With the suddenness of the magic circle flaring to life, the very first thing I did was clamp one hand around Moru, the other around Denis, wrap both of them in my mana, and slam my feet into the ground before launching us upward. Even then, the blast still caught us. It was an enormous eruption that punted all three of us through the air like discarded cloth dolls.

  I hit a row of trees hard enough to snap them clean through, felt the breath jolt out of my lungs, and still wasn’t actually injured thanks to my scales snapping awake underneath the armor. The shock of it, though, that part I’ll admit, I hadn’t expected an explosion with the manners of a mugger.

  Even while tumbling, I didn’t loosen my grip. Iron hands on both of my current companions, especially Moru. With my back eating most of the force as we were hurled backward, and me gouging trenches in the dirt trying to kill our momentum, the only thing Moru and Denis really suffered was the first lick of the blast.

  The moment we stopped, I twisted around. The section of forest we’d been occupying mere seconds earlier was now a roaring patch of flame/

  What in all the realms was that? Because yes, I had been enjoying Moru’s fluff against my face— gift from the heavens, that— but my mind hadn’t switched off for even a blink. I’d been scanning the entire time: shapes, sizes, spatial signatures, the whole catalogue, tracked across a radius wide enough to detect any mage gunning for us. And I had sensed nothing. Not a whisper of danger.

  If it was a mage, they would’ve needed at least some sort of confirmation that we were actually crouched in that thicket. No reasonable chance of that unless they walked straight into the range of my Air Sense, which they absolutely hadn’t.

  And this place had nothing in the way of high ground, no ridge, no fallen trunk tall enough to get a decent view through the undergrowth. For someone to attack us from outside my detection range, the question wasn’t merely who. It was how in the world did they manage it?

  I clenched my jaw as I looked at the newly formed “team.” Denis groaned, and a wash of green mana rolled over both him and Moru. I’d seen Moru turn himself into a full gust of wind before rematerializing, more than enough to dodge the physical shock of a crash, but apparently the poor floof had been so startled he forgot to use it.

  Denis patched him up anyway, then met my eyes.

  “Don’t worry. I have a defensive technique.” I gave him a reassuring thumbs-up.

  He exhaled, stood, and stared at the devastated patch where we’d been minutes ago. “Fuck.”

  “Fuck indeed.” I glanced back at the flames. “Any idea who that might’ve been?” Because honestly? I’d clearly gotten too smug. If I was going to handicap myself, the least I could’ve done was gather intel about the competition. Lysska had been right there. One question and I might have walked in knowing something useful.

  “Did we step into a trap?” Denis asked.

  Traps, huh… funny thing, that was the very idea I had tossed aside just a few seconds ago. If a trap really had gone off, it wouldn’t have shocked me. I’d read enough during my “Spirit Hunt prep 101” to know the Colosseum’s chosen terrain held more than just overgrown beasts; as it was also littered with weird spell contraptions designed to maim, cripple, or outright kill. There were participant records where the monsters weren’t the culprits, just the traps calmly doing their job.

  But traps needed triggers. Something stepped on, touched, disturbed, or tripped. And nothing about what we’d done matched that. My instincts weren’t ringing on the trap theory either.

  “I don’t think it was a trap,” I said. “We were sitting there doing absolutely nothing, and then a fire explosion spell decided to bloom around us. Traps don’t carry direct intent… not in the same way. That blast did.”

  Even as I said it, I was uncomfortably aware of how vague I sounded. There’d only been a handful of times I’d actually fought spellcasters, but every one of them left me with the same unmistakable sensation, their magic carried something like a pulse, a push, a directed will. Intent. I was sure there had to be a proper term for it somewhere. Or maybe this was one of those things dragons just naturally felt and everyone else politely ignored. Hard to say.

  “Intent… huh,” Denis muttered. That was all the reflection he got before another massive spell circle flared to life beneath our feet.

  Again, no presence in range. Not a single soul.

  Oh, whoever this cloaked lunatic was, I was going to personally ensure they regretted existing today.

  ***

  “And there went the second one,” a hooded figure muttered as he straightened, gripping his staff, still faintly smoking with leftover fire mana. He yanked back his hood, revealing a sharp-toothed grin beneath a very self-satisfied drakkari face. “That should’ve cooked ’em. First one missed by luck. Lucky bastards.”

  Zoya exhaled long enough to convey ten different shades of disappointment. “Nope. Still not harmed. Not even close.”

