47th of Season of Air, 80th year of the 32nd cycle

  “The ninth round is about to start with only ninety-seven groups remaining, two of which are the qualifier champion and second place holder, while some larger teams have multiple groups.” Northstar interrupted Sleek’s heated cheers for the Billowing Sands’ final mageknight.

  The woman fought desperately against the four remaining longclaws. One swept its talons at her while the remaining three beasts slaughtered the illusory villagers. The carnage would have been hair-raising had the battle taken place in the real world; then again, no fourth realm mageknight would risk their life in a desperate melee over a dozen mortals.

  “Fifty-nine groups still have unbreached walls—”

  “Oh, wow! Do you see this, folks?” Sleek interrupted his co-host, earning a fiery glare for his effort. “A pair of peak fourth realm dreadwalkers in each lane. Look at them pounce the mageknights who expected they would just run towards the forts like the longclaws. Things are about to get bloody…”

  ***

  Newt lunged at the dreadwalker as soon as it appeared. Unlike before, the fiery beast turned to face him and exhaled an ocean of flames. Traced Magmin Scales sprang up, burning away the searing heat as Newt lanced his glaive into the beast’s maw.

  Granite Crust covered Newt’s skin even as his blade sank into the monster’s brain. The dreadwalker disappeared, leaving Newt wide open for its mate’s massive chomp. Granite Crust soaked the damage from the triple layer of spike-like fangs, but Newt’s chest still ached under the force of the gargantuan jaw’s bite. The retaliatory fire-wave blasted into the dreadwalker’s maw, and the conflagration consumed the hulking saurian.

  Newt twisted midair and landed on his feet, then hurried to the second lane, catching his breath along the way. Air-attributed longclaws outpaced the fire-attributed dreadwalkers twice over, and Newt risked the shortcut through the jungle, catching the saurian pair long before they had reached the middle portion of their lane.

  Both monsters turned, sending walls of flame at Newt as he soared, spear-first, towards the closer one. He passed through the two fiery screens, his glaive finding the dreadwalker’s eye without error. The monster disappeared, along with Newt’s cover and purchase.

  He fell, the other saurian’s jaw snapping closed right above his head. The glaive flashed, severing the monster’s neck, and just like its mate, it too disappeared as Newt righted himself with a burst of flames. The distraction consumed a mere handful of seconds, but he rushed straight towards the fortress instead of cutting through the jungle.

  Newt noted how his rapid footfalls made no dusty clouds when slamming against the earthen road, but the saurians’ did. The leaves didn’t rustle or burn in the wake of his spells, and he wondered why, when they turned to ashes at the saurians’ actions.

  In Magmin’s realm, deaths and interaction with the environment appeared much more realistic, but then again, Magmin didn’t maintain hundreds of instances of the same realm at the same time, and the dragon had certainly been at a higher realm than the creator of the trial Newt was taking. Maybe the realism came from the fact that Magmin’s realm belonged to Magmin, it was the copy of his realm, while Sage’s Realm boiled down to an elaborate spell seal amalgamating multiple secret realms?

  Nonsense thoughts. Newt reached the fortress and moved to his third and final lane. Two hundred yards away, a lone dreadwalker trampled its way towards him.

  “Twochains, we’re switching lanes. Come here. There’s only a single dreadwalker.” Newt shouted while dashing to his friend’s lane.

  “I also have a single dreadwalker incoming,” Flare shouted.

  In a matter of moments, Newt handled his third wave, and rushed over to help Twochains, who was struggling with a single dreadwalker. Under normal circumstances, his stand would be heroic, but in the event, it was below expectations.

  “You stay here from now on, and I’ll take your lane,” Newt said as the slain saurian disappeared.

  He considered their current situation, and it was tough. Had Twochains fallen, they would have probably lost the next round, assuming the enemy didn’t grow stronger but slower, in which case Newt could handle four lanes.

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  “Redleaf, come back here to back up Twochains!” Newt turned around to Twochains, but the man just nodded, he already understood Newt’s idea.

  “We’ll attack them together and keep each other safe. If they are focused on the fort, we’ll kill them while they are tearing down the wall.”

  “Good man!” Newt smiled.

  ***

  “Seventy-four teams remain with the ninth round mere seconds away. Seventy-three.”

  You’re repeating yourself, and your reporting is bland, factual.

