There was a slow drumming noise as the gate opening, which began to rapidly increase in tempo, until it was cut by a loud trumpet sound.

A lion emerged from the gate, tempest mana swirling around it. Travis raised his hands and started sketching out another one of his spells, and Liz nodded, as if that meant something.

Not sure entirely what she meant, I decided that locking it down was the best course of action, and overcharged my mana to cast a triple-layer Fungal Lock over the thing. Dusk must have reached the same conclusion, because she released her hand spell.

Rather than forging them together into a pair of giant hands, she conjured the hundreds of tiny ones, dragging it down and into place.

Liz summoned her shadow whips and lashed out, but instead of using them to harm, she wrapped one around each leg.

The lion let out a massive, bellowing roar, and I realized my mistake a moment too late.

The lion didn’t have just tempest mana, it had tempest and mental mana mixed together. I just hadn’t noticed, because everything here was permeated with mental mana, because it was an illusion.

The roar rang in my ears and struck at my mind, rattling like the call at the end of the world. Fear flooded through my body and mind.

This lion was too strong. It would kill me, kill Dusk, kill Kene, kill and kill and kill and kill. It would kill until it waded through an ocean of blood, then realize that wasn’t enough for it.

It was war.

It was…

Nonsense.

Kene’s spell resistance circle wove together with the Magister’s Body empowered mental and knowledge mana in my mind, as well as the natural abnegation that stopped the desolation in my gut from spreading, and I shook off the spell.

Our binding spells had dissolved in the grip of our fear, and the lion was charging us. Kene was spinning out more layers of generalized spell resistance around Liz and Travis, but it was left to Dusk and me to hold it off for now.

I called Briarthreads, overcharging them the best I could, then adding more. Just because it had fear effects didn’t mean it wouldn’t have strong claws, and if I was alone, I wanted every advantage.

I teleported right in front of its charge and in the moments where my aura pin slowed the monster, released my Briarthreads, alongside a scattering of Pinpoint Boneshards.

Dusk punched out, compressing her mana tightly, and a shockwave threw the lion back into the air.

I teleported back right in front of it as it landed and released another wave of attacks, but the lion wasn’t entirely stupid. It swiped at us with its claws, but the moment it tore through my briars, I teleported back and out of the way.

The lion charged at me, and I vanished, leaving an afterimage where I was. The lion tried to roar again, but I teleported into its face and Dusk hit it with another shockwave.

“Hold it down!” Travis shouted, and I repeated my earlier stunt with Fungal Locks. Liz leapt into the air next to me and whipped out.

A moment later, Traivs’ aura lanced through the lion, killing it. As it dissolved, the announcer cheered us on, and the next gate started to open.

Once again, we all piled into Dusk, and I used the moment to recharge some of my mana. I wasn’t awfully low, but my temporal gate was a bit behind, since it didn’t have a harvesting spell and I’d used it much more than my death gate.

It gave me even more appreciation for Dusk, honestly. If we’d had to burn mana surviving the water, winds, battles, and whatever was happening now, I didn’t think we’d have been able to make it this far now.

It might kind of be cheating on the challenges, but it felt pretty great.

When ten minutes had passed, we emerged to see a sand-filled arena, with winds carrying more sand through the area.

“Sand monster time?” I guessed.

“Probably,” Liz said. “Not like it’s going to be another Veilight Octopus…”

Travis started sketching again, and Liz gave him a look.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

“Do you have enough power?”

“Yes,” he said. “But I’ll need to recover during the next challenge, before we break a stick.”

Liz nodded, and we tensed as we waited for something to emerge.

This time, a swirling elemental sandstorm flowed out, blending tempest and telluric mana together in circular flows of combined mana.

Liz cursed and shook her head.

“We’re not gonna be able to Aura Lance through this, it’s dominion makes it too disparate. Let me try. Kene, give me your alchemy bombs?”

Kene passed them over, and she took one in each hand, then started sketching. Travis stopped sketching his own spell and sprinted forwards, drawing aura blades in either hand and swinging at the elemental.

I had to hand it to him, he was determined. His slices did nothing, but he certainly tried.

I tried to cast a Fungal Lock on the elemental, but it just sort of fell apart, with nothing to properly grab onto or physical body to grab.

“Get out!” Liz shouted as she jumped into the air. She soared up, and I noticed that her shoes were glowing.

Was that the source of her incredible jumping powers? That would explain a lot, actually.

Once she was overhead, she threw the two alchemy bombs down, then released a small bead of flame. The moment they were both right over the elemental, the bead expanded into a roaring ball of fire.

