Three seconds.

  Three seconds was how long it took for Olivia Kio, Glenn Larstud, and Callum to comprehend what had just occurred to their teammate.

  The woman before them had slid gracefully into what was, clearly, a thrusting stance, and then there was a garbled choking sound from behind them. Less than a second later, a heavy, wet thump resounded through the forest. Far too wet and far too heavy to ever be good news.

  The first to turn around had been Olivia, less than a single second after the thump had reached their ears. Her gaze wide and blank with disbelief. The next had been Glenn, who refused to let himself be caught off-guard by something that the woman ahead of them could do, and thus turned to look at what had just occurred to Alec. The third and final had been Callum, whose head turned to Alec so haltingly that a rusted metal marionette would have had a smoother transition in comparison.

  The greenery beneath Alec had been dyed a deep, hauntingly dark red that only continued to expand the longer that they looked. The hole in his neck could only just barely be seen, given the distance he had managed to create between them all, but what they could see was more than enough.

  They had seen the other teams, those that had even reached this Step of the trial in the first place, and they knew that when someone ‘died’ in this space, it wasn’t a true death. Yet, they also knew that once someone died here, that was it. They were taken out of the Step entirely, leaving the rest of their teammates to try and pick up the slack that they caused.

  And this woman had just eliminated one of them so fast that none of them had even seen the movement that had done it. What chance did the rest of them have?

  Victor had said that having more than one person go through the trial would lead to errors and glitches in the Steps, but none of them had ever expected something like this to be the result of that. This woman wasn’t a challenge to overcome; she was pure death given form to punish them all for a transgression that none of them were even aware of yet.

  With a stuttered gasp, Alec jolted upright.

  A hand slapped against his neck, and his eyes gazed past all of them to stare, haunted, at the blue-haired swordswoman. His breathing both fast and heavy.

  Callum wasn’t ashamed to admit that he shrieked like a little girl as he did so. Glenn, despite doing the exact same thing, very much was.

  “What in the Twin-Continents….?” Olivia muttered, unable to figure out what was going on.

  Was this another glitch? Was this intentional? Had the extent of the injury been some kind of illusion or fake-out? Alec certainly seemed just as rattled as the three of them, more so, actually, so the injury probably had been real…

  “Hm, so that’s the level that you’re working at.”

  The woman’s voice dragged them all back to the reality at hand; her weight rested on a single leg, and her blade held loosely in her right hand, the tip hovering above the ground by only a few centimetres.

  “You…You killed him!” Callum muttered, eyes wide and voice airy.

  He didn’t want to admit what had just happened, but he had to. It was too sudden, too surprising and drastic for him to just leave it alone. That was his friend. His friend, who had been behind Callum and was still murdered without Callum even being able to lift a finger to help.

  “He came back.” The woman scoffed flippantly, waving her hand dismissively. “Besides, a little brush with death never hurts a warrior, especially not little old Dius. Isn’t that right?”

  Her voice came out in a mocking coo as she crouched down, her blade laid flat across her thighs, to be roughly eye-height with Alec’s position, sat in the grass dyed red in his own blood.

  “What…was that?”

  Alec’s voice was quiet and hoarse as he shifted and rose to his feet, his blade, slick with red, held in a white-knuckled grip.

  “A recreation of death. Since you can’t actually-“

  “That thrust. What was that thrust?”

  The woman went silent instantly, her orange eyes wide and her pupils the size of pinpricks. As fast as Alec had, she rose to her full height once more and continued to stare at him, her tail lazily swishing left and right behind her.

  The silence held over the five of them for a brief moment before it was shattered with the quiet, almost manic giggles of the beast-kin. And what started as giggles quickly, and alarmingly, turned into more and more intense, deranged, cackling.

  “Ahhhh,” She sighed, once her cackling died down into the rumbling echoes of giggles that still tried to bubble up through her lips, “Attaboy.”

  The shiver that wracked Alec’s form came from nothing less than the absolute depths of his soul. The glare that his eyes narrowed into was no less intense, his body shifting on instinct to lower his profile and put his blade between the two of them.

  “Alright, kiddos. How’s about a deal?” The woman offered; a sharp grin aimed at the four of them as she held a finger up.

  “And what kind of deal, exactly?” Olivia questioned suspiciously, her grip on her blade just as tight as Alec’s own.