  Sleek smiled at his co-host. The previous round was his chance to shine, a true carnage. Just as he had expected, hordes of dreadwalkers tore dozens of mageknights to charred shreds, destroying the teams which had barely remained in play by hanging onto threads, including seven royal groups and eleven from the ducal houses.

  And based on how the challenge was developing, Sleek would have another chance to shine in mere moments.

  He scanned the transmissions, searching for a great team that would succumb to the attack after a long hard struggle, and found it in the Everfrost Order. The final group of the all-female team was down two members and had seven villagers left, but their remaining fighters were tenacious.

  He searched for the introductory losers, staggered souls who would die miserable or comical deaths before the main event. His gaze skimmed over the Explorer’s Gate’s team. One group had already fallen, the other would last at least one more round before following them. The royal and ducal teams still remaining showed no signs of cracking; as for the independents, only Dandelion remained, and he showed no sign of fatigue.

  There. The final group from the Wild Warriors had all of their members standing. At first glance, they were among the better-faring teams, but they were all spent. A little push and they would topple like a stack of dominos.

  “Heavens,” Sleek shouted as the monsters appeared. “A mass of five longclaws floods each lane, but unlike previous members of their species, these are fire-attributed!”

  Without pause, Sleek shifted to the most irrelevant team as the awakened from the royal and ducal families fought against the beasts.

  “Wild Warriors’ Garnet Brightdew slays one with a spectacular cleave of her ax—oooh!” Sleek winced. “And the other four tore her to shreds! Will they be able to withstand this wave? I guess not, the last of them fell within moments.”

  Sleek paused to let the viewers enjoy the sight of packs of longclaws advancing down the empty lanes before changing focus.

  “Unlike this valiant, yet ultimately futile effort, Everfrost Palace’s mageknights are putting up a good fight. Their two remaining contestants are whittling away the longclaws. Everlast Highpeak has only two remaining while Flake Farisle just slew the second longclaw. Will they manage their lanes in time to stay ahead of the longclaws advancing uncontested towards their fortress? What of the final lane?”

  ***

  Newstar lashed out, decapitating the longclaw before even seeing which creature had materialized. The second disappeared before they moved, and only the third perished trying to offer some resistance.

  Woodhopper watched, transfixed. Compared to her, Newstar’s reflexes were horrible, average for fifth-realmers, and impossibly good for those at the fourth realm.

  The only one more terrifying was Dandelion. She was glad she had listened to the gatemaster’s advice and hedged her bets for this round. Dandelion would almost certainly win the event.

  Newstar finished off his lane of monsters in ten seconds. He had started burning his mana like crazy, abusing his advanced movement techniques to achieve quasi-flight hopping off treetops between the two lanes.

  He descended upon the illusory saurians like a meteor, smashing into the ground right at the center of the longclaw pack. His glaive whistled through the air, scything through two necks, before he blasted a ball of flames from his foot, immolating the third one.

  “Will Everlast Highpeak make it in time?” Sleek roared, and Woodhopper muttered another unintelligible curse. If he’s offering commentary on something, it should be Newstar’s power. If only Explorer’s Gate had a decade or two more to polish their gem. Even the three seasons he spent wandering the Savage Wood were an incredible loss to them in the Sage’s Realm tournament. Had he spent them on weapons’ training, he would’ve performed better. All of that would have to wait until the fifth realm.

  But the order’s losses were much more severe than several seasons of training. Twochains was supposed to be their eighth pick, not fifth. All things considered, her order’s younger generation held remarkably well, and made them all proud.

  Newt slaughtered his second lane and headed for the third just as the pack reached the walls. Flare had handled three, and was keeping the other two at bay, but she was burning through her mana to stay in the fight.

  Twochains and Redleaf attacked their longclaws just as they slammed at the gate. Twochains struck one down, Redleaf wounded the second, but the two beasts turned around and fell upon them.

  Redleaf finished off the wounded one, but another illusory beast pounced on his chest and tore his head off with a sweep of its claws. The boy vanished, leaving Twochains alone.

  Newstar flew straight at the fortress, where five longclaws were slaughtering the villagers. The beasts reduced their seventy civilians to fifty in mere heartbeats.

  Woodhopper breathed a sigh of relief as the longclaw pack abandoned the easy targets and turned on Newstar.

  Then, Twochains fell.