The simulated city of Olympicõ materialised around them in layers.
First the ground — packed stone streets, familiar from the reports Melissa had briefed them on. Then the buildings rising on either side, the sky assembling itself above in a dull overcast that matched the real city's usual weather. Last, the silence — the specific silence of a populated place emptied of people, the kind that meant something was coming.
Seven contestants. One city. Seven waves.
For the first few seconds everyone was still, getting their bearings. Levi scanned the skyline automatically, noting cover, sight lines, the width of the main boulevard. His smartwatch sat against his wrist — health at 100%, magic energy at 100%, both readings clean and green.
"Together for wave one," Kevin said. He said it with the tone of someone asserting authority before anyone else could. "See how they attack first."
Nobody disagreed. They spread into a loose formation on the main street.
Levi looked at Kevin. Something about him was different from the lobby — the composure was the same, but underneath it there was a tightness, a quality of effort that hadn't been there during ordinary academy days. He filed it without examining it yet.
The Kitsune came in swarms — dozens of the fox-faced B-class myths flooding from the side streets, moving fast and low and in the coordinated way of things that hunted by instinct. The contestants responded before anyone called it: seven people who had spent months being trained to kill things, doing what they'd been trained to do.
It lasted about ninety seconds.
"Wave one," Sylvia said, looking at the cleared street. "Done."
"Warmup round," Kevin said. "Don't get comfortable."
"Nobody's comfortable," said Levi. "We know what's coming."
Kevin looked at him for a moment, then away. The tightness again — brief, controlled.
✦ ✦ ✦
The A-class wave hit differently.
Not harder, necessarily — Gargoyles and Ogres were manageable for any top-class student — but the numbers were higher and the instinct to cluster became a liability. Too many myths converging on one position meant overlapping attacks and no room to move.
"Split up," Levi said. "Divide the wave."
Nobody argued. The group fractured — Kevin and James east, Dwayne and Vanessa toward the southern quarter, Priscilla already rising to her preferred altitude, and Levi and Sylvia in opposite directions along the main boulevard with the specific energy of two people who had already, without discussing it, decided this was a competition.
Levi activated his 1st Form.
The Flux spread through him in a clean wave — warmth to charge to the heightened state of Electrified, the world sharpening at the edges. The Gargoyles hit first, diving from the buildings on both sides. He let them commit to their approach, read the angles, and moved — inside the lead one's dive, a dagger through the throat on the way past, already turning for the second. No wasted motion. His mother's training, rendered automatic.
The Ogres were slower, hit harder, and thought in straight lines. He used that. He moved laterally, let them track him, waited for two to converge on the same position and then wasn't there when they arrived — their collision more effective than anything he could have done directly.
He cleared his section in four minutes. Checked his watch — 100%. Clean.
Then he looked around, located Sylvia's position by the small fires visible two streets over, and made a decision.
He went toward the fires.
Sylvia had three Ogres left — large ones, taking their time, backing her toward a building wall. She was handling it, had clearly been handling it, but she hadn't finished yet. Levi arrived from their blindside and put two of them down in the time it took her to deal with the third.
Sylvia turned. Looked at the two fallen Ogres. Looked at Levi.
"Those," she said, "were mine."
"They were available," said Levi.
"Within my range. Which makes them mine."
"That logic doesn't hold up."
"When I'm done with you," Sylvia said, with great calm, "nothing will hold up."
She came for him. He ran.
—
The crowd, watching on the arena screens, appeared to find this sequence entertaining.
Melissa, in the stands, watched Levi sprint down a simulated Olympicõ boulevard with Sylvia in determined pursuit and thought: I trained them for months and this is what they're doing with the trial. She laughed anyway. She couldn't help it.
The three colonels in the VIP section were not laughing. Colonel Ralph had written something in his notepad.
Levi spotted Priscilla on a rooftop three streets ahead — sitting cross-legged, already finished, watching the chase with the bright smile of someone enjoying a show — and made for her at speed.
He arrived and put her between himself and Sylvia. "Priscilla."
"Hello," said Priscilla pleasantly.
"What," said Sylvia, arriving, "are you doing."
"Seeking mediation."
Priscilla looked between them. "Sylvia. Those myths didn't belong to you. Anyone can kill anything in a trial." A pause. "That said, Levi, you did go specifically to her section."
"I was in the area."
"You telestrided to her section."
"...I was in the area."
Sylvia pointed at him. "Next wave. I'm taking your kills."
"You can try."
