The wave four signal cleared and the simulation held its state — the city intact, the myths gone, the seven of them standing in their various positions across the southern quarter.
Then Veronica's voice came through: "Thirty-minute break. Medics incoming."
The medics materialised at the edge of the simulation — part of the support infrastructure, present in the trial the way they were present on real deployments. Levi let one check his watch, accepted the energy supplement without argument, and went looking for Kevin.
He found him in the middle of a cleared street, flat on his back, being attended to by two medics and watched by James, who was crouching beside him with the expression of someone trying to decide between concern and amusement.
"I leave you for one wave," James said, as Levi arrived.
Kevin opened one eye. "How are you still alive."
"I'm always alive. Unlike some people." James gestured at the radius of flattened buildings that marked the Colossal Golem's footprint. "Was that yours?"
Kevin closed his eye again. "3rd form. Just unlocked it."
"In the middle of the trial."
"Seemed like the right time."
James considered this. "Honestly? Fair enough." He sat back on his heels. "Congrats, by the way."
Kevin's mouth moved into something that was almost a smile. "Thanks."
The others arrived in stages — Sylvia and Priscilla from the north, Dwayne and Vanessa from the west. The group assembled loosely around Kevin's position, the particular configuration of people who had just been through something together and were still finding their bearings.
Sylvia looked at Kevin's watch reading. Then at him. "You need to be careful with the 3rd form for the rest of this trial," she said. Not harshly — the direct register she used for things that needed saying clearly. "Your body isn't conditioned to it yet. Using it again and immediately casting something at that scale — you'll faint. And if you faint in the final wave, you're exposed."
Kevin was quiet for a moment. "I hear you," he said.
"It's your call. I'm just telling you what I see."
"I hear you," Kevin said again, and this time it meant something different.
Levi watched this exchange. Watched Kevin's face during it — the way the advice landed, the way he received it without pushing back, which was different from how Kevin received most things. The trial had done something to him. The Golem, the transformation, the rage that had preceded it — something had shifted underneath the surface.
He filed it and let it be.
—
The thirty minutes passed with food from the medic supply kits, quiet conversation, and the particular exhausted relief of people who had made it further than some of them had expected. Dwayne produced something from his kit that turned out to be good and shared it without being asked, which Levi filed as a first. Vanessa sat beside Kevin and said nothing but stayed close, which seemed to be the thing Kevin needed without either of them stating it.
James turned Levi's dagger over in his hands. "I'll give this back after."
"I know," said Levi.
"I mean it."
"James. I know."
James nodded, pocketed it carefully, and looked at the simulation sky. "Do you think the 7th wave is a legendary class?"
The question landed on the group and sat there.
"Possibly," said Levi. "This is a simulation — they can run anything."
"Code Yellow at most," said Sylvia. "Hercules or Fenrir. They wouldn't send Code Orange or above at trainees."
"Unless they wanted to see how we'd handle something we can't beat," said Priscilla. "How you respond to an impossible situation is information too."
Nobody had an answer for that.
Veronica's voice returned: "Break over. Waves five and six incoming. New rules."
✦ ✦ ✦
"Contestants. For waves five and six, we're adding something."
Veronica's voice carried through the simulation with the particular quality of someone who had enjoyed designing what they were about to describe. "Each of you will be assigned six civilians. They represent your lifeline — if all six die, you're out. Kill your myths, protect your people. Any questions?"
A pause that contained no actual questions, only dread.
"Good. Spreading you out now."
The contestants dispersed to separate districts. Six figures materialised around each of them — simulated civilians, rendered with enough detail to be convincing, looking at the MK-in-training beside them with the specific expression of people who had been told this person was responsible for their survival and were not entirely sure how they felt about that.
Levi looked at his six. "Stay behind me," he said. "No matter what happens."
They nodded. One of them — an older woman — said: "Don't get us killed."
"That's the plan," said Levi.