  That wiped the smile off his face faster than any spell could. He scrambled for the pendant hanging at his chest, touched it, and froze as his eyes widened. Only one question made it through the panic fog in his mind: How?!

  Zoya shared the sentiment. She bit her lip, her spatial sense spreading out like a net and she felt three presences. First the waryn, second his familiar, a Venlycan, and the third… that infamous bastard Toma?.

  Apparently the two had teamed up. The reasoning didn’t matter much. One followed the lightning path, the other, judging from earlier, seemed to be a Nature pathwalker, with a familiar aligned to Air.

  Easy prey, or so the plan had gone. Neither of them should’ve known what hit them. The moment the chained explosions injured them, Zoya and her teammate would strike from behind and end it cleanly.

  Except Toma? was ruining everything. Truly, spectacularly ruining everything.

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  How in the ancestors’ names was he reacting that fast? His speed was nonsense! And even though he and his team weren’t taking the full brunt of the explosions, the impacts should’ve left them reeling. Instead, it was doing practically nothing.

  Toma? took each shockwave for his little team, tanked the force head-on, and kept standing like the explosion had just… politely tapped his shoulder.

  Power, resilience, reaction speed… and— Ancestors forbid— actual compassion, considering he was shielding them with his own body. That part especially was not something Zoya ever expected from a bastard like him.

  “I think we should change targets, Evren,” Zoya suggested. They had already caught two unsuspecting participants earlier who fell neatly for their little combination.

  The trick was simple in theory: Zoya wielded Space affinity, and her current partner, another member of the same sect, was a pure fire mage. The moment they arrived here, the first thing she did was locate him. The artifact he wore let her funnel her spatial senses directly into him, giving him a perfect, real-time view of any target in her detection range. Evren no longer needed to be anywhere near the battlefield to unleash those monstrous spells of his.

  Fire flowed in his veins, but close-quarters combat against a lightning pathwalker was basically volunteering to be carved like fruit. Sure, there existed fire pathways that turned mages into front-line warriors with defensive enchantments like Infernization, but Evren wasn’t on one of those. His path was built for overwhelming spell potency, not brawling.

  And Toma?, even if he was an obnoxious bastard, was still a red core. Not the prodigy type (a label Zoya was rapidly reconsidering), but red core was red core. A spell like Infernal Explosion needed firm visualization to strike a precise point on the field. Normally, that meant the caster had to see the place with their own eyes. But with Zoya feeding her spatial senses directly into Evren, his one limitation evaporated.

  They could stay hidden, completely undetectable, and bombard anyone in her range with relentless, massive explosions. There was practically no risk and no warning for the enemy.

  Mana wasn’t a concern either, they’d packed enough high-grade mana potions to fuel several small wars.

  Cowardly? Maybe. Effective? Yes, very. And the sect leader himself had approved the tactic. He wanted both of them to qualify for the second Phase this time. Honourable duels weren’t listed anywhere on the requirements. Winning was.

  Evren shook his head. “I’m not convinced. We’d have to locate new targets first. And right now? Nothing. I’m sensing absolutely nothing around us. Pretty sure those two are just getting lucky. Their tricks will crack if we hit them a few more times. I’m trying again.”

  Zoya exhaled and re-established the spatial barrier around them, smothering any hint of mana buildup. A distant section of the forest shook as another explosion thundered across the terrain.

  Evren’s face crumpled yet again. They dodged. Again. He gritted his teeth and started channeling once more. And once more, his effort amounted to nothing. That didn’t stop him; anger only made him more determined.

  “It’s like watching rats scuttle away from heaven’s wrath! It was amusing at first, but now it’s just irritating!” Evren barked as another harmlessly missed its mark. The duo was adapting at an alarming rate, constantly shifting positions so the explosion radius never properly caught them, and the shockwaves barely slowed them down.

  Then Zoya sensed something… off. There was a tiny discrepancy in the spatial pattern.

  “Toma? is acting a little weird.”

  “He’s always acting weird.”

  “Not that kind of weird.” Zoya sharpened her focus on her spatial sense, her brow knitting. “There were two Toma? there. Just for a moment.” Her eyes widened.

  While Toma? dodged the last explosion, she’d felt it. There was another presence peeling off him for a heartbeat before vanishing entirely. It was so quick she wouldn’t have caught it if she hadn’t already been studying him, trying to understand how in the ancestors’ names he was slipping through every single blast.

  And worse, his expression was shifting in a way she didn’t like. First irritated, then thoughtful. Then, right as that second presence split off him, he started grinning.

  “Something’s wrong. We should move.”

