High above the battlefield, Eryndor hung in the sky like a lone pillar between heaven and earth. His arms were spread wide, palms open, fingers slightly curled. Slowly—deliberately—they began to close toward each other.

  The air around him stirred.

  At first it was only a whisper, a faint tug in the currents. Then it became a pull. Leaves, dust, droplets of mist—everything in a radius of 500 meters—slid through the sky toward him.

  Between his hands, a pale shimmer began to form.

  The shimmer thickened, folding layer upon layer of compressed air into itself. The space between his palms flared with light as invisible weight condensed into an orb.

  Below, the battlefield erupted with movement.

  Fifteen challengers launched from the ground, bounding upward in unison. Each leap shattered the air beneath their feet, shockwaves cracking like cannon fire. They kicked off the sky again and again with thunderous strides, streaking toward Eryndor in arcs of raw killing intent.

  He ignored them.

  More air streamed into the sphere, the currents becoming violent whirlwinds that clawed at the clouds. His hair whipped across his face, his coat snapping in the gale. The orb shrank further, growing impossibly dense—until it was the size of his own hand, suspended before his face.

  One kilometre of atmosphere—forced into a single point.

  In the dark chamber, far from the arena, the man in white leaned forward sharply. His voice was cold.

  “No. We cannot allow him to unleash that attack.”

  A fat woman lounging beside him gave a dismissive wave.

  “Relax. He has people he cares about. He won’t be reckless. And if this gets out of hand, we’ll surround him with cushion.”

  The man in white didn’t blink. “Giveluek.”

  From the shadows, a masked figure stepped forward—eleven feet tall, his presence like a slab of iron.

  “Yes,” he rumbled.

  The man in white laced his fingers together before his mask, gaze unblinking.

  “If the blast is not controlled… and it spreads outward—kill him. And contain it.”

  Back in the sky, the orb of air blazed.

  It no longer looked like air—it was plasma, a miniature star raging between Eryndor’s fingers. The glow painted his face in molten white, arcs of lightning crawling over its surface. The challengers were almost upon him—less than a hundred metres away.

  He moved.

  In one smooth motion, Eryndor gripped the sphere with a single hand, aimed downward, and thrust it forward.

  The cone of destruction was narrow—five degrees. But what came out of it was not wind.

  It was obliteration.

  The compressed plasma screamed into the earth, tearing a path through the challengers mid-flight. They did not burn, they did not fall—they simply ceased to exist, erased so cleanly that even their shadows were gone.

  The beam struck the ground.

  The compressed plasma screamed into the earth, tearing a path through the challengers mid-flight. They did not burn, they did not fall — they simply ceased to exist, erased so cleanly that even their shadows were gone.

  The beam struck the ground.

  There was no explosion in the conventional sense — there was a collapse. The moment the energy hit, a tunnel of earth six hundred metres wide simply vanished, drilled straight down through the island’s crust at hypersonic speed.

  The beam didn’t slow.

  It punched through a thousand kilometres of rock and magma, bursting out of the island’s underbelly in a blazing column that stabbed into the ocean depths.

  The elf staggered beneath the crushing column of plasma, skin blistering, his face peeling under the impossible heat. Every breath was agony — yet he did not stop.

  He crouched low, muscles screaming, and launched himself into the air.

  Each leap was a desperate sprint on nothingness, his boots striking the very sky as he bounded upward through the beam itself. The searing energy flayed strips from his armour and skin, but he pushed on, teeth bared, voice raw.

  “Damn it—!” he roared, blood spraying from his lips. “I will not die here! I REFUSE!”

  Eryndor’s gaze narrowed.

  The elf was coming for him.

  Without hesitation, Eryndor drew the air tight once more, shaping a second sphere of burning plasma — larger, denser, angrier. He hurled it straight down.

  The blast smashed into the elf mid-leap, driving him like a meteor toward the ground. Stone split and screamed beneath him as the beam pinned him deeper and deeper, until only a maelstrom of heat, blood, and dust marked where he had been.

  Yet when the light thinned for a heartbeat… he was still there.

  His body was a ruin — armour slagged, flesh torn and weeping — but he stood. Blood dripped in sheets from his jaw as he glared skyward.

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  “Such persistence,” Eryndor said coldly, “is futile.”

  Something in the elf’s body shifted.

  The veins beneath his skin lit up — with bravo, like molten steel coursing through his arteries.

  He crouched once more and leapt. The air screamed as he closed the distance. In the blink of an eye, his staff swept in a killing arc.

  Pain exploded through Eryndor’s body as the blow sliced clean through his right forearm.

  Eryndor’s scream tore across the sky.

  The beam faltered — then ruptured outward in a blinding explosion.

  Both men were flung from the heavens, spinning violently toward the earth. The elf’s body tumbled, smoking, trailing a ragged stream of blood.

  Where Eryndor’s attack had once been, a hole six hundred metres wide now gaped — a shaft that drilled straight down through the island’s heart, punching out the underbelly into the ocean.

  From deep below came the roar of the sea reclaiming the wound — a boiling rush of water and steam blasting upward in a geyser visible from leagues away.

  Far off, Valerius turned toward the light just as the shockwave rolled over him. The ground split beneath his feet as the air itself slammed into his chest like the fist of a god.

  Valerius didn’t flinch. He stood staring at Valtos.

  Valtos moved first—a punch that slammed into Valerius’s face like a meteor. Even with the ground beneath him fortified, it caved in three metres deep, the shockwave ripping outward in a hurricane that scoured the land bare for a hundred kilometres.

  Blood ran from Valerius’s nose.