The A and B-class myths arrived in coordinated swarms — Kitsune moving low and fast, Gargoyles and Ogres behind them. Levi activated his 2nd Form and went forward rather than waiting — creating distance between the myths and the civilians was the priority, not the kill count. He met them forty metres out, worked through them with the focused efficiency of someone who had done this in training hundreds of times and was now doing it for the first time when it mattered.
Not one myth reached within ten metres of the civilians.
When the last one dropped, he stood in the empty street and checked his watch. 81% — down from the break recovery, a few hits absorbed absorbing myths that had tried to go wide. Acceptable.
He turned back to his civilians. The older woman was looking at him with an expression that had moved from skepticism to something more considered.
"Not bad," she said.
"Thank you," said Levi.
—
Two districts over, Sylvia had taken a different approach.
Her civilians were standing in the eye of a fire hurricane — a contained rotating column of flame that Sylvia had shaped into a barrier, its interior calm and its exterior an impassable wall of fire. She stood outside it, working through her myths with the systematic efficiency of someone who had secured the thing she was protecting and could now focus entirely on the threat.
The myths burned.
When the last one was gone, she walked back through the hurricane wall — her own fire not touching her — and found her civilians. They were sweating profusely. Their clothes were steaming slightly. One man was fanning himself with his own hand in a way that suggested he had been doing this for some time.
"The myths have been dealt with," Sylvia said. "You're safe."
Applause. Grateful, somewhat dehydrated applause.
She looked at them. Then at the hurricane. Then back at them. "Were you... were you too warm in there?"
"Warm," said the man with the makeshift fan. "Yes. Warm is one word for it."
Sylvia dispersed the hurricane. A cool breeze moved through immediately, and all six civilians made the sound of people who had been slowly roasting for ten minutes and had just been given relief.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't account for the—"
"The oven effect?" the man offered.
"...Yes."
She stood in the cooling street and thought about the fact that she had nearly slow-cooked her own civilians in a protective measure. She decided this was something she would not be mentioning to anyone.
✦ ✦ ✦
Wave five cleared. All seven contestants still active, though James's civilians had required some explaining — all six had woken up from an involuntary blackout with no memory of what had happened, which was technically fine and practically somewhat alarming. Kevin had lost two civilians in the chaos before his 3rd form arrived. Everyone else had held.
Wave six: S and SS class simultaneously.
Levi assessed his district and made a decision. The myths in this wave were faster, better coordinated, and would eventually reach his civilians if he fought them conventionally. He needed a different shape to the problem.
He focused his energy on the ground. Four magic circles bloomed open — larger than the circles he used for bondage spells, configured differently, built for something more sustained. From each one, a figure stepped out.
Electron clones. Four of them, shaped from condensed Flux energy, each one carrying the basic imprint of his ability. They weren't fighters — not with the precision and judgment he had — but they were fast, they were present, and they could absorb an attack that would otherwise reach a civilian.
"Protect them," he said, nodding toward the civilians. "Anything that gets past me."
The clones took their positions. They didn't respond — they weren't conscious, just shaped intention — but the formation was correct. Levi turned to face the incoming wave and felt something that wasn't quite satisfaction but was adjacent to it. Problem solved before it became a problem.
He crouched low. Let the Flux build.
"Electric Vortex."
He launched himself at full speed, jumped at the leading edge of the myth formation, and twisted — the vortex forming around him as he turned, the momentum of the dash carrying into the spin. The Flux ran through him like a current through a conductor: complete, directionless, going where the path of least resistance led.
The myths caught in the vortex didn't have time to register what was happening. They went up, they went around, they came apart.
Levi came out of the spin at the end of the street and sat down immediately on the pavement, waiting for the world to stop moving.
"Man," he said, to the simulated sky, "that was a lot of spinning."
He lay back. Looked up. The clouds were convincing — the simulation rendered them with the specific grey of Olympicõ's usual weather. A cool breeze moved through, and for a moment the city was quiet and the trial was somewhere else and he was just lying on a pavement looking at clouds.
He thought about his mother.
Not with grief exactly — or not only grief. More the way you think about someone who shaped you: the specific weight of their absence combined with the specific presence of everything they left. He reached one hand up toward the simulated sky, not really expecting anything, just — reaching.
