The dim moonlight shimmers through the half closed window. The light hits Zerx in his eyes, the boy begins to slowly wake from his slumber. As his eyes open, he begins to hear noises of what sounds like talking and general conversation in front of him. Once his eyes open, Zerx doesn’t immediately stand up, he takes a few seconds to think to himself. Trying to regain memories of what led him here. His mind flashes back to the magic knight conference in the main room of the ship, and that's all he can seem to remember. Realizing this is the first part of the event, he sits up, looking around the room until his eyes narrow towards his teammates.

“Riley..?”

Zerx’s eyes narrow towards the other boy in the room, he recognizes him as Dulse. The same kid that Azra saved previously. He can’t help but think how convenient this is. He takes notice of a special gold and brown glove on Dulse’s arm, the glove has 10 lines on that gleam with a different color on each, slowly going from green to a blood red. Zerx begins to think to himself “That wasn’t there before… Seems like it might have something to do with his magic, kinda like Azra’s sword.” Zerx jumps up from the bed, looking at the other 2 boys, Riley looks towards his adopted brother and snarkily remarks “Glad you decided to join us, Dopty.” Zerx rolls his eyes while Dulse looks confused at this nickname. “Yeah whatever…” Zerx stretches the collar of his magic knight uniform, clearly uncomfortable in such tight clothing. He drops back onto his bed and says “So, what's the goal of this round?”

“I’ve studied each round of the course, this round is typically for more experienced troops, maybe around round 3 - 4? But I guess they’re trying something new this year.” Riley says and looks at the door “After everybody in the group wakes up, zombies from a royal knight's magic will invade the room. Death is very possible, we have to beat through the zombies and traverse the ship, eventually we have to defeat the man with the zombie powers. He's a higher ranking knight so we need all of our teammates to stay alive.” “How long do we have? I'm the last one to wake up.” Zerx replies to his brother, “I’d guess 2 to 3 minutes, So we don't have long, the timer starts from the moment you wake up, and you sat on the bed regaining your composure for a minute or 2.” Riley turns to the silent Dulse. He doesn’t really seem to have much to add to the conversation. “Just stick together, teamwork is vital for this trial.” Riley stands up after he finishes that sentiment, He looks toward the wooden door with anticipation, waiting for the zombies to burst in any second.

“There's an end goal, But i'm not sure how or where it is…” Dulse says to Riley and Zerx, finally gaining some guts to speak up. “Let's hear it” Zerx says, both Riley and Zerx turn towards Dulse, who seems to be full of anxiety and very nervous. “T- There are 3 gems… in 3 different locations of the boat… we have to connect them for the-” Before Dulse could finish his sentence, the door swings open, and a small zombie crawls in. Its body seems to be weak, it crawls into the room and looks up at the 3 men. Riley takes notice, the zombies red eyes don't seem to be normal… It seems.. Special. Zerx rushes in without a second thought, the second the door swings open he's already on top of it with his blinding speeds. He blasts towards the zombie, swinging his fist down with extreme force. His fist slams down onto the zombies head, its blood splatters onto the floor and a bit onto Zerx’s hand. The boy shakes his hand a bit and winces, “Ewwwww. zombie blood.” Riley and Dulse both look at each other, and then look at Zerx, Riley speaks first “Let's not act brash now.” “While you sit there talking, a bunch of these Zombozo’s are comin’.” Right as the 3 boys look out the door, pieces of the last zombie seem to start crawling, its arm, which are still intact, grab onto Zerx’s leg.

“What the-” Zerx tries to jump away from the zombie in the door entrance, he looks down and sees the zombie's face starting to come back together. Something strange floods through Zerx’s body, for some reason he feels… trapped. Stuck. Like he's wallowing in pain and darkness. While Dulse looks scared, focusing on the zombie coming back together that's attached to Zerx’s leg, Riley is focused on the door entrance. Way more zombies seem to be flooding in. They begin to start trying to crawl in, some moving slow but some are a lot quicker. Riley puts mana into his hands, he launches a wave of it at the door that materializes into a slab of stone. The stone lands in the door entrance, and Riley lifts index and middle finger, the slab of stone rises and blocks the door entrance. “That should buy us some time.. I doubt they have a long attention span.” Zerx kicks the zombie grabbing his leg with his other leg, it crashes into the wall, its head exploding on impact. Despite throwing the Zombie off of him, he still feels stuck, and imagines himself in pitch darkness. Riley’s snap wakes him back into reality, as he launches a bullet of stone at the zombie, the bullet pierces the zombie's chest and gets stuck in the wall. Riley then claps his hands, at this motion the bullet expands into an X shape that traps the zombie to the wall. “What the hell..? They can regenerate?” Zerx says, looking towards his comrades “Nobody told me about that” “Because we didn’t fight them yet you dolt.” Riley insults his brother, and Zerx is clearly ticked off by his comment. “Either way! You guys were sitting here talking about being prepared and you didn’t know they could regenerate?!” “Obviously we won't know every nook and cranny, But I guess your frontal lobes might not be fully developed yet.” Zerx, who's already still off from the visions the zombie made him see, looks at Riley Pissed off. Dulse gets between them before any more fighting can continue. “Hey! Hey!” Dulse says keeping the two apart, “Let's try to focus on the zombies outside the door first?”

Zerx backs away and turns toward the door “Fine. Lets rush em and take em out.” Riley facepalms and looks at Zerx “Why not take this time to finish the conversation we were having earlier? That logically makes the most sense.” “Fuck your logic. Im tryna get to the action. If we stay here longer MORE zombies might appear, making it even harder for us to get through.” Riley looks at Zerx with a blank expression, he remembers Azras words to him when they were kids “Never Argue with Zerx when he's got a decision in mind! He's very dense, nothings gonna get through to him” He wants to ignore him, but his pride is getting in the way of his tolerance. “You have the intelligence of a barbarian and a goblins halfbred child.” “Yada Yada Yada, keep your snarky remarks to yourself Rai Rai.” Zerx has a snarky smile on his face, and that pisses Riley off even more. “Guys! No!” Riley sighs and decides to listen to Dulse “Carrying on this any longer would waste more time. Finish what you were saying earlier, Dulse.” “W- Well… We have to connect those 3 gems so we have a way off the boat, to stop the zombie invasion… This test is more about working with a large number of people! You can't fight any of the 3 gem holders Solo Dolo! You’d die.” “Teamwork..?” Zerx scoffs at the mention of working together “Working with these 2 is gonna be a challenge on its own… Man where's Azra…” as Zerx finishes his thought, he hears Riley crack his knuckles. “Well. Let's find Azra and her team, and we can work with our forces from there.” “Those are the words I'm looking to hear!” Zerx clenches his fists, and they spark, a purple energy erupts from his hands. Dulse puts on a brave face, he charges something in his gauntlet glove esc weapon. The 3 boys run towards the stone wall blocking the entrance, leaving the red eyed zombie in the room on its own. Riley drops the wall, and they rush into the hallway, which seems to be flooded with zombies.

August 28th 4070 - 8:00pm (2 hours before the invasion began)

We got a view of the captain's cove, in the room sat 3 people. Ezekiel Newman, Jaiden Da Monta, and Dohjo, the same man with the brown hair covering his eyes who had the scuffle with Eiko Alphonia. “This year got some stuff competitors, all with some interesting forms of magic.” Jaiden said, looking over to his 2 fellow instructors. “Looking through the files, there's only really 1 person I find interesting.” Ezekiel says, looking down at a file in his hands. “I have a couple I'm keeping my eyes on. Who peaks your interest, Zeek?” Ezekiel looked back at Jaiden after this question, “Zerx Cavendine. The brother of the girl that pestered us earlier.” “What's so special about that guy out of all Royalty? I'm more interested in Riley Cavendine if anything.” “His power. The boy can't generate any Mana whatsoever, so he has to rely on soul energy alone.” “Doesn’t that make him pretty useless? Soul Energy is only really good to support your magic ability, and since Mana manifests into Magic, its natural advantage is gone.” Ezekiel smiled at his comrades' words, he looked up to the ceiling and said “The boy figured out a way to reverse soul energy.” This caught Dojho’s attention, who seemed to have been dozing off into his own world. “W- What?” Jaiden said, looking at Ezekiel.

“Soul Energy typically has a positive property, creating things rather than destroying things. It creates mana, it generates specific emotions, things like that. But that boy… I'm not even sure how he did it myself, hell he might not even know, but he figured out how to Swap his Soul Energy to destroy instead of create.” Ezekiel tossed Zerx’s file for his registration on the table where the 3 sit. “He calls it, Berserker Soul.”

August 28th 4070 - 10:15pm (Beginning of Magic Knight Exams)

Azra, Nora, and Adora rush through the hallways infested with zombies. The zombies are wearing a variety of clothes that range from torn and ragged t-shirts to tattered suits that look as if they were once a formal attire. The most striking feature about these zombies is their glowing green skin, a dead giveaway that these undead are not to be messed with. Their eyes are sunken and hollow, giving them a menacing and almost soulless appearance. They also rotate between sizes, they go short and disheveled to tall and imposing. All 3 of them slash their way through the zombies surrounding them. “I’ll hold back on my magic..” Azra thinks to herself “Might as well save it for any big battles that might come up..” Azra looks back at her teammates that seem to be tearing apart zombies with little to no real issues. Nora's eyes seem dark, and lifeless while she tears the zombies apart, unlike how she looked when talking in the room a few minutes prior. Adora on the other hand has hardly said a word to either of the girls, swinging her massive sword around and tearing through a bunch of zombies at once. The gang is stopped in their tracks when they see a MASSIVE, 4 armed, red eyed zombie. This Zombie is different, it has eyes. Eyes that beam with a bright blood red glow. The zombie has drool and blood dripping from its mouth, as it devours something. Azra’s eyes narrow and see the zombie ripping someone apart, limb from limb. She recognizes them as the triton she talked to a few hours ago. This makes her heart ache, even despite not knowing them well, a person she knew died, right in front of her no less.

Azra is seen to be physically getting angry, clenching the hilt of her blade. Nora and Adora look at her, somewhat taken aback by this personality switch. “That must’ve been someone close to her.. Poor girl..” Nora thinks to herself while looking forward. The zombie turns towards them, and spits out something behind himself. It's a torn apart trident, covered in blood and saliva. The zombie starts to sprint towards them, Crawling on the ground with its legs and 2 of its arms, with the other 2 in front of it, reaching out to grab Azra. Azra steps back, but grabs her sword firmly by its hilt, she rushes in towards the zombie as the words from her poem flow back into her mind.

the moment, I am alive

The music's energy, I strive

To capture the essence, of its vibe

To dance like a flame, so alive

Azra's movements were mesmerizing to behold, as she spun her sword around her body with a fluid grace that almost seemed to dance. As the sword swung through the air, a scarlet red fire blossomed around her, creating the illusion of a living flame that danced and flowed with each movement of her blade. The sight of the flaming sword was both exhilarating and terrifying, as it gave the sense of a great power that could be unleashed at any moment. “Scarlet Nova.” Azra blasts through the side of the zombie, creating a crater in the beast's side covering her in blood. Azra winces noticing how much blood is on her, but then looks back at the zombie. The attack destroyed 2 of the zombie's arms on its left side and blew out its leg eye, also slashing a bit of its left leg and different parts of its flesh on the left side of its body. Azra lifts her sword at the zombie, clearly ready to take it out with her next attack. The zombie then ROARS at Azra, it charges up some spit and launches acid blood at Azra. This throws her off her game, she wasn’t expecting the zombie to have a type of magic.”None of the other ones had Magic?!” Azra narrowly jumps on the ship's window. Holding onto the frame and barely dodging the blood that spits out of the zombies mouth. Adora swoops in from behind, slamming her sword down into the zombies right shoulder. Her sword gets a bit stuck as the zombie turns its head and looks directly at her, trying to unjam her sword from its shoulder. “Fuck.” The zombie spits acid blood down at Adora, who's in point blank range of the attack. Her face is flooded with Acid and she falls back, sword still planted in shoulder. Right as the zombie tries to pull Adora’s sword out, the sword transforms. The transformation slips out of the shoulder directly before it fully materializes. The glowing light appears to be Adora..? Azra and Nora are both very confused, as Adoras body transforms into the sword that was just inside the beast's shoulder.

