“Okay,” Akari said. “Let’s get out of here.” She extended a hand toward the brick wall and formed another portal on its painted white surface.

Kalden raised an eyebrow at the sight. “Where’s this lead?”

“My secret hideout,” she replied. “On top of the library”

“And you had this portal the whole time?”

“More like half a portal.” She strode forward, passing from the dark corridor to the stone roof. The Artegium library was a cylindrical stone building capped with a massive bronze dome. Stone walls and ornamentation surrounded the dome with a ten-foot gap between them. Here, Akari had gathered all the food and water she’d found in the HAC. Not to mention pillows and blankets from the facility’s laundry rooms.

She’d watched her share of past games, and certain patterns had emerged over the years. The contestants always kicked things off with epic battles, then they spent the rest of the day too thirsty, hungry, or exhausted to function. Combat was tiring work—far more than a day at the gym, or one of Raizen’s classes. Those were controlled environments with regular breaks to recover your strength and mana. Fortunately, Akari had fought in an actual war zone, and she knew they’d need a place to crash.

“Awesome!” Relia clapped her hands at the sight of Akari’s hideout. “I’ve always wanted to build a blanket fort!”

Kalden set down his camouflage unit, and the transparent domed surrounded their tiny fortress. With that done, they raided a crate of water bottles, followed by a cooler of sandwiches and protein bars. No need to ration things at this point—she’d stolen enough to feed a whole army.

“How many of those ‘inactive portals’ can you make at once?” Kalden asked her as they ate.

“Three or four,” Akari guessed. She hadn’t tested it yet, but Salvatore’s Second Law said you couldn’t focus on more than four techniques at one time. At least, not until the Master realm. These days, it wasn't much of a law, considering the long list of exceptions. For example, Cloaks happened subconsciously with practice, so people rarely counted those. You could also batch several smaller techniques in your mind, which was how Kalden and Tori wielded so many weapons.

But larger Constructs needed more focus to maintain, and portals were especially fickle. Akari had practiced this skill over the past few weeks, keeping one portal active while she focused on other tasks around the house. She knew what Kalden was imagining, though, and it would be awhile before she did anything that fancy.

They spent the next few minutes lounging in their nest of blankets, sharing the stories of their own experiences. Akari told them how she’d eavesdropped on her group in Old Town, learned of their betrayal, and got them first. Relia frowned during this story, but said nothing.

“Why not get more distance in the beginning?” Kalden broke in. “Isn’t your aspect best at range?”

Akari resisted the urge to glare. After spending more than a full year with Kalden, she’d learned not to take his criticisms so personally. He was always analyzing fights like pieces on a game board, trying to understand them, or to improve for next time.

In this case, Akari knew she’d messed up in a dozen different ways. She’d just been too pissed off to think straight.

Relia told them how she’d made some new friends near the HAC, but it hadn’t worked out. They’d bailed the second they realized who she was.

Kalden’s story was the most interesting by far. Apparently, he’d poisoned and blown up a good portion of Blood Army, then he and Relia had faked their own deaths and taken out the rest in battle.

Talek. He’d spent a whole semester undercover , only for his faction to collapse in the span of an hour. Then again, she’d seen this happen in previous years, too. The qualifying rounds were always more chaotic than people imagined.

“Then we ran into this cute girl who made portals,” Kalden continued. “Relia nursed her back to health, and we defeated our enemies with the power of friendship.”

Akari snorted. “That’s one way to describe a death mana bomb.”

“Yeah,” Kalden mused. “People won’t like that, will they?”

Relia shook her head seriously. “The Cult of Trelian made life mana bombs a few years back. I’d hate to see the comment sections right now.”

“Good old internet,” Akari muttered. In all honesty, though, internet commenters seemed to complain no matter what you did, and it was even worse in the outside world. Here, they even had a “rule” that claimed all arguments would eventually devolve into Aeon cultist comparisons.

“Anyway,” Akari said. “What’s our plan for today?”

“We should rest,” Kalden said. “More fighting right now is an unnecessary risk.”

Akari blinked. “Rest? Coming from the guy who trained non-stop all summer?”

“He’s right,” Relia said. “We have food, water, and shelter. Most people won’t.”

Kalden nodded. “That means they’ll be desperate today and sloppy tomorrow. Who’d you rather fight?”

“Easy for you guys to say ...” Their logic was sound, but Akari had one problem: she’d earned eight points for beating her former team, and two points more for helping with Tori and Lyra. Ten points had been great for the first few hours of the game, but things were changing.

