A few hours earlier, I'd have tried to fight or outwit my way out.
But that wasn't an option anymore.
I could barely move.
My limbs were sore, blood had dried in strange patterns along my hoodie sleeves, and my only remaining orb was cracked like old porcelain.
So when I crouched behind that jagged slab of rock, just barely out of Cassia's line of sight, I didn't plan some brilliant escape.
I played dead. Literally. Slowed my breathing, pressed my cheek to the stone, and listened to the screams of the four poor bastards she was playing with.
At one point, she danced a little closer, her boots crunching gravel just a few paces away.
I thought I was done.
I had one hand on the orb, the other on my eyes.
Planning to activate my bloodline and blink away if I had to — madness and all.
But then…
The world shifted.
Not metaphorically.
The actual terrain lurched.
One of those sudden arena transformations hit mid-standoff — cracks split through the earth like lightning bolts across mud, and the ground sank.
Water surged in from some unseen source, dragging entire platforms downward.
The chunk I was on broke off and tilted.
Cassia didn't even look at me — too busy leaping gracefully to another stone, cackling like a banshee while her victims flailed and cursed.
And I? I didn't jump. I just remained crouched.
My stone chunk tilted further, then rose.
Apparently it was one of those new floating ones.
A perfect, unexpected elevator.
By the time she looked back, I was just a shadow against the sky.
Did she see me? Maybe.
Did she care?
Not enough.
I breathed through my teeth and counted the pulses in my fingertips.
One orb left.
Cracked.
Seven minutes remaining on my smartwatch.
Currently, I was lying flat on my back on a floating rock.
Yeah. A literal slab of ancient, rune-carved stone, levitating like some forgotten god's coaster, drifting slowly through the upper stratosphere of the dome.
And I mean way up.
If I reached out, I could almost touch the dome's ceiling—its smooth, enchanted surface shimmered faintly with illusion magic, a web of runes weaving across it like veins in the sky.
Every so often, a flicker of static rippled through it, reminding everyone watching outside that we were still under scrutiny.
This was still a test. A spectacle.
And I was the idiot taking a nap at the top of it.
Not by choice, of course.
I didn't have the strength to jump off. My legs were done.
My MP was somewhere around "please don't sneeze or you'll pass out."
So I just let the rock take me where it wanted, which happened to be up. Real high.
Higher than I'd like.
Wind howled around me in slow, high-altitude gusts, teasing at the edges of my hoodie.
My left arm was tucked against my ribs where I suspected something was bruised or cracked, and every breath I took carried the faint taste of blood and metal.
Honestly, the view wasn't bad. Just... unsettling.
Because below me, the arena had changed again.
The terrain had shifted a few minutes ago—again. Silver Mist Academy loved to keep us on our toes. Or in my case, off them.
I thanked my stars it wasn't lava this time.
I had a very specific list of terrible ways to go, and "burning alive while surrounded by maniacs"
was near the top. So yes. Thank you, terrain shift.
You weird, eldritch dungeon master, you.
Since then, entire platforms had been swallowed by rising tidewaters.
Huge stone rings floated across the water like lily pads on a mythological pond, spinning slowly, lazily, like they weren't trying to murder us earlier.
And worse—some of the heaviest pillars, monoliths, and shattered terrain chunks were now floating mid-air.
Not drifting. Floating. Suspended in a surreal lattice of motion.
One chunk of ancient stone spun end over end as if waiting to find someone to crush with elegance.
Another hovered motionless, angled just right to catch a desperate climber by surprise.
I watched it all from my accidental sky throne.
And then I noticed something that made my blood run a bit colder.
The arena was shrinking.
The dome hadn't moved, but the floating platforms were subtly, slowly, converging.
Drawing together like iron filings toward the eye of a storm.
The outer terrain was being pulled inward, the flooded edges drying as new structures formed.
The battlefield was compressing.
A final round was coming.
And from this high up, I could see almost everyone left.
Scattered survivors on floating ledges.
Combatants clinging to ruined debris.
Movers and climbers.
Fighters and cowards.
It was like watching chess pieces crawl across a board that kept rearranging itself.
And then… I saw them. Some of the main casts.
The first was Justin Bridge.
He was sprinting full-speed toward a girl who looked like she'd barely made it out of a swamp, clutching her ribs and leaning against a floating stone stairway.
She had wide eyes, a scraped-up dress, and a stubborn spark behind her glare—one I'd seen before.
Wait—hold on.
Oh. Her.
That was the girl I saved earlier.
The one who'd gotten nearly eliminated by that death-happy Necrozi student.
The same girl Justin was now running toward like he was starring in a dramatic reunion episode.
He crouched beside her, breathing hard. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," she snapped. "You don't have to act like you care—"
"I don't," he shot back. "I just don't want to see you like this. And someone has to carry your dramatic ass to the finish line, right?"
