00:00:10]
The sky above the arena cracked with thunderless lightning. Like judgment from the heavens, the air itself trembled.
A divine whisper echoed across the battlefield.
"Phase Three: Commencing in… 10 seconds."
Beneath the ruined surface of the war zone, deep in its twisted labyrinths, something awoke.
A low growl—ancient, ravenous—echoed upward.
[00:00:05]
On the edge of a shattered kingdom hall, Lyra stood over bloodied soil. Her cloak fluttered like a banner of death.
Beside her, Daniel's eyes reflected silver steel. His grip on his staff was calm deadly.
"Now," Lyra murmured, a whisper sharp as a blade.
[00:00:01]
Across the field, teams scrambled, still fortifying their half-formed defenses.
[00:00:00]
"Phase Three has begun. New Objective: Destroy the hidden Kingdom Core concealed within the monster den. Bonus Reward: Double Points."
The system timer had long vanished, but its echoes still haunted the battlefield.
Phase Three had begun.
And some teams weren't waiting for monsters to do the killing.
——————————
The Cold Hunt Begins
A layer of frost whispered across the battlefield as Daniel raised his hand.
His eyes glinted.
"Freeze."
A wide-circle spell burst out from him—Glacial Lock.
The legs of the defending members from Team 50, all lower circuit users, froze solid where they stood. Before they could scream—
Lyra moved.
A shadow among shadows, her dagger flashed like a whisper of death.
One strike. One kill.
One after another.
The battlefield turned crimson.
"YOU—!"
The leader of Team 50 roared, his massive broadsword swinging with fury.
Lyra met the blade with her dagger, but the force threw her back. She hit the dirt, breath stolen from her lungs.
Daniel retaliated instantly.
"Ice Spear!"
A shimmering spear of frost launched toward the team's leader—
But clang!
Another member of Team 50 intercepted it, slashing through the spell and then—
Cut Daniel's arm clean off.
Blood?
No.
Smoke.
"…An illusion?" the attacker muttered, confused.
The real Daniel stood ten steps behind him, calm and smirking.
Behind him, an ally from the illusion team faded into view.
"I brought some friends."
Ice Blade. One clean swing.
The man's head fell, eyes still wide in shock.
Meanwhile, Lyra disappeared into the shadows.
The team leader, fuming and confused, scanned the battlefield.
Mana fluctuations flared from the treeline.
"There!"
He charged blindly.
But something else found him first.
From the trees, a writhing, grotesque creature—a Mana Drainer—leapt and latched onto him, draining his aura and tearing through his armor.
"GRAAAGH!"
In the chaos, Lyra reappeared just long enough to kill the remaining weaklings. Daniel and his unit finished the job—ten bodies dropped in moments.
The team leader struggled, crushed beneath the monster's weight.
Lyra gave him one last look, eyes cold.
"Wrong place. Wrong phase."
Then she vanished once more.
Their mission wasn't total annihilation.
Just thinning the herd—eliminating the weak and one threat.
And they had their own core to return to.
Because the monsters weren't going to stay weak forever.
Feldine's Blaze
Elsewhere, death took a different form.
Feldine had four strong members. Four mana circuit 9 elites.
The vampire's black eyes lit up as his hands glowed bright orange.
Infernal Burst.
Flames twisted like serpents, incinerating everything they touched.
Rune traps exploded around him. Illusions activated.
But Feldine simply raised his shield. The fire parted.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Explosions rang—but the vampire walked through the chaos, untouched.
His allies moved as one.
Georgina launched herself forward, gauntlets glowing with kinetic mana.
One punch sent a defender crashing through a wall.
A kick crushed another's ribs.
"Too slow."
Behind her, Feldine narrowed his eyes.
"Enough."
He cast Acceleration, his body vanishing in a blur.
The healer of Team 30 never saw the mana bullet coming. One shot—head gone. The next—straight through the core.
CRACK!
The magic of the core screamed before exploding in a burst of blue light.
Georgina, still fighting, sensed it.
"It's done?"
She grinned—right as her kick launched an enemy fighter, Kwader, straight into a pack of Mana Drainers.
He didn't scream long.
"They're swarming. We move."
Without wasting a second, Feldine and his squad disappeared into the shadows of the next battlefield.
And thus, the monsters had only just begun to arrive—
But many teams… were already dead.
While the battlefield burned and monsters roamed, Team 12 was already moving—long before the phase even began.
The moment the system announced the Mana Drainers' hidden core, Arthur opened his eyes.
He didn't blink.
He didn't need to ask questions. He already knew the answer.
His voice was soft—yet absolute.
"Julian. Jace. Leona. Nikolai. Tess. Ron."