Adora falls back to the ground and grabs her sword covered in acidic blood, she shakes the blade and looks up at the zombie. “You almost got me with that one, Good job.” While the zombie is still looking over at Adora confused, Azra jumps back in. She once again attempts to move her sword around her in a movement that mimics a dance, but attempting that in the air wasn’t the greatest idea, as Azra messes up her movement, and her blade erupts with an unsynchronized flame. She swings her sword, jamming it down with the flame embarking the zombies shoulder, the same shoulder Adora was just stuck inside. The flame scatters throughout the zombie's entire arm, it gets set ablaze and the zombie stumbles over. This shakes Azra, she flips over once the zombie throws its head forward, and she falls back next to Adora in front of the beast, crashing to the ground with her sword jammed into the zombie's Shoulder. The zombie charges up, it launches a wave of bloody acid towards Adora and Azra, who are both laying on the floor after their failed team effort. The blood begins to rush towards the 2 of them, slowly flooding the narrow hallway. The hallway doesn’t have many ways to go, there are a few locked room doors with claw marks all over the wood, and blood protruding underneath the crevices. The blood rushes toward the 2 girls, as Adora barely stands to try to defend her and her teammate.

Nora jumps from behind them, slamming her axe onto the ground in front of her partners, making a huge ramp that seems to block the blood, as it melts through to the bottom layer of the ship. Nora then jumps up, battle axe in hand, and jumps onto the wall to propel herself towards the zombie. Nora spins her axe and slashes directly through the creature's abdomen, going right through the beast like a rocket. She then leaps once again, slashes the zombie through its dome. Nora's shy demeanor seems to be gone, she has a sick smile on her face as she tears it limb from limb. As she appears on the other side after slashing the top of the beast's head, she tosses her axe with all her strength, tearing directly through the monster's chest exclaiming her attack name “Triple Axel.” The zombie explodes at this, erupting and spouting blood everywhere in the room. Nora's eyes go from a dark, hollow state back to their original light brown color, seemingly meeting the end to her bloodlust.

“N- Nora…” Adora and Azra say at the same time, jaws dropping to the floor at her sudden switch in demeanor. She went from a very bloodthirsty and rabid, to a very shy and timid stance once again, battle axe behind her back as she stares down at the floor. “S- Sorry… Did I overdo it..?” Azra and Adora look at each other, and Azra says “You know what, Keep doing exactly what you’re doing little lady.” She stands up and dusts herself off, walking through the rubble and broken blue floor tiles, she grabs her sword which seems to be covered in zombie blood. “Yuck…” She swings around her sword and closes her eyes, trying to avoid getting it in her eyes and touching it in general. Adora stands up and walks ahead of the other 2. “Azra, are you afraid of blood?” “I'm not afraid of it.. Just a slight phobia. Something from my past is all…” “You wanna become a Royal knight with a blood phobia…?” Nora responds to Azra with a sound of concern but also intrigue. “Yeah it's dumb, I know. But that's not what matters.” Azra says, she knows she's partially lying, “I didn’t really choose this… But I’ve always wanted to become one… so I have to go through the exam like any other applicant.” “We shouldn’t be focusing on me right now!” Azra says dismissively, as she continues to try to shake the remaining blood off of her sword.

“How the hell could that zombie use blood magic?!” Azra exclaims looking at her 2 teammates for answers. Nora seems just as confused, replying “All the other ones didn’t have any… what's different about this one…” Adora cracks her knuckles and says “Easy, the zombies with glowing red eyes are placed like obstacles. Any zombie with glowing red eyes has a special magic power, and won't stop following the person who attacked it first till it has killed them or it gets killed itself.” Azra continues to clean her sword, using a cloth she found on the floor to wipe off the zombie blood. She looks at her teammates, still trying to make sense of everything that has happened. "I thought zombies were just mindless creatures. How do the red eyes make them any stronger?" she asks, a hint of concern in her voice. Nora nods in agreement, "No idea, but this is like nothing we've seen before. We need to be extra careful from now on." Adora steps forward, "Let's keep moving forward. We can't afford to waste any more time. We have to see if we can find another team…” “I just hope we don't run into anymore of those red eyed pests…” Azra says, as the trio continue to run down the deep dark hallway. They continue to move and see groans and roars coming from deep down. They feel a high amount of soul energy, exerting a lot of force as it weighs them down. “W- What the…” Azra says and looks ahead, her eyes take notice of 6 gleaming red eyes in the distance of the hallway….

Zerx, Riley, and Dulse rush down their hallway, Zerx and Riley bash apart any zombie they come across with just their bare hands, and Dulse stands behind them, trying to avoid using his magic if possible. “I have limited uses… its best if I save this… especially for the other waves of the exam…” Riley begins to feel something strange, hes not sure what but he starts trying to pick up on their surroundings. “Black uniform…. Shattered door…. Room 215….” The group continues to run and he keeps trying to pick up on things he sees on the floor, but it seems… endless. Black Uniform. Shattered Door. Room 215. Black Uniform. Shattered Door. Room 215. Black Uniform. Shattered Door. Room 215. Riley takes notice that they seem to also be fighting the same zombies over and over… “If my theory is correct… then Zerx should hit this one with…” “RIGHT HOOK!” Zerx blasts a zombie that comes around the corner to attack them with his right hook, and Riley claps. “Wait.” Dulse and Zerx stop running and look at Riley. “Whats the big deal now smart alec?”

“Don't you realize we’re going in a circle…? Like a LOOP or something, You’ve used your right hook like 6 times now.” “To be fair, its a good right hook.” Zerx laughs at his own joke, as he looks around their surroundings. “But you’re right, I noticed we were going down the same path over and over…” “Its a strange phenomenon… I don't fully understand it either.” Dulse says looking around, realizing they’ve gone past this same way multiple times. “Man… Has anything even happened on the outside? Has any time passed or is it still the same time we all woke up??? When did the time loop even start…?! W- W-” Zerx slaps Dulse for his rambling. “Yada Yada YADA. All that chit chat isn’t gonna get us out of the time loop. Focus.” “Y- You’re right… Thanks Zerx.” “No problem little buddy.” Riley interejects into the interaction “I’m just happy we weren’t wasting any magic or soul energy fighting those zombies… Would have been a lot of wasted energy.” “Yeah.. That's true” Zerx stretches in response, Surprisingly Riley by him actually agreeing, but he continues “Lets try something. Me and Dulse will go backwards, and you go forward.”

Zerx punches his palm with his fist, but looks at the other 2 “Alright then. If we meet up again, We’ll figure out another way out. Maybe going 2 ways at once will shatter the time loop or something-”, “B- But what if we don't see eachother again?” “I’ll figure something out little bro, Trust me.” Zerx puts his fist out to give Dulse a fist bump. “Even if we don't meet up again and I die, You got Riley backing you up. He's strong.” Riley is surprised by Zerx’s words, they make him smile a bit and he looks at Zerx. “Don't die on Azra, Dopty.” Zerx doesn’t seem to get annoyed this time, he smirks and as Dulse returns his fist bump he says “Yeah, I got it Rai Rai.” The 3 split up, Zerx goes forward, while Dulse and Riley go backwards. As Riley and Dulse begin to move backwards, they feel they suddenly feel a sense of unease wash over them. But behind them they realize the ground behind them splits, as if they’re already escaped the time loop. They feel a high altitude of soul energy amplifying throughout their section of the hallway. Dulse falls to his knees, barely having the ability to stand. Riley continues to walk, getting slower and slower with every step. His body begins to feel like he's carrying thousands of bricks on his back. “My soul energy is strong…. All those unfinished Pacts are catching up to me…” Riley smirks as he kneels, hearing footsteps coming from the other side of the hallway. Red eyes gleam onto the 2 boys, feeling heavy amounts of soul energy.

Zerx dashes down the hallway, jumping on the wall, to the ceiling and swinging down, propelling himself forward. He laughs, he seems to be having fun doing it. But while Zerx is off guard, he hears a noise. He looks into the room with the shattered door, it seems like the time loop is continuing, as he's passed the same door multiple times now. Zerx’s eyes narrow towards the entrance of the room with the shattered door, he sees 10 slimy green fingers. He sees something that seems to be crawling out of the room door and he recognizes it. The same Red Eyed zombie from before, the one he obliterated in one attack. “It was you.” He rushes towards the zombie, dropping down from the ceiling attempting to blitz it and one shots it again, but the Red Eyed, small, green zombie dodges his attack. The zombie swiftly pulls its head down to dodge his attack, with Zerx slamming his fist into the door frame and making a dent in it. Zerx flips over “What the-” the zombie covers its head in a purple hoodie, that's attached to the rest of his shirt. It claps its hands, and opens them up again. Zerx rushes towards the zombie, charging his purple soul energy into his fist attempting to crush its skull again. But right before his fist could make contact, the zombie began to speak.

“έξοδος ψυχής, μαύρο κενό.”

(Translation: Soul Output, Black Void)

As the zombie finishes its incantation, a black sphere appears in its place. The void begins to suck anything close to it, including Zerx, into it. It feels like he's being pulled into a vacuum, with all the oxygen being sucked out of his lungs.Zerx's vision begins to blur, and he struggles to hold onto consciousness as the void continues to grow larger and more powerful. He can feel the life force being pulled out of him, like he's being shredded apart, molecule by molecule. Zerx feels his strength fade, as he gets pulled into the dark void. Inside of the black sphere, Zerx stands on nothing. It feels like there's no gravity in the room, as he stands up in pitch black darkness. The zombie sits across from him, hands still left open, covered in white energy. Zerx stares back at the zombie, with a smile on his face. “You’ll be a challenge for me to defeat.” Zerx dashes toward him, charging his purple energy into his hands as he attempts to full throttle and crush the beast's head. After 1 step, Zerx begins to fly through the dark void at extreme speeds.

“Χώρος”

(Translation: Space)

At the words that Zerx can't understand, his punch swings down but it stops right before it makes contact, he gets blasted back to where he once stood, he crashes into nothingness. He doesn’t quite understand it as his eyes widen. “It seems like whatever he says in this void, becomes law? Or maybe it activates, I'm not sure… But whatever he said knocked me back pretty far. Yet I took no damage…. What did I crash onto? Solid Air?”

