And with that, the 4th trial was set to begin. After the nurses looked over all the students to make sure they were in fighting condition, the coliseum began to rumble.
"Naturally it is much more entertaining to have the students fight live in front of the audience. Plus, we have this massive coliseum, so might as well use it."
As the announcer said this, the ground split apart. Five massive platforms, each forty meters in diameter, rose from the coliseum floor. Their circular forms shuddered as they climbed higher, glowing runes flaring to life at their edges. Within moments, the five platforms hovered ten meters above the arena floor, towering like titanic stages waiting for their performers.
The crowd gasped, then roared, the noise rolling like a storm across the coliseum.
"Pretty exciting, huh?" The announcer smirked, voice booming through the amplification spell.
As the cheers rattled the air, shimmering barriers unfolded around each platform, sealing them like domes.
"Alright now!" the announcer called, voice tinged with relish. "You will all be divided into your separate groups. Remember, the goal is simple. Survive longer than your enemies. That is all that matters. He who survives the longest wins. Oh and also you will be equipped with your weapons of choice." As weapons appeared in students' hands.
Elijah felt a pot of gauntlets attach themselves to his arms.
Before Elijah could even suck in a nervous breath, his body lurched. The familiar wrench of teleportation twisted through his stomach, and suddenly the world snapped back into focus. He was standing on one of the five raised platforms, surrounded by fifty-nine other students.
He immediately realized none of his teammates were with him. No Brax, no Mira, no Rennik, no Sylvara. No Kat, no Tim, not even Claro. He was utterly on his own here.
His eyes swept the faces around him—and froze. Across the platform, standing tall and expressionless, was a figure he recognized. The dark-haired boy who fought like a phantom in their second team battle. Nysar. The shadow-stepper. Their duel had nearly broken Elijah, but they had come out of it with something like mutual respect. Nysar didn't acknowledge him now, but Elijah caught the faintest flick of the boy's gaze. It was enough.
The countdown began in the corner of his vision. Ten. Nine.
Elijah rolled his shoulders, stretching the tension out. His heart hammered like a drum.
Eight. Seven.
A swirl of power filled the air, students charging up mana, preparing their abilities. Some were muttering mantras, others already posturing aggressively.
Six. Five.
Elijah crouched low, ready to move.
Four. Three.
This wasn't a team match anymore. He'd need to be clever, unpredictable, merciless.
Two. One.
The barriers flashed green.
Begin.
The platform erupted in chaos.
Explosions of mana flared as abilities were unleashed in every direction. A whip of water lashed out and snagged a student by the ankle, yanking him into a brutal kick that sent him skidding. Another student sprouted jagged bone shards from his arms, slicing the air in vicious arcs. Someone cloaked themselves in mist, spawning doubles that darted out with short blades.
Elijah didn't wait to admire. He fired a sticky line and vaulted upward, slamming his feet against the barrier wall itself. His adhesion locked him there like a spider. From that vantage, he scanned below. Students were already going down, flashes of light as their shields shattered and teleported them away.
A spike of warning tingled through Elijah's senses. He swung himself aside just as a spear of stone erupted from the ground where he'd been stuck a second earlier.
Danger sense. Again. It was saving him by a hair's breadth.
He fired a line at the stone conjurer, yanking the boy's arm wide. Then he let go, dropping from the wall in a controlled fall, and smashed a boot into the kid's gut. Adhesion locked them together for just long enough for Elijah to twist midair and slam him into the ground with bone-jarring force. The shield flared red and cracked, before Elijah slammed his foot into the kid's head, eliminated.
Elijah barely had time to roll away before a streak of lightning seared past him. A girl, sparks dancing over her arms, glared at him with teeth bared.
He raised both arms, sticky lines snapping outward. She tried to sidestep, but Kat's training had taught him precision. The lines wrapped her arm, and he yanked her straight into his rising knee. Her shield cracked but didn't shatter, she fired a lightning bolt point-blank, sending him tumbling.