  Everything about this woman set her instincts on fire, and she just couldn’t figure out why. Despite her confusion, however, she didn’t let her suspicion or wariness drop in the slightest. She trusted her instincts, and if they told her that something about this woman, besides the obvious, was off, then she trusted that something was wrong.

  “Since it’s obvious that the four of you would never be able to overcome me if I went all out. I’ll cut you all a deal. Manage to hurt me, even the tiniest papercut, and I’ll consider the victory yours and kill myself.”

  The silence that followed could have swallowed a horde of stampeding elephants whole, four sets of wide and suspicious eyes boring into her. Just when any of them started to get a read on her, she swapped gears in an instant, throwing them off entirely and leaving them on the back foot and at her mercy.

  Olivia hoped that that wasn’t a premonition of the battle to come, but she wasn’t nearly so na?ve as to actually place any bets on such a futile hope.

  “However, you have ten minutes.” The woman continued, the executioner's blade coming down on their metaphorical necks, “You four go ten minutes without winning, and I shatter this ritual and throw the four of you back to reality with no hope of continuing. How’s that sound, hm?”

  The innocent smile that she shot them, and the way that her hands clapped together, somehow only made her appear more ominous to the four teens. However, at this stage, there was very little she could actually do that wouldn’t, not after that first showing of her strength.

  The first to answer, however, was a surprise even to his own teammates.

  “Fine then. But don’t start crying when this little plan of yours backfires.” Glenn smirked, taking a confident step forward.

  If not for the jittering in his hands, it might have even looked genuine.

  ‘He’s just as scared as we all are, but that ridiculous ego of his isn’t letting him back down.’ Olivia thought to herself, opening her mouth to say something, only to close it quickly, a considering look in her eyes.

  ‘What is he doing? He can’t really-‘ Callum, on the other hand, opened his mouth wide to try and question what his teammate was doing, past history and transgressions be damned.

  Unfortunately for Glenn, the green-haired teen was beaten to the punch.

  “Haven’t you gotten the memo yet?” The woman in front of them spat, annoyance clear in her tone as her free hand came to rest on her hip and her gaze narrowed, “You aren’t important here, kid. Now go scram.”

  “And I don’t know what rock you’ve been living under, but I’m going to show you just who you’re messing with!” It was said more to hype himself up than to intimidate the woman, but that was all that he needed it to do.

  The moment that Glenn finished speaking, he rushed forward, his bulky frame eating up the distance between him and the woman with surprising speed.

  “Because!”

  The earth beneath their feet cracked as he came to a stop in front of her and swung his blade, ruffling his hair and the grass beneath them with the force of his swing. The attack was dodged, but he was already moving into his next blow, undeterred in the slightest.

  “I’m the Azannium Wall!”

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  His next three blows were swung with all the speed and might that he could put behind them, the air swirling and the glint of his blade reflecting through the forest whenever his sword hit a beam of sunlight beneath the canopy.

  “THE GREAT GLENN LARSTUD!”

  Red mana shone off the boy’s blade as he took a singular, powerful step forward. His foot sank into the earth, and his muscles bulged with barely restrained power. Orange eyes rolled up to stare at the incoming blade, flat and blank.

  The downswing of Glenn’s strike rumbled the air and split the ground beneath him, a two-meter-long gash in the ground opening with a catastrophically loud bang that made even his own ears throb in discomfort.

  ‘There! There’s no way that even a smug bitch like her could-‘

  “Azannium Wall?” The hand that grabbed his wrist was nothing less than all-consuming, her grip like that of a vice and her baleful glare shining ominously even through the thin cloud of dust that he had kicked up with his attack.

  “You’re barely deserving of Wet Paper, let alone Azannium.” Alec and Olivia appeared at the woman’s sides, flanking her no matter which direction she turned; ordinarily, a difficult position to work one’s way out of, especially without a greater agility to rely on.

  Glenn’s world spun and blurred, and the feeling of smacking something hard and soft at the same time etched itself into his memory alongside the lance of pain that shot through him, a startled scream ripped from his lips without him even realizing that he’d made a single sound.

  Yet to the woman, such a paltry pincer attack meant nothing.

  Glenn’s startled screams faded in and out as the woman grasped his ankle and released his wrist while backing off and flicking her arm out, slamming Glenn and Olivia together with the sound of a dull thunk that seemed to almost echo through the forest. The slightest shuffle of fabric from behind her revealed Callum’s introduction into the fray and the target of the next in her chain of attacks.