“Εγκοπή”

(Translation: Slash)

When Zerx blinks, a slash mark appears on his arm. The sleeve of his Royal Knight outfit falls off, Zerxs arm begins to bleed as a deep wound appears in his arm at those words. Before Zerx can react to the second cut arriving on his arm, once again, the zombie speaks. “Εγκοπή” Another slash appears on his shoulder, a gash appears and his sleeve falls off, he slumps over a bit from this. “W- What the hell….” Zerx looks up at the zombie, now with a mixture of disgust, confusion, and fear. He can't believe that the zombie's incantations are affecting him even in this strange pocket dimension. He knows he needs to find a way to defeat the zombie somehow, but without understanding the zombie's language, it's unclear how he can do that. Zerx must stay focused and try to figure out a way out of this situation before it's too late. “The others are counting on me…”

Zerx looks at the zombies hands covered in white energy, he can hardly make it out, but 3 of its 10 fingers are down. “So you have a limit! It's said 3 things and now 3 fingers are down… So I just have to-” “Εγκοπή'' As Zerx hears the zombie start talking, he decides to test something out. He completely falls over, attempting to dodge the word being used. He hears a gust of wind blow past his head, it narrowly cuts Zerx’s eyebrow, and long brown hair above his left eye. He begins to bleed from the top of his head, due to his hair, the scar above his left eye is revealed. It's a scar that goes directly through it from his eyebrow right near his nose. “I CAN DODGE IT! HAHAHA!” Zerx laughs like a madman as he jumps up, covering his fist in purple energy ignoring the part of the slash that did hit him.

“YOU’RE FINISHED!” “Χώρος” Zerx turns to his side, but is still blasted down by the words. He crashes back onto the nothingness, as steps back up and bolts towards the zombie like this is nothing but a regular tuesday. He takes notice at the zombies hands, both of its thumbs and index fingers are down, and its left middle finger are down. Zerx sends a wave of Purple soul energy through his shoes, tearing them apart, propelling himself toward the zombie. He covers his hands in purple energy again and he begins to think “ONE HIT! IT'S ALL I NEED~” Zerx is directly above the zombie, he tosses his fist down onto the zombie, but right before his fist can connect…

“Τοίχος έκρηξης”

(Translation: Blast Wall)

Zerx slams his fist into the wall, and gets launched backward, he feels his arm snap as he gets sent backwards, he falls onto the ground with his broken arm. Hes barely able to stand, as he hears the words “Εγκοπή'.” Zerx attempts to duck, but the slash is actually aimed in the direction in which Zerx was moving, slashing into his chest, tearing into his uniform and throwing him backward. The boy can barely stand, his thoughts begin to blur as he starts to bleed out of his mouth. He can slowly feel his body give up as he stumbles, his blurry vision allows him to barely see its remaining 3 fingers, and its red eyes gleaming towards him through the pitch darkness with hatred and malice. Zerx begins to smile, slowly accepting his death. “Dying being outclassed by a better opponent… A death fit for someone like me…” He says to himself out loud, as he kneels.

“Dying before me? Well ain't that something… Dopty.”

Zerx imagines Riley saying in his head “Nah… I can't let that dickhead outlive me… I gotta stay alive…. For Azra too… Dulse….” Zerx barely stumbles back onto his feet and his head begins to fill with memories. Memories he wanted to bury for so long, but they flood back into his brain like a title wave. 9 Years ago. September 10th 4061. The day he and Azra were adopted by the Cavendine family….

“My eyes are so heavy…. I can barely stand…. How…. How did we get here….” The young boy thought to himself. He turned, he saw a younger girl with scarlet red hair, and green eyes laying on the ground with tears in her eyes, in rags and dirty clothes. He took notice of his surroundings, they were standing next to a window, in a room with a lot of books, potions, gems and things of that nature around them. He looked up in front of him, and saw a woman with long gray hair with a tiny boy beside her, shorter gray hair and green eyes. The woman seems to be holding a blade, sword in hand with her son behind her. “W- Wait! Lady We don't mean any-” Before the boy could finish his sentence, the woman dashed towards the 2 young children. *SLASH* The woman swings down. The young boy jumps in the way to protect the girl with scarlet red hair. The blade cut straight through the young boy's eye, as it begins to bleed down, the younger girl stares in shock as her brother.. Just jumped in the way to protect her from this attack that definitely would have killed her. The blood. The Blood. The Blood. It drips in front of the young girl, something she had never seen in person. “Disgusting THIEVES!” The woman yelled, and begins to stomp on the young boys head, it slams onto the ground with a loud thud and she continues to stomp him out. “Not even a month after the death of the king and yet you VERMIN crawl into my castle as if I have no strength of my own!” The young girl watched in shock as the woman stomped out her older brother. “Please..” The boy pleaded, barely managing to get his sentence out. “I- I don't care… what you do to me…” The woman continued to stomp on the boy, but chose to listen to his words. “PLEASE DON'T KILL MY LITTLE SISTER!”

Zerx snaps back into reality. Grabbing onto the scar in which that woman, Diana Cavendine, slashed that day. “If I could go back in time… I’d do the same thing.” The zombie seems to clearly have had enough of looking at Zerx, and it puts down its final 3 fingers and at its maximum volume yells

“Καλούπι!!!!!”

(Translation: DIE!!!!!)

Zerx smiles, this unlocked memory gives him more will to live, and as that wave rushes towards him. Zerx unleashes his purple energy. It blasts and protrudes from his body. It erupts around him and counteracts the wave of energy. Zerx has completely unloaded 5% of his Soul Energy. His broken arm snaps back into place, as the wounds on his body begin to close. The Soul Energy output envelops the pocket dimension, flooding it with his purple energy. The zombie sits in shock and awe, not really understanding what's going on but is pushing its full energy output into its attack, 100% of the zombies Soul Energy vs 5% Zerx’s Aura. It hardly even matters, as Zerx begins to laugh like a maniac. He screams “LET'S GO FOR 6 PERCENT!!! BERSERK. OUTRAGE!”

Zerx’s energy erupts through the entire ship. The energy can be felt by every contestant, zombie and captain on the ship and in the area, it even floods the seas surrounding the ship itself. Rileys opponent, the zombie with high amounts of soul energy splats right in front of him, the wave of zombies in front of the 3 girls implode. A bunch of zombies erupt throughout the entire ship due to Zerx’s soul energy. Nora and Adora dawn confused expressions after this burst, with the 2 girls falling to their knees after this burst. Azra doesn’t fall, however, she simply smiles to herself, not knowing what happened to him, but she dawns great confidence in herself and her own abilities. “He's down.” She says to herself outloud, Nora and Adora look at each other and then look at her confused. “Who's down?” “Doesn’t matter. Let's keep going girls! We have to find any people still up while we have a chance!”

Zerx falls to the ground in front of the main door where they left, the zombie is nowhere to be seen, seemingly eviscerated into nothingness. Zerx falls back to the wall and looks up at the ceiling. “Man… Shouldn’t try to output all that stuff at once next time….” Zerx laughs a bit, turning to his side and looking down the hallway. “Guess I'm out.. Can’t go anywhere if I want to. I think the goal might be just don't die…? Riley’s so bad at explaining shit.” His smile becomes warm, as he looks out the window in front of him. “Well…. Azra… Dulse… hell Riley… You guys got it.” Zerx then passes out, closing his eyes with a smile on his face, thinking more of his childhood.

Riley stands up, getting off his one knee and staring into the blood splattered onto the floor from the zombie that was obliterated right in front of them. Dulse sits back, confused and somewhat disappointed, kind of hoping he could get a chance to prove himself to Riley, though he’ll never actually admit that. “W- What was that…?” “I'm good with Soul Energy. Zerx took care of whatever caused our little time loop fiasco. I'm not too sure if he’ll be able to meet up with us again though.” A frown appears on Dulse's face, trying to comprehend what Riley just implied. “B- but how do you know that was Zerx… Maybe it was someone else!” “The possibility that was anybody besides Zerx is 1 in a trillion. I know a lot about his soul energy, its one in a kind. The destructive power of that was way more than anybody else I’ve ever encountered, it must have been him” “S- So you’re telling he might have died?!” “Not dead, but he was definitely pushed to use a last resort of sorts.” Dulse becomes slightly more confused “We walked away from him like 2 minutes ago?! How is that possible!” “Well, here's my theory” Riley puts his hand on his chin.

“I'm assuming, the time loop was keeping us trapped in a certain point in time, leaving us unmoving until we decided to move. The idea of it being a captain level opponent is unlikely, because 1 captain keeping one group of students trapped doesn’t make much sense to me. Most likely it was a zombie, and I dont think a zombie has even strength to keep its little pocket dimension time loop kicking, especially when it has nobody giving it a constant supply of soul energy due to the many zombies infesting the entire ship. The fact it was able to manifest a time loop means it must have been on the higher spectrum, so I'm assuming it might have just trapped us in one point of time, maybe the moment we left our room. So by the time we fully split from its time loop, leaving Zerx trapped, we escaped and encountered our opponent, but as Zerx beat the scumbag in the time loop, it shattered and brought us to modern day.” Dulse looks at Riley after he finishes his expansive theory, “For such a handsome and strong dude, he's really nerdy…”

“So let's go back to Zerx! He's not too far away from us!” “We can't waste time. We have to complete the objectives as fast as possible. I'm assuming Zerx’s energy destroyed every zombie currently in the ship. So we can't waste time backtracking. He’ll be ok.” Riley begins to run forward, and not wanting to be alone, Dulse stumbles but follows him. “I'm not sure… going back for us might make us stronger!” “If he got pushed to his limit where he nuked the ship with Soul Energy, he'd do nothing but hold us back. Going forward and finding more people would be a lot better than going back for a dude that got pushed to his limit and is a lot weaker now.” “Yeah… You’re right… I'm sorry I keep trying to drag you back Riley… I just don't wanna risk anything happening to hi-” “It’s whatever Dulse, I dont care.You want to go back for your friend, an emotional reaction at being told he's getting left behind is expected.” Riley turns the corner and begins to go up stairs, with Dulse following behind.

Azra, Adora, and Nora turn the corner, jumping down the stairs trying to find other people still alive, even if not viable to become allies, just to put them out of harm's way. “It's been around 3 minutes before that burst of energy went off, we haven’t seen a zombie since.” Adora says, looking at Azra and Nora, trying to scan the area for any zombies or survivors. Nora replies “I'd guess something might have happened to the source… Maybe the energy disabled them or something, or they’re slowly crawling through the ship. It's one or the other, so honestly I think we should be going upstairs instead of down..” “How do we even know where the source is?” Azra counteracts “Either direction we go is a risk, because we don't know where the zombies started.” “Y- Yeah.. sorry. Lets just keep going this way then..” Right as they finish this conversation, the girls immediately stumble across someone. It's a man, who seems to be no older then them, with messy long black hair, with a closed left eye and a blue right eye, and blood dripping from one of his arms. He stumbles over and collapses, and Nora rushes over to him.