Pain flared even through the protective buffer, but Elijah gritted his teeth. He snapped a line to the ground, swung low around her, and kicked her legs out from under her. As she toppled, he slammed her face-first into the platform, shield breaking in a flash.
That made two.
The crowd outside roared, though muffled through the dome. He couldn't focus on that now.
A sudden scream drew his gaze, across the platform, someone was being pulled into the air by near-invisible strings. The enemy was a lean boy with trembling fingers, hands twitching as thin, glowing cords slashed and bound. One student was slammed into the barrier wall hard enough to knock the breath out of him before vanishing in teleport light. Another tried to counterattack, only for the strings to wrap around his throat and squeeze. His shield flared and shattered.
Elijah narrowed his eyes. That ability… threads? Strings? Whatever it was, it was deadly. The boy's control was eerie, the strands slicing through the air like a puppeteer gone mad.
But something about it made Elijah's skin crawl. It was as if the strings weren't just reacting to his will, they twitched and writhed on their own, even when his hands stilled. For half a second, Elijah thought he saw one brush against the boy's skin and burrow slightly before vanishing. He blinked, uncertain. The boy didn't seem to notice, or maybe he was trying not to.
A pulse of danger sense jolted Elijah. He spun aside just in time for a massive student with insect-like arms to crash down where he'd stood, claws tearing gouges in the stone. Elijah lashed a sticky line to his face and yanked hard, slamming his knee up as the bug-boy staggered forward. The shield cracked, but the student retaliated with a furious screech, mandibles sprouting where his mouth should be. He slashed wildly, forcing Elijah into retreat.
Think, think. Elijah fired two lines, sticking the boy's arms together. The mutant bellowed and tore the lines apart, but that was all Elijah needed. He dove low, swept the boy's legs with a mana-reinforced kick, and drove both gauntlets into his chest before he could rise. The shield shattered, and the bug-student disappeared.
Elijah exhaled hard, sweat dripping into his eyes. That was three.
The battle raged on. Explosions shook the platform as someone hurled molten rocks across the arena. A girl split into mirrored clones, only to be burned out by a cone of flame. One boy summoned spectral birds to dive-bomb opponents. Another manipulated metal scraps from the floor into jagged blades.
The air was chaos, pure chaos, and Elijah was right in the middle of it.
He swung himself up onto a jutting rock pillar, chest heaving. The crowd outside was a dull roar, but he could feel eyes on him. He spotted Nysar again across the way, silent, deadly, vanishing into one student's shadow and reappearing behind him with a flash of steel. The kid vanished instantly. Nysar's face remained as cold and unreadable as ever.
Elijah looked away. He couldn't afford to think about allies or rivals. This was survival.
His danger sense tingled again, but not from an attack. No, this was different. Wrong. He could feel a unique energy of some sort. He turned his head toward the string-user.
The boy was trembling, sweat streaming down his pale face. His hands clutched his head as though trying to hold it together, but the strings lashed outward on their own. They weren't attacking precisely anymore—they were writhing, flailing, snapping at anything nearby. Students cursed and backed away.
One thread lashed out and cut deep into a student's shield, not just cracking it, but digging straight through. Elijah's breath caught. That wasn't supposed to happen.
The boy screamed, voice ragged, before diving to the side. The strings were moving on their own now.
Elijah felt the hairs on his arms rise, danger sense sparking so sharp it almost hurt. Something was very, very wrong.
And that was when the chaos truly began.
Elijah didn't have time to focus on the boy.
The platform was chaos incarnate.
Mana flared like fireworks as abilities clashed. Firestorms twisted against walls of ice. A boy grew a chitinous tail and used it like a whip, only for another student to anchor herself to the ground with spikes of steel. A girl shouted an attack name, her body glowing as she split into five blazing duplicates that darted in every direction, only for one of them to explode when hit, nearly blowing three people off their feet.
Through it all, Elijah clung to survival by instinct and grit. His sticky lines lashed out like extra limbs, swinging him clear of explosions, yanking weapons out of hands, or dragging opponents into each other's attacks. He was quickly becoming very proficient at using the new sticky line technique.
