Chapter 19: The Bloodwood Qualifiers
The deafening blare of the bone-horn shattered the crisp morning air, signaling the absolute start of the First-Year Ranking Qualifiers.
There were no safe classrooms today.
There were no theoretical arrays or dusty chalkboard diagrams.
The Academy had ruthlessly dumped eighty elite squads directly into the center of the Bloodwood.
It was a sprawling, ancient section of the enchanted forest where the massive trees had bark that looked exactly like rusted iron, and the incredibly thick canopy blocked out the sun entirely.
The rules were brutally, violently simple.
At the absolute center of the forest stood a ruined stone ziggurat housing a dormant Mana-Geyser.
The first squad to successfully reach the summit and hold the geyser for ten unbroken minutes qualified for the main tournament.
Everyone else failed.
"Movement on the left flank!" Rolf roared, his voice tearing through the chaos.
The werewolf was already fully transformed.
His massive, fur-covered frame crackled aggressively with thick, yellow Beast-Aura.
He caught a charging Orc dead in a full sprint, effortlessly lifting the two-hundred-pound brute by his heavy iron chest plate and hurling him bodily into a vicious thicket of razor-thorns.
CRASH!
"Keep the perimeter absolutely tight!" I barked, standing firmly near the top of the steep stone steps.
"They think we are an incredibly easy target because of me. Let them naturally bottleneck at the stairs!"
The damp forest air was suffocatingly thick with the sharp smell of ozone, violently burning pine, and fresh blood.
It was a scene of absolute, unrestrained chaos.
Volatile spells of screaming fire and jagged ice detonated wildly across the forest floor, uprooting ancient trees and scattering the weaker squads like frightened insects.
But my squad was a perfectly calibrated, lethal machine.
Nyssa stood at the summit just behind me.
Her silver-rimmed glasses perfectly reflected the volatile emerald fire rapidly building in her delicate hands.
She was a walking, breathing artillery battery.
"Three-second casting delay! Clear the center!" she shouted flawlessly.
"Rolf, drop!" I ordered cleanly.
Rolf hit the mud just as Nyssa unleashed a massive, sweeping arc of pure emerald flames.
The localized blast totally incinerated the front line of a heavy demon squad trying foolishly to push the stairs, sending them screaming in agony back into the dark tree line.
FWOOOSH!
But exactly as the thick smoke cleared, my [Sharp Eye] caught a highly subtle, completely terrifying shift in the ambient mana pressure.
"We have a massive problem," I said, my cold voice cutting effortlessly through the ringing in my ears.
Emerging deliberately from the burning tree line was a heavily armed squad that had not engaged in the initial chaotic brawl at all.
They were High Elves, dressed flawlessly in pristine white and gold combat leathers, and heavily flanked by a towering Minotaur vanguard.
At their absolute center stood a blonde Elven mage whose slender hands were weaving a massive, incredibly intricate geometric array.
The physical air around him was literally warping and distorting with raw heat.
"A Tier-3 Siege Spell," Nyssa gasped, her olive skin instantly going sickly pale.
"He is aggressively compressing a Solar Lance. If that spell hits the ziggurat, the stone will melt entirely. We absolutely cannot block that!"
"Kaelith!" I yelled.
"Can you reach him?"
Kaelith instantly appeared from the deep shadows of a ruined pillar, her twin daggers dripping lazily with fresh black ichor.
The silver star-bracelet I had given her perfectly caught the flickering light of the surrounding fires.
"The Minotaur's Aura is far too dense," she assessed coldly, her tactical eyes scanning the enemy formation for weaknesses.
"If I strike the mage, the beast will undoubtedly crush me before I can successfully extract."
The arrogant Elven mage's spell was glowing blindingly, painfully bright.
We had maybe ten seconds before he wiped us completely off the map.
"Rolf, Nyssa, Kaelith, funnel all your focused attacks directly on the Minotaur!" I commanded, rapidly drawing my short, heavily weighted wooden gladius.
"Make the mage firmly believe his vanguard is about to break!"
"What about the spell?!" Nyssa yelled in pure panic over the roaring wind of the gathering magic.
