The heavy steel doors of the Blue Gate hissed shut behind her, sealing with a definitive, mechanical clank.

Sora stepped out of the shadows of the staging tunnel and directly into the blinding, artificial daylight of the arena. The scale of the battlefield from ground level was staggering.

The air inside the stasis barrier felt unnervingly still, carrying the faint, lingering scent of ozone, crushed rock, and the coppery tang of Elise’s blood from the previous match.

High above, the massive holographic displays shifted, projecting Sora’s face to the world.

"And here comes our blue side contender!" the male commentator’s voice boomed through the acoustic amplifiers, vibrating the very floor beneath Sora’s boots. "Representing the proud and unyielding nation of Varisus, give it up for Sora Maddox!"

A ripple of intense excitement tore through the stadium. The name ’Maddox’ carried an incredibly heavy weight in the Exterminator world.

"That’s right!" the female commentator chimed in, her voice dripping with journalistic hype. "She is the grand-niece of commander, James Maddox! But do not think she is merely riding on her family’s coattails. Our records show she awakened barely one year ago, and she has already clawed her way to a verified Rank C!"

"An absolutely terrifying growth rate!" the male commentator yelled. "There are heavy rumors circulating that her class possesses an S-Rank potential! Will she show us the legendary Maddox supremacy today?!"

Instantly, Sora heard the muffled, overlapping screams thousands of people rooting for her to win. The sound was like a crashing ocean wave. She instinctively raised her head, looking around to see the roaring crowd, but she quickly realized something strange.

From the inside of the battlefield, the glass right outside the seal didn’t work as a clear see though glass. Instead, it was completely opaque from the inside—a shifting, shimmering wall of isolating energy that completely blocked her from looking outside.

She couldn’t see a single face in the stands. It was a brilliant design choice by the tournament organizers to prevent Exterminators from getting distracted.

Sora let out a slow exhale, forcing her heart rate down. She gulped, pushing the anxiety deep into her stomach. ’I will not be distracted,’ she told herself firmly. ’Uncle James would mock me to death if I lose the first round.’

She raised her hands. With a faint flash of silver mana, she summoned her twin daggers, their serrated edges gleaming dangerously in the light.

A moment later, she also summoned her second best armor—a set specifically designed for high-velocity wind users.

In a flash of light, a completely glimmering, lightweight steel cuirass materialized, tightly covering her torso completely to protect her vital organs. Matching steel boots locked around her calves and feet, and heavy steel gauntlets wrapped around her forearms and hands.

However, the armor deliberately left her vital moving places—the elbow joints, the back of her knees, and her upper thighs—completely bare. It offered less overall protection, but it allowed absolutely free, unrestricted movement in battle.

For an Assassin class, speed was life.

Across the sprawling expanse of the arena, the locks of the Red Gate hissed. The heavy doors slid open.

A lady stepped out.

Sora’s eyes narrowed as she analyzed her opponent. The girl looked wild. She had dyed her hair a stark, ashen gray, cut short and messy. She wore an absurdly minimal outfit for a combat tournament—a tight, ragged crop top and frayed denim shorts that left almost all of her skin completely bare to the elements.

She was casually smoking a thin cigarillo, letting a plume of gray smoke drift from her lips. She had multiple metallic piercings dotting her ears, her lower lip, and most notably, three sharp silver studs pierced directly into the skin at the outer ends of both her eyes.

She stopped walking, took a long drag from her cigarillo, and looked across the arena at Sora. Then, the girl smiled. It wasn’t a friendly or competitive smile. It was a wide smile that looked exactly like a starving wolf spotting a rabbit.

With a flick of her wrist, the gray-haired girl tossed her cigarillo onto the pristine arena floor. She raised her hands, and a dense, crimson mana flared around her forearms.

She summoned two massive, heavy gauntlets. They weren’t blunt boxing weapons; extending from the knuckles of each gauntlet were four wickedly curved, razor-sharp blades built exactly like tiger claws.

"And stepping out of the Red Gate!" the male commentator roared. "She needs no introduction to the local crowd! She belongs to Ufrifa itself! A ruthless local prodigy representing the host nation! Welcome Shila!"

The massive digital clock on the dome flashed in bright red letters.

3... 2... 1...

BZZZZZT!

The match began.

Sora didn’t hesitate for a microsecond. She instantly channeled her silver mana, pushing the highly compressed air directly under the soles of her steel boots.

BOOM!

The air pressure violently detonated, creating a shockwave that launched Sora forward. She tore across the arena with the speed of a howling gust, her body blurring as she sprinted directly toward the red pillar on the far side.

But as Sora sprinted, her eyes remained locked on her opponent.

The Ufrifan girl didn’t run. She didn’t even take a standard combat stance. Instead, she dropped down, leaning forward onto all fours like a feral beast, the tips of her tiger claws sinking effortlessly into the dense alloy floor.

The crimson mana around the girl’s body violently flared, concentrating entirely into her legs.

CRACK!

The girl jumped. She jumped so incredibly hard that the alloy beneath her feet completely shattered, sending a shockwave through the ground that visibly shook the sixty-foot pillars.

Sora’s eyes went wide. She lost track of her for a fraction of a second. She snapped her head up. The Ufrifan girl wasn’t running across the arena—she was soaring through the sky.

With that single, impossible leap, she had launched herself high into the air and was currently at the apex of her arc, directly above Sora’s position.

"That’s insane!" Sora gritted her teeth, her mind calculating the terrifying trajectory.

’If I try to go for her flag, it’s game over,’ Sora realized with a cold spike of dread. ’She is physically more agile than me. Her leap covered half the arena in a single bound. If I keep running, she will land, rebound, and reach my blue flag much faster than I can scale her red pillar!’

She couldn’t outrun her. She had to ground her.

Having thought that, Sora instantly changed tactics. She killed the wind pressure under her boots, sliding to a violent halt that carved deep grooves into the bent floor Elise had warned her about.

In a flash of light, Sora completely dismissed her twin daggers back into her inventory, freeing both of her gauntleted hands.

She planted her feet, looked up at the descending girl, and channeled every ounce of her dense wind mana into her arms.

Sora swung her arms in rapid, sweeping upward arcs. With every swing, she used the extreme air pressure to launch massive, invisible Air Slashes directly at the girl mid-air.

The crescent-shaped blades of compressed wind shrieked as they sliced upward, carrying enough force to cut through solid steel.

High above, the gray-haired girl saw the lethal distortions in the air flying toward her. She twisted her flexible body, trying to contort and dodge them mid-air without any footholds.

She narrowly twisted past the first two, but Sora had fired a relentless barrage. It was almost impossible to dodge the final, massive air slash aimed dead center at her torso.

Sora watched intensely, waiting for the impact.

But suddenly, the laws of reality seemed to glitch. The massive Air Slash that was just a millimeter away from touching the girl’s crop top simply... vanished.

Shila blinked, her brain struggling to process the impossible visual. What—

Before she could even finish the thought, the air less than two inches from her face violently rippled.

Shila didn’t see the girl move. She didn’t see a leap. Instead, ripping straight out of the empty, distorted space right in front of her eyes, she saw a fist flying directly toward her face.