He crouched low after vaulting over a spray of acid, his danger sense prickling hard. Without thinking, he threw himself flat as a giant hammer whistled overhead, the shockwave rattling his bones. The wielder, a hulking student with arms like tree trunks, roared and brought it down again.
Elijah fired a line to the hammer's shaft, stuck it to the ground, and dodged aside. The student yanked, confused when the weapon barely budged. Elijah dashed in, palms glowing faintly, and slapped them onto the student's thighs, adhesion locking them together. The big kid toppled awkwardly like a felled tree.
A follow-up kick to the jaw cracked his shield, and another snap-line yanked him into the blast of someone else's flame attack. The shield broke, and the boy vanished.
"Four down," Elijah muttered between heavy breaths.
But he couldn't celebrate. His senses buzzed constantly now, every direction screaming danger.
He spotted movement, a girl in flowing robes weaving frost into jagged shards. She flicked her hands, and the ice curved unnaturally midair, homing in. Elijah leapt aside, only for one to graze his leg, numbing it instantly.
He lashed a sticky line to her staff and yanked, throwing off her focus. The shards clattered to the ground. She shouted in surprise as Elijah vaulted forward, sweeping her legs out from under her before she could recover. He pinned her down with adhesive force and slammed a mana-charged palm into her chest. The shield flared, cracked, and burst.
She vanished in teleportation light.
Elijah staggered back, sweat dripping, his limbs heavy. That was five.
The battlefield was thinning, maybe thirty students left. But the strongest were still standing.
He glanced toward Nysar again. The shadow-stepper was carving through opponents with surgical precision, slipping between darkness and light, untouchable. Elijah's stomach knotted. If it came down to a fight with him, survival would take more than clever tricks.
But then Elijah's attention snapped back to the string-user.
The boy's trembling had worsened. His hands were clutching his face as if trying to hold something inside, but the strings writhed freely now, more numerous than before. Dozens lashed across the battlefield, slicing shallow grooves into the stone platform.
Nearby students cursed and backed away.
"What the hell's wrong with him?" someone shouted.
"Eliminate him!" another cried, hurling a fireball.
The strings whipped up like a shield, catching the fire and scattering it into harmless sparks. But the boy didn't move to counterattack. His mouth was open in a silent scream, eyes wide and bloodshot.
Then, with a sound like tearing fabric, a second surge of power burst out of him.
The air warped. Heat shimmered around his body, but it wasn't just fire. It was… pressure.
Elijah's danger sense spiked so violently that his knees buckled. Something primal screamed in the back of his mind: Run.
The strings stiffened, glowing red-hot, their edges sharper, hungrier, as flames licked along their length. The nearest student, a tall boy with armor of some sort covering his chest, shouted and raised his fists.
"Come on then!"
He charged. The strings moved faster than Elijah could track.
They wrapped the armored boy in a heartbeat, slicing deep grooves into his hardened skin. He cursed and tried to rip them away, armor thickening over his chest. For a second, Elijah thought he'd shrug it off.
Then the pressure flared. A blast of raw force pulsed down the strings, and they lit up deep crimson.
The boy's shield should have flared. It should have absorbed the damage, saved him like it had saved every student so far.
It didn't.
The strings sliced through him, through armor, through flesh, through the protective shield as though it wasn't there.
His scream was cut off in a spray of red light as the teleport system yanked him away too late. The smell of scorched stone and iron filled the air.
The entire platform froze. Students stared in horror, attacks faltering. Even Elijah, breathing hard, felt his blood run cold.
That wasn't supposed to happen.
The shields were absolute. They protected students from lethal harm no matter what. That was the entire point of the trials. And yet… the boy had just been cut down.
Elijah's danger sense flared again, sharp enough to feel like knives in his skull. The strings writhed outward, hungrier now, and the berserk boy screamed. His voice was raw, animalistic, no trace of humanity left.
And for the first time in the trials, Elijah wasn't sure if any of them were safe anymore.