Noah’s voice tore through the noise of the battlefield.

"DAMIEN! NOW!!!"

Damien heard it clearly from across the field.

He gave one sharp nod without breaking his stride.

At the same moment, Noah turned and ran hard in the opposite direction, gripping his spear tightly, weaving through the debris field with his eyes already fixed on his target.

---

Damien stopped moving.

He planted his feet in the middle of the fifteen students surrounding him and let his body do what it had been building toward.

The golden glow that had been running across his skin intensified suddenly, not gradually but all at once, surging from a steady shimmer into something far brighter. His entire body lit up like a lamp being turned to full power.

Then it expanded.

A circle of white light erupted outward from his body, vast and immediate, expanding in every direction in a widening sphere that swallowed everything around him. The white carried a deep gold underneath it, warm and blinding, the kind of brightness that gave no shadows and left nowhere to hide.

The sphere spread outward ten meters, twenty, further still, until the one section of the battlefield was drowned in it.

Every student caught inside it stopped.

Hands flew up to cover eyes. Bodies turned away instinctively. The B-1 students surrounding Damien staggered back from the sudden intensity of it, losing their footing and their focus at the same time.

Arisha turned her face away sharply, one arm raised across her eyes.

Kaelan shut his eyes immediately and stilled himself.

Lyria squeezed hers closed, feeling the heat of it pressing against her skin even through her eyelids.

Ryan, the tanker, dropped his shield slightly as the light hit him, his eyes slamming shut by reflex.

Ophelia turned away from Damien’s direction with a hiss, her eyes clenched closed.

Nobody was watching their backs.

---

Noah had been moving since the moment he shouted.

He had covered the ground quickly, cutting around the edge of the engagement in a wide arc, keeping low. By the time Damien’s light detonated, Noah was already behind Ophelia.

He couldn’t see clearly either. The light was everywhere, washing out colour and depth. But he kept his eyes dropped downward, focusing on the ground directly in front of him rather than the blinding source.

Her shadow.

Even in that overwhelming brightness, the shape of her figure cast a dark outline on the rubble beneath her feet. He used it to close the last few meters without looking up.

He thrust the spear forward with both hands.

The tip drove through her from behind, clean and deep, piercing through the back and out through the chest.

Ophelia’s breath cut off into a sharp, sudden scream.

"Arrghhhh!!!" Her scream traveled across the battlefield.

---

At the same moment, the miniature sun Damien had created reached its limit.

It detonated.

BOOOOMMM!!!

The shockwave rolled outward in every direction, carrying a wall of displaced air and hot white light that knocked students off their feet and sent loose debris skidding across the ground. Smoke billowed outward from the centre, thick and immediate, swallowing the entire area in grey white haze.

Noah had already pulled the spear free and moved the moment he felt the pressure building. He stepped away fast, putting distance between himself and Ophelia’s position before the wave hit.

The smoke came down around everything.

A few seconds passed.

Then Ophelia’s body flickered once in the haze.

And vanished.

Noah exhaled. ’She’s down...now how many remained?’ and he turned, trying to read the battlefield through the smoke.

Then a scream came from nearby.

He recognized the direction immediately. His expression shifted into something quiet and knowing. After all he already knew what was coming.

He already understood what it meant.

The smoke began to thin.

Through the grey haze, a shape became visible on the ground.

There he was Kaelan.

He was away, lying face down, blood spreading beneath him, his body already glitching at the edges. His daggers had fallen from his hands. Whatever had hit him had been fast enough that even Kaelan hadn’t seen it coming through the smoke and the blinding light.

His body flickered one final time.

Then he was gone.

Lyria stared at the empty space where he had been, her expression caught between shock and confusion.

"What happened?" she started to ask, turning to look around. "Who—"

Something wrapped around her ankle.

She looked down.

A thick green vine had coiled around her foot, emerging from a crack in the rubble beneath her. Before she could pull free, more came — shooting upward from the ground on either side of her, wrapping around her wrists and yanking her arms out wide, holding her completely in place.

She pulled against it. The vines held without giving an inch.

Her eyes went wide.

Two arrows came out of the smoke. They were fast, straight, and close together. They came without warning. Her weakned body was not able to break free from vines.

Both arrows drove deep into her stomach.

Lyria’s breath left her in a single harsh sound. Her spear slipped from her fingers. She looked down at the arrows, then back up at the smoke in front of her.

Her body began to flicker.

"Lyria!" Arisha’s voice came from somewhere behind, sharp with alarm.

But there was nothing to be done.

The vines dissolved as Lyria’s body disappeared.

From the thinning smoke stepped a figure.

Green hair and same color eyes. A bow held loosely in one hand, already dismissing itself back into his storage ring as he walked forward. His clothes were clean. His face showed no sign of injury, no sweat, no damage at all. 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

He was Michael.

He had been waiting. Hidden, perfectly preserved, while everyone else had spent themselves fighting.

The bow vanished and a rapier appeared in his right hand in a single smooth motion.

He turned his green eyes toward Ryan, the injured tanker who was still on his feet but barely. His shield cracked, his armor damaged, his breathing heavy.

He was a beastman with wolf ears. They twitched.

Michael moved toward him without a word.

Ryan raised his shield and braced.

The rapier found the gap between the shield edge and Ryan’s arm in the first exchange, sliding through it cleanly. Ryan held a mace tightly in his other hand.

Ryan grunted and held on, but the second strike was already coming.