I'll continue directly from the Hunter Card prompt, keeping your original events and focusing on the atmosphere, character movements, and longer descriptive passages before dialogue so the action feels more like a Light Novel.
Hunter Games — The Abandoned City
The moment Akira pressed YES, the light beneath his thumb flashed gold before spreading across the surface of his Hunter Card, and a faint vibration traveled through his hand as the screen changed.
Around him, the same thing happened to hundreds of other Hunters.
Some accepted without hesitation, their expressions filled with confidence as if the Games had already been decided in their favor. Others stood motionless, staring at their screens with narrowed eyes, while a few exchanged uneasy glances with the people standing beside them.
Akira slipped his phone back into his pocket and looked toward Jackson, who was already rolling his shoulders as though he had been waiting for an excuse to fight.
"So, what do you think happens now?" Akira asked.
Jackson glanced at him, a crooked smile spreading across his face.
"Hopefully, something interesting."
Akira turned toward the center of the battlefield.
A gigantic gate had begun to rise from beneath the stone floor.
Its dark surface was covered in ancient carvings, their shapes worn down by centuries of weather and neglect. Thick chains dragged against the ground as the gate slowly lifted, revealing a wall of darkness beyond it, and the spectators' cheers began to fade as the sheer size of the structure became clear.
For a few seconds, nobody spoke.
Then the darkness beyond the gate began to change.
Buildings emerged from the shadows, followed by broken roads, abandoned vehicles, and the skeletal remains of skyscrapers that stretched toward a sky without a single sign of life.
An entire city lay beyond the entrance.
But it wasn't the kind of city Akira had seen from the aircraft on his way to Sao. There were no bustling streets, no banners waving above the roads, and no distant voices drifting through open windows. The buildings stood crooked and silent, their shattered windows reflecting a dull light while thick vines crawled over the walls and swallowed whatever remained of the streets. The city was abandoned, or at least made to look like that. It was a city built for the Hunter Games.
Then every Hunter Card flashed white.
Akira's smile disappeared.
The air around him warped.
It happened so suddenly that he barely had time to register the sensation, a strange pressure gripping his body as though the world itself had seized him by the shoulders. The stone floor twisted beneath his feet, the surrounding Hunters stretched into blurred silhouettes, and the enormous gate vanished behind a curtain of white light.
"Wait—what?!"
Akira reached out instinctively, trying to grab the nearest person, but his fingers closed around nothing.
For a moment, there was no ground beneath Akira's feet. Only the rushing sound of wind filled his ears, growing louder until it drowned out every other thought.
Then the light faded.
Akira's eyes widened. He was falling.
Far beneath him stretched the ruined city. The rooftops rushed toward him, growing larger with every passing second, while the wind tore at his clothes and forced tears from the corners of his eyes.
"YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!"
His shout vanished into the wind.
Akira twisted in midair, desperately searching for something that could slow his fall. There were buildings everywhere, but most of them were too far away to reach, and the few that weren't were approaching much faster than he would have liked.
Akira gritted his teeth as he thrust one hand toward the nearest building, forcing his Tao through his arm while trying to remember the movements he had practiced countless times before.
Blue flames burst into existence around his body.
The Azure Flames spread beneath him in a violent surge, their light illuminating the broken windows and crumbling rooftops as Akira fought to force his descent into something he could survive.
The first burst slowed him. The second sent him sideways.
The third nearly threw him into the side of a skyscraper.
Akira twisted his body at the last second, narrowly avoiding the concrete wall before crashing through a cluster of branches growing from a rooftop garden. Leaves and splintered wood scattered around him as he struck the roof, rolled across the cracked surface, and finally slammed into a pile of debris near the edge.
The wind continued to howl above the rooftops.
Somewhere below, metal clanged against metal, followed by the distant sound of something collapsing inside one of the abandoned buildings.
Akira slowly lifted his head.
"...I'm alive." No one was there to hear that sentence. He lay there for another moment, staring at the empty sky as he tried to convince his heart to stop pounding against his ribs. "It seemed that everyone was dropped in like this."
Then he pushed himself upright, wincing as pain spread through his shoulder.
A sharp noise interrupted him.
Akira's expression changed as he turned toward the rooftop entrance, where three figures had appeared between the shadows of the doorway and the broken concrete wall. Clearly Hunters, but none of them looked much stronger than the other, with no piece of clothing that would give them a sense of importance.
Their eyes were fixed on him. The tallest of the three stepped forward, rolling a short weapon between his fingers while his companions spread out to block the nearest paths away from the rooftop.
"Landed wrong, aye," the man said, a lazy grin crossing his face.
Akira rose to his feet, brushing the remaining dust from his sleeves as he studied the three men in front of him.
He had barely entered the Hunter Games, had no idea where the others had been sent, and was already standing in front of three people who seemed determined to make his day worse.
Akira sighed.
"Can I at least have five minutes to recover first?"
The man laughed.
"No."
Akira lowered his head for a moment, his black hair falling across his eyes.
"...Figures."
The blue flames around his hand flickered back to life.
And the first fight of the Hunter Games began.