“Retreat,” Uriel called out. “Anyone not at tactical-class or higher, you need to RTB now.”

“Something’s wrong with the Gate,” Waylan said. “That’s an order, not a request. Jennifer, flares.”

A small diagram appeared on the same corner that the warning had appeared from, roughly mapping out the paths that the three groups had traced out over the course of their delve. The entrance was marked with a large red dot, helped along by bursts of bright light from spells that Jennifer must have created back the way they’d come.

The sudden, sharp change of tone pushed them to get into action immediately. Uriel and Waylan were good leaders given that they were still students.

We should go, Syl signed. Not our fight.

This was almost certainly a trap intended to catch Bianca, but it was entirely possible that she wasn’t the only target. There were a good deal of prismatics here, and the possibility that someone knew what Syl was and wanted to flush him out didn’t escape him.

Agreed, Bianca signed back.

The majority of the undergraduate competitors left alongside Syl and Bianca, leaving a total of ten in the area; six Reserve and four undergraduates. One of the seven Reserve members split off to escort the undergraduate group back.

Good tactics, Syl thought. They were also aware that this was likely enemy action by this point, so sending off their weaker links was as good as presenting a free target to anyone who wanted it.

He was a bit curious to see how they would function in combat, but he could use a perception-type spell to monitor the situation instead of watching them himself.

Contrary to the beliefs he’d once held, Syl didn’t need to involve himself in everything. Graduate questioning would be as effective as his own—possibly more, given the tendency of people facing him to die.

Waylan and Uriel were both master-class magicians. Though the latter might not be in an area where her talents could truly shine, this was a powerful lineup even into an ambush.

Later, Syl would reflect that he should have never trusted reassurances from Aurian leadership.

#

“Stay close,” Uriel said. “The Gate is manifesting monsters far above its level.”

“The enemy might have enhanced it,” Waylan suggested.

“That’s not possible,” Ashley Aurum, military officer and a member of one of the prismatic family offshoots, dismissed. “Gate-affecting magic doesn’t exist.”

“Don’t speculate on how this happened,” Uriel snapped. “Look at how we’re going to make it out of this. Waylan, take point. Ashley, Steven, back him up and switch-hit if you need to. Lawrence, Nora, watch our six and above us. I’m sensing signatures from deeper into the Gate, but there’s always the possibility of flux masking and cloaking.”

“What should we be doing?” asked Wyatt, a third-year who’d stayed behind to fight.

“Surviving,” Uriel said. “Form ranks as well as you can, but be aware that the moment an enemy attacks, we’re going to break. No formation survives contact with magical warfare. Stay out of each other’s way. There are no second chances here. We’re not going to be able to bail you out.”

“Understood, ma’am,” he said.

“It’s not too late to leave,” Uriel said. “I don’t want any—Waylan! Two o’ clock, forty-five up!”

Waylan didn’t reply verbally, instead igniting with flux as multiple fortification-type spells activated at once.

According to the Aurian magician registry, the Reds were the best single combat family in the world bar none. Their signature fighting style revolved around extremely complex spell chains, and their magicians were lethally flexible because of it. Waylan had been training in the art of dueling since childhood, and his movement showed that. He maintained five separate spells of various classes at once—one to enhance his speed and strength, another his perception, a third to infuse every strike he made with flux, a fourth to summon the Red family’s Phoenix Blade, and a fifth to balance all of those effects without damaging his body or flux channels.

He added a sixth spell into the mix as the monster Uriel had detected sprang out at him. The python the diameter of an oil truck drilled through the cave rock, a second equally enormous snake emerging from within its maw and spitting a deadly green beam of force at Waylan.

Most Reds would have used a quick movement spell to get behind the easily tactical-class creature at this point, dodging the beam and trying to counter-attack, but Waylan had taken a more unconventional route.

A-class reflection-type spell, Silent Mirror. It was another spell that only Reds had access to, but this one had only been passed down the main family line. Mastery of the spell often skipped generations, with many choosing to pick a more conventional duelist path. When Waylan had learned it, his grandfather and teacher had been the only Red who had known the technique. He’d died shortly after passing it on.

Silent Mirror was difficult in more than one way. Not only was the spell terribly complex, it also operated on a level deeper than just the spell process. The user had to draw from deep within, and he had to know the way of the warrior intimately. When used in battle, this spell was often believed to be tactical or even master-class for how effective it was—but in actuality, that perception came from how impossible it was to cast correctly.

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Silent Mirror created a flux pattern that was conceptualized not as a mirror but as a sword. By hitting a spell in just the right place at just the right time—a window that got increasingly difficult as the spell being reflected increased in complexity and power—it redirected it, changing the owner of the spell and its target all at once.

The magical process the giant double python had initiated was a simple but powerful dual-process A-class magic manifestation. At this level with this complexity, Waylan’s window to parry was a cube of space about fifteen centimeters to each side for roughly five hundred milliseconds.

His manifested sword, a crimson red blade that shone with bloody light even in the darkness of the cavern, made contact with not just the spell but a specific part of its flux component, redirecting it into the snake’s maw. The green beam sizzled through flesh and stone without even slowing down, searing a fist-sized hole through the back of the python’s head.

Waylan finished the fight in under a second, blitzing forward and chopping off one head, then two.

