"Roar!"
A massive red bear swung its paw at the small human who had dared to disturb it. The human dodged instinctively, throwing himself sideways. The bear's paw slammed into the earth instead, and the ground cracked outward in a web of jagged lines from the point of impact.
Zach's heart was hammering. If he had been half a second slower, his skull would have been pulped. His back was already soaked through with sweat when the bear attacked again.
It lunged. The enormous red silhouette filled his vision as it launched itself toward him, and Zach's legs went to jelly. He felt utterly disconnected from his own body, as though someone else was supposed to be handling this. Just as hope started to slip away, an ear-splitting crack split the air. He whipped his head around and saw a bolt of lightning — an exceedingly powerful one — slam directly into the bear.
The creature's entire body scorched black. It was hurled off its feet and crashed through the treeline behind it, taking two trunks down with it.
Zach turned. A young man stood at the edge of the clearing, watching him. Zach's chest tightened the moment their eyes met. The young man's gaze was like looking into a bottomless abyss — deep, cold, and utterly empty of warmth.
He shook himself back to the present and pushed himself upright. "Thank you, benefactor. If not for you, I don't know what would have become of me."
"So," the young man with the abyss-like eyes said. "You're a member of Prince Charles' group?"
Zach didn't know why he was being asked that, but there was nothing suspicious about the question so he answered honestly. "Yes, that's right. I am. May I ask my benefactor's name?"
"You don't need to know." The young man's tone was completely flat, carrying no emotion whatsoever.
W-what? Zach opened his mouth to respond — and then his vision went black. He crumpled to the ground without understanding why.
Inside a cave deep within the illusory world, two people occupied the dim space. One was a young man with abyss-like eyes, standing with his arms loosely at his sides, speaking in measured tones. The other was also young, but the resemblance ended there. This one was barely holding himself upright against the cave wall, covered head to toe in wounds. There was no part of his body that had been spared. His hair had been burnt black. Whatever had happened to him in the moments before this scene was not difficult to imagine.
The wounded young man — Zach — gritted his teeth and pressed a hand against a deep gash across his stomach. Despite everything, he held his ground. "No matter what you do, I won't hand over the points I earned with my own blood!"
The young man with the abyss-like eyes didn't even blink. "So you want to be tortured until you break. Understood."
A chill ran down Zach's spine as those words landed — quiet, unhurried, and utterly convincing. The memory of the pain he'd already endured came flooding back, and his psychological defenses collapsed all at once. He dropped to his knees. "Please — please don't kill me. Take the points, all of them, just please let me go!"
"Hmph."
The young man with the abyss-like eyes looked down at the pathetic display without expression. Pain was simply the most efficient solution. He had confirmed that across six attempts now.
This young man was Alzer. He had gone into the exam with a plan, and so far Zach was his sixth victim. His point total had grown to something workable — but his ranking still sat somewhere around the top 500, which was nowhere near sufficient.
Just as I thought. This method has its ceiling.
He had known from the start it wouldn't carry him all the way. The problem was containment. Word of what he was doing would already be spreading through the illusory world. Six victims meant six people who had survived to talk. Participants would be wary of him now, and some of the more aggressive ones might actively hunt him. He needed to shift gears and let things settle before moving to the next phase of the plan — which meant watching how Prince Charles responded to the news.
The tattoo on his wrist pulsed. He checked it. Nine points now, up from seven. Rank 474.
He had two hours left.
Alzer turned and walked toward the cave entrance, leaving Zach slumped against the wall. The man was no longer useful, and he had never intended to do any permanent damage. That was what separated victims one through five from Zach — the others had folded quickly. Zach had required additional encouragement.
"So you're the one they're calling the Demon."
A voice from the cave entrance. Alzer's gaze shifted.
Standing at the mouth of the cave was a young man with white hair and pale blue eyes, dressed in a high-quality silk robe that sat immaculately despite the surrounding chaos of the illusory world. He wore a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes.
"What of it?" Alzer said.
"Nothing, really. I just wanted to see if the rumors were accurate." Without waiting for a response, the white-haired young man attacked. A blue flame conjured itself in his palm and he flung it straight at Alzer.
Alzer was alert. He was always alert. He read the danger before it fully materialized and threw himself clear.
Rumble.
The blue flame struck the cave wall. The entire structure shook. Alzer watched the fire eat through stone and melt the ground where it pooled, his expression going still. "You're Vincent Bluefire. The Bluefire Saint's son."
"Oh — you know me?" Vincent's smile widened slightly. "I'm honored." He chanted an incantation and drew a magic circle in the air with one finger. The circle condensed into a luminous blue bow. A fiery arrow of the same color materialized at the string. He drew it back and released.
Alzer raised his hand and formed a lightning shield. The blue arrow struck it head-on and detonated, dispersing the shield entirely. Before Vincent could nock a second arrow, Alzer moved his hands through a rapid, unfamiliar sequence.
Hundred Thunder Snakes.
Lightning serpents, each roughly a meter in length, erupted from the ground around him. They surged toward Vincent in a writhing mass, covering the distance at the speed their element implied.
Vincent loosed six arrows in rapid succession. Each one multiplied in flight until hundreds of blue fire bolts filled the space between them. The swarms collided — lightning and blue flame — and the resulting shockwave rattled the cave to its foundations. Stones began dropping from the ceiling.
Against the far wall, Zach had been watching all of this with wide, terrified eyes. He started crawling toward the exit. An explosion detonated close to him and he stopped thinking entirely, just moved.
Alzer registered the movement but paid it no attention. Zach escaping was fine — sparing him had always been the intention. What required his full focus was the fight in front of him.
He ran the numbers quickly. Vincent had reached the second level of the Mortal Stage. Their exchange had looked even, but it wasn't — Alzer was burning through mana at a significantly higher rate. He needed to end this. The noise from their clash would already be drawing attention; if a crowd arrived and found him here with a depleted mana pool, the resulting chase would be a serious problem.
He snapped his fingers, and a translucent colorless ball about the size of an egg formed between his lips. He caught it, turned the object once in his hand, and hurled it at Vincent. Then he spun on his heel and poured everything he had left into his legs, sprinting toward the deepest part of the cave.
Vincent watched the ball arc toward him. His expression went tight the instant he recognized it. "Crap — he knows how to make a Magic Bomb?!"
He exhaled sharply, pulled his focus inward, and began drawing magic circles in the air one after another with his index finger until six floated in a ring around him.
"Bluefire Sealing Secret Art — First Move: Chains of Suppression!"
Six enormous blue chains erupted from the circles and wound themselves around the Magic Bomb, squeezing inward.
It wasn't enough.
BOOM.
The explosion hurled Vincent backward through the cave entrance and out into open air. Behind him, the cave gave a long, grinding groan as cracks split across its ceiling and walls. Large stones fell. Within a minute, the entire structure had collapsed inward.
Vincent picked himself up and checked his condition, heart still thudding. Then he thought about where his opponent had gone — straight into the deepest section of the cave, right before it came down. He had no way of knowing whether the man had made it out.
He decided he didn't want to be standing here when other participants arrived to investigate the noise. He turned and walked away before anyone could find him looking like this.