I’d seen third gate spells cast before, of course, and they were impressive. But Fireball is something of a famous spell for a reason. It’s often called the pinnacle of third gate destruction, and as the huge sphere of flame, easily twenty feet across, sent heat lashing across the battlefield, I could see why.

Then the vials broke, and two more explosions, substantially smaller, shook the room.

The winds that spun to make up the tempest part of the elemental dispersed, and the sand all melted into slag in an instant. Liz landed and casually hopped forwards.

“Primes!” I swore. “What was that?”

“Cyclone spells create a heat distribution, with a concentration of lunar energy at the top, and solar at the bottom,” Liz said, grinning like a cat who’d just caught a mouse. “By overheating the top, it blew the whole thing apart. Plus, the heat fused the sand into glass.”

I just nodded, and as the announcer went on about our victory, a spatial warp took us to our next challenge.

We appeared on the rocking deck of a boat, and all of us were wearing what looked rather like military outfits. Someone wearing a far less prestigious uniform came up to us and saluted.

“Captains,” they said. “We can see the first of the pirate queen’s three main vessels on the horizon. We expect we should be able to catch them by sundown, but they’re going to have more mana canons than us twice over, and will have stronger ward generators. Are you still confident in engagement at night?”

“Belay that,” Liz snapped. “Continue to trail at a distance until sunrise. Do we have invisibility wards?”

“Yes ma’am,” the soldier said. “But to run them, we’ll have to cut power to the defensive wards and the propellant spells.”

“Primes,” Liz said. “Alright, they’ll know we’re coming. We can outrun them, though, so bring us in close until we’re just out of firing range, then cut power to the propellants down to eighty percent, and reinforce the defensive wards.”

“Yes ma’am!” the soldier said, snapping out another salute and scurrying off to spread her orders.

“Not bad,” Kene said.

“My grandfather runs a naval guild,” she said. “I’m almost tempted to take this challenge… If only our golden rods worked on the third floor.”

“Please stop calling them that,” I said, and Kene snickered.

“What?” Liz said. “Not a fan of–”

She was cut off by me summoning a stink bomb into my hand threatening me.

Dusk peeped up, saying that she didn’t understand what was going on – why was Liz’s phrasing weird. I put the bomb back in order to put my fingers over her ears and shook my head disapprovingly at Liz.

Liz just laughed, then slapped Travis on the shoulder.

“Let me know when your mana’s recovered, big guy.”

Travis nodded, then wandered over to a bench to take a seat. Liz started walking over to the… prow? Of the ship. The front part that stuck out over the water – I wasn’t a ship person.

I looked at Kene and took my hands off Dusk’s ears.

“I’m going to look through the cargo hold,” I said. “Want to come?”

“Sure,” Kene said. “But since everything’s an illusion, doesn’t that mean that the cargo would be?”

“Probably,” I said. “But also, I’ve noticed the sage seems to like trickery, at least to some extent. I’ve gotten away with a lot of it in my trials. I think there’s decent odds that something’s there.”

We wandered downstairs, opening doors, but none of them seemed to lead to the cargo hold. We went down another few levels, then eventually spotted it, and opened it up.

I doubted on a real ship that it would have been left unlocked, but this was all a mental mana projection, and I planned to use that fact to my advantage. I strode in and closed my eyes, then extended my mana senses. Rather than search with my eyes and hands, I let my senses wash through the room, going over each bit of mental mana in the air, turning it over, dismissing it, and then moving on.

I wasn’t sure how long it took me, but I eventually found something. It almost slipped by me, since it was also made of mental magic, but it was just a bit more densely packed than our surroundings.

Affixing that point in my mind, I walked over to the box and pried it open to reveal a single shimmering purple vial. I tossed it to Kene, who evaluated it.

“It’s some sort of mental magic elixir,” they said. “Feels like a fourth gate growth supplement? Pretty expensive stuff, it could be worth selling in the next auction.”

They tossed it back to me, and I tucked it into Dusk’s realm.

I searched the rest of the cargo hold, but I didn’t find anything, so we headed back up top and relaxed. Two hours passed by, and then Travis stood.

“Mana’s recharged,” he said. Liz grinned and pulled out the stick Elio had given her, then snapped it.

There was yet another flicker of spatial magic, and we appeared in a blank room. Stone walls, floor, and ceiling, but nothing more – no doors, no window, no furnishings, nothing.

“Huh,” I said. “I wonder what the challenge is?”

As if he’d been waiting to say that, Travis’ eyes began to glow a bright purple color, and I sensed the strain of mental and death mana of an Asomatous, and a fourth gate one at that. He opened his mouth, and spoke in a voice that wasn’t his own.

“Me.”