"Pfft."
"You're welcome, by the way."
Ah yes.
That classic romance arc.
You know the type.
The one where the dense, oblivious protagonist doesn't realize his lifelong female best friend is head-over-heels for him until five books and twelve chapters of pining later.
Yeah. That's what those two were. Cliché central.
I swear, I could already hear the violins swelling for their inevitable love confession post-tournament.
Idiots.
Then my gaze drifted to the next familiar figure.
A girl standing tall, long black hair streaked with silver, pulled into a lazy braid down her shoulder.
She was perched atop a floating slab of marble like some kind of noble wraith, untouched by mud or blood.
Selene Vaelthorn.
Another heroine.
Another problem.
She looked just as terrifying in real life as she did in the game. Immaculate. Elegant.
Like someone had paused the war for her to freshen up.
While everyone else looked like sewer survivors, Selene looked like she was auditioning for a perfume ad set in a cathedral.
She wasn't fighting. Just… watching.
Calculating. Waiting.
And then there was Cassia Virelle Duskmoor.
Yes. That Cassia.
I spotted her from the jagged ruins near the central ring of floating monoliths—barefoot, humming, eyes lit with dangerous glee.
Her dress was torn, her knuckles bleeding, and she was smiling like someone who'd just been told it was open season on good behavior.
She licked blood off her finger. Whose blood, I didn't want to know.
Crazy girl. Certified.
And not far from her…
Glory.
My sister stood balanced on a narrow floating walkway, her white hair plastered to her cheek by wind and sweat.
She looked tired. Focused. One orb left. Her hand was twitching near her side—already channeling wind.
She hadn't seen me yet.
Further away, near the edge of a submerged ruin, I spotted him.
Valois Laurent.
The Vampire Prince. Still alive. Still standing.
His pristine coat was gone. His shirt was torn. Blood streaked his shoulder.
One of his orbs blinked faintly, cracked but intact.
And yet, he stood like nothing had touched him.
Tall. Calm. Terrifying.
And then…
Something splashed in the center of the field.
A shape rose from the water—gasping, hacking, spitting like a man reborn from a baptism of chaos.
Everyone turned to look.
Even Cassia tilted her head.
And I sat up slightly from my floating rock and muttered: "…No way."
The boy in the water blinked up at the sky, wild blond curls matted to his skull.
His soaked hoodie clung to his ribs. He looked around, utterly confused.
"…Wait… Where's my spoon?"
Marco.
Of course.
Who didn't know Marco?
Eternal Realms veterans knew him well.
The crazy werewolf who laughed at death, tripped over destiny, and somehow always ended up surviving the worst situations through a mix of chaos, luck, and blind refusal to die.
He was a playable character, believe it or not.
Yeah. I know. Doesn't make sense.
But trust me—he wasn't just comic relief.
He was a chaotic wild card.
He had impact. Hidden storylines. Side quests.
One of them even changed the ending of the game.
And here he was now.
Emerging from a battlefield like a drowned rat.
Even now, as he staggered upright, he was gripping something in his hand
A spoon.
Where the hell did he get a spoon?
"Marco?" someone called.
He blinked. "YEAH?!"
"…How are you still alive?"
"I DON'T KNOW! I think the spoon helped."
"Where did you even get a spoon?!"
He turned, completely serious. "It's tactical."
He said it like he believed it.
A boy beside him looked ready to implode.
"What are you going to do with a spoon, dig someone's eye out?!"
"I was gonna eat pudding," Marco said, then paused.
"But now I might consider the eye thing."
Everyone just stared at him.
And Marco? He just smiled and tucked the spoon into his pocket like it was a legendary weapon.
No one even knew how to react anymore.
Honestly? I was glad he was still here.
Only about 30 of us were left now.
All scattered across this semi-flooded battlefield of floating rocks, hovering rings, and drowning towers.
The arena wasn't just flooded—it was shrinking.
The walls were inching closer, pressing us all inward.
The final phase was coming.
And I wasn't ready.
I clenched my fist, feeling the trembling pulse of my single cracked orb still hanging at my hip.
Seven minutes.
That was all I had.
Suddenly chaos split below into a dozen flashpoints.
I couldn't track them all at once, but I tried.
And gods, it was terrifying.
Cassia Virelle Duskmoor stood barefoot on a floating pillar, hands soaked in crimson glow, her pupils like pinpricks of starlight.
Four students surrounded her in a loose ring—clearly desperate to coordinate.
Their clothes were torn, limbs bruised, two of them already limping.
Their orbs shimmered a faint silver-blue—still unbroken, but hairline cracks webbed across the surface like they could give at any moment.
"I'll give you five seconds," Cassia purred, her grin wide and bloody.
"Not to run—but to say something interesting.
If I'm bored, I start improvising."