  Legs, arms, clothes, neck. The woman grasped Glenn by all of them as she swung and slammed him around as a living weapon, utilizing his larger bulk to great effect to keep the other three from closing in. Flailing limbs became extra range and sharper, more painful strikes to inflict on those who stayed too far back out of fear. Hunched, tensed muscles became tougher, more dense spikes and protrusions through which to hammer into and punish any who dared to rush in too fast without a plan.

  In her hands, Glenn had ceased to be a human and had instead become a living weapon with both range and mass that she could seemingly configure at will. His shrieks and unconscious cries an added layer of psychological torment on top of the physical pain that she so easily and so happily inflicted on the four of them.

  It was the inwards rush of mana that disrupted the balance between the four active combatants, the woman’s gaze swivelling in an instant, and her grip on Glenn releasing entirely in exchange for her blade. The clang of metal on metal and the high-pitched screeching of their collision filled the void left by Glenn’s lack of reflexive screaming. The earth beneath the two of them flattened and compressed, the grass directly beneath the woman stripped clean from the soil and thrown high into the canopy above.

  “Dragon’s Might, and far better than that boy’s, too.” The woman complimented Alec with a grin, flicking both of their blades off to the side and blocking two more strikes before she was even able to get another word out, “And so ruthlessly aimed! You would have cleaved right through him if I hadn’t brought my blade out.”

  “You said it yourself. Death here is just a simulation.” Alec stated, voice flat and dead as his blade met the woman’s three times more, skirting off it each time like it was made of ice and coated in oil.

  “And you’ve been through it, you know exactly how ‘real’ that simulation feels!”

  Blood sprayed across the ground in an arcing line, and then a second time over the woman. Alec’s eyes were glassy, and his lips barely parted as his torso was opened in one long line from shoulder to hip, his body going limp and falling back.

  The thud of his body coincided with the approach of Olivia and Callum alike; their blades poised at the ready and their eyes gleaming with hatred. Her blade met Olivia’s and skillfully deflected it to the side to throw Callum’s own strike off. Her follow-up only barely missed thanks to a reflexive curling of Olivia’s arms, bringing her blade just far enough in to block what would, no doubt, have been a fatal blow.

  Olivia stumbled back a couple of steps from the force of the blow, giving the woman just enough time that she could step into Callum’s personal space, forcing him to back up. He never even felt the bite of her blade before it went in one side of his neck and right out the other, one hand on the hilt of her sword and the other gripping it halfway down the blade.

  “Shit!” Glenn scrambled backwards to his feet while Olivia rushed in, a blow to her chest diverted just barely downwards to where it struck her stomach, gouging a wide hole that had the girl down and out for the count in an instant.

  “Coward.” The woman’s scathing statement and the death glare that she levelled on Glenn froze the teen solid.

  His hearing turned static, and his sight went grey. It was like nothing wanted, or knew how, to work anymore in the face of not only the bubbling rage inside, but the sheer, all-encompassing feeling of death that pressed down on him.

  The last thing he saw was a glint of metal and a spray of blood before everything went black.

  “What a disappointment, honestly.” The woman sighed, one of her ears flicking and her tail lashing out to hit the side of Alec’s wrist, throwing his thrust at her back wide.

  Spinning on the spot, to follow the momentum of her tail, her sword swung round and just barely missed Alec as he leaned and twirled to the side simultaneously, movements rushed and sloppy. Their blades met in another rapid flurry of strikes and sparks, Callum and Olivia both crawling to their feet in the meantime.

  “T-That was-“ Olivia muttered, a hand over her completely unharmed stomach; even her clothes were in pristine condition.

  “Alec!” Callum’s shout dragged her back to the danger at hand, red eyes catching blue right as the light left them, Alec’s bisected torso hitting the ground limply.

  With a scowl and a glare that could have killed a lesser man in a second, Olivia jumped right back into the fray, blade in hand and heart in her ears.

  Again and again, they threw themselves at the woman in front of them, attempting anything, everything that they could possibly think of. Yet no matter what they did, she cut them down with impunity.

  Blood stained her blade and the ground beneath her, soaking into the teens’ clothes and matting their hair. Their grips became wet and slick, and the strength in their hands came and went in waves. Almost incapable of forming a fist when they first shot back into awareness, to gripping their weapons so tightly that it was a miracle none of them buried their fingers in the hilts.

