Kael glanced down at the dark metal band on his left wrist. It hummed, then numbers flickered to life.

800 pts.

Around him, similar numbers materialized. The participants who had fought through both Round 1 and Round 2, himself included, all sported eight hundred points. A baseline established by survival and demonstrated capability.

Karacus and several others who had only participated in one round found different numbers glowing on their wrists. Four hundred points.

Then there were the debutants. Rooley stared at his bracelet with weary resignation. One hundred points. A pittance compared to the rest. The message was clear. Those who had not yet proven themselves were valued accordingly.

"The point disparity is not an insult," the Commentator said. "It is a reflection of demonstrated capability. You can change your valuation quickly, if you’re skilled enough. Or not at all, if you’re dead."

He let that word hang.

"Now then, the rules of this round. When you kill another participant, their points transfer to you. Every single point they possess becomes yours the moment their life ends."

The atmosphere shifted.

"The beasts and criminals housed within the abandoned city have also been assigned point values. You can earn points by killing them. However, and this is important, they do not gain points from killing you. The transfer is one-directional."

He raised a finger, and a massive projection materialized above the podium in luminous script.

For beasts,

Mana Heart Rank 1 was worth 100 points,

Mana Heart Rank 2 worth 200 points,

Mana Heart Rank 3 worth 300 points,

Mana Heart Rank 4 worth 500 points.

Criminals yielded more.

Mana Heart Rank 1 criminals were worth 150 points,

Mana Heart Rank 2 worth 250 points,

Mana Heart Rank 3 worth 400 points,

Mana Heart Rank 4 worth 600 points.

"Criminals yield more points than beasts of equivalent rank," the Commentator noted. "This is intentional. The criminals are more dangerous. More cunning. They won’t simply charge at you. They’ll set traps, coordinate, and pretend to surrender before gutting you when you lower your guard."

He smiled.

"For those worrying, there are only a few Mana Heart Rank 4 entities in the city, both beast and criminal. So the odds of encountering one are relatively low."

"And one final rule regarding death," the Commentator said, his voice dropping. "Anyone who dies in the city will be resurrected outside the city, on this stadium. Take note."

Confused relief passed through the participants. But the Commentator’s grin widened.

"Yes, you’ll come back. But your points will be gone. Transferred to whoever killed you. You respawn with nothing. Zero. And while you’ll be alive, you’ll also be eliminated from this round. You can watch the rest from the stands with the other failures."

"Unlike you, the criminals in that city have been given death sentences. They were going to die anyway. The Empire simply decided to make their deaths entertaining." His gaze swept the podium with genuine coldness. "They will not be resurrected. When they die in that city, they die permanently."

A low hum filled the stadium. The air in front of the podium began to fold, reality creasing like fabric pinched by invisible fingers.

The portal was massive, easily fifteen meters tall and ten wide.

"The abandoned city of Valdris. Once home to three hundred thousand people. Abandoned forty years ago after a mana catastrophe contaminated the groundwater and drove the population mad. Now it hosts the worst criminals the Empire couldn’t be bothered to execute cleanly."

He turned to face them.

"Enter the portal. You will each be deposited at a random location within the city. You will not know where your allies are. You will not know where your enemies are."

His smile was a blade.

"Survive. Kill. Earn points. Try not to die. It’s embarrassing."

Everyone entered the portal one after another.

For a fraction of a second, Kael existed in two places simultaneously. No up or down, no hot or cold, no sound. Just absence. Then the world snapped back.

Wind. Gray sky.

Kael’s boots touched flat, cracked concrete, and he dropped into a low crouch, eyes sweeping his surroundings. He was on a rooftop, perhaps twenty stories tall, one of the taller structures nearby. The city stretched in every direction, a graveyard of architecture, buildings leaning against each other like drunk companions, streets choked with abandoned vehicles and overgrown vegetation.

He checked his bracelet. Eight hundred points. Ranking not yet updated.

Wind from the northwest. Faint. No immediate sounds of combat.

Good. I have a moment to—

A high-pitched shriek cut through the wind, metallic and vicious.

Kael’s head snapped upward.

A Razor Wing Eagle, wingspan easily four meters, mottled gray-brown feathers that had nearly perfectly camouflaged it against the overcast sky. Its trailing wing edges were lined with razor-sharp metallic filaments that caught the dim light like dozens of knife blades. Its talons were reinforced with naturally grown dark iron-colored claws capable of tearing through steel plating.

Mana Heart Rank 2 and worth two hundred points.

It had been circling above him, using cloud cover as concealment. Smart for a beast. It had spotted him the moment he appeared and positioned itself for a diving strike.

Now it dove.

The speed was terrifying. The eagle folded its wings partially, transforming into a feathered missile aimed at Kael’s skull. The metallic wing edges screamed through the air.

Shadow Step.

Kael’s body dissolved into darkness, reappearing three meters to the left between one heartbeat and the next. The eagle’s talons sliced through the exact space where his neck had been, metal claws scraping concrete with a shower of sparks.

But Kael wasn’t staying. Being elevated made him visible and exposed. He ran to the edge and jumped.

The wind roared as the ground rushed up. The eagle recovered with a vicious banking turn, orienting on its falling prey, refusing to give up. The beasts were persistent.

Three stories from the ground. Two.

Gravity Manipulation. Reverse.

The force accelerating him downward reversed, and his descent abruptly halted mid-air. The shift was violent, a jolt that would have torn the muscles of anyone without his body refinement. His enhanced bones absorbed the shock.

He hung for a fraction of a second before activating the secondary effect.

Gravity Flight.