“You’ll be ok now, Sir.” Nora's hands begin to gleam with energy magic, covering the man's body and beginning to close and heal his wounds. “So that's your magic..!” Azra says, looking at Nora healing the bleeding man. “Yea… Healing. I use my energy magic to make myself stronger sometimes…. But I mostly save all my mana in case I need to heal others..” “That's pretty selfless for someone with such a high bloodlust.” Nora looks at Azra confused after these words, Adora also takes a glance at her a bit confused, but the man begins to grunt, catching the girls attention as he opens his other eye. He sits up and looks at Nora, the 2 make eye contact for a second, Nora shyly breaks the eye contact, blushing as he begins to speak “Did you 3… save me?” “Well it was more her than us” Adora says pointing towards Nora, who's still blushing and seems shy at his first glance. “She healed you up” Azra adds “So if you wanna thank anyone, your thanks should really be going to Nora.” The boy looks over to Nora and smiles at her “Well, thanks Nora. You saved my life.” Nora gets up and turns “Y- Yeah no problem at all.”

Adora begins speaking to the dude “So, what's up with you and your teammates?” “Dead. They died roughly an hour ago from my estimate, I’ve been fighting my way through alone. I was almost taken out earlier by some strong zombies, but I survived.” He stands up from the ground and begins to stretch, turning his back and looking farther into the hallway. “Maybe you can help us. We're looking for allies. We have to collect those 3 gem things and connect them to escape, and we need all the help we ca-”“I'm aiming to survive here, not to make friends or be some hero. You either connect those gems or survive 24 hours. I'm taking the latter.” The man begins to walk down the hallway behind the girls where they came from, “Thanks for the help, but I'm good just trying to survive.” As he continues to walk away, before he can get anywhere the ceiling above the 4 begins to crack, Nora, Adora and Azra jump to the left while the other guy shoots toward the right. The ceiling collapses and downfalls Riley and Dulse, the 2 are standing on top of a huge zombie that seems to be coming back together bit by bit.

The 2 crash onto the floor, Riley and Dulse jump off of the zombie creature as Riley claps his hands together, generating 2 rock hands that clap the Zombie in place. “R- Riley..?” Azra says looking at her brother, he turns back to her with a look of surprise but has a feeling of relief as well, but he would never show that emotion to anybody. “So there ARE more zombies left over!” Adora says, pulling her sword out getting ready to fight with the Zombie. “Incorrect. I'm pretty sure whatever Zerx did disabled whatever source the zombies were coming from, but this behemoth was so strong it was able to survive and attempt to regenerate itself.” Everyone else looks at each other and then looks at Dulse and Riley, who seem to have taken damage but nothing vital from fighting the beast. As the group stands there in shock, trying to come to terms with the fact that there might still be more zombies left, able to tank that massive amount of soul energy. The massive creature begins to and breaks out of Riley's rock hands. It lets out a loud groan, as if it was trying to speak, and its mouth opens wide, revealing rows of razor-sharp teeth and a glowing tongue. The zombie regenerates 2 rotating blood blades on its back, as it stares down the 5 people in front of it. The man Nora healed stands frozen behind the beast, not making a single sound as it begins to crawl towards the people across from him.

Without hesitating for even a second while everyone else stands in shock, Adora rushes in with her sword in hand, jumping up aiming to slash off the zombies head. The zombie scowls, launching a rotating blade at Adora which she struggles to dodge in mid air, bending her sword body left to avoid the attack. The rotating blood blade slashes a bit of Adoras arm, but she manages to keep her sword in hand as she crashes into the wall. This snaps everyone back into it besides the man behind the zombie, as they all attempt to bum rush it. “I want to use scarlet nova… but I need a good opening!” Azra thinks to herself as she attempts to fight alongside her 3 allies. Adora manages to stand up as she watches the fight with the zombie commence. The zombie ducks Nora's initial slash with her battle axe, but is caught when Riley makes the motion of a bunch, and an earth fist materializes and slams into its face. Dulse seems to be standing back, waiting for a good opening to jump in thinking “I just need to touch it once and we can win!” As he watches Azra swing in with her sword, slashing one of the zombies arms with a massive hit. This zombie is a vibrant green color with red eyes, razor sharp teeth and a glowing oozing tongue. It has 8 arms that it uses like legs like a spider, with Azra now cutting off one of those arms. The giant human of mass launches another blood blade off of its bumpy green back, with Azra narrowly manages to dodge at point blank range. The blood blade indentents into the floor, but it dissolves in a second, reappearing on the zombies back.

Riley points upwards and snaps his fingers, as 2 rocky pillars materialize in thin air, crashing down onto the zombie pinning it to the ground. At that second, Nora attempts to rush at the Zombie swinging down her battle axe, but in less then a second, it launches 2 blood blades from its back at sonic speeds to destroy the pillars keeping it down. The 2 blood blades propel towards Nora, coming directly at her. Suddenly a mirror appears in front of her completely reflecting the attack back at the zombie. The zombie manages to dismantle one of its blade blades, but the second one propels back at it too fast, cutting off the bottom part of its jaw. Nora is surprised and wonders where the mirror came from, till she notices the man she healed earlier with his hand clenched as if he's controlling the mirror. She then begins to fall down to the ground, the motion of her attack being stopped by the mirror that appeared in front of her as the man jumps over the zombies back, points his hands down and a mirror appears directly above the zombie, blasting it, indenting its body into the ground like a tattoo on someone's skin.

The man then grabs Nora right before she falls down to the ground, almost as if all of that was in one swift motion. “Alright. I paid you back now.” Nora blushes at his words and smiles “W- Well… I can see why you survived on your own for so long.. You’re fast.” “Yeah that's what she said” Nora and the man look at each other confused, clearly he realized the joke did NOT land the way he wanted it too and he looks embarrassed. Nora can't help but laugh, however their interaction is cut short as the Zombie launches a blood blade directly at them. Nora reacts in time, throwing her axe from her hands to block the attack but leaving a massive dent in the weapon. Riley then claps his hands, as 2 hands appear from the hole in the ceiling and the ground below the beasts to trap it once more. Dulse then reacts running towards the beast attempting to land his hand on it, with his giant glove. The zombie launches 2 blood blades at Dulse, but Riley covers him by making pillars directly in front of him. The blood cuts through the pillars, but this gives Dulse enough time to move out of the way, as the pillars slow down the blood itself.

Dulse then makes contact with the Zombie with his glove, the exact second it breaks out of the 2 stone hands keeping it in place. Once its arm makes contact, Dulse shouts “20 TONS!” 2 of the 10 gleaming lights on his glove go out, as the Zombies mass increases by 20 tons, making it crash onto the floor trying to adjust to its new body weight, keeping it planted onto the floor where it once stood making giant cracks in the floor the group stand on. “NOW!” Dulse yells back towards the rest of the group.

the moment, I am alive

The music's energy, I strive

To capture the essence, of its vibe

To dance like a flame, so alive

“Scarlet NOVA!” Azra blitzes through the zombie in the blink of an eye, in less then a second the zombie is torn apart straight through the middle as Azra appears on the other side. As blood sheds and the zombie begins to disappear, Riley takes note of how fast the zombie seems to disintegrate when hit by Azras Phoenix magic. Azra begins to shutter after being drenched in zombie blood once again, trying to shake it off of her without making it too obvious to everyone else, fearing the judgment. Azra walks back over to the group, clearly tired after using Scarlet Nova 3 times in a little over an hour. The group decides to take refuge in one of the room doors labeled 265, directly next to the staircase that goes up a floor and down a floor. Azra lies on the bed, while Nora and Adora sit on the floor. The man sits on the bed directly in front of Azra, while Dulse sits on the bed across from Azras. Riley stands near the door however, not letting his guard up for a second. “Before anything, let's introduce ourselves and our magic abilities. I’ll go first. My name is Riley, and I utilize the basic earth magic.”

“Azra. I use fire magic to attack enemies.” “N- Nora… I don't use any magic to attack my enemies, but I have healing magic to heal myself and allies.” “Adora. I don't have a magic ability.” This makes Azra wince, knowing that Adora is lying as she remembers Adoras sword switch attack, but she decides to simply go with the flow. “Dulse… I can manipulate mass with my gauntlet.” The man who Nora saved finally speaks, giving out his name to his allies “Sidel. I use mirror magic, it can reflect specific attacks and launch beams of energy.” Adora takes notice of Sidels unique power, finding it quite interesting unlike anyone else she's seen. “So” Riley begins to speak once more “Does everybody know about how this round works and about the gems?” Everyone in the room seems to nod in agreement with Riley, leaving him surprised. Sidel snaps his fingers, a mirror appears next to him and a beam of light shines down onto the floor of the room. The group looks in awe as a blueprint of sorts appears on the ground.

“One of my teammates dropped this. It's a complete layout of the ship from top to bottom, and the exact location of each gem.” Riley looks at Sidel confused “How… could your teammates have had one of these? That doesn’t make a lot of sense.” “You’re asking the wrong guy. He dropped it and I picked it up before I ran away.” The group all gather together and look at the blueprint. This gives them an idea of where they were, and makes Riley realize something. Adora points to where the girls started and Riley points to where him, Dulse and Zerx started. “We were in the same room, just one floor apart.” Riley says with a deadpan voice, realizing the stupidity of it. The second floor was laid out in a way that made it so the left side and the right side would never interact, Riley, Dulse and Zerx started in room 216, and Azra, Nora and Adora started in room 116. They both just started at different times and went 2 different ways. But there's not enough time to focus on that, as Riley notices the location of each gem.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

“Gem A’s location seems to be in the captain's Den. Where the ship is actually being driven on the top deck.” Riley says pointing towards it “Gem B is in the announcement hall where we started to begin with right besides the lunch room on the first floor of the rooms!” Azra says, pointing toward the announcement hall. “Gem C is on the bottom floor. The storage room below everything else.” Sidel says as he looks down to the very bottom. The gems on the paper all seem to be in the same crystal shape, with the labels A, B, and C on them respectively. “Us going there together would probably be a bad idea, so we need to divide our forces here wisely.” Riley mentions, looking at everybody in the room. “From what I can assume, whoever summoned the zombies might be somewhere more concealed. Probably the bottom floor. I can guess that whoevers keeping us trapped on the ship might be in the captain's den, because logically that seems like the best place for them to be. So that leaves whoevers amping the zombies with Soul Energy to be in the announcement hall. These zombies are way too strong to just all be from one person.”

“So how do we handle it?” Adora asks, scanning the room herself. “If we go by 3s, one gem won't be accounted for. We can't just trust everyone else to handle it, so it's better if we send people in a group of 3, a group of 2, and a 1 person alone.” “I'm not too sure that makes a lot of sense, Adora.” Sidel replies to her, disagreeing with her take on the matter. “Why not send people in 3s, we meet up again, and then we can ambush the last person left.” “Because everyone will be weaker at that point. Why not send our strongest force alone, and send our weaker forces together to kill all 3 birds in one swoop.” “I can see where both of you are coming from” Riley interjects into the argument “But it might be best to let everyone decide. So, Nora, Azra, and Dulse. What do you think?” “M- maybe we should go with Adoras idea… Sending out everyone to attack all 3 might be the best case scenario..” Nora says in agreement. “Eh. I'm mixed. I feel like they both have a good point, but I don't think anyone has an outright advantage over one of those people don't ya think?”

