“Why not?” Kene said with a shrug. “It would give us three effective skips. That should let us get through most of the more time consuming challenges.”

We spent the evening roasting some hot dogs over a campfire, before Kene and I ‘left’, hiding our portal in Liz’s tent in order to get into our room. It probably made a few of our competitors draw the wrong conclusion, but I wasn’t too horribly worried about that.

The following morning, Kene absorbed the rose he got from the auction, since enough time had passed since his use of the apple for the mana toxin to clear out, we each downed a nutrition potion, then we all headed to the open gates.

“What can we expect from the second floor?” Kene asked Liz.

“This is just based on previous years, so it could be wrong,” Liz said. “It usually takes about a week, with a combat challenge at the start and end. Both are pretty hard, usually. The middle often has more complex scenarios. Last cycle, twenty-whatever years ago, there was apparently a really complex scenario involving sneaking an entire nest of eggs out of the watch of a very angry chicken.”

I stared at her, unable to tell if she was joking. Even Travis, who was usually so still and unmoving that he could be mistaken for a stone, frowned slightly.

“I’m serious!” Liz said. “It could breathe out four different elemental breath attacks!”

She was cut off as spatial magic warped the air around us. We appeared in a large colosseum with seven – what other number would there be – gates around us. There was a roaring crowd, but as I focused my senses on them, they were almost entirely made of mental mana.

In fact, everything here was. It seemed more like an incredibly elaborate dream than it did real.

“And our first set of warriors is up!” came the booming voice of an announcer. “Can our fresh meat survive the arena? Or will they wind up being fed to the hounds?!”

With a loud grinding noise, one of the gates began to rumble and rise into the air. A moment later, a giant… thing… emerged.

I didn’t know what to call it. It had the body of a bear, but with eight legs instead of four, In place of its head was a mass of writhing serpents, all tangled together at the base of the neck, and every single serpent’s had a look of sheer bloodlust. Instead of a bear tail, the monster had a massive giraffe’s neck, but instead of a head, it was an axe.

When I’d just started off as an apprentice, Orykson had told me he detested the word monster, and that it was inaccurate.

I categorically agreed. A blink fox or estragon couldn’t reasonably be called a monster.

This… Thing… on the other hand?

Yeah, no. This was a monster.

“Gross, kill it with fire!” Liz shouted, thrusting her palm out. Contrary to her words, a third gate spear of ice lanced across the distance, covering a hundred feet in seconds and slicing into the Thing. The powerful attack severed one of the monster’s legs, and it let out a roar of pain. A moment later, Liz’s legacy released a copy of the same spell.

The Thing’s magic burst out of it then, peak third gate, and dense. Stronger than the estragon had been, about on par with the guardian drakes. But while their mana was complex, this was far simpler.

Physical and abengation mana swirled over its body, taking the complex, delicate power of Siobbhan’s fox-bird mana and replacing it with brute force. Armor plates shimmered over the Thing, and Liz’s second spell skittered away.

“Why are we always up against physical brutes?” Kene complained as he quickly cast a series of spells over us – first, his golden blessing, then layers of runes, then his spell resistance circles.

The spell resistance circles felt way stronger now, and were fused with trickles of energy too, making them more effective at pushing away beast magic – probably an effect of his bond with Siobbhan?

Siobbhan cast her own spells over us, leaving a tingling blue light mixing in with the gold, and we went to work.

Travis’ aura condensed around his arms and legs and he exploded forwards with a sharp, almost jerky haste. In a way, I was reminded of Qwin’s tattoos, but this traded away precision for power.

He crossed the space in an instant, and his aura focused into a blade, slamming down on the Thing’s head-snakes. The Thing’s armor rippled, but didn’t break.

Liz started walking to one side and released a barrage of ice knives, each one exploding on contact, and I teleported into the air above the monster. Dusk punched out with her shockwave spell, and under the triple assault, even the monster’s powerful shields shattered.

Travis’ aura blade swept through the snakes, and they fell to the floor, dead.

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That didn’t seem to stop the monster, though. It swung its axe-bladed tail right towards me, and I had to teleport out of the way. The blade came down against Travis, who’s aura forged itself into a shield over his head and took the blow. He staggered, pushed back, and Liz and Dusk both leapt on the opportunity. Dusk started sketching, and Liz’s shadow released a barrage of shadow darts, slamming into the Thing from every angle.

The tail swung to the side to strike at Liz, and she quickly took several steps back, her dart trail trailing away.

Dusk’s spell completed at the same time as Travis’ own. A needle-like spear of sand punched into the Thing from above, right as Travis released an equally thin beam of aura.

In that moment, I got a great example of the difference between generalist mages like myself and Dusk, and combat mages, like Liz or Travis.

Dusk’s sand landed and damaged the creature, but Travis’ beam punched through the being’s entire body.

That was enough for it to slump to the ground, and Kene quickly cast some refreshing spells over us as the announcer did a bit of drumming up the crowd.

Then the next gate opened up, and we all tensed.