  “And move where?” Evren asked flatly.

  “Anywhere but here. My gut’s screaming.”

  Evren stared at her. “No. I’m not running. Even if we win, imagine Fath- err Sect Leader’s face if he sees we let the Taranov heir slip away.”

  “So that’s why you’re so stubborn,” Zoya drawled.

  Evren shrugged as if it were obvious. “We’re not the only ones the Taranovs made enemies of, but plenty will be hunting that bastard. Taking him down is a trophy. A direct slap across the Taranovs’ face. And I want that honour for us.”

  Zoya opened her mouth to argue, but something brushed the edge of her awareness, and everything inside her went cold.

  She glanced back sharply. They were tucked inside an underground cavern, wrapped in her spatial shields. The “shields” weren’t meant to tank hits as even a novice spell would shatter them. They were a disguise that blocked all mana signatures leaving the cavern and doubled as an alert system if anything touched their perimeter.

  She hadn’t relied on them much after mastering Spatial Sense. Usually, she sensed threats long before anything so much as grazed a barrier. But this time, something had brushed the outer edge of her shields.

  Zoya’s face drained of colour.

  She darted a look at Evren, he was already channeling the next explosion without a clue. She turned back toward the direction of the presence she’d felt, heart pounding.

  And still, her Spatial Sense registered nothing.

  How?!

  One horrifying possibility slid into place. What if they weren’t in the same plane?

  The moment the thought crystallized, the puzzle snapped together. Zoya poured mana into her skill, far more than she usually dared, forcing her senses beyond the material layer, breaching the boundary and peering straight into the Shadow Dimension.

  IT ALL MADE SENSE.

  That presence, it had to be Toma?’s familiar. Some creature that lived in the Shadow Dimension. That explained why it vanished from her perception the instant it appeared.

  What didn’t sit right was how she hadn’t detected anything beforehand. Even without fully attuning her senses to the Shadow Dimension, she should’ve felt at least the faint disturbances, those little ripples that shadow-dwellers inevitably left on the physical plane. Being a spatial mage she’d hunted enough wraiths in Varkaigrad; their signatures were unmistakable once you learned what to look for.

  Maybe this one carried its own stealth tricks. Maybe it was simply stronger. Either way, it wasn’t slipping past her now.

  The moment her mana surged, her senses burst outward into the world’s dark reflection and she felt it plainly.

  The shape was humanoid. Toma?’s build exactly… just naked. And it was standing right behind her.

  Zoya screamed as a brutal backlash clawed straight through her mind, dropping her to her knees. Her hands clamped around her skull as the tearing pain flooded every thought.

  What… was… happening?

  Just observing at the thing had triggered something deep in her head. A primal incompatibility. As if her mind wasn’t meant to perceive it directly.

  But she couldn’t collapse now. Not here. Not with Evren still blindly casting beside her.

  She dug her fingers into the cavern floor, forced herself upright through the shrieking agony, spun toward where she’d sensed it, and hurled a Spatial Rend with bloodshot, burning eyes. The tearing space howled forward—

  —And struck absolutely nothing.

  Her vision swam as she blinked.

  Evren’s body hit the ground before she even processed the movement. Two gaping holes, one in his throat, one straight through his chest, as if something had punched clean through him with no resistance. His eyes were wide with horror before the Colosseum’s blessing activated and tore him away from the arena entirely.

  Zoya’s instincts screamed. A bead of cold sweat traced down her neck.

  The thing was no longer where she’d looked.

  It was inches behind her.

  The last sensation she registered was a darkness-coated hand sliding through her torso like it was nothing.

  Then, blackness.

  “Toma?” (the polite murder-dragon)

  “I have a plan!”

  Denis (slightly overwhelmed waryn)

  Has survived explosions, impossible dodges, and somehow the worst of all, the unholy smile Toma? made right after declaring, “I have a plan!”

  “This is… fine? This is fine.”

  Moru (Precious Anxiety Floof)

  Despises fireworks. Loathes explosions. Currently whimpering in Toma?’ arms and desperately wishing the world would stop happening.

  Evren (fire mage, briefly)

  Status: Two neat holes.

  “I swear I saw a naked Toma? before dying. I am emotionally damaged.”

  Zoya (spatial prodigy, wholly unprepared)

  Status: One neat hole.

  Experience: 10/10 terror. 0/10 survival.

  Mangowo (author)

  Hella sick. Slowly perishing. Will reincarnate as a mango. Probability of successful rebirth: 47%.

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