"What... what are we even supposed to do?" Iris whispered, her voice trembling as it broke the eerie silence of the arena.
As the leader of the Boston Trio, she had always been the one with the answers, the one who found the path to victory.
But as she stared at her own spells hanging like frozen corpses in the air, her composure finally fractured. Her hands, still glowing with the residue of her last failed spell, shook with a realization that was worse than defeat: they weren't being outfought; they were being ignored.
"Things aren't over yet," Rampart grunted, stepping into a low, wide stance that seemed to anchor him to the very core of the arena.
"He's got his tricks, but we have our grit. Behind these gates, we play by my rules. We're going to fortify this position until it's a diamond-hard tomb for anyone who tries to cross."
He looked back at Iris, his confidence a stabilizing force. "Let him watch. He's about to find out that some styles of defending aren't meant to be analyzed—they're meant to be endured."
Ember's eyes ignited with a manic, white-hot intensity. "Let him hide behind his void," she snarled, the air around her beginning to warp and ripple from the sudden surge in temperature.
"There isn't a space in this world I can't reach if I turn up the heat. I'll burn the oxygen, I'll burn the light, and if I have to, I'll burn the very vacuum he's standing in until there's nothing left but ash and stardust."
The two supporters stood with their hands shoved deep into their pockets, looking more like bored students waiting for a bus than combatants in a stadium finale.
There was no mana flared, no defensive stances taken—nothing. They knew their role was simply to stay out of the way and let the trio do their work.
Their relaxed postures were a silent, devastating insult to the Boston Trio; they weren't even worried enough to take their hands out of their coats.
**
Markus withdrew a blindfold and slipped it into place. Since he was sitting out of the offensive round, he intended to sharpen his sixth sense, pushing his spatial awareness into the realm of pure intuition.
As the world turned dark, his other senses exploded into life: smell, sound, and touch. This was what blind individuals develop due to neuroplasticity.
The brain's visual cortex reassigns itself to process auditory and tactile information. This reorganization allows for improved sound localization, faster frequency reactions, increased tactile sensitivity, and better memory.
The girls performed an autopsy on the Trio's combat style, cross-referenced the data from their earlier matches against the desperate variations they were throwing at Markus.
Time was up. The fifteen-minute window of safety slammed shut as the mechanical hiss of the lift signaled their return.
The platform rose through the gloom, carrying the Blackwell team back into the heart of the storm.
Behind the iron-wrought gates, the girls stood with a new, predatory stillness—their "mechanical efficiency" now sharpened by a clinical understanding of their enemy's doom.
They were no longer just the "Unstoppable Trio's" opponents; as the stage locked into place, they were the architects of the Trio's impending collapse.
**
"I CANNOT BELIEVE MY EYES! LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, LOOK AT THE FIELD! MARKUS BLACKWELL HAS STEPPED ONTO THE SANDS... WEARING A BLINDFOLD?!" Rogan's voice reached a fever pitch, cracking with pure, unadulterated shock.
"THIS IS BEYOND CONFIDENCE—THIS IS A TOTAL ECLIPSE OF SPORTSMANSHIP! HE IS TELLING BOSTON'S FINEST THAT HE DOESN'T EVEN NEED HIS SIGHT TO DISMANTLE THEM! THE DISRESPECT IS RADIATING OFF THE STAGE!"
"Calm yourselves, gentlemen," Professor Candle interjected, her voice a cool blade of logic cutting through Rogan's hysteria.
"This isn't mere showmanship. I've witnessed this in the private training halls of the Academy. It is a specialized form of sensory deprivation designed to force his spatial awareness to transcend physical limits. By discarding his sight, he isn't ignoring his opponents—he is feeling the very displacement of the atoms they occupy. He's not being disrespectful; he's being precise."
Markus took a step back allowing the girls to take the spotlight.
"I trust you girls to bring this home," Markus said, his voice carrying a calm, melodic warmth that felt utterly out of place in the high-tension arena.
Even through the blindfold, he seemed to be smiling at them.
"Go on and have some fun. It's just a friendly tournament, after all. Enjoy yourselves to the fullest—don't let the pressure ruin the experience."
Rosanne clenched her fists until her knuckles turned white. She felt the weight of his trust. The victory wasn't just a goal anymore; it was a foregone conclusion she was about to manifest through sheer, calculated strategies.
"THERE IT IS! THE SIGNAL FLARE!" Joe's voice was nearly lost in the sudden, feral roar of the crowd.
The red light washed over the sands, painting Markus's blindfold and the girls' predatory smiles in the color of a warning.
The girls surged forward, their signature abilities blooming in the air like predatory flowers. They began "testing the waters" with a flurry of low-mana, high-precision strikes, probing for the cracks Rosanne had identified during the observation phase.
They weren't looking for a knockout yet; they were looking for new tricks the trio might have prepared.
The air hissed and crackled as their powers grazed the Boston defenses, each minor impact providing new information on their defensive strategy.
The castle gates underwent a violent, elemental evolution.
Under Iris's command, a torrent of pressurized water collided with Rampart's rising clay, churning the entrance into a thick, viscous layer of enchanted mire. Before the sludge could even drip, Ember's red-hot flames washed over the surface, flash-firing the mixture into a seamless obsidian-grade crust.
With the gates now fully encased in their obsidian shell, the line of sight between the two teams was utterly severed.
The arena was split in two by a wall of sun-baked stone, plunging the battlefield into a tactical eclipse.
This wasn't just a physical barrier; it was a desperate gambit to "blind" the Blackwell heir. By cutting off his vision, the Trio hoped to render his legendary long-range sniping obsolete, forcing the match into a claustrophobic war of attrition where his spatial precision might finally falter.
What the Trio failed to grasp was that Markus had no intention of joining the siege or lifting a finger against their fortified gates.
To him, this wasn't a battle—it was a final exam, and he was merely the proctor. He sat in his pocket of frozen space as a silent observer, his only role to ensure the girls didn't suffer a stray, grievous blow.
He wasn't their spear; he was their safety net, watching with sightless eyes as his "students" prepared to dismantle Boston's pride without a single hint of his help.