"Oh, I will." She checked her watch. Still 100%. Then, more seriously: "How are you both?"
Levi checked his. "Hundred." Priscilla the same.
"Good." The competition dropped out of Sylvia's voice momentarily — just two words, but the quality of them was different. "Keep it that way."
✦ ✦ ✦
Wave three brought S-class myths.
Chimeras and Golems — more dangerous, more varied, requiring actual strategy rather than just speed and reaction. The contestants split again without discussion, the pattern established now.
Levi went for the Chimeras first. They were faster than the Gargoyles, more aggressive, and they attacked in sequences that required reading rather than pure reaction. He let his 1st Form carry the speed differential and focused on the pattern — feint, commit, recovery gap. The daggers found the gaps.
For the Golems, brute force through the exterior was inefficient. He'd learned this in class. He used the Flux instead — concentrated bursts of electricity at the joints, where the exterior material was thinnest. The disruption to the core was enough. Three Golems, three precise strikes. His watch reading: 97%. Three percent from a Chimera that had been faster than expected.
He looked up to find Sylvia already in his section, working through the last of his Chimeras with her fiery fists, wearing the expression of someone executing a plan.
"Payback," she said, without looking at him.
"Fair," said Levi.
She killed the last one. He made no move to stop her. She looked surprised by this.
"You're not going to fight me on it?"
"You earned it. And we're both still clean — that's what matters." He checked the watch again. 97%. "What are you at?"
"96." She flexed her hand. The Fiery Fists were good but they cost something every time. "I'm going to have to manage my energy from here."
"Same."
They found Priscilla on her rooftop.
"How are you always done first?" Sylvia asked.
Priscilla considered this genuinely. "I can reach everything in my range simultaneously. I don't need to go to the myths — I just need to know where they are." She paused. "I think I killed about sixty that wave."
Levi and Sylvia looked at each other.
"How much health?" Levi asked.
"Still hundred."
Across the city, the sounds of the wave finishing — the last impacts, the silence spreading outward. The smartwatches signalled wave clear.
All seven contestants still in.
✦ ✦ ✦
They found Kevin and James near the southern quarter — Kevin breathing harder than the S-class myths should have warranted, James sitting against a wall with the particular stillness of someone managing something internally.
"You good?" Levi asked Kevin.
"Fine," Kevin said. Too fast.
Levi looked at him properly for the first time since wave one. The tightness was worse now — not physical fatigue, something else. Kevin's jaw was set in a way that went beyond concentration. His watch read 81%. High loss for S-class myths.
"James has range limitations with his ability," Kevin said, before Levi could ask. "Can't use it near allies. I had to cover him." His voice was flat. Reporting, not complaining. But underneath the flatness was something that had been compressed for a long time and was starting to show at the edges.
"Next wave we can coordinate better," Levi said.
Kevin looked at him. "I don't need help."
"I know. I'm suggesting coordination, not help."
Kevin held the look for a moment. Then he nodded — once, brief — and looked away. Levi filed the look away too. Added it to the lobby observation and the wave-one tightness and the watch reading of 81%.
Something was running underneath Kevin's surface that hadn't been there on ordinary days. Something that the trial was turning up.
He'd keep an eye on it.
—
Wave four signal.
Levi felt the shift in the simulation before the myths appeared — a change in the air pressure, a density to the silence that meant what was coming was heavier than what had come before.
He looked at Sylvia. She looked back. They both looked at their watches, then at each other.
"SS class," she said.
"Evogres," said Levi. "Hundreds of them."
One of his daggers was with James — he'd handed it over three waves ago when James explained the limitation of his ability, the specific constraint that made him useless at range against anything faster than a Golem. The dagger was the workaround. Levi had given it because it was the logical thing to do and because he'd seen James's expression when he asked.
He looked at his remaining dagger. Then he reached for the Flux and pulled it into his free hand, shaping the energy the way Ivel had shown him in the inner realm — not dispersed, focused. A blade of condensed electron energy formed in his palm, edges sharp with static charge, not as balanced as the real thing but functional. He tested the weight.
Good enough.
"2nd Form," he said, and transformed.
The Ecstatic form arrived with its characteristic depth-charge feeling — not the surface warmth of the 1st Form but something from further down, the tattoo patterns lighting across his skin in blue-white lines. The world sharpened differently at this level. Not just faster — more.
The Evogres came through every street simultaneously.
Levi moved to meet them, and the chapter of the trial that was going to hurt began.