I crash into another shop.

  I'm lying on the ground. Air struggles to get in, I smell liquor. It refreshes my lungs. I cough hard, spitting blood.

  My vision catches a shelf about to fall. I instinctively jump, landing on my knees as it slams onto the ground.

  "Aaach…"

  A sharp pain surges from my stomach.

  I've been hit, and it won't stop bleeding.

  I press my left hand hard on the wound to slow the bleeding. My breathing pace increases. I sweat profusely.

  A smoke coat covers the entrance before parting, letting the intruder in.

  "You survived." he says, standing at the position of the hole three meters away from me.

  "Aren't you trying a little too hard to catch me?" I take a deep breath, resisting the urge to scream from the pain. "Do you have any idea how much it'll cost to fix the neighborhood? Is the simple soldier's salary high enough to reverse the damage?"

  He lets out a laugh. "There are no victims, so we'll check the casualties later." He points his finger at me. "And in any case, I can use the excuse of the culprit trying to flee. Like that, the incident would be put under duty affairs, and the authorities in charge of the economy will take care of it." He twirls his hand. "A piece of sand getting away from their treasure would go unnoticed, and even more, I'll be praised as a hero."

  "Your funds… are they going to pay for my dress?"

  "What?"

  I stand up on trembling feet. "I put a small fortune into this, so why won't I get some return on my purchase? It's my asset after all." I charge.

  He sweeps the air with his left hand. My body no longer feels the contact of the ground. A violent gust rams me into the concrete wall outside of the shop. A blood curdling pain runs through my body as I slump to the ground, coughing profusely.

  My chaffed knees bleed out as I scout the area. There's nothing out of the ordinary in sight.

  My entire body feels like it's been struck all over with needles.

  I stand up again with difficulty, this time he walks toward me very slowly.

  "Look how red your dress turned out. Use your spirit or you might fail to get out of here." He spreads his hands in embrace. "Here, give me all you've got."

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  "As if I'll reveal my trump card this early." I smile.

  "Even your smile turned out to look odd." He lowers his head.

  I sprint around to his left. His head follows my movements.

  "Are you trying to escape now? I'm sorry, but I'm not going to let you go."

  I force open the door of another shop with my shoulder. Once inside, I break through its wall, throwing the rocks formed by the cracks at him.

  I throw away a dozen, but he effortlessly dodges them all.

  "Was that your final attempt? I hope you'll use your spirit rather than resorting to this child's play."

  I step back. My heels break and I stumble onto my rear. Inside the shop, I keep trying to increase the distance between us.

  Smack.

  A rock slams onto the spot where he was standing, but without looking, he dodges.

  My eyes look at the sky. A grey bird is flying above.

  So that's his spirit. No wonder he wasn't at proximity.

  I lower my head, lying in defeat.

  He approaches slowly with certainty. "You know why nowadays kingdoms don't recruit people without spirits? It's simple. Those without have reached a human limitation that those with have surpassed. Even without using their spirits, those having spirits are capable of superhuman prowess." He steps inside the shop and stands in front of me. "So I wonder… Why haven't you used yours, going to the point of nearly dying?"

  I stare at him. "I asked you what you're hiding behind that mask, but it looks like I'll never know." I close my eyes, lowering my head.

  "That look of defeat… despite not using your spirit, you gave me a good fight." He pats my shoulder. "Now we're going to headquarters. They're going to take care of you."

  My right hand grabs onto his neck.

  He scoffs. "How? Your injuries… they disappeared," he speaks in a trembling voice as I press harder.

  He looks up at the ceiling. There, a transparent cyan woman is standing. No, only her upper body is visible while the rest remains behind the visible surface of the ceiling. We can't yet consider her a woman. Her eyes are pink.

  She drops from the ceiling, charging a punch at the soldier. His head crashes onto the ground, the shock causing the entire shop to shake.

  He doesn't move this time, knocked out cold.

  I clap my hands and tap my clothes to remove the dust.

  "How, you asked? Well, I cannot attack you without knowing the full scope of your abilities." I squat down before his still body. "At first, when I saw you using wind without your spirit in sight, I thought you're an ascender, so you might be even stronger when you summon a spirit, and that would've been bad for me. But because you're still a soldier, I came up with two conclusions. Either you are one and your spirit is extremely weak, or your spirit is just hiding."

  I look at the rock that fell on his old spot. "Those rocks weren’t meant to touch you. The fact you managed to dodge that one without seeing it made me consider you share your vision with your spirit, and there it was all along. Option one turned out to be right." I grin. "With that, all I had to do was put myself where your spirit can't see us. So I went deep inside the shop where it couldn't see us. The fact that I was in bad shape lowered your guard, and I took advantage of it. You couldn't have seen that coming."

  I pull his mask off his head.

  I thought his face was ugly. Turns out it just has burn marks, but despite that, he's not too bad looking.

  I stand up fully healed. I leave away my heels, walking barefoot.

  If they went to look for all the participants, then I understand why only one was here. But unlike this area, which has been sealed for obvious reasons, other areas won't be fighting playgrounds. That's if the participants and the soldiers use their brains. Perhaps this situation has been set up to create chaos.

  There are a lot of inconsistencies about it, but Filip might help me clear them out.

  I have another issue on hand. We were a considerable number of participants. How did they recognize us?