The actual act of freeing Professor White from his prison turned out more elaborate that it otherwise needed to be. Had Natsumi actually acquiesced to her late teacher's incessant nagging, she would have shattered the mirror while still inside the cocoon and be done with the whole affair. However, she did not do so. Instead, she let the man stew while she proceeded toward the last, main attraction of the entire carnival: a scavenger hunt with banshees.
 
"No thanks," the druid said when the conductor of the event suggested dying and joining the carnival. She took the note from the child all the same, and walked through the mists into the forest beyond. Only once she was out of sight did she begin speaking to White in his native tongue rather than freeing him. "I'll say this now while I can get a word in: I am no longer of the Yamauchi clan. By now, my father has surely disowned me for fleeing my obligations, and good riddance. I tell you now that I will not suffer someone lecturing me on my honor anymore, because the honor system was different for me than for others. Following orders without question is not admirable. It's a disease that I have cured myself of."
 
Natsumi believed she was safe while lecturing her professor like this, having not noticed the nearby banshee. If the Controller had not interceded at that moment by forcing the Queen to turn her head, she might well have met with an early end. That said, Yamauchi did not fall to the banshee's tricks.  When her opponent lunged, the young woman simply side-stepped the attack while also utilizing the sharp edge of White's mirror to counter. Since the item possessed some form of magic, it was able to harm the banshee on contact, and also sever the chain of a soldier's locket that had adorned the creature's neck.
 
One stroke was all it took, and two important actions were accomplished. The first item on the scavenger hunt had been found, and the Pawn was, at last, freed.

Irritation, sorrow and desperation: it was difficult for Professor White to discern which of these negative emotions he was most strongly aligned with when his student had forgone the obvious route toward his freedom. Before his stay in Sepulcher Manor, he had been a patient man, but the entire ordeal had worn his nerves thin. The idea of having to wait even longer to be free after his mirror had already been found? It was a purely preposterous notion to a man of such caliber.
 
Yet when the girl he regarded as his last hope began her counter lecture, Aaron's impatience relented. Broken as he was, he had not yet left behind his compassionate spirit.
 
'Disowned?' Ever since his first visit to the Yamauchi Manor, Aaron White had been able to sense the dysfunction of the family. He knew there was tension between Natsumi and her father without even asking, but never did he imagine the problem severe enough to tempt Natsumi to run away. This realization came as a mild shock to him, and it served to lift the blood haze that had clouded his vision ever since his encounter with the mirror.
 
This woman before him was no longer the small, inquisitive child he remembered. She was an individual who had risked escaping the status quo of her caste, and, against insurmountable odds, survived. His student had matured in his absence, even learning to fight without his instruction to guide her. The banshee encounter proved that well enough.
 
"You've grown up, Natsumi," White said as his spirit emerged from the shattered mirror in a bright flash. "And, because of that, I apologize for my insistence on treating you as a child." The late artifact hunter now stood before the druid in an ethereal remnant of his earthly form. His gaze fell upon his student's tanned face for the moment, but that would soon change.
 
"Thief!" A unanimous screech erupted from the fog laden overgrowth surrounding teacher and student as soon as White's containment had been breached. The nearest banshees began a rapid encroachment, apparently angered by the event.
 
"We have much to discuss, Lady Yamauchi," White shouted as he called forth what arcane power he had left, "but these spirits seem intent on making me a permanent resident. We'll have to fight them off if we're to have any chance at civil conversation." The first, gruff smile in many years adorned Aaron's face as he thought on the battle to come. This was how he wanted his end to be: standing side by side with a student he trusted while the two robbed the past of its well-guarded secrets. It was a dream come true, far better than any, ill-fated mirror. "Let's make this, my first and last practice session with you, something to remember."

For Natsumi, White's words lay solely in the murky gray. The professor had helped her studies substantially, but that didn't mean she possessed fealty toward him. Trust was a commodity that only belonged to her animal companions because she knew they were not motivated by selfish, human desires. Had Aaron not been causing her sleep disruptions, the young woman wouldn't have even come to the carnival. To be in a place where a powerful wizard met his end was one of the last things she desired. It would not be far from the truth to say that, in the absence of personal detriment, any reason Natsumi would have come up with for visiting the Haunted Caravan would have been completely devoid of altruism toward another human: even a dead acquaintance.
 
Yet, here she was in the thick of a battle she did not choose, with enemies that screamed loud enough to force her to lower her audible range using a patchwork, adaptation spell if she didn't wish to risk going deaf. The banshees were upon her too quickly for her to reliably flee, so she was forced to fight if she wanted to get back to Virens Forest.
 
