[65% HP Remaining!]

"You spoke to my brothers, then?" Ursula huffed before spitting blood into the partially frozen and glass heated sand. Her uniform was covered in steaming holes where Samuel's fire bit deathly deep.

"No. Your brothers speak to me." Samuel and Ursula circled eachother. "They explained this entrance game simply— the professors confirmed it. This isn't about heroism. It's about potential for glory. The commoners are told to survive. But I have the tools to succeed. I don't need to save lives if nobody actually dies. That means I can do what I need to win."

At both their backs, walls of smoke distorted in the winds from their juvenile elemental combat.

Ursula made a confused expression. Sweat beads rolled down her freckled face, falling off her chin as snowflakes, "Why do all this? The reward is nothing for you and your pampered ass. What's the motivation here?"

"Accolades, you ogre. You think my father expects me to just coast through this University and not rise like the Phoenix? My last name is Leon, Ursula. Some of our fathers actually have a legacy beyond beers and assaulting whor—"

Ursula threw the ball of sand held in her fist, now frozen into a dozen dirty ice shards.

Samuel casually held his hand out, encased in dark-flames. The ice volley melted and fell as black glass five feet before reaching him.

Ursula came in close behind with a wild hay-maker. The heat didn't bother her as much.

Samuel ducked low and hammered a blow into her stomach so hard it knocked the icy armor crusting off of her.

The battle stopped as she held his fist to her stomach. It grumbled like a tornado spun there.

Samuel looked up at her, finding her skin turning beet red. Eyes white and mad as all hell.

[Berserker's Rage….. 69%]

"You punch like a boy…." Ursula growled.

Samuel encased himself in his aura and shoulder charged her, leaning into where she held him.

Ursula quickly let go of his arm and caught him in a bear hug before lifting him off his feet.

The two went down hard in the sand, shattering the glass made from Samuel's fire as she suplexed him.

Immediately, she took top mount, hammering blows into his face until her knuckles split and blood splattered against the surface of his aura like a carriage windshield.

She was past gassed. Frothy white saliva flew from her chapped lips as she heaved and roared, carried onward by a wild rage that went deeper than simple system requirements. All the while, huffing about respect for RedVine—

They came fast. Late, but fast— as if the arrows themselves understood they were behind schedule and whistled through the air in a rush to please the noble boy.

The first one grazed her shoulder. The second sank into her forearm. Then another in her upper chest.

[40% HP Remaining!]

Samuel punched her from where he lay. She fell backward before being kicked to the ground.

Samuel stood over her. The remaining archers at his back had already begun gutting the supply drop with a fiendish intensity.

"I'd take you. Id give you a bow and make you work as a member of my island guild— but you're a bad investment. You're noble blood— but you aren't like me. You're a year ahead in age, but only just Reborn. The spectators will think I need to align myself with nobles to win. I don't. Your class is strong, but you are wea—"

From Samuel's left, a packed ball of dirt flew straight at him. He was fast— his confidence made it so. Not an ounce of hesitation in his movements.

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Claude had fought him enough times to count on that. He wouldn't side step a ball of dirt. His ego wouldn't allow it. Hell, he was just talking about how he had a family legacy to uphold.

His hand came up and caught the ball without looking. He crushed the dirt sand mixture, disintegrating the weapon formed against him as if he were some god.

Only he wasn't.

And when he looked over to Claude, standing at the edge of the forest, he found the ball of dirt wasn't just dirt.

A dirtied bundle of guild-maker bands with defiled rainbow-colored runes glimmered like a bomb on the precipice of explosion.

It was.

Ursula smiled as he brought her hands and knees up to prepare for the blast.

"Finally, you stop tal—"

Samuel barely had any time to brace for the impact. He tried throwing the bundle of bands back in Claude's direction, but they were only cloth binds. There was no weight to carry them far.

The blast went off like a warp spasm from hell. Light and sound warbled ten feet in all directions around the blast, creating an illusionary rift of multicolored magical frays of violent runic recoil. The sound was like a balloon pop in reverse surrounded by fire. Suction, shrinkage and blowback.