"Why are you reaching for the sky?"
He turned his head. Priscilla was floating two feet above the pavement beside him, her six civilians levitating serenely around her in a loose orbit, all of them apparently unconcerned about being several feet off the ground. She was looking at him with the expression of someone who had walked into a moment and was deciding whether to say something or just be there.
"Thinking about my mom," he said.
She descended until she was at his level — still floating, cross-legged in the air — and didn't say anything for a moment. Then she leaned over and hugged him, briefly and without ceremony, the way she hugged people when she'd decided they needed it regardless of whether they'd admit it.
He let her.
"You didn't need to do that," he said, when she sat back.
"I know." She smiled. "You looked like you needed it anyway."
He looked at the sky again. Then at her floating civilians. Then back at her. "How are you always done before everyone else?"
"That," said Priscilla serenely, "is a secret."
—
In the park district, Kevin stood in front of his two remaining civilians and listened to Sylvia's advice replay in his head.
*You'll exhaust yourself. You'll faint. You'll be vulnerable.*
She was right. He knew she was right. His body was still telling him, clearly and in detail, what the Colossal Golem had cost it. The 3rd form had reserves that weren't replenished by the medic break — not fully, not yet. Using it again would spend what was left.
The S and SS class myths were coming through the park entrance in a continuous stream, and his two remaining civilians were behind him, and his watch read 67%.
He thought about the wave seven speculation from the break. A legendary class in the final wave. If he exhausted himself here, he wouldn't be able to fight in wave seven. He might not even be conscious for it.
But if he didn't use it, his civilians would die. He'd be disqualified. He wouldn't reach wave seven at all.
*It's obvious which option is better.*
He transformed.
The earth shook — less dramatically than before, the 3rd form arriving with the slightly diminished force of a body doing something for the second time before it was fully ready, but arriving nonetheless. He cast Bottomless Quicksand, watched the myths begin to sink, built an earth wall when they threw their weapons. He held it as long as he needed to.
When the last myth submerged and the ground solidified, he released the form immediately. Before it could cost him more than he had.
He was on his knees. Conscious. His watch read 44%.
Still in.
✦ ✦ ✦
Wave six signal: clear.
Seven contestants. All seven still active.
In the arena, the crowd noise had been building for the last twenty minutes into the specific sustained roar of people watching something they hadn't expected. The colonels had stopped writing notes individually and were conferring — heads together, voices too low to carry, the focused discussion of people comparing observations.
Melissa was watching the health displays. Levi at 71%. Sylvia at 63%. Priscilla at 100%.
She looked at that last number for a long moment.
The contestants gathered at the city centre for the final wave — called there by Veronica's announcement, all seven of them moving through streets they'd fought across for the last hour, converging on the open plaza at the city's heart.
"So," said Levi, when the group had assembled. He looked at each of them — Kevin still moving carefully, James with a borrowed dagger and the focused expression of someone who had found their footing, Dwayne and Vanessa side by side, Priscilla serene, Sylvia with fire still present at the edges of her hair from the last wave. "Wave seven."
"Wave seven," said Sylvia.
"Whatever comes through that portal," Levi said, "we handle it together. No splitting up, no individual kills competition—"
"Agreed," said Sylvia, immediately and without the usual resistance, which told him she was taking this seriously.
Above the city centre, a portal opened in the simulation sky.
Not the small portals that had seeded the earlier waves. A large one — wide enough to see through, wide enough to watch something come out of.
Four shapes dropped through it. Large. Winged. Moving with the specific arrogance of things that had never needed to be afraid of anything on the ground.
Levi looked at them. Fire dragon. Crystal dragon. Wind dragon. Ice dragon.
He felt the slight deflation of someone who had been hoping for a legendary class and received something that was merely very dangerous. Then he felt the adrenaline take over, which was the more useful response.
"Dragons," said Priscilla.
"Four of them," said Dwayne.
"One each," said Levi, "and three of us share one." He looked at the group. "3rd forms. Now."