“Wrong.” Riley says, which catches everyone's attention. “Azras flames can deal with zombies more efficiently than anyone else's magic. Fire seems just to have this natural effect against the undead I don't quite understand.” Azra smiles being praised by Riley, she grabs her sword and stands with confidence saying “The guy on the basement floor is who we’re assuming that controls zombies right? Then I’ll deal with him by myself.” Azra says with a cocky smile on her face. “You sure…?” Nora asks Azra, seemingly afraid for her friend. “Honestly, No. But even if I die, I’ll deal enough damage for you guys to clean up when you make it to the basement floor. You guys need all the help you can get.” “Pretty selfless, Azra.” Nora remarks “Than-” “It's stupid.” Adora says to Azra, cutting her off. He stands up, grabbing her sword and turns toward the door. “But, I’ll go deal with the person in the entrance hall. I’d prefer having people to back me up.” “Anyone in mind?” Riley says. Adora thinks for a moment, she then points to Sidel. “I'm interested in what your mirror magic can do. It might be good at covering my tracks.” Riley then gets up after hearing Adora pick Sidel, “So it's me, Dulse and Nora hm?”

Riley takes notice of the look on Noras face, clearly she's scared for Azra and doesn’t want her to meet her demise. “How about this… Nora, you can go with Azra to heal her up and help her out during her fight in the basement floor. Me and Dulse have been together this whole time, we should be fine. It's the best of both ideas if 2 people go to each location.” “Got you..!” Nora says, jumping up and standing by Azras side. “Me and Dulse will head to the captain's den on the top deck, Adora and Sidel will go to the Entrance hall, lastly, Azra and Nora will head to the bottom layer. We meet up in the entrance hall once everything is over with, alright?” The groups nod at each other, ready to split off and go on their separate adventures. Before they set off, Azra quickly asks Riley a question “Hey… Have you seen Zerx..? I felt his soul energy go off earlier, was he with you guys?” “Yeah. He's fine, but he's recovering down the hallway. He should be fine, Don’t worry Azra.” Azra smiles knowing her brother is ok, and the 3 groups exit the room. Azra and Nora go down the stairwell, heading to the basement floor. Riley and Dulse go down the hallway in Zerx’s direction, which leads toward the staircase that takes them to the captain's den directly. Finally, Adora and Sidel head up the stairs, directly towards the entrance hall.

We first get a view of Azra and Nora. The 2 of them rush down the stairwell, making their way all the way to the 5th floor or the cruise ship. Azra and Nora seem confused, as the 2 girls are standing in another hallway full of room doors that go through the 5s. “I assume one of these rooms leads to the ground floor, right?” “P- Probably… But that would take forever! We need to get to that bottom floor asap!” Nora lifts up her battle axe, and charges energy into it. As she charges, she remembers that the top half of the axe is a little bent but that doesn’t seem to matter right now. While Nora charges up, Azra thinks to herself “I’ve used Scarlet Nova a lot in one day… wayyy more than the usual honestly. I have 5 more uses for today till I completely run out… So I need to reserve them for when I have an opening to cut that thing to shr-” Before Azra could finish her though completely, Nora slams her axe down onto the floor, smashing through it as the girls fall down. They fall through the gap in the floor and feel a strange feeling, as if traveling through a dimension or something. Their bodies feel light, yet their feet feel like they’re being dragged down into the pits of hell. The 2 girls fall down into the storage room, it looks massive. It seems that the Storage room is full of a variety of different things: large shipping containers, shelves full of food and other supplies, and more. It also seems that this storage room is dimly lit, with a few lights illuminating the area. The girls walk through the storage room, stepping through boxes and chip bags and suitcases and even a few skeletons. The girls cautiously walk through the storage room together, scanning the area for anything that seems unordinary. Azra heightens her senses as the girls walk through the massive storage unit, eventually stumbling at an area clear of any items. The only thing in this clearing is one light, it's a very dim and dark light, but it illuminates something standing in what would otherwise be pitch black darkness.

The creature has 10, long sword-like fingers, with dark green skin that seems to be skinny yet very hard, skin that comes off of its body, tattered and torn, hovering around its face like a hood. It's muscular, while also looking skinny at the same time with glowing red eyes that stare daggers into the soul, with 3 vertebrae sprouting from its back like a wing on the left side. This is the most huge zombie they’re seen yet, standing at a whopping 8 foot 9 inches tall. Towering over Azra and Nora like David and Goliath, compared to Azra who stands at 5’7, and Nora who's even shorter at just 5’5. Azra and Nora step back a few feet, as the zombies blood red eyes gleam towards them. It begins to walk, not fast but not slow either. It walks towards the girls and begins to speak in an eerie tone “Visitors.. 5th time today…” Azra remembers her pride as a warrior, and the comments her peers have made towards her this far. “I have to keep going… I have to keep pushing!” Azra steps forward toward the zombie, holding her sword in front of her, pointing at the Zombie. Nora looks at her, impressed how she can stand there with a face that doesn't have a bit of fear. This gives Nora a confidence boost as well, as she wields her axe with confidence, clearly still having the face of somebody scared shitless.

Riley and Dulse rush toward the top floor, trying to get this done as soon as possible. Riley dash towards the main floor, with Dulse barely being able to follow behind him. “Slow down… a bit… Riley…” Dulse says out of breath as he follows him, Riley jumps onto the top deck. His eyes take notice of the sky immediately. It's a pitch black color, no dim sunlight shines through the pitch black skies to make sure nobody dies from lack of sunlight. Despite that, corpses lay at Rileys feet leading towards the captain's den. He begins to think to himself “Seems like they really wanted to get rid of contestants or something… this seems like more deaths than actually allowed for something like this.” Riley begins to walk towards the captain's den, as he steps through the dead bodies surrounding it. Dulse rushes closely behind Riley, not even wanting to look at the bodies longer than he has too. Riley, somewhat seeing a destructive fight coming, sends 4 orbs of mana on both sides of the captain's den directly outside the walls. “Just incase” he mutters as the 2 continue to walk through the dead bodies. The 2 boys open the room door, and see a Dark skinned man, with dark brown hair and black eyes. He lays back in his chair facing towards the sea in the captain's den. Trophies, portraits and different posters and decorations of sorts seem to be hanging on the walls. Hes facing toward the ceiling with a book in his hands, as he seems to be muttering a song. “You are my speciallllll~” He continues to mutter this rhythm to himself, as Riley and Dulse stand at the entrance confused. Dulse looks over toward the table beside the man, and sees the gleaming purple gemstone just sitting there. Dulse looks at Riley, and Riley looks back at him with an understanding look.

Dulse dashes toward the purple gemstone, bolting toward it attempting to grab it immediately. In a split second, the man goes from reading his book to swinging his fist down toward Dulse's skull, attempting to end the boy's life in one foul swoop. Dulse pulls his legs back to drop himself, and narrowly dodges the man's fist, which slams into the ground with maximum capacity directly behind where Dulse lands. A giant crack appears in the metal floor, scaring dulse as he jumps back toward Riley in a split second. “It didn’t work… that dude… is dangerous!” The man looks up at Dulse and Riley, with all of them making eye contact, he finally recognizes who it is. “J- Jaiden Da Monta!” They recognize the captain of squad 2, as the same guy who had a little scuffle with Azra earlier on the ship. Riley looks at Jaiden with a familiarity, “So you’re royalty, Right..?” “Correct. The Da Monta family is one of the most powerful in all of Eternia, outclassing the Cavendines and Alphonias in strength, besides just the king himself.” “I think we’ve met before, Riley Cavendine!” “I don't remember you honestly, I don't remember the faces of people that bore me.”

Jaiden seems to get ticked off at Rileys comment, “Well… Someones got a smart mouth " "and someones got a hot temper” Riley responds “Royalty aren’t supposed to get their hands dirty, yet you go around killing people all willy nilly like the monster you and your disgusting bloodline are, filthy. I look down on you people.” “Ironic coming from such an embarrassing lineage… how would your father feel if he heard the way you were speaking Rai Rai~ He's shaking his head looking up from hell.” “One of us got to meet their father, let's see what that deadbeat of yours has to say.” Jaiden seems to actually get angry at that, and he begins to step toward Riley “I’ve always kind of hated your family, so It's fun to finally be able to put one of you down a peg, for looking down on us natural born warriors that worked our way UP to royalty!” Dulse begins to walk forward but Riley puts his hand in front of him, motioning for Dulse to stay back. “How many people did you kill, you barbarian?” “What likee 6 of them?” “Then I’ll take you out myself with 6 hits.” Jaiden laughs at Rileys overconfidence and punches his knuckles together “Normally for us examiners, we have to hold ourselves back fighting magic knight contestants, some still die in the process but we tend to let most of them go. But… for you Riley, I’ll give it everything I’ve got.”

Adora and Sidel make their way towards the main entrance. The duo walk together in awkward silence into the lunchroom, not seeming to like each other's company but just wanting to get this done. Adora seems to be thinking and muttering something to herself while glancing back at Sidel every now and then, then looking back ahead of her muttering. This starts to piss Sidel off a bit, he's not one that takes kindly to talking behind his back, so he attempts to listen into what Adora could be thinking. “You got something to say?” “No. Just thinking of something.” “Which is?” “Why does it matter to you? A girl can't think to herself anymore..?” “Well I think it has something to do with me, so if it does just spit it out” “Dont piss me off, Sidel. I'm not in the mood.” Adora looks at Sidel with eyes that give off something sinister, he doesn’t like the vibe he's getting from her so he jumps back away from her. He then takes notice of her sword, his eyes widen as he starts to understand the markings on her massive blade. Υπηρέτης Ντουλαχαν translation - Dullahans Servant. This makes Sidel shake to his core, as he looks back at Adora who has a sinister smile on her face and her sword now parched on her shoulder.

“Who… Who the HELL ARE YOU?” “Awww finally, someone figured it out! I'm glad it was you~ Your magic is quite interesting.” She then lifts her sword up and points it towards Sidels face. “I’ll be taking it now~” She snaps her fingers and she appears on top of Sidel, taking the place of a chandelier directly above him. Black ooze corrodes from her body as she jumps down and swings her sword on top of Sidels body, slashing down on top of him. A mirror appears right on top of him, making Adora swing into it. For half of a second, Adoras face appears in the mirror where she slashed it. In that half a second, Sidel punches the mirror on instinct, throwing Adoras body across the lunchroom. She slams into the walls and giggles like a maniac as stands back up. “Now I REALLY want it!” Adora throws her blade at Sidel, who spawns a mirror in front of him once again to freeze the sword in time for half a second. But before the mirror could catch her blade, the blade floods with black ooze, and Adora takes the place of the sword. While her body is still materializing with the black ooze, Adora full force slams her fist through the mirror, socking Sidel in his face and blasting him towards the wall breaking his nose. Sidel sits slumped on the wall, vision blurred from the powerful punch. “Oh em gee! I'm adapting!!” Adora’s stoic demeanor is completely gone, as she shakes her hands in excitement like a little girl at the fact she's adapting to Sidels moves after only 1 move.