When the dust settled, Samuel laid at the edge of the island, opposite Claude. His university uniform top was completely evaporated. If he wasn't sporting a buzzed head, like Claude, he would've from the blast.

"You took your time with that one." Ursula grumbled in pain as Claude helped her to her feet.

Behind him, half of the supply drop was absolutely trashed. Boxes of weapons and armor were blown back into the archers working for Samuel. Laying out half of them. The others— who must've been tanks, were only just getting up.

"Let's get even." Ursula grinned as she faced them like a maniac, "You bastards want your arrows back—"

"Ursula, stop." Claude faced the world behind her. Seeing what she couldn't as the black smoke walls separating them from their entrance team finally settled.

Burp stood alone on one side, holding Emma up by the hair, with his other hand— just the finger, pressed against her throat. It was wrong. Slimy and dark-blue, covered in yellow ringed spots. Like some sort of frog.

"Burp— the hell are you doing?" Claude asked.

"What does it look like, genius?"

"Claude, he's lost his mind—" Finn started before being interrupted.

"Shut up. I'm the only one here thinking. I'm the only here who's got something to prove— truly! We're fifth wavers. There's only two more waves left. We're the bottom of the barrel. If you went to school you know the statistics! We die the most. We're the weakest. Our life spans are the shortest. Why would I stay shacked up with all of you?! When I could join him. My family was noble once….. I'll bring that back here."

A fist sized amphibian crawled out of the collar of Burp's uniform top. It looked like a cross between a lizard, bullfrog and mudguppy. Slimy spotted scales shifting colors like some deformed chameleon. Burp shivered and gagged as it crawled up onto his shoulder.

He met eyes with Claude as the spots spread across his greasy skin. He was repulsed by his own power.

"I don't do performances. I'm not gonna play hero and do the good thing just to die when the right thing is right in front of me. You can hate me, everyone already does." Burp spat.

The archers who functioned more like slaves were up. Some gathered the wounded while others took aim on Claude and Ursula.

"So you want to join up, frog-man?" One of them yelled.

"It's Burp. And yes, I do. I've brought a friend. She's an Elemental Archer…. Another Rare Class. Real fiesty." Burp yelled over to them.

"What's the plan?" Ursula whispered to Claude.

It should've felt good to be looked at for direction. It should've.

But his shame magnified as he realized he had nothing.

Samuel was the enemy. Samuel was always his mountain to be climbed.

But as he stood on the island, he found himself near no apex, and no longer facing one mountainous threat.

Every island. Every person, was a mountain to be climbed, full of craggy cliffs and unique personal drop offs into gulleys of trauma and decisions made by a life set in a type of stone completely unlike his own.

There were no heroes in training on the island with matching ambitions and hope for saving the world.

Instead, there were a hundred kids scattered across a shattered battle ground hunting for glory and fighting for survival. It was brutal and primal and without bounds. There were slaves and mysteries he couldn't unfold. Wounds he couldn't heal because….

"….. I don't—"

"Ack!" The arrow hit one of the tanks behind the supply drop. It came from the forest, like they all did. The tank did little more than stumble as it plunged into his shoulder. The other archers scattered and took aim.

"Don't worry it's just me, guys. Still trying to learn how to work this bow…y’know im a healer. I wasn’t trained to use these weapons…." Trey yelled from the green.

Ursula took the chance as if she'd been waiting for it. As if she was the one who went in the forest and saved a student who was shooting at her only minutes ago. She shoved Claude into motion. "FINN! Move!" She ordered the only other fifth-waver standing.

They headed to the only place they could, sprinting on long dead legs, trying to ignore how slim their chances were as the evening sun sank with them into the cold again waters.

"Let them go." Burp said as he dragged Emma and Xander over to the others, "The ocean awakening will handle them, won't it?"

"You want it to?"

"Yea. We need every beast-tamer other than me dead." Burp replied.

The others regarded him with discomfort as he opened of the supply drop boxes of guild-maker bands and tied them around Emma and Xander.

"Why?"

"There's a beast-tamer on one of these islands that'll be chosen by a dark-god." Burp tied the last guild-maker band in the box around his wrist. "And it's not me."