  He swung back. His fist smashed into Valtos’s temple, a crater blooming beneath the giant’s feet. Valtos staggered half a step, crimson streaking down the side of his head.

  Then Valerius froze. He felt it—Eryndor’s fall.

  His head turned sharply. In the next instant, he leapt, clearing the distance in a single bound.

  “Of course you would run,” Valtos called after him, voice thick with mockery. “I don’t blame you.”

  Valerius landed beside Eryndor. His brother was on the ground, bleeding heavily, clutching the ragged stump of his arm.

  Valerius’s face twisted. “Ooo… been there. But don’t worry—it’ll grow back.”

  Eryndor blinked at him in disbelief. “Pardon?”

  Ice spread over the wound, sealing it and halting the flow of blood.

  “Dude, where’s the crown?” Valerius asked.

  Eryndor’s eyes widened—he hadn’t even noticed it was gone.

  Valerius dropped to sit beside him. “We should wait it out till the timer’s almost done. If we grab relics now, we won’t last till the end. And you’re not exactly looking your best.”

  "I have expended the greater portion of my mana," Eryndor conceded. "This phase is an exercise in tedium, and I find myself desiring reprieve."

  "You claimed my hand shall regenerate—by what mechanism?"

  “I told you yesterday. I call it body reconstruction. If I’ve got it, you’ve got it too. Remember when I sliced your leg off in that ruin? How’d it grow back then?”

  "It was Gustein who administered my restoration."

  Valerius blinked. “Oh. Right. Forgot all about that guy.”

  Eryndor regarded the stump intently. “Never before have I endured mana depletion… it is a most novel and disquieting sensation.”

  Valerius’s head tilted suddenly. He felt them coming.

  He swung his sword. Even sheathed, the pressure in the air surged—trees toppled, branches sliced clean. Several would-be attackers screamed as limbs fell from their bodies.

  "That is quite the finely-wrought armament,” Eryndor remarked, extending his sole remaining hand. “Might I examine it?”

  Valerius handed it over.

  The instant Eryndor gripped it, his arm crashed to the ground, the blade’s weight yanking him down. Veins bulged in his neck as he tried to lift it.

  "Valerius… of what material is this forged? This is, without question, the most ponderously weighted object I have ever borne."

  He managed to raise it barely a foot before the weight refused to yield.

  Valerius plucked it from his grip, holding it with both hands, pointing the tip to the sky as he studied it.

  “No idea what it’s made of. But it’s some kind of rare mineral.”

  He rose to his feet, eyes narrowing toward the horizon.

  “I’m going to get Ziraiah. Stay put—you’re not a target right now.”

  ---

  Elsewhere, Ziraiah stood at the centre of a tightening ring.

  Hundreds surrounded her—Casters, Augmenters, Bravo users—every one of them hungry for the three relics that floated lazily around her like planets in orbit.

  She glanced left. Then right.

  They were closing in.

  “Don’t you think it’s unfair to gang up on a girl like me?” she asked, her tone light but her eyes sharp.

  A towering Leporid hefted a hammer onto his shoulder, its head big enough to flatten a carriage.

  “Girl, you’re lucky I haven’t smashed you to bits already. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll drop those relics.”

  A female Leporid, her long ears twitching, stepped forward with a smirk.

  “Does your mother know you’re here? This is no child’s play. I’d hate to see a pretty girl like you die out here.”

  Ziraiah placed a hand over her chest, feigning warmth. “Aaw… it warms my heart to see you care.”

  From the crowd, a short, broad-shouldered Fredeen with short limbs and thick brown fur bellowed, “Give up now, child. You can still walk away from this.”

  The relics around her shimmered once before drifting down into her bag. She exhaled slowly.

  “This is a competition, isn’t it?” Her lips curled into a dangerous smile. “Come take them… and thanks for letting me catch my breath.”

  Her left fist rose before her face, knuckles tightening. From between her fingers, fire bloomed, shaping into a blazing sword that she pulled free as if unsheathing it from her own soul. Flames roared along the blade’s edge, casting flickers across her face.

  She swung it in a clean horizontal arc to her right and stopped abruptly. The air cracked from the swing pressure.

  “Muscle augmentation. Indomitable defense. Accelerated perception,” she announced, each word landing like a war drum.

  Some in the crowd tensed. Others grinned.

  “At least we gave her a way out,” an Aurellian man muttered to the fighter beside him. “Too bad she didn’t take it.”

  Ziraiah shifted her stance—right leg sliding back, body coiled, the flaming sword raging at her side like a living thing. She was ready to fight them all.

  An elderly Aurellian with white hair stepped forward, voice carrying over the restless crowd.

  “Stop this foolishness, girl! This is no place for a child!”

  Ziraiah’s smirk deepened. “Really? And what about you, old man? Aren’t you too old for this?”

  ---

  Valerius was already moving—cutting through the jungle in great, earth-cracking strides.

  A pressure in the air caught his attention.

  He felt it—her mana flaring like a rising sun.

  She’s outnumbered… and she’s not backing down.

  Then, clear as day, he sensed the ignition. The signature heat of her conjuration.

  A grin tugged at his lips.

  “Oooh… time to see what my little sis can really do.”

  With a flex of his legs, he launched skyward, tearing through the canopy in a burst of leaves and splintered branches.

  The wind roared in his ears as he climbed higher, higher—until the island sprawled beneath him like a map.

  He found her instantly.

  A lone figure holding fire, standing against a tide of enemies.

  Valerius planted one foot on the empty air as if it were solid ground. The atmosphere rippled under him. Then—

  Boom.

  He kicked off again, leaping across the sky itself, closing the distance in titanic bounds.

  To Be Continued...