"Alright," she responded to White's final request as he made it, "but I get to take a nap after this." Drawing on what little she remembered from the professor's manuscripts on countering the undead, Natsumi drew her tanto and empowered it with consecrated energy. Luckily for her, the banshees had been scattered enough that they arrived in staggered amounts rather than the vast horde that could be heard deeper within the forest. This allowed the woman to engage one enemy at a time on average, which she did when the first banshee came barreling into sight.
 
"Leave my husband!" howled the ethereal entity before being beheaded. Her adrenaline based speed was kicking in, so the druid was able to move with the deadly precision of a typical, Kurayo inhabitant. Despite that, though, it was clear that her consecrate spell was far from refined. Rather than give a clean cut, the tanto had practically exploded the creature's head off, almost damaging the noose that Natsumi needed to complete the scavenger hunt in the process. White would surely offer commentary on that, but the runaway was too preoccupied to care. Many more phantoms were on their way.   

'A painful child,' White thought, 'But at least she's brave.' Indeed, the professor felt slighted when Natsumi barely even acknowledged him or his apology, but he chalked it up to bravery and focus. They were useful talents, so he allowed his own feelings to fall by the wayside. It wasn't like he had time to worry about such trivial matters, anyway. The banshees were already beginning to stream into the clearing, and White would soon be forced to react.
 
During the initial moments of combat, however, the professor's actions were constrained to watching rather than fighting. He observed in fascination as Natsumi took the first kill, taking note of her grace. She possessed speed and strength definitely above that of an average human, something that told Aaron the curse was mutating his student's body at an alarming rate. Provided the mutations from said curse remained as benign as those he was presently seeing, the professor surmised that the woman possessed the potential to surpass even him in combat. That, of course, was assuming she refined her magic more.
 
"You have too much power in your strike," White said after watching the banshee's head go flying. "The key to any weapon enchantment spell is to visualize the image of the weapon you are using in your head before you cast the spell. Then, as you're casting the spell, imagine it as a thin shield coating the weapon. Like so." Another banshee came out of the forest after this explanation, but the professor easily dispatched it with a clean strike from an ethereal sword he summoned. The sword was coated in a consecrate weapon spell much more refined than Natsumi's, and, as a result, it behaved like the bladed weapon it was than a blunted weapon.  "No mess and a clean cut."

In the past, Natsumi had not been fond of criticism. Every time someone showed even the slightest negativity toward her actions, especially if that someone was male, she would think of her father's abuse and, subsequently, withdraw. It had been almost a year since she ran away from home, though, and the memories were starting to fade. Rather than shy away from disapproval, she was now quick to adjust. She had become a model student of life.
 
When the third banshee came, the druid had already memorized Aaron's instructions. She had watched his magic and stance carefully whilst he was dispatching his own target, taking extensive mental notes of the affair for future use. With that future being now, she was quick to utilize her newly acquired knowledge to behead yet another phantom.
 
Just as the professor had claimed it would, the imagery based tactic served its purpose. Rather than roughly separating from the shoulders as it had before, the banshee's neck came cleanly off. Natsumi's tanto, when used against undead creatures in this manner, now behaved much like a hot blade does when slicing meat from the bone: more than enough for her to claim her third prize. Now slain, the ghoul could do nothing as her killer chopped off one of her petrified hands and pocketed it for a foolish game.
 
"Not so hard when you think of it that way." There wasn't even a smile on Natsumi's face when she spoke: no sign of excitement or pleasure over success. To others, she might simply have appeared in the likeness of a cold-blooded killer in that moment.  The truth was somewhat different. Joy had been tempered by pain. The agony of her ears was returning even in the presence of the numbing effect her temporary adaptation granted, and that deep ache was spreading to her spine. She feared illness. The only reason for her tough face, this time, was because of her upbringing.
 
'Never show your enemies, or even your friends, weakness.' Izumi had told her younger sister these words about a month before leaving the family home to enroll in the Shadoka school. They stuck with her even all these years later.
 

For decades before his death, the professor had been consistently bothered by co-workers and former students alike to take on an apprentice. There weren't that many artifact hunters thanks to the fact that the profession was atypical for a Wyllmochvarian wizard, and also because the life expectancy was low.  White was an exception. It was due to his uncanny ability to survive that the university believed him to be some sort of golden goose. As a result of that status, upper staff had sent him many notices during his tenure, imploring him to at least name a successor.
 
