of her had to go through the one-sided barrier magic for her to be on locked out on the other side.

All of her physical body, to be more precise, as she could not return through it by holding on to a long stretch of crystal magic sticking through the barrier magic. She performed quite a few similar tests to see if she could cheat that rule in some way. If her magic was supposed to be an extension of her soul then why did the one-sided barrier magic not count her magic as an extension of her soul.

Her clothes did seem to continue through with her as if they were a part of her body which was grounds for thought as well. Perhaps it was similar with how healing magic only worked so far as the soul saw the body? All of what the soul thought of was the body had to pass through for it to be blocked outside?

All that experimenting with her new magic got the attention of the two Royal Mages who felt her aura come about and then disappear like someone reigniting and blowing out a candle repeatedly. While they did not fully believe her explanation of it being because of her attempts at sealing away her own soul to help her find the Soul Rainbow, they did not believe it less enough to say that she was lying about it.

"Shouldn't you be asking me the same?"

Because for the most part the Royal Mages seemed content with leaving Cter alone in the two-storied house. Weeks could pass without them visiting and checking to make sure that she wasn't doing something she shouldn't, enough time that Cter once or twice almost began to believe that they had just forgotten her. She never took those beliefs to soul though as again escaping would make things worse for the monsters. She did not know where the Royal Guards that had been with her at Soul's School were. She did not know where the war was taking place.

Hell, she did not know anything about the war, really.

And if there was anything that worked from the Royal Mages' tactics to keep Cter as a prisoner, then them keeping her in the dark about the war they were very effective in doing.

To her it felt the same as the human-human war. There was a similar apathy towards it from the Fourth Monster Mage. Something that she knew was important and impactful on paper, but something that had never jumped out of said paper and affected her personally.

All what led up to the war she knew about intimately. She was there with each step from the First Fusion to the Princess of the Lineage declaring her intentions at the Council of Three Countries. With the human-human war though she heard the Xoff King talk about how he was to go to war.

And then he went to war.

And Cter went the other way.

How was she supposed to feel anything personal about a war that wasn't about her and which she had been deliberately sent away from? That it then shifted its tide violently to become a human-monster war was something that was told to her and not her experiencing it. There were no heartstrings to pluck because she wasn't connected to it at all. Her fellow monsters were killed each day while she sat in her comfortable chair researching.

Each time she went to make a sandwich for lunch there were monsters becoming dust on the battlefield. Humans invaded monster villages and occupied with a constant vigilance and fear that at any moment there could be formed another fusion which the humans wouldn't be able to prepare for, all the while

Cter spent another day being a prisoner in a comfortable, two-storied home. At night both sides worried what the other would do. What the next day would bring and the horrors they would face. Cter often thought about both the humans and the monsters as she prepared for bed. What they felt and how they would feel come morn.

Yet she slept unburdened and serenely all into morning.

"If I should have then I would have already."

Because it wasn't her war.

None of it were, not with her where she was.

Even if the Royal Mages would have updated her on the goings-on of the war. Even if they had read out loud the names of each monsters that had been killed in the war it wouldn't have been any different to Cter. She could not get emotional over something she had no emotion towards to begin with. Had there been any news about those she knew of then that would have been different, but otherwise it would just have been numbers, really. Names next to numbers.

Not much different than the old recipe books she had scoured for clues about the Soul Rainbow.

Cter cared more about sugar measurements than she did about monsters dying in a pointless war fueled by the dry tinder of fear.

And she did not find that strange.

Even though she knew that she should have.

If it was because she had given up or because there wasn't anything left but apathy and tiredness against the goings-on in the world which she had been pelted with for years upon years, Cter did not want to find out. It was what it was.

And it was war.

Apparently.

"Good thing you didn't then."

Maybe she became so adapt so quickly with her one-sided barrier magic because it helped her shut everything out? Inside her barrier there wasn't a war in the distance, for it was blocked. There weren't any Fusions, for they were blocked outside the barrier as well. There weren't any humans. There weren't any monsters.

It was just her, in her own, quiet place made from her own magic. It was the same as her sinking into the world below the lake's surface, but she could be there longer. She could be there for as long as she wanted, all alone and with no one to disturb her. Just her and her soul, with no one else to interrupt them.

"How do you mean?"

Except for when they did.

"Exactly as I say."

For when Cter was taken away from the two-storied house and placed in a carriage guarded by humans wearing long, sleeve-less robes with widened shoulders to hide their arms and their intentions. For when she was given a wide-brimmed, pointy hat similar to Rasliela's to hide who she was, the tired cloak to hide her Monster Mage clothes reminded her more of an old rug than anything else.

"It was not our choice for this. You know that to be true, Cter."

There were no other carriage meant for the Royal Guards that had traveled to Soul's School with Cter. There was only the one meant for her and the Royal Mages which was meant for transport. The other four in the convoy were guards and soldiers.

"Yet still you doubt me."

She knew where she was to be taken, yet did not know where that was.

"Yet still you doubt us as well."

She knew why she was taken there, yet did not know the reason for it.

"I'm half-human, after all."

She was going to war.

"That you are..."

But still wouldn't be a part of it.