A pause.
"Go. Destroy the core. No matter what."
There were no nods. No farewells.
Six shadows simply vanished from the courtyard like mist swallowed by night.
⸻
Ron and Nikolai took point, their movements layered in shadow and silence—runes woven into cloaks of distortion, shadows folding around their bodies like liquid. Even the Mana Drainers—predators honed to track mana—would sense nothing.
They crossed the battlefield like phantoms slipping through cracks in the world.
No blood. No noise. When a kill was needed, it was done in a heartbeat. No echo.
Ron's fingers traced the air. Glowing fragments pulsed and faded.
"Faint mana distortion. Northeast. Buried under debris. A decoy field—clever, but not enough."
Julian, at the center of the formation, flowed mana like a still river. It smoothed across the team, scattering their magical presence to dust. Even the monsters wouldn't know they existed.
Leona, quicksword drawn, was a blur at the flanks—her blade whispering through the air. Jace followed beside her, silent but thrumming with potential, fists clenched like thunder waiting to fall.
And Tess, the healer… walked with the quiet of someone who had seen death too often to be afraid of it.
⸻
Back at the fortress, Arthur sat in quiet meditation.
But around him, the air thrummed. As if the world itself held its breath.
Mana gathered—not called, not summoned, but drawn, lured, seduced by something deeper than magic.
Rodin knelt beside him, hands pressed to the ground, eyes half-lidded as he felt the pulse of the land—reading tremors like they were whispers from the gods.
At the center platform stood Bryce. Sword and shield held high, unmoving. An unbreakable wall cast in flesh and iron.
Above, Sera paced the high walls. Her bow glowed faintly, golden light dancing across each arrow like the breath of dawn.
They weren't meant to fight.
They were meant to end fights.
Their duty: Protect the core. At any cost.
The terrain was already primed—layered with rune traps. Not crude devices, but precision constructs laced with the mana of Julian, Ron, and Arthur himself. And deeper still—false cores, brimming with illusionary power.
To the eye of magic, there were a dozen "true" cores.
Only Arthur knew which one beat with the real heart of the kingdom.
Not Rodin.
Not even Bryce.
⸻
Then they came.
The Mana Drainers.
They oozed from the cracked stone, limbs twitching unnaturally, skin slick with void. Their fangs dripped with stolen magic, their eyes empty, hungering.
Rodin didn't wait.
The ground responded.
Stone erupted like a beast unchained—jagged spires skewering the first wave mid-crawl.
Bryce stepped forward, shield raised high. A Drainer lunged—
CLANG.
Steel shattered bone. His sword followed—clean, final. A single strike. Nothing left behind but steam.
From above, Sera whispered to her bow.
"Sleep."
Thwip.
One arrow. A skull split.
Thwip.
Another. A creature pinned to the wall like a grotesque trophy.
Thwip.
A kill with every breath.
Inside, Tess's voice drifted across the comm-line. Calm. Steady.
"Minor wounds only. We're holding."
So far, it was routine. Perfectly executed.
Until—
A new presence. Multiple.
Figures emerged from the mist near the courtyard gates.
Twisted, misshapen. Covered in grime. Disguised—imperfectly—as Mana Drainers.
Rodin's brow furrowed. "Disguised?"
Sera's fingers hovered near her bowstring.
"Wait—those aren't—"
And then Arthur opened his eyes.
Just one word:
"Now."
⸻
The world exploded.
The runes detonated in cascading fury—concussive waves of fire and force ripping through the courtyard. The disguised intruders didn't scream.
There wasn't time.
They were ash before their weapons left their hands.
Arthur stood. Calmly. As if he had merely woken from a nap.
His voice was low. Final.
"Julian's mana, layered with mine."
He looked to the smoldering ruins, unblinking.
"That array was built to kill ninth-circuit elites."
A breath later—seven more enemies broke through the eastern barricade.
Fast.
Armed.
Confident.
Their mistake.
Arthur moved.
Or rather—the world moved around him.
A blink.
A breath.
Seven bodies crumpled to the earth, heads already falling.
By the time the dust landed, Arthur was seated once more.
He brushed a speck of dirt from his robe, eyes closed.
"Don't worry."
"Nothing will happen here."
⸻
Arthur's unique skill didn't just restore mana—it devoured the energy around him. Wind. Light. Life. Will.
And if there was no mana left to take—he'd burn stamina. If that ran dry—he'd burn his own essence. His own soul.
He never ran out.
That's why he didn't move.
He didn't have to.
He was the eye of the storm.
The stillness between lightning and thunder.
The general who didn't need to see the battlefield—because he had already planned its ending.