"I will handle the spell."
I did not wait for them to argue the absurd logic.
I stepped swiftly off the stone stairs and immediately triggered [Phantom Tread].
The deep shadows of the ruined ziggurat instantly leaped up to cling intimately to my black coat.
The loud crunch of my boots against the bloody gravel vanished entirely.
To the rest of the screaming battlefield, I became absolutely nothing more than a faint blur of dark, shifting static.
I sprinted aggressively down the flank, completely skirting the outer edge of the clearing.
My lungs burned like fire, but my newly tempered Endurance flawlessly held.
I watched as Kaelith and Rolf successfully launched a highly coordinated, ferocious assault directly on the Minotaur, forcing the massive beast to roar in anger and raise his heavy iron shield.
Nyssa viciously pelted the shield with rapid concussive blasts, creating a massive, deafening distraction.
BOOM!
CLANG!
The Elven mage sneered arrogantly.
His eyes remained locked hungrily on the summit, entirely focused on finishing his Solar Lance to annihilate my squad.
He completely ignored his unprotected blind spot.
I slipped perfectly behind him, silent as a ghost.
The Sovereign's Conduit roared violently to life in my chest.
I did not need to weave a complex spell.
I did not need to brutally overpower his overwhelming magic.
I just needed to violently break his delicate concentration.
I inhaled the chaotic, aggressively burning mana of the battlefield and forcefully shifted its frequency into heavy, incredibly dense Aura.
The silver light pulsed violently down the veins in my arms.
I stepped fluidly out of the shadows directly behind the arrogant Elf and aggressively drove the blunt pommel of my Aura-coated gladius directly into the back of his knee.
The joint buckled instantly under the massive physical pressure.
CRACK!
The Elf let out a shocked, agonizing gasp, his rigid, highly precise casting stance completely collapsing.
"What..." he started to yell, turning his head in absolute panic.
Exhale.
Magic.
The heavy Aura vanished entirely from my limbs, converting instantly into raw, searing Arcane heat.
Before he could possibly regain control of the massive, highly unstable siege spell hovering between his trembling hands, I slammed my open palm directly against his spine and released a microscopic, highly disruptive pulse of my own F-Grade mana directly into his array.
"Duck!" I roared, violently throwing myself backward into the thick mud.
The resulting arcane feedback loop was utterly catastrophic.
The Solar Lance, violently stripped of its structural containment, detonated prematurely.
A massive shockwave of blinding, golden light erupted from the Elf's hands.
KRA-BOOOOOOM!
The concussive force violently blasted the towering Minotaur entirely off his feet and threw the rest of the elite Elven squad deeply into the trees exactly like broken ragdolls.
I was sent skidding aggressively through the mud, my ears ringing violently from the blast.
Slowly, the heavy dust and choking smoke began to settle.
The Elven squad was entirely wiped out, groaning and totally unconscious in the dirt.
The massive, misfired siege spell had done our brutal job for us.
I pushed myself up slowly onto my hands and knees, spitting out a foul mouthful of ash, and looked back up toward the ziggurat.
Rolf, Kaelith, and Nyssa were staring heavily down at me in absolute, thoroughly stunned silence.
They had not even seen me move until the massive spell had exploded.
[System Alert: Tactical Domination Acknowledged.]
[Host has successfully neutralized a Tier-3 threat. Experience Matrix updated.]
"The timer is ticking!" I yelled up at them, smoothly wiping the wet mud from my face as I got to my feet.
"Watch the tree line! We still have exactly three minutes!"
Kaelith was the very first to successfully snap out of it.
A fierce, incredibly proud smirk crossed her flawless face before she instantly melted back into the shadows to aggressively guard the flank.
Rolf let out a deafening, highly triumphant howl, banging his massive fists against his chest.
Nyssa just slowly adjusted her silver-rimmed glasses, her glowing emerald eyes fixed firmly on me with a look of absolute, terrifying awe.
We were not just the squad with the weak goblin tactician anymore.
We were the undisputed apex predators of the Bloodwood.
And the Academy was finally going to brutally realize it.