He never ignored that demand from the university's higher-ups, but, for all his talent as a hunter, Mr. White was too stringent of a judge. All of the apprentices he had chosen over the years had later been found wanting. These men and women were your typical, sheltered wizards; they didn't enjoy field work, nor were they even good at it. Seeing as that was half the work of an artifact hunter, every single individual was, eventually, removed from Aaron's care: whether by death, discharge, or resignation.
 
Was Natsumi any different? The professor saw incredible potential in her, especially after she demonstrated her mastery of a new spell application she had only just finished seeing for the first time. Not even some senior mages, White had observed, were capable of that.
 
Even so, the spell application was too simple, and the professor remained worried by Natsumi's, cold personality. He anticipated that the former Nisshoki noble would eventually show him something to force his decision, but, until then, he wavered. A battlefield was no place for an interview, so he had to rely on observation and action to reach a proper ruling. To that end, a trial by fire was underway, all while the sole judge preoccupied himself with killing banshees: at least until the deciding factor was revealed.

Despite how well the battle had gone thus far, Natsumi's lucky strikes were about to run out. The stream of ghouls was becoming more continuous, and it wasn't long before the druid found herself cornered in a pincer attack. She was able to dispatch one of the two attackers using the same technique she had up until that point, but the other one got close enough to wound her arm during the skirmish. A single, strong strike from a pair of claws was the only thing needed to knock the woman's tanto out of her hand, and also gain a wince of pain.
 
"Die!" the banshee screamed as blood began running down Yamauchi's forearm after that event. It attempted to strike the girl once more for a killing blow, but she was still fast enough to evade. Now that she was unarmed, however, her situation was less than ideal. The ghoul's attacks were relentless, giving her little time to do anything but dodge backward.  Eventually, she would run out of space, and, when she did, it looked like everything was about to end in a gruesome fate.
 
At the last moment, though, just before the final claw strike came down on Natsumi's jugular, she reflexively used one arm to block the creature's attack and the other to palm strike where its heart should have been. Normally, this wouldn't have worked to even stun the creature; the phantoms were too ethereal for unarmed combat to work, after all. Yet, in this case, the woman wasn't using normal, unarmed combat. Although she was not consciously aware of the fact, she had begun channeling consecrate weapon directly into her body before striking. The result was more than satisfactory.
 
When the banshee's arm came down on Natsumi's, it did not pass through as it normally would have. Instead, the appendage stopped dead in its tracks; all while the druid's other hand forcibly removed the creature's heart. None of this had been intentional. Yet, all the same, it was clear that the woman had just mastered the final tier of consecrate weapon while also acquiring her fourth, scavenger item.

White's hopes for Natsumi were temporarily dashed when he witnessed the banshees begin getting the best of her. He would have helped had he not been preoccupied by four other ghouls attempting to make him their afterlife husband, but, seeing as that was not possible, he could only watch as his last hope of a successor neared her end.
 
At least, that's what Aaron thought was going to happen. When his final candidate demonstrated a level of spell mastery that even he had not achieved, however, his opinion changed. He had tried several times in the past to perfect his use of consecrate weapon to the point where he could channel it through his body, but he never quite succeeded. Such a skill, according to his experience, seemed almost exclusive to master monks, yet Natsumi had, apparently, learned the technique mere moments after receiving a lesson on its predecessor. She was a true prodigy: a once in a lifetime opportunity that the professor would have been a fool to pass up.
 
"You pass," he said to Natsumi after she struck down another banshee. The professor stopped pulling his punches and summoned a massive explosion of holy light to clear the immediate area afterwards. It gave him a chance to speak to his student at least before they departed the cursed forest. "While I was alive, I was told by the university to find a successor. Yet all the candidates I eventually mentored were incapable of handling my line of work. In you, Natsumi, I have found what the others did not possess: skill, cunning, ability to learn under pressure, and the courage to get your hands dirty. With that in mind, I have a proposition for you."

The results of her desperate counterattack had surprised Natsumi just as much as Aaron. She didn't know how she had succeeded in that moment of doom, nor was she sure she could replicate it without plenty of additional practice.  Yet, in spite of these facts, the professor remained impressed enough to stop playing the weakling. It was about time, too, since the banshees were getting too numerous to handle.
 
After the holy light spell decimated the remainder of the immediate, enemy forces, the young woman searched the ground for her tanto. White was speaking of apprentices during this search, and he finished just as she retrieved her family blade along with a faded wedding band next to the ashes of a fallen ghoul. That ornate trinket marked the final item on the scavenger hunt, and so the former noble was finally ready to hear her old mentor's proposal.
 
"What did you have in mind?" she asked with a straight face, even as the ectoplasm and blood coat on her wounded arm began oozing down to the murky ground.