Tasora moved like a speed demon.
Lightning snapped under her feet, and the ground gave up trying to keep up.
One moment she stood across the field and the next, she was already within Maku's range.
Maku split.
Two, then four versions of his body doubles peeled away from the original body in a fuzzy blur.
His loom, a katana, rang as every copy drew in perfect sync, blades flashing from different angles.
Tasora smiled.
She vanished and rammed straight into them like a flashing pinball.
One Maku took the hit and dissolved on impact, bursting apart into motes of light.
Another caught Tasora's kick and was launched backward, skidding before flickering out.
The real Maku slid low beneath the chaos, katana sweeping for Tasora's legs.
Lightning cracked.
Tasora twisted mid-motion and brought her heel down.
The ground detonated.
Maku was thrown clear, rolling hard before forcing himself upright, breathing fast, blood streaking his lip.
"You know what I absolutely hate the most? It's accepting a losing game," Maku protested. "Why did we even accept this deal?"
Tasora was already moving again, lightning snapping at her heels.
"Because my friend asked for help," Nagi answered.
She flicked her wrist.
A white kunai flew, stabbed cleanly into an ice boulder left behind from Solaris's earlier barrage. Violet string followed it with tension.
Tasora lunged.
Nagi yanked the kunai back.
The blade returned to her hand, but the string stayed.
Tasora's foot caught it.
She glanced down, then up, smiling wider. "Oh. You're actually fun."
Another kunai flew.
Then another. Each one struck something solid.
Sometimes ice.
Sometimes stone.
Frozen debris was scattered across the flat land. Each time, Nagi recalled the blade and left the string behind, thin violet lines stretching and sagging across the battlefield.
She never stood still.
She ran, slid, leapt, letting the strings pull at her hips and shoulders. She hooked one around her waist, vaulted sideways, and let Tasora's lightning punch carve empty air where she had been.
Nagi landed, twisted, and threw again.
Tasora charged straight through the web.
Strings snapped against her arms and legs, stinging like lashes. Electricity surged along them, lighting the web in violent purple flashes, burning them to ashes.
Nagi grabbed two strings at once and flung herself backward to gain momentum like a slingshot.
She skimmed the ice boulders and kicked off a frozen slab heading over Tasora's shoulder.
Tasora spun and punched upward.
Nagi twisted midair, released the strings, and let herself drop. She caught another line with her heel, swung like a pendulum, and snapped a kick into Tasora's jaw.
It landed.
Tasora slid back half a step.
She laughed.
"Ok, you're pushing your luck."
Nagi did not respond. She was already moving again, throwing her kunai and recalling it.
The battlefield began to resemble a spider's nest stretched across ice and stone.
Tasora started ripping them apart.
Nagi slingshotted herself again, skimming across the ground, strings snapping her forward faster than her legs ever could.
She slid under a lightning kick, rolled, then yanked hard her kunai hard.
Several strings tightened at once.
Tasora stumbled forward, caught by a dozen invisible tugs.
She growled, electricity flaring brighter, and tore free in a violent burst.
Nagi landed lightly, chest rising, sweat on her brow. She smiled, sharp and feral.
"Yeah, you definitely deserve the top spot."
Tasora straightened, brushing frost from her sleeve, eyes glowing brighter.
"And you're more persistent than Matt."
Maku recovered and started moving again.
Three bodies this time, all charging at once, blades crossing in a killing arc.
Tasora tore through them with raw speed, each strike erasing a double until only the real one remained and took the blow head-on, hurled back to crash beside Nagi.
Solaris stayed back.
Her staff trembled in her grip as she forced her breathing to slow. Frost crept outward from her boots, and the air was frosting with every exhale.
She raised her staff, hesitated, then lowered it again, jaw tight.
Tasora noticed that this was her chance to fend off her opponent's backlines
Lightning surged, and she launched herself forward, the pressure alone forcing Maku and Nagi to brace.
Then a scream ripped across the field.
"Khent! Waffel!"
A beam erupted, yellow braided with red, screaming through the air with a sound that drowned out everything else.
Tasora barely had time to turn before it slammed into her side.
The explosion swallowed her.
Her lightning cloak shattered outward like broken glass. The ground collapsed into a crater. Tasora was hurled clear across the field, skipping three times like a stone over water before vanishing into smoke and debris as she smashed into the outer wall.