She pressed the button on her wrist and brought up the scoreboard for the hundredth time that day. The second-years dominated the top, along with Zukan Kortez, Elise Moonfire, and several others from their class.

Relia held the number twelve spot with twenty-seven points, and Kalden sat at number fifteen with twenty-one points. They could easily stay in the top thirty, regardless of what happened after this. Especially Relia, since she gained extra points for every person she healed. The system definitely favored healers that way, but every attempt to change it resulted in heated debates.

Meanwhile, Akari’s name sat all the way down at number forty, ten spots short of making the cut. And that gap would only grow if she camped out on the roof all day. She’d seen it happen in previous years: contestants would start strong, get too comfortable, then fizzle out as the game reached its climax.

“No one wants to see you left out,” Relia said. “Kalden and I can’t even start a team without three people.” She gave them both a meaningful look. “Speaking of which, how are we going to fill this team?”

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

Akari glanced away, fidgeting with her hoodie strings. She and Kalden had hoped to recruit some people from their temporary alliances, but that obviously hadn’t happened.

“Let’s not count our raptors before they hatch,” Kalden said. “We need to focus on this game for now.”

“But how long can we wait around?” Akari said. “What if we miss another big fight?”

“We’re sitting in the center of the Artegium,” Kalden said. “We’ll hear a fight if it happens.”

“What if it’s in the cafeteria?” She patted one of the cardboard crates behind her. “That’s the last big food source. And what about all the stragglers out there? We’re missing easy points.”

After a bit more discussion, they settled on a compromise. Akari made a long-range portal, and they explored the smaller parts of campus while avoiding the larger armies. Unfortunately, they didn’t find much out there. Aside from a few secret caches like Professor Coleman’s lab, all the smaller buildings were bare. Sun and Moon Army controlled the good stuff in the Artegium, and their numbers made them almost untouchable.

They did, however, find an arena boundary on the northern side of campus. Here, the city appeared to go on, but an invisible barrier stood in their way, not so different from the edge of a dueling arena.

Most qualifying rounds started with nine square miles or less, so they hadn’t expected to get that far. The arena would probably shrink at the end of day one, closing in on the most populated spot. By then, they’d only have four square miles to play with.

Akari’s team should be safe when that happened, but it sucked for anyone who’d made their base on the outskirts. They’d have to hightail it toward the middle, only to get picked off by traps or snipers.

Then again, maybe the outskirts really were as desolate as they looked. So much for easy points out here.