“How did nobody else notice the markings on the…” Sidel looks at her sword, the markings seem to be completely gone a second, and Adora walks up to Sidel. Looking him directly into his eyes “What markings..?” She says back in her stoic demeanor. Sidel looks up at her terrified and a mirror appears directly in front of Adora, point blank range he blasts her with a beam of energy from the mirror. Sidel stands up and sees Adora, who looks almost unharmed from the attack standing on a lunch table. The girl giggles as she rushes toward him, he attempts to blast her with another mirror but instead he blasts a plate from one of the lunch tables, as she appears beside him. Sidel claps his hands and 2 mirrors appear in front and behind Adora, blasting her in that split second. Sidel jumps onto a lunch table just in case, which was a good idea as Adora sword propels towards where he was just standing, slashing into the lunch table seat that would have been directly behind him. Adora swaps places with her sword once more, appearing on the lunch table seat and throwing a fast jab at Sidels face while still covered in her black ooze. She slams her fist into his stomach which tosses him into the air, Adora then snaps her fingers and her sword comes back to her. She dashes to where Sidel is going to land, and with only 2 seconds worth of charged up dark ooze, tears his body straight in half. His blood splatters onto the floors where they stand, and a bit of it goes onto Adoras face.

“How could Azra ever hate this stuff~!” Adora says as she wipes blood off of her face and licks it. At this moment, she tosses her sword in between the 2 parts of Sidels body, she claps her hands together and begins to mutter a prayer. “Almighty lord… Guide his soul to the rift between heaven and hell, the rift where time nor space matter… as you give me the blessing of his magic powers. Lord Dullahan, keep him safe on his journey and allow him to pass on into the rift of nothingness known as the netherworld… Amen.” Sidels body is covered in a black liquid, the same sort of ooze that she used when transporting between locations. His body is completely absorbed into the sword, as the sword gains another gem on its hilt. A 4th gem. She stands up, puts her sword on her back and reassembles her serious demeanor as she walks down toward the entrance hall.

Adora, bloodied up, begins to strut towards the entrance hall. Her mind wanders with a bunch of different thoughts, not really sure what to think or how she’ll take on this new opponent but she's excited for the fight nonetheless. Despite her excitement, the girl keeps a serious demeanor as she opens up the doors to the entrance hall. The once bustling room that held over 300 people, now seems to be completely empty. The room holds the stage where the introductions were held, where the queen once stood. She looks around the walls and sees the different flags of the dynasty hung up, the room seemingly completely spotless. “Did the guy run away…? Or was he already defeated.” She thinks to herself as she begins to walk towards the stage. But right as she begins she feels a presence coming from the ceiling, she looks up and is immediately attacked before she could even blink. The girl darts out of the way, and her attacker crashes onto the floor right behind her. Adora jumps on stage, looking down at the person who seems to be getting out of the rubble, dusting themself off as they look toward Adora.

“You sly little killer~” The masculine voice says, walking out of the dust, revealing himself to be Ezekiel Newman, leader of squad 5 of the Khourburg Dynasty. “I heard what you did to your teammate in the other room. I saw it too, quite brutal don't ya think?” Adora looks at Newman with a look of confusion “Hypocritical coming from magic knights who casually slaughter people for an exam.” “What could you ever be talking about, little lady! This room is spotless.” “Ezekiel Newman of Squad 5, dead family and a few close friends, commonly known as a germaphobe.” Zeek looks a bit scared yet intrigued at Adora’s analysis “You’re… interesting, little lady. A bit freaky how you know all that personal stuff about me.” “I study the people I have intentions of killing, so I know everything about every captain and important person on this ship. You probably cleaned up all the bodies or something with your magic.” “Ding ding ding! Spot on killer girl!” He looks up at her on the stage “If you know everything about me, You should also know I don't take kindly to little fangirls like you!” “Save it. Let your skill do the talking.” Adora wields her blade, pointing it toward Ezekiel, who looks back at her, charging some energy of sorts into his fists.

Jaiden bolts towards Riley, the 2 still confined to the small space in the captain's den. Jaiden throws a fast jab at Rileys dome, and Riley ducks the hit by bending his head down, and jabbing Jaiden in the stomach back with a weaker hit. “1.” Dulse stumbles, wanting to get a chance to participate in the fight but choosing to stay back “Riley’s stronger than me.. I might just hold him back.” The jab in the gut seems to do no real major damage to Jaiden, as he swings his fist back towards Rileys face. Making contact and slamming him into a wall. The attack doesn’t seem to do any major damage to Riley himself, but the force tosses him out of the sidewall of the captain's den, knocking over trophies and books laying on a bookshelf Riley knocked over. Jaiden jumps out of the hole Riley made on impact, and as Riley crashes to the ground Jaiden throws another fast punch at Riley, it hits him directly in his face but seems to do no damage. Riley doesn’t even move from the punch despite the momentum. This gives Riley the opportunity to slap the sides of his hands together, and the 2 spheres of mana he set up outside of the Captain's den come slamming into Jaidens sides like an automatic sliding door. “2.”

Riley jumps back toward the ledge of the ship, only being kept on by the handrail on the ship as his back crashes into it. “Why didn’t his attack do damage..? Phantom pain maybe..? But that wouldn’t make se-” Before Riley could continue to think, Jaiden breaks out of the 2 slabs of rock, dashing towards Riley. Riley ducks his attack and spins to the side, as Jaidens fist crashes into the handrail, bending the hard metal till it touches the floor. “Now it does damage again…” Riley puts both his hands out, and blasts a bolder towards Jaiden. Jaiden swiftly dodges the attack for once, which throws Riley off as he assumed Jaiden never dodged any attacks. Jaiden bolts toward Riley once again swinging his fist forward towards him, Riley creates a wall of Rock in front of him with his hands to cover him from the attack. Jaidens then switches positions, throwing his hand down to the ground, to spin him, making his attack onto the wall a double kick with both legs pushed forward like a luchador. His legs make contact with the wall, doing no damage. His body is facing upward as if he was in a coffin while doing this kick, so right as he makes contact, he slams both of his hands on the ground behind him to crochet him up above the rock wall, and he jumps down toward Riley. Riley uses mana he charges into his hand to make a pillar of rocks that ejects towards Jaidens face like an erection.

The pillar of rocks beams Jaiden directly in his face as his moment from his jump propels him back toward the rocky wall “3.” Jaiden lands on the wall sideways, and in one motion, he uses it to propel himself forward, and directly jab Riley in his gut, making him spit out blood as he gets blasted backward onto the floor. Riley crashes into the ground directly in front of another handrail, as he smiles to himself despite taking a devastating blow from Jaidens attack. “I get it now…” Jaiden walks toward Riley and begins to think to himself about Rileys earth magic. “There are 3 kinds of earth users. Those who spawn it from mana, those who can control earth around them, and those who do both. Rileys only spawned it from his hands but never utilizing them otherwise. So he must only be the first type, otherwise he would have taken other opportunities to hit me like when I was on the wall..” Jaiden dashes towards Riley, aiming to hit him with another blow once again. Riley narrowly jumps out of the way of Jaidens attack, leaving a slab of stone where he once stood. Jaidens fist connects with the slab of stone on this corner of the ship, it slams to the floor but doesn’t crack due to this attack not actually doing damage, just pushing it down.

The top deck of the ship is massive, but it's shaped like a pentagon. It has 5 sides, currently Riley and Jaiden have taken their fight to the bottom left. The initial battle started near the top side, so the 2 orbs of mana Riley is keeping intact are on the top right, and the location where the 2 sliding rock slabs are on the top left. Leaving only the center point/top middle (the actual captain's den) and the bottom right unfought in. Dulse stands in the top middle, watching the fight from afar, looking for anything in the captain's den of value. Directly below the captain's den, is Adora and Ezekiel in the main entrance hall. Riley jumps to his right after leaving the slab of stone on the floor, which Jaiden quickly follows after making his analysis of Riley's powers. Riley snaps and 2 beams of mana fly up as he jumps away from Jaiden. He snaps his fingers down and the 2 pillars of stone crash down onto Jaidens back, as he gets planted onto the ground “4 and 5.” Riley tosses a stone slab on the floor behind him, right as Jaiden gets back up and bolts toward Riley, Riley uses mana underneath his feet that he planted there in a split second to create 2 pillars of rocks, blasting him back towards the center of the ship. Jaiden jumps on the pillars right as they construct, and chases Riley like a mad dog.

Riley lands on the floor but right as he does, he gets a fist in his face. This punch does the most damage of any, smashing into Riley and crushing him into the floor. He doesn’t die, but he takes a lot of damage from this hit which causes a lot of bleeding from his face. Jaiden jumps back, looking at Riley as he stands up. Riley closes his left eye, which is now blood red as it bleeds out in its socket. “I’ll kill you in one more strike, then that piece of trash in the captain's den is gonna have to hit me 7 times!” Though Riley is bleeding, he seems very relaxed and nonchalant about this whole thing. “Eh. It's whatever, it's nothing too vital so Nora can heal me up. It's not like I lost an eye.” He says outloud, ignoring whatever Jaiden was talking about. This pisses Jaiden off like no tomorrow, if there's one thing he HATES, it’s being ignored. Jaiden attempts to rush towards Riley, but Riley smiles because that's what he’d expected. Riley opens his palm and then slaps down his left hand into it, sticking out his index and middle finger only. “Scizzors.” The 4 slabs Riley set up all around the battlefield, and one of the 2 orbs of mana he set up earlier all rush towards Jaiden before he can blink, keeping him trapped in place. Each one of the 5 pillars jab into his torso, arms, or back. He crashes onto the floor, knees sliding as he barely manages to not fall over. “6.” Riley says, finally finishes his countdown and stretches. “I’d kill you, but it would be hypocritical for me to do that after everything I’ve said about human life.” Riley wipes some of the blood away from his eye, as he walks towards Jaiden whose face floods with anger. Riley grabs the gem from Jaidens pocket, as he struggles to move in Rileys trap.

“Yo. Dulse. I got it.” Riley calls out to his friend, as Dulse runs out of the captain's cove holding a bunch of different weapons. “Look at all the loot I found!” “Good Job.” Dulse looks down at Jaiden, sticks his tongue out and then asks Riley a question. "They was pretty fast.... What the hell was up with his magic ability anyway? That punch thing seemed confused.." Riley puts his hand on his chin, and gets ready to yap Dulse's ear off. “I figured out his magic after a couple of blows, it most likely originates from energy magic due to how complex it is. He’ll strike with 1 attack, the attack will nullify and won't do damage. You hit him, it will do the amount of damage you output. But then in his next attack, it will have the combined strength of your original attack and his blow that did no damage. Like a 2 for 1 special. It's something for simplicity's sake I’ll call stack. I figured it can't stack multiple hits at once or it might nullify its effects, so I set it up to where I hit him 5 times at once. I did that by letting him think I couldn’t use my magic in any real unique ways, but that was intentional from the start to throw him off. I kind of combined both plans into one to get him to underestimate me.” “So… how come he's not breaking out of your little pillar thingies? You’d think he would be strong enough to do that.” “Well….”

“Mana comes from soul energy. People are born with high amounts of soul energy, so that weakens their mana output, People with less soul energy have more space to output mana in their body, so they’re able to generate more than someone with high amounts of soul energy. To use magic, you output your mana from your body to materialize into whatever you’re using or doing, depending on the type of magic you utilize, even something that affects the human body. Despite one coming from the other, mana and soul energy are natural enemies, so they automatically reflect each other. Your own soul energy and mana can touch, but soul energy and mana from other people perfectly reflect each other, blasting away like 2 magnets. The 2 will never be able to connect with each other, which is why mana transforms into magic, to give a sort of balance between the 2 systems and the people that use them. I put bits of soul energy at the tip of each slab, so then when I propelled them toward Jaiden, my soul energy completely covered his body. He won't output any mana while covered in someone else's soul energy, despite his mana affecting his body, it still needs a source to output. So he’ll explode if he even tries to generate it while covered in my soul energy.” “So… covering someone in soul energy is like a natural counter to any sort of mana.” “Correct Dulse, It works the same way with mana too. If you cover someone completely in your mana, they can't output any sort of soul energy. It's very hard to actually pull something like this off.”

