Thalia let out a scream of pain as the fire scorched her from head to toe. As the spectacle faded though, she landed on the ground with a rugged set of red body armor covering her. Humanoid, but no longer human, she barreled forward, picked up Scarlet, and punched through the outermost ice wall.

Scarlet, used as a human grenade in a manner not dissimilar to Ryker, sent blood splattering everywhere after being punched through a wall of ice. Her blood began dissolving more and more of Albion’s ice castle—taking him out of both fights as he focused on flag-protection repairs.

On the other side of the battlefield, the trio of Ryker, Electra, and Celeste mounted a... decent offensive against the graduate student bone fortress. Electra and Celeste had paired and shot a beam mixed with pure energy and lightning to blow a hole through their outer wall. Electra had then blitzed the interior with a hand clamped onto Ryker. Hammer throwing him towards the heart of the base, she let him do his magic.

Flying through the air faster than the human body could handle, Ryker’s eyes sharpened as he furrowed his eyebrows. Over the course of a second, he detonated five different fingers to blow a hole through five consecutive walls. At the sixth, he detonated both his legs to create a small mushroom cloud in the interior of their Class Zero training room.

Skidding against the ground, he grimaced as he crashed straight into a bed of bone spikes set up by Isolde. “Fu... it hurts.”

“It’s okay to cuss,” Isolde used Ashe as a hammer, throwing him on top of Ryker. Spikes may have punctured through Ashe, but it weakened Ryker further.

Ashe, with his body burning from pain, stared up at the ceiling for a second. His languid atmosphere evaporated as a maniacal smile spread across his face. His body shook with silent laughter as he pushed himself up and off the spikes. Before long, his laughs became audible, then loud, then ear piercing.

Isolde, grimacing as to the difficulty in dealing with Ashe in his current state, waved her hand before retreating deeper into the bone fortress. As she left to take on a role similar to Albion’s, she encased Ashe in a suit of bone armor. Its interior, though, pierced Ashe with spikes from all directions.

“I can fight... fight to my heart's content,” Ashe marveled as his muffled voice came through the bone helmet. The laughter had stopped, replaced only with a wild and repressive air. Unsheathing a glowing sword, he twirled it in the air while walking forward through the destroyed walls of the fortress.

Celeste and Electra, on the other hand, elected to crouch down into combat positions rather than advance. Their eyes narrowed. They watched as Ashe crushed bone shards under each step.

After a few seconds, Ashe’s sword slowed its twirling in the air. It traced a slow path in the air as its owner tensed his arm. Not a second later though, the sound of bone shattering filled the air. Bone shards flew outward. Ashe reached backward and clenched down, his hand catching Ryker midair.

The bone shattering though, did not come from a signature Ryker explosion; Ashe had swung his sword at his own face to break the bottom of the mask. After revealing everything below his nose, blood poured down his face from the area still obscured by the mask. Unfazed, he raised his sword up to his mouth and licked the edge with a faint smile. “I savor this taste... and I hope you all will too.”

Without a moment of hesitation, he threw the now-healed Ryker forward towards Electra and Celeste before launching off the ground and blitzing them with a stream of attacks. Electra caught Ryker and began to backpedal, she zipped across the ground as Celeste took to the air. Yet, slowed by Ryker, Electra had to fend off a flurry of sword strikes coming in from every direction.

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Ashe left after images as he chased. With every passing moment, he got stronger, faster, and more fearless. Even as Ryker and Electra partnered to shock and explode him at the same time, he continued forward.

“He fights like Conrad,” Celeste murmured as she floated in the air.

I have no idea how to get involved. I need to collaborate when I attack as Angelica said but... how in this situation? How do I collaborate with them when they’re being suppressed by a stronger, faster, and far more aggressive Conrad?

“The main difference is that each of Conrad’s strikes are ultra-precise.” Electra grunted to Ryker, who she carried on her back. Electricity flowed out of her eyes as she fended off each of Ashe’s attacks. “He fights like a wild beast though, driven by nothing but instinct.”

“Seems like the instinct is pretty good though,” Ryker reached forward, catching the sword before detonating his hand.

Electra, with the opening left by where Ryker’s hand used to be, sent a punch forward towards Ashe. As she punched forward, purple lightning raced down her arm as she sent a Celeste-style laser beam right into Ashe’s chest. Ashe staggered and Electra backed off, leaving sparks in the wake of her footsteps.

The retreat of Electra marked the start of a new phase in battle: its standstill. Neither side could make any meaningful progress towards the flag of the other.

Angelica, sat in a chair on the side of the pitch, just tapped her foot while yawning. Both sides made pushes towards the other, but as it looked right now, they had achieved a sort of... equilibrium.

One side needed to make a gamble. To roll the dice. Otherwise a protracted war of attrition would occur and... well...

I don’t have time to wait that long. I have other things I’d like them to do. How long should i let it go on though?

Fifteen minutes maybe?

Ten...?

... fifteen sounds nice enough.

Angelica leaned over and grabbed a tablet from the table sitting next to her. She connected it to the screen on one wall and reset the timer she had set earlier. Hitting start, she nodded in satisfaction as it began counting down with blaring red numbers. “Fifteen minutes! Otherwise I’m declaring this a draw and nobody wins!”

Hopefully that’ll galvanize them a little.

And galvanize the timer did.

Both sides started by pulling all their members back into their own respective sides. Everyone hunkered down for a bit as they discussed strategy and reinforced their own defenses. Flags ended up being buried a little further as new shells of ice and bone covered the flags of the respective sides.

After two minutes, both sides emerged with hardened eyes, tensed muscles, and lips pressed into thin lines from the concentration and pressure now filling the room. They stared at each other, shifting as they took on various formations, jabbing, but not committing to any formal, frontal attack.

When one side moved though, both sides exploded into a glittering fight, bedazzled in explosions and powers.

Nyssa led off of the charge for her side. Transforming into a giant isopod encased in conductive metal, she swallowed Ryker before Electra rained a shower of lightning bolts on top of her. Electrified, she ran forward, plowing through the other team best she could, then, once near the bone walls, she rolled up into a ball and crashed through the outer layers.

Now a reflective mirror of sorts, she braced as Celeste sent a barrage of energy lasers at her. They reflected off her metallic shell and—though leaving marks of destruction—also sent energy scattering into the heart of the Graduate divisions base.

And... for a last step, she untransformed—this time though, in steps—she opened up her stomach to let Ryker out before shrinking and condensing her form as much as possible as Ryker detonated his legs to envelop the bone fortress in searing heat and shockwaves.

Their final offensive had begun.

“The numbers advantage truly is helpful,” Angelica tapped a finger against the table. “If they’re coordinating like this they’ll easily cross the chasm in ability, even if the graduate students stop holding back.”