Sooner or later, they’d have no choice but to fight the larger factions.

~~~

Tori Raizen reclined on the hotel bed, watching the day’s events on the TV screen. Lyra snored softly beside her, and a dozen taco wrappers covered the nightstands on either side of them.

She and Lyra normally ate a healthier diet, but they made exceptions for their post-match meals. In this case, the victory and consolation prizes were always the same: they took a taxi to the nearest Cadrian restaurant and ordered one of everything on the menu.

Five hours had passed since her defeat, and she still hadn’t spoken with her father. He was overseeing the qualifying rounds now, but his shift should end sometime in the next hour. Then they’d have their post-match talk—a tradition far older than their taco runs.

Her father always asked her the same questions after a competitions: “What went well? What went wrong? What could you have done better?”

Tori had started the day strong. Her army suffered minimal casualties in the first few skirmishes, and they’d formed a decent base of operations near the Healing Arts Center. She and Lyra had scored several kills, plus some leadership bonuses for their first fight in the Combat Arts Center. Tori had even spent a few minutes at the top of the scoreboard.

Then a Death Artist had entered her territory, and someone far worse tried to recruit her.

That bastard.

Tori clenched a blanket in her fist as the scene unfolded on the TV. Kalden Trengsen hadn’t even bothered to act inconspicuous as he stuck his explosives in the car’s fuel tanks. He’d done it in plain sight, and everyone had trusted him.

But why? Why would he do this?

She’d known Kalden Trengsen was special. That was the whole reason she’d recruited him into Blood Army. She’d even put him in charge and given him everything he’d asked for. Then he’d repaid her by destroying their faction from the inside.

She should have left Relia Dawnfire alone—Kalden was right about that part, at least. That girl was a freak of nature, and even Grandmasters didn’t fight mana storms on their own.

As for Kalden, she should have stuck a blade in his back the first chance she got. That probably wasn’t the answer her father wanted, but it was a nice fantasy.

Tori blinked several times to clear her head. If she were smarter, she would have followed Lyra’s example and gotten some sleep. But her thoughts kept on racing, replaying her mistakes like a fever dream.

Her duel with Kalden felt equally surreal. That moment had been a hook, sinking deep below the waters of her mind and pulling older dreams to the surface. Dreams of fighting a younger Blade Artist in Shoken. A boy who looked and fought like Kalden.

“Who trained you?” she’d asked him on the first day of class.

“My father,” he replied. “Grandmaster Rinshi Trengsen.”

Even that name felt familiar—a faint strand in the broken web of memories.

“You won’t find anything about him,” Kalden had said. “Trust me, I’ve tried.”

He’d spoken those last words with a hint of genuine frustration as if he’d searched for answers himself but came up short. That seemed to fit with his story of being an orphan. But then … he claimed his father trained him to fight like a Blade Artist.

Memory loss?

That might explain how Kalden had appeared out of thin air. No one with his skills could stay hidden in this day and age. There should have been footage of his earlier training and duels. Instead, they had one cell phone video from a fight in Creta.

Even Tori's father thought the name “Rinshi Trengsen” felt familiar. But who could erase the memories of a Grandmaster? That was crazy, wasn’t it? Her sleep deprived brain was just making excuses now.

But even as she dismissed the idea, Tori’s mind wandered back to one of her old journals. Somewhere, buried deep in her closet back home, sat a leather-bound book. That book held half a dozen blank pages for the month of Tresember, 850. Only that month. The surrounding pages were packed with thoughts about training, but she had no record of that point in her life.

Those blank pages had bothered Tori ever since she’d leafed through the book and discovered them. She’d tried asking her father about that month, but he didn’t have an answer.

Could they have met Kalden and his father during that time?

No way … erasing ink from a page was even crazier than memory loss. Especially since no one had ever read her journals. Not even her parents.

Tori took a few deep breaths, bringing her mind back to the present moment. She and Lyra wouldn’t have guaranteed spots in the battlegrounds, but they might still get invitations from the qualifying teams. Yes, Tori had killed several other teammates today, but she hadn’t done anything too disgraceful. On the contrary, she’d risked everything to stop a Death Artist.

Eventually, a soft beep sounded from the suite’s main room as someone stuck a keycard in the door. Tori elbowed Lyra to wake her up, then she grabbed the remote from the nightstand and switched off the TV.

Heavy footsteps drew closer, and Grandmaster Raizen strode into the room. His muscular frame filled the doorway, and his loose-fitting Blade Artist's robes only enhanced that image.

Tori leapt off the bed and saluted, while Lyra rubbed the sleep from her eyes. Red hair covered half her face, and she wore a pair of dragon-print pajamas that somehow managed to look both childish and skimpy at the same time.

Her father turned his gaze to the other girl. “Give us a moment, Miss Manastrike.”

Lyra gave a half-hearted nod, wrapping herself in a blanket and shuffling out toward the suite’s living room.

Her father closed the door once she’d left, then he set down a sound suppressor on the dresser. As always, his face was stoic and unreadable. Whether he’d chastise her or comfort her, Tori couldn’t say.

Regardless, one thing was more important than the qualifying rounds.

“How’s Mom?” Tori asked in Shokenese. They both spoke fluent Espirian, but her father had always been more comfortable with his native tongue.

“Her condition has gotten worse.”

Tori’s heart sank at the words. She’d tried calling the Healing Arts Center today, but they refused to tell her anything over the phone. That usually meant bad news.

“But I’ve found a way to help her,” he said after a short pause.

“Help her?” Tori asked. “How?” They’d been dealing with this illness for the better part of a year, and the healers always told the same story: it was untreatable. Even Dawnfire’s controversial aspect couldn’t put a dent in it.

Her father hesitated. “An opportunity has presented itself. There’s an alchemist in Vaslana who makes experimental elixirs based on individual biochemistry.”

Tori swallowed, not daring to get her hopes up. She’d heard of this new field of alchemy, but it hadn’t been approved by the Alchemist’s Guild. That meant it was technically illegal to buy and sell these elixirs, and most exchanges happened through dangerous people.

“He’s done three elixirs for this particular illness,” her father continued. “A perfect success rate, and no known side effects.”

“What’s the catch?” Tori finally asked.

“Nothing to worry about,” he said. “I’ve already taken care of it.”