He shot upward. The sudden reversal was disorienting by design. The eagle, committed to its dive, couldn’t adjust in time. It streaked past him, metal talons extended, missing by less than a meter.

Kael didn’t stay airborne long. Flight was mana-intensive. He pulled the Cloak of Flight from storage and draped it over his shoulders. The enchanted fabric caught the wind, transforming his upward momentum into a controlled horizontal glide.

THWIP.

The sound was subtle, almost lost in the wind.

He twisted his body mid-glide. The arrow missed his center mass but didn’t miss entirely.

Gah!

Pain lanced through his left shoulder as the broadhead sliced a shallow furrow along his deltoid. His twist had converted a chest wound into a grazing strike, but the arrowhead was sharp enough to draw blood despite his Mana Skin.

Dark Emperor’s Eyes.

The world shifted to monochrome grays and silvers, every shadow sharpened, every mana source glowing like a beacon.

Two kilometers away, on a crumbling residential tower rooftop, a figure. An elf. Male, tall and lean, holding an enchanted recurve bow of pale wood, already nocking another arrow.

Syvlan Star Academy. The archer from the podium.

The eagle was circling back, metallic wings glinting, talons extended, ready to strike in coordination with the arrow.

The elf drew to his cheek. The eagle dove, claws leading.

Gravity Shield.

A sphere of compressed gravitational force materialized around Kael, a faint distortion in the air like heat haze given physical form. Anything entering would be violently decelerated and deflected.

The arrow struck the shield and stopped, its momentum utterly absorbed before tumbling away.

CLANG!

Metal talons slammed against the gravity shield with a sound like a blacksmith’s hammer on an anvil. The eagle bounced off like a stone skipping water, screeching in fury as it struggled to regain equilibrium.

The elf was already drawing again. The eagle recovered, folding its wings for another diving strike. Claw and arrow converging from different angles.

Kael didn’t wait. Instead of maintaining the shield, he changed the gravitational conditions.

Gravity Surge. Self and Target.

Kael’s body accelerated downward at three times normal freefall speed. Simultaneously, the eagle in its diving trajectory experienced the same surge, its natural dive combined with Kael’s gravitational pull causing it to plummet at violently accelerated rate.

The elf’s second arrow flew through empty space where Kael had been.

But the eagle, falling uncontrollably, dropped directly into the arrow’s trajectory.

THUNK.

The Mana Heart Rank 2 arrow struck the Razor Wing Eagle in its right wing root. The broadhead punched through feather, muscle, and bone, exiting the other side in a spray of dark blood and fragmented metal wing-filaments.

The eagle’s screech became a scream. Its right wing crumpled, and it spun out of control, tumbling end over end before crashing through a building window across the street with a shower of shattering glass.

Kael decelerated in the final fifteen meters, boots touching cracked asphalt with a controlled thud. He straightened, checked his shoulder. The graze was shallow, already sealing thanks to enhanced regeneration.

He had perhaps thirty seconds before ground-level threats arrived.

They didn’t disappoint.

An Iron Hide Bull emerged from behind an overturned transport, two meters at the shoulder, hide gleaming like oxidized iron, curved horns sharp and vicious. Mana Heart Rank 1. A Rock Lizard slipped from a collapsed storefront to his left, four meters long with scales mimicking the surrounding rubble perfectly. Mana Heart Rank 1. Two more Iron Hide Bulls charged from an intersecting street.

Four beasts. All Mana Heart Rank 1. Four hundred points total.

Kael drew his twin Void Edge MK. II blades and moved.

The first bull lowered its head for a gore. Kael sidestepped minimally and brought his right blade down in a diagonal slash across its neck.

Sky Rending Technique, Third Form: Falling Crescent.

The blade moved so fast it left a visible trail of compressed air. The technique was layered. Physical cut followed by a mana crescent that extended the strike’s range by nearly two meters. The Iron Hide Bull’s metallic hide parted like wet paper, the mana crescent severing its spine cleanly.

The Rock Lizard lunged from the left. Kael pivoted, reversed his left grip, and drove the blade downward into its skull.

Third Form: Falling Crescent, Inverted.

The inverted version drove the mana crescent into the ground, creating a concentrated explosion that pulverized the lizard’s head from the inside out, leaving a crater in the pavement.

The remaining bulls separated, trying to flank from opposite angles. Kael stepped into the frontal charge and executed his own variation.

Third Form: Falling Crescent, Vortex.

He spun, both blades extended, mana cascading off shadow-steel in a continuous ring of destructive energy. The first blade caught the charging bull across the chest, opening a furrow deep enough to expose ribs. The mana crescent expanded the wound catastrophically, dropping the beast mid-charge.

The spin carried him full circle to face the final bull just as it reached striking distance from behind. Kael’s reverse-grip blade caught one horn, deflecting it wide, while his other blade drove into its eye socket with surgical precision. The bull’s charge died instantly.

The first bull, the one cut across the chest, was still trying to rise. Iron Hide Bulls were legendary for their structural resilience. Kael walked over calmly, placed his blade against the back of its skull, and channeled lightning through the shadow-steel.

Crackle.

The beast spasmed once and went still.

Over time, he had mastered the Sky Rending blade techniques to another level entirely. What had once been rigid, formulaic forms had evolved under relentless practice into something fluid, a living combat system that adapted to circumstance. The third form could be executed horizontally, vertically, diagonally, inverted, or in the spinning Vortex variation he’d developed.

He checked his bracelet.

Twelve hundred points. Ranked third in individual performance. Heaven’s Gate sat at second in team rankings.

Kael flicked blood off his blades and sheathed them.