You have fifteen minutes before Challenge 6 begins. Everyone must gather in the South Gym. Those who are not in there when fifteen minutes ends will die.
Nathan looked around at the other students. They were in the cafeteria at the moment, two weeks after the Survival Challenge. They were expecting the next Challenge to happen at any moment, due to the rather lengthy rest. Everyone assumed that the extended period was a result of Nathan's group having a longer and tougher Challenge.
It was true it took them a little longer to fully recover, but the rest period, Nathan felt, had been excessive. He suspected it was to make them nervous with anticipation what it would be.
Instead of joining the others, he continued eating. Not much had happened other than Madeline officially pissing everyone off and Michael finding a new chick to fuck constantly.
With five minutes left, Nathan took care of his trash, then grabbed his backpack and made his way down to the South Gym, Samantha following him in silence. Since there wasn't much reason for him to talk, he'd returned to being silent, other than when training with a member of his group, either in martial arts, with swords, or with magic.
There, he found the rest of the students waiting, and so took a seat and waited until the next notification, which occurred with a sealing of the South Gym.
You have 5 minutes to prepare for Challenge 6 You will be divided into eight instances of seven students based on the your strength, with the strongest being together and the weakest being together. You will be restrained to the South Gym during this challenge. One student in each instance must die. All rules are lifted during this Challenge. The surviving six members will be released from the Challenge once all instances have finished, and all rules will apply once more after one student has died. Any attempt to kill more than one student during this Challenge will result in your death. Succeeding in killing more than one student will result in your death. A kill is shared for all students within an instance.
Nathan looked around, his gaze fixing on Madeline, who looked a lot less sure of herself. She was one of the seven strongest students, and the other six at the top all disliked her. She was outnumbered. After a few moments, though, she smirked, and Nathan knew she had some sort of plan for victory. Especially with the way she was looking at Keith.
It didn't matter. Five of her opponents had magical defenses, and while Mitchell didn't, he was definitely not going to fall to her magics. According to Keith, she wasn't talented enough at force magic to kill someone by applying it directly to their brain or heart, the way Keith could.
That made him curious how she planned on killing Keith. He knew she wouldn't target Mitchell, even if she could. She wanted Keith dead, no matter what.
The timer hit zero, and Nathan found himself in the room with his group and Madeline, as well as a new message in his vision.
Your Challenge will take place on the football field. No combat permitted until all members are on it. You have 15 minutes.
I guess even the System recognizes that the strongest seven could do some serious damage to the area and possibly need a bigger space in a fight to kill someone.
The group of students made their way down to the football field as Nathan wondered how the System came to that conclusion. Was it simply because they were so powerful? Or had whoever was responsible for the game interfered to do that?
Not the people behind Madeline – the people behind the game in general. The actual force behind it. Did they interfere with this instance to give the group more space? Or was it really the System, which somehow determined that their particular instance needed more space?
And why the football field? The dome was much much larger than the South Gym, so it should have worked, too.
They reached the football field, and Madeline walked to the center, removing her school jacket and tossing it to the ground, rolling up her right sleeve. Keith frowned when he saw the light gray marks on her arm.
"Hiding these was such a pain," she smiled at him. "I'm glad I finally get to show off a bit."
Then, she held out her arm and the gray markings lifted off, swirling and expanding, taking on the form of a humanoid figure ten feet in height and built of stone, its eyes a pair of glowing red orbs.
"A stone titan?" Keith frowned, walking towards her. "How in the fuck did you contract a stone titan without anyone noticing?"
Stone titans, Nathan knew from his inquiries about the various familiars, were in the same classification as thunderbirds and griffins. Something that powerful being contracted should have been noticed, yet even Keith was unaware of it.
"It's still just a baby," she smirked. "But it's more than enough to deal with you and whatever half-rate familiar you have. Kill."
She immediately fired off several fireballs and whips of flames, slashing out with air as her familiar charged Keith.
"Stay back!" Keith hollered as Samantha, Michael, Mitchell, and William went to aid him. "I can handle her!"
The others stopped, then looked at Nathan, who was sitting on the bleachers, having moved to them the moment they were allowed to fight. They saw him holding a container of dried fruit, munching away as if it were popcorn.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
Looking back at William, they saw the attacks slamming into his barrier, the stone titan attempting to break through as the mage calmly removed first his robe, then his jacket, then his tie, then his shirt, revealing a series of white and gold markings on his back.
They stretched out, first as if like wings, and then took on the form of actual wings, white and gold in color. They were neither feathery nor leathery, more akin to blades of color attached to the wings' edges.
Madeline halted in her attacks as the majestic wings stretched out, then detached from Keith's back, floating out on their own.
"What in the world-" she began, only to find the 'wings' shifting their form, rapidly turning into a swirling mass of light, wind, and clear water. "HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE?"
She summoned up a storm of fire and threw it at Keith, but his familiar transformed into a giant wall that shielded him, and he released his barrier, allowing the stone titan to attack.
The flames sputtered out against Keith's familiar, which enveloped the stone titan and squeezed, slicing through its limbs and core in moments as Madeline screamed in fury, then in pain as her contract was forcibly severed by her familiar's death.