One girl, a Terrakai user from Tenaria, hurled vines forward from her bracers, trying to bind Cassia's arms.
It was fast, well-timed. I almost flinched.
Cassia ducked under the vines, twisted mid-air like a dancer possessed, and caught the bracers with a snap of her wrists.
With a savage yank, she pulled the girl clean off the platform—and straight into a jagged rock ledge.
A pulse of light—one orb shattered.
"Oops," Cassia said, blinking innocently. "One down."
A boy tried to blindside her with a conjured blade of ice, but she bent back unnaturally, kicked his chin with her heel mid-flip, then exploded a burst of blood-red mana from her palm that sent him hurtling into a floating wall.
A crunch echoed up to me.
Another orb gone. That made two.
The remaining two fighters exchanged a look—and ran.
Cassia just laughed and didn't bother chasing.
Selene Vaelthorn looked like she belonged in a painting.
She stood atop a flat platform surrounded by rising water, her braid fluttering in a ghostly arc behind her.
Her hands moved in lazy, fluid circles—graceful, almost disinterested.
A Fyorian boy—some noble judging by his golden-lined sleeves—charged at her with a halberd etched with lightning runes.
Selene raised a single hand.
Clink.
The halberd shattered in his grip like it was made of glass.
"What—?" he gasped.
"You're loud,"
she murmured. "And predictable."
A wave of silvery-blue mist poured from her hand and enveloped him.
For a moment, he screamed—but no one could see what was happening inside.
When the mist cleared, he was flat on his back.
Not dead. But out cold.
His three orbs flickered, dimmed—and the smartwatch on his wrist blinked red.
Evacuated.
Selene adjusted her gloves and didn't even glance at him again.
Thalia Renwild and Justin Bridge were back-to-back, cornered on a series of broken pillars as water splashed violently below.
Two students advanced on them, one wielding spectral chains, the other some kind of mirrored shield that rebounded spells.
"Remind me again why we're doing this?" Justin grunted, ducking under a chain that sliced through a boulder.
"Because you're an idiot with a savior complex!"
Thalia snapped, hurling a compressed arc of Terrakai force toward the mirror-user, who barely blocked it in time.
"And because you said, you wanted to be among the top 10 in the evaluation exam"
"Still do," Justin muttered, swinging his blade.
It crackled with radiant fire.
The chain-wielder caught it—but yelped when the blade scorched through his gauntlet.
They were fighting smart. Rotating.
Switching targets.
Justin and Thalia weren't just surviving—they were dominating.
I watched in stunned silence as Justin blasted a chain from the air with a flame-covered elbow, then parried with the back of his hand like this was a game of tag and not a life-sized chess match of pain.
Two orbs cracked on their enemies.
One shattered moments later. The fight was turning.
And then there was Marco.
Where wasn't Marco?
He shot past on a makeshift jet ski made of three chained shields and a chunk of summoned ice, yelling, "Outta the way, losers!"
He bounced off two platforms, nearly face-planted into a floating tree trunk, somehow landed a backflip, and continued skating away—laughing like a maniac.
"Does he have a goal?" I muttered.
He passed Selene, waving. "Hey, gorgeous! Love the braid!"
She didn't even turn.
Then he yelled, "Wait—is this lava or soup?!"
He dipped a spoon—yes, a literal spoon—into a steaming red pool. Took a sniff.
"Oh thank gods, it's soup!"
I blinked.
Even from above, I heard another student scream in frustration. "Marco, stop helping!"
He saluted with the spoon and rode away.
Then I saw her.
My sister.
She stood at the edge of a half-submerged ring, eyes narrowed, clothes clinging to her soaked frame, hair wild and eyes wilder.
She was bruised, bleeding from the corner of her mouth, one sleeve torn clean off.
Across from her—Valois Laurent.
Of course it was him.
He stood tall, twin blades glinting with vampire steel, crimson eyes steady.
His coat was sliced, his chest heaving.
One of his orbs was faintly cracked.
He rolled his neck.
"I had a feeling we'd meet," he said. "Though I'd hoped your brother would last a little longer."
Glory's fists clenched.
"Don't talk about him."
Valois tilted his head. "He was strong, for someone with no class. But now... it's just you."
She didn't respond with words.
She launched herself forward, feinted left, and struck high—bare fists against vampire steel.
The crack of impact thundered like a war drum.
Valois parried the next hit, spun low, and swiped at her legs, but she flipped—literally flipped—over him, caught his coat mid-air, and drove a knee toward his skull.
He blocked just in time.
Then he smiled. "You're angry."
"You think?"
"I like it."
Another exchange of blows.
She kicked.
He dodged.
He slashed.
She weaved.
A burst of kinetic pressure knocked both of them apart—but neither backed down.
My heart pounded as I watched. One thought circled in my mind like a vulture.
If he hurts her again, I'm going to lose it.