Arisha nocked an arrow and drew back smoothly, her golden eyes locking onto Michael as he moved around Ryan.

"I’ll help you, Ryan," she said quietly.

Her eyes began to glow.

Hunter Eyes. Her ability. It sharpened her vision far beyond normal range, letting her track fast targets and calculate the exact path an arrow needed to travel to reach them. Even through movement, through chaos.

She tracked Michael, following his footwork, waiting for the moment his pattern gave her a clean window.

Then the air changed behind her.

A pressure, something like displacement. Something was moving in fast from behind her, close enough that her instinct registered it.

She spun around immediately.

Travis was already on top of her.

His sword burned with pure dense mana from crossguard to tip, the light coming off it almost too bright to look at directly. His expression was completely different from his usual easy manner– he was focused.

He was faster than she had expected.

Arisha dropped her bow without thinking and threw her right arm up.

A dagger appeared in her hand from her storage device in the same motion.

The blade came down.

CLANG

"Gaahh—!" She clenched her teeth hard against the impact, the force of it driving her down to one knee. She pushed her mana through her legs immediately, reinforcing them, and shoved upward with everything she had.

Travis was pushed back a single step.

She didn’t waste the time she got.

A blue magic circle appeared in the air in front of her, snapping into existence almost instantly. From it a water spear formed and shot toward Travis at full speed.

Travis was already moving sideways before it arrived. He lunged to the right and the spear missed him by a narrow margin, slamming into a broken chunk of rubble behind him with a sharp explosion.

BOOM

Arisha used those seconds to reach into her storage device with her left hand and pull out her wand. The blue gem set at its tip caught the light and gleamed clearly even through the dust and smoke still hanging in the air.

Dagger in her right hand. Wand in her left.

She set her feet and faced Travis head on.

---

Noah watched all of it.

He observed the things, more like what was left on the field.

Six people still standing.

Travis, fully fresh, not a mark on him, currently pressing Arisha back between the broken sections of rubble.

Michael, barely tired despite the fight with Ryan, now turning to survey the field now that Ryan was gone.

Damien, sitting with his back against a broken slab of concrete, he was completely spent. He had given everything in that burst of golden light and was not getting back up for this fight.

Arisha, fighting Travis at a clear disadvantage. She was skilled but she was tired and Travis had been conserving himself the entire battle.

And Noah himself.

Noah looked at Travis and Arisha. Then Michael and Ryan.

He made his decision. He was going to eliminate Michael.

Noah stored his spear back into his ring and pulled out his bow. He slung the quiver across his back, drew one arrow, and nocked it.

Then he moved quietly, angling away from the centre of the field, keeping low and using the scattered debris for cover. Michael was still facing away from him, his attention split between Ryan’s elimination and the fight happening between Travis and Arisha further back.

Noah slipped behind a large broken section of wall and crouched down.

’I need to be closer before he sees me. Let him eliminate Ryan first. Then I will attack.’

He watched Michael through a gap in the rubble.

---

Back in the field, Ryan was still holding.

But barely.

CLANG

CLANG

Michael’s rapier moved in tight, fast patterns, each strike forcing Ryan to work harder than the one before. Ryan’s shield arm was failing, the weight of the shield had become a liability more than a defense, his grip on it weakening with every impact.

The vines came again.

They shot up from the rubble beneath Ryan’s feet and wrapped around his ankles, locking him in place just long enough.

His mace, covered in dense mana, swung hard in a desperate counter and landed.

The head of it caught Michael solidly across the side.

"Argh—!" Michael buckled backward, his breath punched out of him. He straightened quickly, his jaw tightening.

Then he moved faster.

The rapier came in a sharp diagonal slash. The blade cut through Ryan’s armor across the chest without slowing down.

"Arrghhh!" Ryan grabbed at the wound with one hand, blood running freely between his fingers.

Michael stood over him, breathing hard. "You’re done."

Ryan’s body flickered.

Then he was gone.

Michael exhaled and turned, scanning the field. Travis was engaged with Arisha between the large broken sections of rubble about thirty meters to his left. Damien sat against a stone further beyond, unmoving.

He made his decision immediately.

"I’ll help you, Travis," he muttered, and started moving toward them.

He had taken two steps when a sharp whistling sound came from behind him.

He turned instinctively.

An arrow was already close to fully avoid. He swung his rapier hard and the blade connected with the shaft, deflecting it just enough.

Then he saw the second thing.

A sword made of ice, floating just behind where the arrow had been, already angling toward him.

Michael threw himself sideways and rolled, coming back to his feet in one motion.

Noah was closing the distance toward him, spear now in hand, quiver still on his back. A calm smirk sat on his face.

Michael clicked his tongue. "What do you think you’re doing?"

Noah kept moving forward at an easy pace. "Getting points before this is over. How about you be the one to give them to me?"

Michael’s expression tightened. He didn’t respond to it. He just dashed forward.

CLANG 𝚏𝐫𝚎𝗲𝕨𝐞𝐛𝕟𝚘𝐯𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝗺

Their weapons met.

Michael’s rapier, wrapped in dense blue mana, drove against the blade of Noah’s spear. The spear’s edge carried a thin sharp layer of ice running from base to tip, not thick but compressed tightly.

The moment the two blades made contact, the ice reacted.

It spread outward from the collision point, crawling along the surface of the rapier’s blade in branching lines, freezing a section of the metal in place. Not the whole weapon. But enough to make it heavier. Enough to make the next strike feel different in Michael’s hand.

Michael felt it immediately and pulled the rapier back, shaking the ice off.

His green eyes sharpened as he looked at Noah properly for the first time.

Noah was already repositioning, spear low, feet moving.