49th of Season of Air, 80th year of the 32nd cycle

  Newt had taken Dandelion’s advice for what it was - a roundabout confession that he would throw future matches against Firesahun, and that he should not bet on him. He had shown his hand, made a fortune, and secured his contract, such as it was.

  Not to mention that the odds of Dandelion winning the next event had gone down from one to ten to one to four. So, Newt bet a third of his winnings on his own order, a third on the Tidebreaker royal family, and stashed the rest. The manarium he had earned was enough to purchase his parents’ freedom and have plenty left over.

  He wondered what the shameless royal representatives told Dandelion. The Firesahuns probably didn’t threaten him outright, since they had invited him to join, which means they bribed him with enough manarium to make it worth his effort.

  Newt dispelled those thoughts. What one royal family used to bribe Dandelion was irrelevant, given his current circumstances. He trekked through the jungle alone, with a six-foot-long pole in his hand. At the end of the pole stood a small flag in his order’s colors.

  The rules of the event were convoluted. Other than competing mageknights, live saurians roamed the realm, which poorly emulated the wealds. The goal was to collect as many of the seven thousand flags carried by mageknights and saurians alike, with a hard deadline of twelve hours, after which the event would end.

  The saurians roaming the artificial wilderness were at the fourth and the fifth realms, and when they eliminated a mageknight, the fallen contestant’s flags would be added to the saurian’s existing flags.

  What made the trial strange was the fact that the realm rooted the flags to the ground, seemingly at random for thirty minutes of every hour. Newt didn’t understand what the grandmaster who created the trial tried to emulate with that quirk. And just as he considered the question, his flag suddenly turned immobile and yanked him down towards the ground.

  Newt tried to pull it up, but the flag merely stood on the soft forest floor. Oddly enough, it sat a hair’s width above the earth without touching it. Next, Newt tried to bend or twist the thing, but nothing happened. The flag seemed indestructible and impossible to interact with.

  At least no one can steal it. Newt didn’t know whether his luck was good or bad. The trial had started not five minutes ago, and he was already rooted. He wanted to go off exploring, but the grandmaster who had created the trial didn’t mention whether his flag would be rooted for thirty continuous minutes, or the realm would split the time into smaller blocks, for a total of thirty minutes of every hour.

  So, Newt sat, his back against the immovable flag as minutes trickled by. Twenty minutes in, the ground trembled, shaking his butt. While Newt didn’t mean to hide, sitting next to a bush, leaning against a stick sporting a bit of green and yellow cloth in a forest made him fairly difficult to see.

  He, on the other hand, had little difficulty spotting the bloodneck. The giant, long-necked predator stood over fifteen feet tall, its massive hind legs shaking the ground with each stomp it made. Surprisingly, the saurian was earth aligned, and its saber-like claws glinted with a metallic sheen.

  The beast sported a still-bleeding cut on its flank, and two flags hovered right behind it, staying outside its field of vision. Newt clenched his glaive harder when the bloodneck snapped its head to Newt’s left.

  It raised its long arms, its unnervingly long claws clicking against each other as the peak fourth realm beast worked its fingers and focused on whatever disturbance caught its attention.

  Newt took the chance and sprang at the manabeast, catching it by surprise. A layer of rock surrounded its body, but Newt’s glaive slashed through it as if the defenses never existed, cleaving the monster’s head.

  Blood gushed out of the wound, spraying Newt, before the corpse disappeared along with the gore, and its two flags clattered to the ground. A phantom jolt to the side made Newt roll ahead, a sword piercing the air where his kidney had stood a moment ago.

  Newt did not even see the attacker as his glaive flashed, and the person disappeared, another flag clattering to the ground.

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  Four, Newt thought. After gathering three or more flags, a challenger could surrender at any moment and leave the realm ahead of time. He hoped his teammates would do exactly that the moment they met the criteria. The final placement was calculated by the number of flags a team brought out divided by the number of participating members.