  Nothing that they did had any effect, nothing that they tried caught her off-guard. She was a combatant with stronger, more precise senses and a fifth limb that could and did factor into her fighting style. An almost unbeatable combination when faced with regular humans like the four of them.

  Three and a half minutes into her brutal deconstruction of the four of them, she began to have some fun. The same swipes and thrusts that killed them began to lop limbs off, too, for her tail to swing around and bat at the remaining teens like makeshift arrows.

  Callum could safely say that if, in the future, anyone ever tried to distract him by hurling a full human arm at him, then he would be prepared to handle it. Because after the third time that an arm had been thrown full force at him, he had started to expect and adapt to it. As horrifying a thought as that was.

  Yet, the most horrifying part of the fight only started four and a half minutes in, when, as Alec’s body hit the ground, a low and quiet breath left the woman’s lips. Her body lowered, and her blade held horizontal to the ground at her side, both hands on the hilt.

  There was the equivalent of a thunderclap of mana, and Olivia rushed backwards just as fast as Alec had at the start of the fight.

  Three gouges appeared in her torso, only a centimetre or so deep, but compared to the Swiss-cheese monstrosities that her other two teammates, who hadn’t had the same instincts to retreat as she had, had become, it was practically a papercut.

  “Power Stance…” The whisper left Olivia’s lips in a quiet, horrified breath.

  “Hm. You figured it out? No….Ah, those instincts of yours.” The woman purred, eyeing the bleeding gouges in Olivia’s abdomen.

  “You know of them?...” Olivia just had to stall for a second; one more second.

  “Of course I do. After all, I’ve fought you before. I know more about your fighting style than even you do. [Grand Hunter].”

  Olivia’s eyes widened in alarm, a flash of mana sputtering to life over her blade.

  “How-!” It was all that she could get out, all that she could even think to say.

  She’d never told anyone outside her family what her Qualification was before. She knew that she never would, especially not to a random stranger. What had happened in the future for this woman to have that kind of knowledge? Had she offered it up? Had she forced the information out of her somehow?

  “Come on, Little Hunter. I just told you that I know more than even you do. Now come on, why not put that attribute of yours to the test too, hm?”

  Olivia didn’t know what kind of ties they had together in the future, especially seeing the animosity she had for Alec, but if this woman had this kind of knowledge on her….

  She couldn’t afford to let an opportunity like this slip past her. It would likely be the only one she’d ever get.

  Olivia, Callum, and Glenn all rushed the woman at once. Callum and Glenn screaming war cries that even the heavens could have heard, since it's not like stealth worked on this woman anyway.

  The three of them were cut down in short order, just like usual. Mana spluttered and blood gushed, awareness slipping through their grasp like flour through a sieve.

  When Olivia came to once more, a soul-deep coldness echoing through her form that slowly warmed back up with her consciousness, Alec was engaged in a rapid flurry of exchanges with the woman. The pace so quick and so ferocious that Alec couldn’t even begin to attempt his new pattern of movement that he’d been developing since that dreading [Gold-rank] quest.

  A quick, non-Power Stanced Glancing Scale took Alec out of the fight with a few stumbled steps and a fall to his knees, his hand coming to his stomach futilely even as he tilted forward and collapsed mercilessly to the ground.

  White mana coalesced around her blade, and she rushed forward, her attack missing entirely as the woman’s presence just seemed to disappear, almost like she somehow sank into the shadows beneath her feet. Yet the sword that caught her in the side and cut her in half gorily was far more real than such a trick of the mind.

  ‘That was….a new technique.’

  When she came to once more, the woman had just ended a rapid exchange of dodges and parries, caught in between Callum and Glenn, doing everything they could to hit the woman in a mad rush of thrusts.

  ‘She’s got more that she’s holding back than just her raw abilities. She’s treating us like a joke. All of us.’

  Olivia’s eyes flashed, and white coated her blade yet again. She refused to be treated like a joke by someone like this woman, no matter how far above her she may be. She didn’t care how often she had to die and get back up. She would be passing this Step.

  Her entrance back into the fray stopped the woman’s blade right before it could cleave through Callum, Glenn already on his knees and clutching his throat from where her tail had whipped out and struck him a half-second previously.

  And throughout it all, –on his knees with sweat and blood alike coating him– with half-lidded, burning eyes of blue; Alec Dius watched.