Nagi pulled herself upright, brushed ice from her shoulder, and squinted toward the source of the blast.
"Matt!" she called out cheerfully, like she'd just spotted a friend across campus.
"Maku! Stay in and capture the home base. Everyone else, don't let up! That alone won't even stop her!" I shouted.
Every other student watching understood immediately.
This was the moment.
A chance to dogpile the monster without waiting for end-of-semester ranking duels. A chance that would never come again.
Everybody wanted a slice of the pizza sitting unattended on the table.
Even the group we'd beaten earlier joined in, desperation overriding pride.
The elf girl loosed an arrow toward the smoke cloud where Tasora had vanished.
Tasora twisted her neck just enough for it to miss and get lodged in the wall.
Tasora burst out of the debris, grabbed the elf by the head mid-sprint, and hurled her aside like luggage.
Her paladin-like teammate with a club and shield caught her instinctively.
Tasora was already there.
She kicked both of them away like they were todlers and weighed nothing.
"Nagi!" I yelled.
"On it."
She hurled her kunai straight up and pulled them back.
The blade returned, but created a string that captured them.
Violet lines snapped taut, intersecting midair and dragging the two flying students back down before they hit the ground.
They landed hard but are still usable.
Nagi crouched beside them immediately, checking the elf girl first.
"You good?" she asked.
The elf took a good look at her face and nodded shakily. "Y-yeah…"
The other teammate was not doing as well.
He rolled onto his side and immediately started puking.
"Okay," Nagi said, standing back up. "You're… less good."
Meanwhile, the battlefield fractured into smaller disasters.
The bottom right group started moving as well.
A short, stocky student charged toward the center base, where Emma stood guard over Azalea's unconscious body.
Looking closer, he wasn't just short.
He was dwarven.
The dwarven charged her with a roar, boots pounding, axe raised high like he planned to cleave the circle in half along with anyone standing in it.
Emma did not move.
She planted her hammer into the ground instead.
The impact sent a low tremor outward. The ice fractured, then lifted. A shallow wave of stone and frost rolled forward and caught the dwarf mid-stride, flipping him clean onto his back like a tipped table.
Behind her, Azalea lay sprawled, cloak torn, scythe nowhere in sight. Her chest rose and fell steadily, and blood dried at the corner of her eye.
Emma glanced back at her.
"Don't worry," she muttered. "I got this."
Another student from thebottom right group base was a literal wall of muscle.
He was sprinting toward Nagi's original base in the top right.
No defenders in sight. He smiled and was probably expecting a free base capture.
He stepped into the circle.
〈 Home Base Status: Satou Team – Contested (Gorlok Team) 〉
He waited.
No countdown appeared.
"…Huh," he muttered. "That's weird."
"Of course it won't be captured."
A voice drifted down from nowhere.
"After all, I'm still here."
The muscle man spun around, eyes darting, even looking up into the air.
"Where?! Where the hell are you?" he barked.
"Retreat," the voice continued calmly. "If you still value your life. I don't have his permission yet to harvest yours."
"You're kidding me," the man scoffed. "Seeing as how you're hiding like that, you must have no confidence in frontal combat. You think I'm some kind of fo—"
SLASH.
A deep cut appeared across his chest.
He staggered, staring down in disbelief.
"Yes," Cwal said, his mist-like body resolving into view as he looked down at him.
"Yes, you obviously are."
Cwal looked up toward Professor Heather, fully aware of what he did and already expecting disqualification.
Heather only shook his head slowly.
Then pointed.
At the dagger in Cwal's hand.
It wasn't Cwal's usual pure white blade.
It was an ordinary knife, laced with a sluggish yellow ooze.
Cwal sighed.
"Belle messed with my storage again," he muttered.
"This must be her paralytic slime. She's been urging me to try it."
He glanced back toward the battlefield, where chaos ruled the lower middle base.
Tasora was back on her feet, facing everyone and laughing like a maniac.
A literal one-woman army.
Then he noticed it.
A single sky blue pupil, fixed on him.
Or more accurately, on the dagger.
"There you go again," Cwal said quietly. "That know-it-all look."
He flipped the knife once.
"Doesn't matter. I don't need it."
The dagger flew.
It embedded itself in the ground centimeters from my foot.
I bent down, picked it up, and dusted it off.
I smiled.
"Time for the closing act."