“Blah Blah Blah.” Jaiden says rolling his eyes, “You guys can leave and stop boring me. You have 2 other gems to collect for a rea-” Before Jaiden can finish his sentence, Dulse launches a bagel into his mouth. Jaiden begins to gag, but he's unable to get it out of his mouth. “Where did you…. You know what, nevermind.” Riley cracks her shoulders, and begins to walk away from Jaiden. “Let's head out and find the o-” before Riley can finish his sentence, the floor below them cracks, a wave of dark energy erupts through the cracks, as pieces from the top deck begin to fall below. Jaiden, Dulse, and Riley all fall through the floor as it caves into itself. The 3 fall down onto the first floor of the cruise ship, into the entrance hall. Dulse grips onto his stolen weapons tightly, as Riley grabs him, snaps his fingers, and manifests a pillar of stone onto the wall as he grabs onto it with his other hand. Jaiden crashes to the floor without anyone to break his fall, still trapped in Rileys scissor attack. Riley's eyes narrow down to the battlefield, and looks down at Adora and the captain of squad 5 Ezekiel Newman. From what he can pick up, Newman blasted the roof with an attack that brought the entire thing down based on the expression on his face. “Rats…” he mutters as looks at the ceiling.

While he's off guard, Adora throws her sword directly at him, Ezekiel notices the sword ricochetting at him, and he punches the sword down by the hilt right as its about to hit him. As the blade crashes to the ground, it quickly gets covered in black ooze, as she spawns in the exact place of her sword. Riley and Dulse look confused, remembering she mentioned not having any magic, as she spawns in, Ezekiel punches her directly in her face while shes manifesting. But the punch seems to do absolutely nothing, as she digs into his pocket and pulls out the gem from his pocket. Ezekiel is confused on why his punch did no damage, but the girl jumps back, still slightly made of black sludge as her body fully reforms. She points the gem to Riley and Dulse. “I got it!” She says, picking up her sword and dashing back through the door into the kitchen. Riley lets go of the pillar, and drops down with Dulse still in his left arm. He lets him go, and the 2 follow Adora down through the kitchen. Zeek begins rushing toward the duo, but he hears someone call out from behind him. “HEY DICKHEAD, LET ME OUT OF HERE!!!” He turns around and sees Jaiden trapped in Rileys scissor prison. “How the mighty have fallen” Zeek laughs as he snaps his fingers and a ghost-like spirit appears around Jaiden, it puts his hands on him and the rocks disappear in a matter of seconds. Jaiden gets up and stretches, then the 2 men run out of the entrance hall door, down to the kitchen following the other 3.

Azra steps forward, the ghoulish zombie beast in the basement of the cruise ship walks toward them, its massive size, its fangs, beaming red size and bone wing stretching from its back. She holds her sword in front of her, fearful inside but she knows that its up to her to get this done. “If this thing controls the rest of the zombies… I wonder how intelligent it might be.” Azra charges toward the zombie, once again remembering the limit on her scarlet novas. She covers her sword in regular flames as she jumps toward the zombie, “Foolish girl…” the zombie growls as it dodges her slash, then it launches the vertebrae from its left side towards Azra, attempting to stab her in her back. Azra pulls her head back to dodge the attack, despite this, one of the 3 vertebrae swing down towards her. Azra spins to her side to dodge the attack, avoiding contact with the vertebrae. She immediately stands up from her spin, and enchants her blade with flames once again charging to the zombie. The zombie spits out 5 blood bombs that Azra quickly dodges, Azra jumps toward the zombie aiming for his neck, but right before she makes contact, the zombie's mouth opens which causes Azra to pull her head back, as the zombie blasts a rotating blood blade out of its mouth.

Azra crashes down to the floor after dodging this attack, as she hears grumbling behind her. Out of the 5 blood bombs, comes 5 zombies. Azra observes the mutated zombies, they have pitch black soulless eyes, and seem a lot skinnier than the zombies she had trouble fighting. “The probably don’t have magic… I’ll take them out with 1 blow!” Azra charges to the zombies, running away from the main body, as she quickly blitzes and slashes through each of these zombies. But right as she mows through them, the zombies bodies split, multiplying into 10 zombies instead of 5. “I can't spend time on these things… but I can't focus on all of these zombies and the main guy at once..!” Azra turns around, trying to scan for Nora as she runs away from the zombies in the giant abyss that seems to be all those storage items. But Nora is still standing there, fearful and shaking. She has a tight grip on her axe, completely petrified and unmoving. “I guess I'm on my own…!” Azra then barely manages to dodge a blood blade coming her way, as she narrowly ducks, cutting her forehead and slashing off one of her wolf bangs. The blood blade goes deep into the array of things and different items farther into the basement. This gives Azra an idea, but as she turns around she feels the ground shake, the main zombie has its 3 vertebrae tendrils implanted into the ground, It then howls as the tendrils glow a bright red color.

Cracks burst into the ground at rapid speeds, and gleam with a blood red light. From those cracks emerges hordes of zombies. The zombies are all identical, with pallid skin and sunken eyes. They crawl out of the ground, clawing and scratching at the pitch black floor below. Their movements are frantic and uncoordinated, but there is a disturbing unity to their movements as well, as if they are all being controlled by a single will. The air is thick with the stench of decomposition, and Azra hears the wet, squelching noises of the zombies pushing themselves up out of the ground. As they move up, their eyes begin to glow a bright, chilling red, and they let out a chorus of low, inhuman groans that echo through the air, sounding almost like the cries of souls in torment.

Azra turns around and bolts away from the wave of zombies, “Infest this darkness, children.” Azra calls out to Nora, who stands petrified with fear. “NORA!!! RUN!” Nora snaps back into it, and turns around, running into the array of things behind her as the zombies begin to spread and involve while the floor around them continues to crack, summoning more zombies and illuminating the darkness and dim lights with the blood red glow. Azra races through the narrow aisle of items, desperately trying to stay ahead of the horde of zombies behind her. The horde is gaining on her, their arms outstretched, their empty eyes fixed on the prize. Azra uses her flame magic to slice through the aisle, cutting through items like crates, boxes, barrels, and other miscellaneous things, leaving more things in the pathway that the zombies struggle to avoid. The zombies try to follow suit, but their clumsy movements are no match for her agility and speed. More cracks arise from the ground in front of Azra, as zombie arms rise up from the beaming lights in front of her. Azra jumps onto a crate, and starts jumping crate to crate, avoiding the grasp from each of these zombies with Nora narrowly following in her footsteps.

Azra jumps onto one last crate, as a zombie emerges from the ground on the exact location of the crate, grabbing her leg and slamming her onto the ground. Right before Azra gets pulled in to get eaten, Nora jumps in and swings her axe down, crushing the zombies head allowing Azra to escape its grasp. “Azra… Let me handle these zombies.” Nora turns around and sees thousands of zombies rushing towards them, the 2 girls are cornered, a wave of zombies coming their way with the only things illuminating them being dim lights and the main body’s beaming red eyes. Nora grips her axe and takes a deep breath, “Brother… guide me.” Nora's blade glows with a bright green aura, her eyes change to be blank, like her state previously in her bloodlust. Azra takes notice of Nora, “Greenish Red color…. High amounts of bloodlust.” Azra thinks to herself, while looking at Nora. Unlike other people, Azra has the ability to gauge someone's bloodlust and intention to kill, it's a skill she was born with and she's finally learned how to scale the difference.

Nora rushes towards the zombies, who begin to run toward her and Azra. Azra wants to help, but doesn’t want to hold her back. With each swing of her battle axe, Nora feels more and more powerful, more and more invincible. The rush of adrenaline that runs through her veins made her feel like a god, capable of anything. And yet, the thought of Azra, running into a hoard of zombies without backup, made her stomach churn with worry. She had been too frozen in fear to help, a feeling she had always despised. She knew that weakness had led to her failures before, and fear had always held her back, making her feel powerless against her own emotions. But in this moment, her emotions were what fueled her, what made her feel powerful enough to do anything. As she slashed through the hordes of zombies, her movements were sharp, precise, and sturdy, as if this was second nature, taking down zombie after zombie with each swing. But as the hordes started to grow smaller, it seemed like she had only made a dent, a small impact in the fight against the endless hordes of the undead. She appears on the other side of the wave of zombies, feet right back where she started. Drenched in blood, breathing heavy, as she looks up towards the zombie with red eyes, the main beast. Nora holds the axe firm, and rushes toward it. “I might die… but it's ok.” Nora fights the zombie but is drowning in her own thoughts. “It's ok Nora…. Serve, Protect, Die. Serve, Protect, Die. Right… brother…”

Nora swings her axe, which classes with a vertebra tendril, the zombie slashes into the battle axe, which shatters in Noras hands. She looks up at the beast, as 2 more tendrils swing down on her. One slashes her face, from her eyebrow to the end of her nose, and another directly pierces her side. Nora falls down to the ground, bleeding out her mouth. She smiles, imagining the face of her brother as she starts to close her eyes. “Serve, Protect…. And die.”....

…..

From the ashes it rose, a grand and mighty bird.

With wings of fire, it took to the skies, a wondrous sight to observe.

For it was a symbol of power, a sign of strength and might,

A force to be reckoned with, both in darkness and light.

But as the Phoenix soared higher, it grew restless, anxious,

For something was wrong, a sense of dread that it couldn't erase.

It felt the flames, the very fabric of its being,

A fire that once danced, now was static, a rabid beast that it'd come to dread.

And so, it descended down, towards a hidden cave,

Where it slept, its eyes closed, in a deep and dreamless salve.

It was there, in the darkness, where it began to ponder,

What had changed, and why its flames no longer danced as it thundered.

For to the Phoenix fire was everything, the air it breathed,

The force that drove it forward, the light that led it to its destiny.

And yet, now it seemed so strange, so out of place,

These flames of fire, so static and unchanging, a curse of eternal disgrace.

But the Phoenix was not one to give up without a fight,

And so, it awoke from its slumber, determined to set things right.

With each flap of its wings, the flames began to stir,

Until finally, they rose up high, and danced as they once had, in their rightful glory.

And so, the Phoenix rose, with newfound strength and might,

With flames that danced, a fiery sight, so beautiful a sight.

For it was the Phoenix, reborn, awakened from its slumber,

A symbol of power, a sign of strength, for all to wonder.

For the phoenix is a beacon of hope, a source of light,

A reminder that even in our darkest moments, we must not lose sight.

For like the phoenix, we too must rise, reborn from the ashes of our past,

And with newfound strength, embark on a journey, of growth and of grace.