  He had little faith Miller, Redleaf, and Slickhorn would manage to bring his team any points. They were in the lower reaches of middling strength, and the odds of encountering weaker opponents twice in a row were slim. Loch and Breeze were also questionable at best. As for Twochains and Flare, they stood a much better chance, and should bring six points to their team. Emeraldstreak and Rexheart certainly had the ability. The problem was whether they would quit in time Otherwise, someone stronger would snatch all their winnings.

  Dandelion is just going to keep fighting until he’s exhausted. I wonder who is going to get his flags? He would have won this, if not for the bribe. Can anyone else claim mine?

  Newt wondered and wondered who could defeat him and how. Nobody could quit as long as they had an enemy within a hundred yards of them, so he would either have to fight all the way, or choose a number at which he would pull out.

  Fifty? Five per teammate, assuming everyone got eliminated, should still score them in the top thirty, possibly top twenty.

  A hundred and twenty, Newt decided. Twelve per member should almost certainly net them one of the top positions. But if my mana runs low, I’ll cut my losses regardless of how many flags I have collected.

  Newt gathered his winnings from the ground. Four was a decent start, hopefully the rest of his hunt would prove just as fruitful.

  ***

  “It’s very rare for the Sage’s Realm to use real manabeasts,” Northstar’s pleasant voice echoed in the tavern as Woodhopper focused on her juniors’ ten screens, and on one showing the giant map of the realm.

  Small bits of it disappeared as both saurians and humans moved away from the realm’s edges. A clever technique to ensure the density of participants remained more or less the same even with the drop in their numbers.

  Nearly half the participants got eliminated in the first fifteen minutes, many independents and small orders sharing the last place with zero captured flags. Redleaf was the only one who got eliminated so far, even Miller held his own admirably.

  She had expected Newstar would take the lead in flag count, but Emeraldstreak and Rexheart had already gathered five each. Unlike Newstar, they remained mobile, making use of their advantage as much as possible. Woodhopper could not help but smirk at how much of an edge their camouflage uniforms gave them in the woodlands.

  Slickhorn had encountered his second opponent, an anonymous independent mageknight.

  Slickhorn won and quit the trial without hesitation. Two victories were enough for him, and Woodhopper approved of the young man’s rational decision. He knew himself and his capabilities and didn’t delude himself.

  We should pay more attention to him in the future.

  Unfortunately, Loch lost. Then Miller and Breeze weren’t as humble as Slickhorn and lost despite having scored enough victories to leave. The order’s high rank filled them with too much confidence and spurred them to grasp for more rather than leave while on a winning streak.

  Miller died to an ultraraptor’s ambush, never even seeing the beast. The last flicker of his surroundings showed the monster strutting around with three flags floating behind it.

  Using real saurians in a challenge was rare, but added an element of randomness to the event, and monsters were unpredictable, acting in different ways and rarely having the same reaction, unlike the automated clones from the previous challenge.

  Explorer’s Gate lost five contestants in the first half an hour, one of which had surrendered, bringing his flags out. Half the team managed three flags in total. It wasn’t a disaster, but things were far from good.

  Flare held four flags and stopped, her own flag rooted to the ground. She didn’t know it, but the team only had three flags banked, less than she was carrying.

  Flare hesitated, and Woodhopper could see her face twitching with conflict. The young woman wanted to keep going, but she also knew that four was a good number, much better than zero, which grew likelier by the minute as the weak lost and everyone moderately sensible left the challenge with their flags.

  “Come on, do it,” Woodhopped whispered, her fists clenched, and the gatemaster chuckled.

  “She should surrender soon,” the man said. “Being immobilized is in part there to break the lesser spirits, to make them feel vulnerable and alone, as if tending to a wounded comrade in a danger zone, but it also serves to stop teams from forming and increases the challenge’s fairness.”

  Flare raised her hands in surrender, but she didn’t disappear. Instead, she spun around and saw a young man diving forth to spear her back with his sword. Flare parried, her riposte slashing his throat.

  The young woman raised her hands again, this time disappearing from the realm with a smile on her face and two extra flags to her name. Explorer’s Gate had gathered eight flags.