The stone titan would normally be able to draw from the ground and heal itself, but three things stopped it. The first was the sheer speed of its death, with the second being its age, making it slower in its healing.
The third was the fact that the football field was an artificial turf, having been changed to that a few years prior, due to the band receiving several sprained ankles after a football game on a wet field. Nothing there but synthetic materials and rubber.
Keith watched as Madeline wailed, then as his familiar surged forward, transforming into a spear of wind, water, and light, piercing through the meager shields she'd managed to conjure and through her body.
It rested there for a few moments, then pulled out, returning back to just a collection of wind, water, and light as it returned to its master.
"Thanks," Keith touched a spot of the water and wind that were swirling around each other. "I'm sorry, but you'll need to go back, I can't have you out while we're here too much. I'll let you run loose as much as you want as soon as I'm able, though, okay?"
The familiar's golden light glowed a little bit, then returned to normal, and the creature shifted to behind its master, returning to the pair of wings it had been before attaching itself to Keith's back and absorbing in, leaving behind just the white and gold markings on his skin.
Keith sighed, then picked up his shirt and pulled it back on. They all received a notice to return to the South Gym within fifteen minutes. He buttoned up his shirt as his classmates returned to him.
"What was that?" Samantha asked as Nathan picked up Keith's tie and jacket and held them out.
"My familiar."
"Clearly," she said. "I meant what was it. The species, or whatever."
"Something strong enough to take on the Grand Set," Michael said. "Was that an elemental?"
"Elementals are based in fire, water, earth, wind, and energy," Samantha said. "That had light factored in as well. It was powerful, though. A very strong thing within the Grand Set?"
"Keep it a secret," Keith hesitated for a moment. "If the magical community finds out I have that contracted, there would be a massive uproar. Right now, I'm seen largely as a rogue agent who doesn't really do much, despite having a lot of power. They know I'm interested in enchanting, and leave me be. If they knew I had something like that contracted, they'd get into a huge uproar over it. It's an incredibly rare being. The last magician to have one was Mordred."
"You have something contracted by an evil guy?" Michael jumped back a few steps.
"No," Keith shook his head. "History's slightly wrong. In the first place, the original text simply said that he and Arthur fell, it never mentioned if they were fighting each other. According to actual historical text from the magical side of things, they actually fought together. Mordred was Arthur's step-son. Guinevere had been raped before Arthur married her, and he was the bastard child born from that. He was never evil, despite what the stories say, and had given up his life attempting to save his step-father's. He succeed, but Arthur died not much later in the same battle.
"Anyway," Keith said as he finished pulling his things back on, then picked up his robe and pulled that back on. "Please, please, please don't ever mention that to anyone. It's extremely important no one knows I've contracted it. Seriously."
"On the scale of familiars and magical creatures," Mitchell said, knowing a little from having spent a fair amount of time with them the last few weeks, and thus, hearing much of what Keith had explained. "Where does that thing lie?"
"Above the elementals," Keith answered. "Beneath the Ultimate Trinity. It's extremely powerful, and just as rare as any of those things. Please."
"No one's saying anything," Nathan assured him, then looked at the rest of the group, who quickly echoed their agreement.
They returned to the South Gym, and nineteen minutes later, they found themselves in the neutral instance, the forty-eight survivors looking around at each other.
You have completed Challenge 6 +12 Stat Points, +12 Skill Points, +120 Points. You may restock your supplies in the MPR, standard rules. Challenge 7 will begin in three days. Rest up and decide. When it is time to begin, which Challenge you face will be by the choice of the majority. The two options are Points Battle and Survival. It will be the final Challenge before the Final Challenge.
They were being given a choice for their next Challenge. Nathan was curious how the Points Battle would work as they hadn't faced that Challenge yet, but a Survival Challenge would last at least twelve days, he suspected. That one guaranteed they'd have time to farm monsters and get stronger.
At the same time, though, the fact that the System called the other one "Points Battle" told him there was probably a reward set for whoever earned the most Points during that Challenge, just like the Survival Challenges.
Well, that was his opinion, but he saw no other reason why it would be called "Points Battle" if it wasn't a competition of some sort.
Instead of dwelling on that further, he made his way to the MPR with the other students to stock up a bit more. There was a high chance that everyone else voted for the Survival Challenge, for the extra grinding.
No one knew what the Final Challenge would entail, but they knew that they'd need to be strong for it. With how hellish their start had been, and the Challenges so far, they knew it would be tougher than anything they'd faced before.
Nathan frowned. That was actually probably why they were being given the choice. What were the odds that the Points Battle had a higher chance of giving them better Points as a result than the Survival Challenge?
The thing was – no one knew. All they knew was that it was a Points Battle, while they knew a lot more about the Survival Challenges. They knew there would be a guarantee for them to get stronger with the Survival Challenge.
Sighing, Nathan shook his head.
The game was playing with them. They'd throw away what would potentially allow them even more Experience and Points because of uncertainty.
He'd have to see if he could change their minds.