“Raging Road” Azra's blade sparkles with blazing red flames as she cuts through the air, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake, destroying boxes and craters left around her, as she immediately makes it to the area where the main zombie stood. As she jets toward him, she swings her sword around her body similar to scarlet nova, but the movements are more static, stagnant. Despite the stagnant and static nature of the movement, there is a sense of power and control that emanates from Azra as she interacts with the sword. She seems to be in complete control of the weapon, even though its movements are almost mechanical in nature. In less then a second, 0.5 seconds to be exact, Azra goes from the back of the storage room, to slashing directly through the beast in one static motion. Unlike the other zombies, who were sliced into pieces, she beams directly through the center point of the zombie, this seems to do a lot more damage than her scarlet nova, leaving the remaining parts of the zombie on fire. “W- When…” The zombie mutters, as its body vanishes. Azra crashes to the ground directly after this attack, she falls and lies on her back. Gasping for air with her eyes widened. “it worked… I learned how to stack them…!”

July 14th 4070 - Cavendine Manor Training Grounds

1:30pm

Azra stumbles, drenched in her own sweat and drained of energy as she flopped over, crashing face first into the dirt floor in front of her, dropping her sword. “Don’t tell me that's all ya got sis” Zerx sat down across from his sister, criss-cross applesauce looking at her flopped over. “Those scarlet nova’s take a toll on you don’t they” he laughed, poking her head with his finger. “I can only use 8 right now… 8 everyday… and if I use all 8 I won't be able to recover them for a few days..!” Azra said, gasping for air as she looked up to her brother. “You use Grannys old book to remember how to use those, right? The dance and stuff?” “Yeah it's like a guide, but Granny told me to never try to never rely on the notes too much.” “Welllll… Why not stack them?” “W- What do you mean by stack?” Azra sat up, looking at Zerx. “Well, why not charge 2 or 3 scarlet novas in one. You might even be able to create a form of your own.” “How would I stack scarlet novas…? That doesn’t make much sense, Zerx.” “Well try doing the dance you do for a basic scarlet nova.”

Azra barely managed to stand up, grabbing the sword beside her, and swung it gracefully around her despite her lack of energy. At the last second, she tripped and fell on her ass. “See..! I can barely do the dance correctly after all these years… granny would be..” “Granny would want ya to keep going.” Zerx stood up, and reached his hand out for his little sister. He smiled, looking down on her with the warm smile of an older brother. “Granny wanted you to innovate this technique and make it your own thing, so don’t give up Azra, stand up and try again.” Azra blushed and smiled back at her brother, grabbing his hand and standing back on her feet. “T- Thanks Zerx! I don't know what I’d do without you” Azra struggled to catch her breath as she looked up at her brother, Zerx. For a moment, she felt as if she had nothing left in her, as if she had pushed herself too far. But then Zerx spoke, and his kind words renewed her spirit. “So! Let's try this, how about you…”

“Keep… a specific segment of the movements. Out of order, make them more static… stack those and unleash…” Azra gasps for air, looking at the dark ceiling after unleashing her new raging road attack. “It… worked!” Nora hardly maneges to stand back onto her feet, as she walks to the corpse of the massive zombie to find the gem. From the bloody corpse of the zombie, right as she walks up toward it, a figure stands from the corpse. Steam flows off of the figure's body, as it rises from the decomposing corpse. Nora can finally take notice of the figure's appearance, it's a man, brown hair covering his eyes in a green hoodie. The man cracks his shoulders as he stands parallel to Nora. “Yuck.” The man says, shaking his body, trying to get the remainder of blood off of him. Nora jumps back, in fear and no real idea how she’ll kill him. “Nah, you’re good.” the man says, which leaves Nora with a confused face. “Dohjo. Second in command of squad 6. My power is shapeshifting into the corpses of things I kill.” He cracks his knuckles and digs through the corpse of the zombie behind him. “I can absorb the body, and transform into that thing. My job here was to infest the ship with zombies… but your little friend killed my zombie form so eh, i'm off the clock.” Dohjo picks up the third gem, and tosses it toward Nora. “I’ll let you have it.” Nora stands speechless and still confused.

“Wha- Wha- What…?” Nora grabs the gem but stammers in absolute confusion “I don’t…” “You don't know how I'm still alive? Don't question it. I don't feel like blabbing right now.” Dohjo replies, he then turns and points to Azra. “Get your little gal pal though… She's not in the shape to stand right now. Oh yeah! And I need tooo…..” Dohjo snaps his fingers and the black veil enveloping the storage room vanishes, revealing a perfectly fine and untouched storage room. Nora stares at Dohjo in disbelief, trying to process everything that just happened. She looks down at the gem in her hand, then back up at Dohjo, who is already making his way towards the exit. "Wait!" She calls after him. "How can you be alive after being killed by a zombie? And why did you give me this gem? What was your point in all of this?" Dohjo stops in his tracks and looks back at Nora. "Like I said, I don't feel like blabbing right now. All you need to know is that your friend here needs medical attention. She's clearly exhausted herself with that attack." He turns back to face the exit and takes a few steps towards it before calling back to Nora. "Oh, and don't worry about the body. I'll take care of it."

After a few seconds, Dohjo takes steps back and looks back into the room again “You 2 need some help..?” He says, looking at Nora and Azra. Nora has her hand holding the gem, while also having her other hand attempting to heal her wounds. Azra lies on the floor, panting and slowly losing consciousness. Dohjo sighs, walking over to Nora first, grabbing her with one hand, then walking over toward Azra, Azra with the other hand, and tugs them both over his shoulders. “Alright. Where are you gals goin’?”

Riley, Adora, and Dulse rush through the kitchen down into the lunchroom. Riley’s eyes narrow at the destruction in the lunchroom and holes in the wall, he can’t help but think to himself “What the HELL happened here..?” The group dash down the corner, hearing footsteps behind them. “Where’s Sidel?!” Dulse asks Adora, who quickly replies “Dead. Zeek killed him.” Dulse's face drops, he seems a bit sad but he hardly knew the guy, so his expression goes back to one that's more normal but he still seems to be sad. Riley snaps, signaling for Adoras attention. While still in motion, Adora turns her head toward Riley, as he signals for her to give him her gem. She tosses it to him and he grabs it, seemingly waiting to connect the pieces. As the group runs down the hallway, door by door, till they turn the corner. As they turn the corner they see a black spirit, its body is long and stretched out, looking a bit cartoony with a simple face. “That's Zeeks!” Adora calls out, as the spirit shoves both of its hands into the walls by stretching them.

The walls become a see through black color, as its arms corrode and affect the walls and surroundings. Riley immediately blasts a rock disk toward the spirit, but it immediately phases through the spirit's body. Right as the disk goes through, rigid spikes appear from the walls attempting to slash the group. Riley pulls Dulse down while Adora dodges on her own, Riley immediately whispers something in Dulse’s ear, as he spins holding him, with another spike appearing directly beside them. “Got it!” Riley scoffs and stands up, he puts his hand out and points his index and middle finger, slapping his hand onto his palm. “SCISSORS!” 3 rock pillars manifest and connect to the spirit, and immediately, Dulse rushes toward the spirit, one of the rings on his gauntlet goes out, “10 TONS!” He swings his fist and crushes the spirit, which is covered in Rileys spirit energy.

Right as Dulse finishes his attack, Jaiden and Ezekiel turn the corner, but on the opposite side of the hallway, Riley sees Azra and Nora running down the hallway. The 2 girls seem to be a bit rejuvenated, and have freshly closed wounds as they run towards the group. “RILEY!” Azra calls out “WE GOT IT!” Ezekiel and Jaiden look at each other in confusion “How the hell did a squad 6-” “Who gives a fuck, Lets DEAL WITH THIS” Jaiden says cutting off Ezekiels sentence, Jaiden bolts toward the group in the middle, as Ezekiel snaps and launches a shadow bullet into his back. His back bleeds out a bit, but he swings toward the group, mainly aiming for Riley. Adora blocks the attack with her blade, the shockwave blasts throw the room as the 2 make contact. Adora feels a blast go through her body despite not even taking the attack head on. Right as this shockwave erupts through the room, Ezekiel's spirit rises back from the ground, tendrils spreading through the crevices of the floor. “RILEYYYYYYYYY!” Azra screams toward her adoptive brother, Nora tosses the final piece of the crystal, seemingly aiming for either Riley or Dulse.

As Adora and Jaiden clash, the spirit lifts the group with its tendrils, throwing off the landing of the Gem. The gem continues to move through the air, as Riley jumps to each different part of the floor, reaching out to grab the gem while weaving and ducking different tendrils aiming at him. A tendril swings at Riley's legs, he jumps on top of it, and as it swings him backward, he launches pillars of rocks from beneath his feet, to propel toward the gem at the last second, right before it seeps through the cracks of the floor. Once he makes contact with it, he immediately pulls the other 2 pieces from his pocket, he clicks them together at the last second as a shadow tendril comes swinging down toward his face. The crystal creates a shiny pink heart, and as that heart glows, the light BEAMS throughout the entire ship, similar to Zerx’s soul energy from before.

The curtain above the ship, the shadow covering everything besides a small portion of light fades, revealing light that beams onto the shattered ship. The entire cruise ship seems to be torn apart, with a hole in through the top deck, holes in the walls, and corpses flooding the entire ship. Light glimmers from the cracks in the ceiling of the first floor, the first bit of real sunlight anybody on the ship has seen in the past 2 hours. Right as Riley is about to get hit by the tendril, he's hit with a beam of light instead as the spirit shrinks. The floor falls down and cracks back together as the spirit zooms back toward Ezekiel. “Just when it was getting good…” Jaiden says, pulling his arm back from Adoras sword. “Eh whatever. Good job surviving.” he cracks his knuckles, and then puts his arms behind his head as he walks away. A feminine voice talks over the intercom, the queen of the Khourburg Dynasty “Congratulations on surviving the first round of the magic knight exams, this year's exam will be much more difficult than the previous few years, if you’ve survived, you’re most likely on the level of at least a squad 3.” As Blare Alphonia continues her sentiment, a wave of energy covers the entire ship, seemingly as a way to sense the survivors.

“You will have all of 1 week of recovery time on the island we have now docked up on, please make your way outside the ship. Thank you, for those of you that have survived but have teammates that are unconscious, Ezekiel will be sending spirits your way to pick up anything with Soul Energy and a pulse. Thank you.” As the intercom turns off, Riley and Dulse sigh, realizing that they don't have to go back for Zerx on the bottom floor and he’ll be ok. Azra jumps and screams in excitement, hugging Nora who stands beside her completely exhausted. “WE DID IT!!!!!! All thanks to you Nora!” Nora blushes a bit at this complement and looks down “Well… You did good to Azra.. but that Dohjo guy also helped us a bit.” Azra scoffs “I guess…” Riley stands up, wiping away the blood from his left eye, which is still wounded from his earlier battle. “Jesus…” Riley stumbles away, with Dulse seemingly following behind him.

“Oh! Adora!” Azra turns toward Adora, who hasn’t said anything in a bit, who seems to be trapped in her own thoughts. "Where's… Sidel?” “Dead. He was killed in the fight with Ezekiel.” Nora dawns a face of sadness, “That's… terrible.” “It's ok. He’ll love on in us, In me.” Adora smiles at her teammates as she turns around, Nora smiles back at her but Azras expression stays stagnant. Despite all the smiling… despite the cheerful down and what she can only assume is a stretched truth… Azra can’t avoid it or hide from it. From Azra’s point of view….

Adora is coated in a dark red aura of bloodlust.

August 29th 4070 - 12:00am (The End Round 1: Knighty Apocalypse)

Starting number: 300 People

Current Number: 54 People