Rudrean arrived at the second zone in a controlled glide as he deactivated the Combat Art.

’I can keep the Combat Art form up for a long time with my build.’ Rudrean’s eyes glinted.

[Isalyn: Yep. You would only get exhausted once your mental capacity reaches the limit, but that’ll take multiple days unless you strain your focus too much.]

The others were already inside the second area.

Two hordes had been split apart and were being dealt with efficiently, Lyra’s weapons sealing the flanks while Ryzen’s ice walls funnelled monsters into kill corridors for Aelira to sweep clean.

Rudrean dropped in and handled the remainder without ceremony, each strike precise and unhurried, the kind of ease that came from a body that was no longer working near its ceiling.

They collected, moved, and repeated.

It was thirty minutes into the second zone when one of Lyra’s orbs pulsed.

Then a second.

She raised her hand. "Stop."

Everyone stilled.

Her golden eyes tracked the data from the orbs in silence. Her expression didn’t change, but her cat ears angled slightly, and her tail went still.

"Two teams," she said. "Approaching from the northwest pass. One has six members. One has five. Moving in coordinated spread, not randomly. They know each other."

"Who?" Rudrean asked.

"Romen Velkar’s team. And Reina’s. The top teams that were expected to win this event by the masses."

Silence settled over the group for a moment.

Aelira turned her gaze northwest, and something shifted in her expression. Not quite anger, not quite amusement. Just a cold, quiet certainty settling behind her eyes.

"Very well," she said. "Two of the strongest teams, same zone, same timing." She glanced toward the central pillar of light burning far in the distance. "They want the bosses, the runes, all of it."

"So do we," Rivera said.

"Exactly." Aelira looked at Rudrean. "Which means they can’t stay. Not for four days, not for one hour." Her voice was calm in the way a decision is calm after it has already been made. "Darling. I suppose you are the only one right now who can swiftly deal with them."

Rudrean smiled. "I’ll send them home."

He looked northwest for a moment.

Ten people who had agreed to eliminate them on sight, moving through a zone they intended to own.

He rolled his neck once and looked back at the group. "Stay here. I’ll be quick."

Aelira stepped aside without a word, and there was a small, quiet pride in the way she did it.

Rudrean closed his eyes for one breath.

Zen Art: Unbound Warrior came alive without fanfare. There was no explosion, no dramatic surge of sound. Just light threading outward from his skin in two colors that had learned to coexist.

Crimson first. Phoenix Flame ignited across both forearms in deep, neon-edged ribbons that coiled upward along his shoulders and chest like living calligraphy written in fire. Then cyan followed, Heavenfall Wind rising through the same channels, weaving between the flame strands in a seamless double helix that wrapped his wrists, ringed his ankles, and gathered above his head into a slow, radiant halo.

Beneath his skin, the patterns blazed.

Every node in his body lit simultaneously as the Combat Art’s internal system engaged, the refined network of wind and flame running through his magical pathways not as two separate forces borrowing each other’s space, but as one thing that had learned it was always one thing.

He rose off the ground.

No jump. No thrust. Just rose, the way heat rises, naturally and without argument, as if gravity had simply reassessed and decided to excuse itself. Heavenfall Wind ran through his entire frame, stripping away resistance and friction in every direction at once. His body stopped feeling like something that moved through air and started feeling like something that simply decided where it was.

He activated Mana Overload.

The system surged and locked full. One minute of unrestricted output, no cost, no ceiling.

Nihil Fury Blades began accumulating immediately as mana poured through him, thin dark shapes gathering in a slow orbit around his forearms.

He exhaled once.

Then moved, vanishing instantly.

He came in from directly above, Astral Veil wrapping him in complete silence. No visual trace, no mana signature, not even the grass bending below him as he descended through the ambient wind of the zone.

Reina and Romen’s teams had merged into a loose joint formation below.

Reina’s five on the left flank, Romen’s five on the right, their mana signatures overlapping in the careful way of people who had agreed to trust each other exactly as far as they needed to.

Romen was at the front, easy in his posture, golden hair catching the strange light of the scorched second zone. One of his cousins walked a step behind his left shoulder. Reina moved parallel on the other side, her purple hair pulled back, her eyes scanning the terrain with the focused precision of someone who knew what she was walking into.

Rudrean descended to twenty meters above them and stopped.

He looked at both formations, mapping the structure quietly. The weakest connection point in any joint formation was always the seam, the place where two groups’ instincts hadn’t fully synchronized yet, where one person’s reflexes ended and another’s began, with a half-second gap between them.

He found it. Two of them. One on Romen’s outer edge, one on Reina’s inner anchor.

He started with neither.

He started with the center.

He came down fast, Astral Veil releasing the moment his feet touched the ground between both teams, the Combat Art’s halo blazing back into visibility as his presence hit them all at once like a pressure wave.

"Hello, folks."

Reina and Romen’s heads shot up, eyes shocked.

They didn’t sense his presence at all!

"You..." Romen’s eyes narrowed, feeling palpitations from the aura alone. "Is that your Combat Art?"

"I have fifty-five seconds left once I finish speaking. If you can last until then, it’s my loss." Rudrean cracked his neck. "Shall we start, folks?"

"Arrogant!" A boy in Reina’s team shouted and unleashed three blood spears in quick succession.

All three simply vanished as if burning into smoke one meter away from Rudrean as a barrier flickered into existence.

Right then, both teams exploded into motion, wanting to eliminate Rudrean as fast as possible.