“That shouldn’t have been here,” he grimaced, letting his sword dissipate as he returned back to the group. “Stay on guard.”

One of the students had gone slack-jawed, her eyes widening at the sight of the brutal, sudden violence in front of them. Without another word, she turned tail and bolted.

“Shit,” Uriel said. “Hopefully they’ll be too focused on your spectacle here to chase after her.”

“She’s not going to be a target,” Waylan said. “Class 2 nobody, if you forgive my disrespect. Nothing special about her, no big family ties.”

Uriel nodded. “Good point.”

“You’re assuming that there’s people behind this,” Ashley said. “The Gate is stronger than it should be, but nothing else has been extraordinary so far.”

“If you say so, then it must be true,” Waylan said, bitter sarcasm dripping from his voice. “Keep moving. Gate hasn’t ejected us, so that wasn’t the boss.”

Uriel was the ranking officer here, but this wasn’t the kind of battlefield where she excelled. Artillery-type magic was incredibly useful when it took specialized equipment and high-class spells to even see the enemy.

Here, where engagements would be taken at ranges where even a particularly sharp stick could be lethal? It was a different story. She was little better than a low-end tactical-class magician here, though her insight into magic proved her to be higher than that. She spent the majority of her focus and flux on maintaining a surveillance net around them, warning the group when a monster approached.

The double python was the first of many similar creatures—all A-class or tactical-class beings that could potentially have spawned in this biome but not within a C-class Gate. After the surprise of the first one, they were more prepared for further instances. Waylan still fought a handful of them one-on-one, but he was no longer the only one participating. Ashley wasn’t quite a duelist, but her annihilation-type proficiency made her a deadly threat once she was able to set up.

Wyatt, one of the few underclassmen present, proved to be capable of pulling his weight by pre-casting area of effect slow and ice spells every time Uriel’s detection net pinged on something. Nora and Lawrence were relatively normal tactical-class magicians, but they were still of First National Academy. When they worked as a unit, their raw destructive potential was amplified. They established a deadly crossfire on their flankwatch, repeating drills they had done again and again and again.

Despite Ashley’s words, there was a general understanding between Uriel and Waylan, the two other prismatic Reserve members, that every aspect of this was a planned-out attack. That sentiment percolated, though not in its entirety. Their tight unit was growing steadily more efficient at killing even the tactical-class monsters that showed up as they got deeper, but amongst the Reserve, everyone knew that there were almost certainly undetected magicians within.

The underclassmen, critically, had not been informed of this. They’d been told to be on guard, of course, but they did knew even less about this situation than the Reserve did.

That meant that when they stepped into another potential boss room, the water now knee deep, it was only the Reserve who had pre-emptively cast shields against types of magic other than annihilation and projection, which had seemed to be the theme of the Gate so far.

Wyatt Bridges was the last magician to step into the room, having lagged behind to reclaim his previous spell pattern to regain a portion of the flux he’d been expending. He walked on top of the water instead of through it, each step crystallizing ice under his feet.

Nobody else was using an active spell, so the perception-type Flux Radar placed two millimeters above the waterline triggered the second a flux process formed under Wyatt’s boot.

Uriel’s eyes widen, and she shouted, “Trap!”

A fair distance away, a silent magician intercepted a wide-range message sent on a hidden frequency, one of many he’d been monitoring.

[4] triggered. Activate all?

Problem, Syl signed to Bianca. We should return.

A much closer distance away, seven mundane land mines detonated underwater. Reactive shields went up, the majority of the First Academy unit having prepared for this, but for some, they didn’t come up fast enough.

Wyatt Bridges, who did not possess a reactive shield for the purpose of non-magical explosives, —a threat he would never have to face in the Circuit—never stood a chance. In less than a tenth of a second, he went from promising future prospect to chunks of bloody charred meat.

Four magicians emerged from the point that their mines had detonated, finally revealing themselves.

For a brief, tense moment, the nine remaining students stood silently, suddenly surrounded by the hostile force some of them had been preparing for.

Then an undergraduate’s body hit the water, an errant piece of shrapnel lodged firmly in the base of her skull, and all hell broke loose.

#

Leaving was harder than returning to the relative safety of the group near the door.

“Where are you going?” Jennifer asked Syl quietly.

“You felt the Gate vibrate, didn’t you?” Syl replied. “We see a problem. We’re going to solve it.”

“What are you—“ Jennifer paused. “That’s a distress call.”

“We’re late,” Syl said grimly. “I made the wrong call.”

“You didn’t,” Bianca said. “You didn’t have all the information. Let’s go.”

“I can’t let you two go,” Jennifer said. “You’re going to get yourself killed.”

Syl affixed her with a dead-eyed stare.

“No,” he said. “We aren’t.”

He set off to go, Bianca following, and Jennifer didn’t stop them.

“I should come,” she said.

“You should not,” Bianca said. “You have people to protect, and you’ll only get in the way.”

“You’re a good engineer, Jennifer,” Syl said, flux forming around his legs. “Don’t dirty your hands with a soldier’s life.”

“How can you say that?” Jennifer asked. “You’re—you’re also an engineer. Shouldn’t you be doing the same?”

My hands are already dirtier than you can even imagine, Syl thought.

Instead of replying, he moved.