Water began to flood the arena, and I arched an eyebrow. I’d been expecting to see a monster of some sort.

The water level started to rise rapidly, and Siobhan began to shake herself to shed it. Dusk bubbled like a stream, and I nodded, teleporting just over her and opening a portal.

“How about in here? You can remain high and dry.”

“You’re really making me wish I had spatial magic,” Kene griped as he and Siobbhan stepped inside. Travis shot me a look.

“Can I enter?”

Dusk made a hesitant sound, then shook her head no. He just grunted and nodded.

“Liz?” I asked.

“You know,” she said delicately, as the water had risen to her chest. “I think I’m starting to see why you ingrained so many non-combat spells. Waterbreathing is useful. If you don’t mind, Dusk?”

Dusk shrugged, and Liz swam to the surface, taking Kene’s hand to haul her through the portal.

I unlocked my left leg, then took a step forwards, casting Immovable Lock onto it, then unlocking my right leg and repeating it, slowly walking into the air and keeping ahead of the rising levels. I watched Travis, curious to see how the aura-focused combat mage would get out of this.

He clenched his fist and solidified his aura into a shield, partially covering him. Another cast created another shield, then another. He ran out of usable aura then, but kept casting, calling ordinary physical magic shields. They looked… weaker… than the normal shield spell – maybe a side effect of his aura? I wasn’t sure.

Still, before the water rose over his head, he’d wrapped himself in a cocoon of shields.

The water level rose until it was nearly ten feet high, then held there for thirty seconds before it started to spin.

A whirlpool started to form, and I could see Travis’ shields starting to crack. I gave Dusk a look.

“You’re sure that you can’t let him in?”

She said that he gave her a bad feeling – that was why she wouldn’t let him in before the disease spell… But fine. I took a deep breath and teleported into the water.

Teleporting through water was harder than through air, burning through energy much faster. If I hadn’t done so much work recently to keep expanding my total mana, and had Beast Mage’s Soul expand the amount of energy my body could hold, it would have put a serious tax on my reserves.

As was, it was hard, but far from impossible. Dusk snapped open the portal next to Travis, as I teleported back into open air, and the moment Travis was through, his shields dissolved, and Dusk’s portal snapped shut.

I just hung in the air above the water, Immovable Lock not taking too much power to maintain.

The whirlpool spun for ten minutes, and I suspected that if Dusk hadn’t possessed an easy cheat card for this challenge, we would have failed to keep our heads above water.

After ten minutes, the water level started to recede, until it was only knee-deep. Well, knee-deep for me. For Liz, Kene, and Travis, it was probably mid-thigh.

I sighed. I really wished that I’d gotten taller from my full gate spells…

Maybe when I used the Alter Truffles during my third gate breakthrough? That would be nice.

It stopped draining, and a new gate started to rumble open. I teleported down to just over the surface of the water, then let myself fall the last foot or so, while Dusk opened the portal to let everyone out again.

As soon as she stepped out, Liz grinned.

“They gave a lunar battlemage a battlefield of water? This will be easy…”

The gate finished sliding open, and… Nothing happened. I glanced around, and then flooded the area with my sensory spells.

“To your left!” I shouted. Kene jumped back, but Liz and Travis… didn’t.

Liz swung both of her hands and I felt her third gate mana condense and overcharge. Four massive slices of water, not unlike the one she sometimes launched from her shadow whips, ripped through the air. A moment later, their echoes did the same, and Travis leapt forward, cutting down with an aura blade in each hand.

Whatever the thing had been, after a furious assault like that, it was no longer that thing. The announcer cheered overhead, and I shifted uncomfortably, very glad about the fact that this all seemed to be projections.

Dusk opened a portal to her realm, explaining that she figured that the next gate would be environmental again, and we all stepped through.

Sure enough, winds began to scour through the arena shortly after, and I thought I was starting to put together the logic – any mage with flight could survive the massive whirlpool, since it didn’t go that high. This would weed out those who’d cheated in the first round, and ensure they didn’t just have one trick.

Or if they did, that one trick was very good.

When the winds grew so intense they started battering at the wards of the portal, Dusk snapped it shut and we waited. I used Internal Pocketwatch to track the time, and then…

Rip!

With a hard wrench, the spell ingrained itself into my spirit. It was something of a relief – my temporal magic was far and away my weakest area, so it was nice to have such a clearly foundational spell ingrained. With its ingraining, I felt… Different.

It wasn’t that I had a clock constantly in the back of my mind or anything like that, but at the same time, I was acutely aware of how time passed, and how long my every action took to complete.

Combined with my powerful mana sense, especially my spatial sense, and it was… Strange. I wondered if this was how people who used Analyze Physicality felt – I knew they got a sense for forces and speeds.

Kene noticed my expression and shot me a curious look, but I just shook my head to let him know it was nothing.

When ten minutes had passed, I opened the portal again. Sure enough, the winds were dying down, and we all emerged, battle spells tensed, as we prepared for whatever would come out of the fifth gate.