The Third Step: Chapter Sixty

For some reason, the first thing that flashed through my head was that I felt sorry for the people broadcasting the match. They’d have to either broadcast Kamal’s foul language, or try to bleep it out mid-broadcast. Could they do that? 

Then I didn’t have time to think of anything else as he revealed just what his fourth gate phoenix mana could do. There was an absolutely massive surge of mana, the kind of thing that suggested he’d poured almost all of his prodigious reserves into it. Similar to the massive storm core that the assassin I’d fought had formed in the sky to unleash what felt like unlimited lightning, the power hemorrhaged out of him and formed into a swirling formation in the sky. It exploded outward, a swirling torrent of ash, flame, and strange warped light that destroyed everything it touched. Within a tenth of a second it had enveloped me, and even with the trickle of soul mana flowing through Starfish’s Regeneration, I was being overwhelmed. I had five, maybe six seconds before my badge pulled me out.

I tapped the air and formed a spatial anchor, quickly wiping it through space to blend it in. With seconds, it was a rush job, but then again, people in combat didn’t exactly focus on minor bends in space. I cast Mold Aura, projecting my presence in the same spot as the anchor, then used Sensory Network to maintain that connection. My badge began to glow in warning, and I pulled myself into Dusk’s realm. As soon as I was in, I dumped a massive amount of soul mana into the regeneration spell, groaning as my skin forcibly broke down and grew new, fresh layers. Dusk waved a greeting as she continued to work on repairing her cloud, and I nodded to her before turning my attention to the Sensory Network. 

Since I could project my mana senses through the anchor I’d left outside, I had a fairly good feel of what was going on. Kamal’s inferno was absolutely massive. It stretched all the way to the very top of the dome, and down to the very bottom. The spell sprawled across the entire disk and began to spiral out further still, expanding with every moment. With a moment of minor awe, I recognized that the spell was harvesting magic from the life force of the destroyed grass, the light in the air that the ash blotted out, and from several other minor sources in order to keep sustaining its growth. The more it burnt and destroyed, the more it empowered itself, like a phoenix rising from the ashes. 

I felt presences popping out of my mana senses as their protections activated, and I continued to marvel at the display… while also continuing to be unimpressed. 

Oh, the power he’d displayed was certainly impressive, but he was locked in the center of the volcano in order to maintain it. Anyone with high mobility would be able to fly out of its range and simply wait the spell out, and I could feel that was exactly what happened. Those who had the ability to outrun the ash’s expansion simply did, while others fell. The cloud did expand, but it simply wasn’t fast enough. Anyone who’d invested in a spell like Haste, Flight, or even Quickstep could simply outrun its expansion. Only those who had no mobility options at all fell before the tide of power. 

Even then, not all of them did fall. Most people who cast defensive spells and attempted to wait it out were pulled from the arena, but I could sense three different presences holding out. One of them was a sturdy presence of physical and telluric mana, maintaining a bubble of his own that was strong enough to fend off the attack. That was… dangerous. I tapped into Soulgaze to get a better sense of them, only to find that they felt completely bored, and that the power they were putting off was a very standard amount of power. They weren’t using a massively overblown amount like Kamal’s bubble shield, but a basic, almost casual amount. I mentally marked that presence as one to watch out for.

The second was an abnegation and blood mage, the vampiric magic slightly different from either Riley or the Sekhem’s, tinged with more knowledge and mental mana than I was used to. Their presence was hard to detect, and I wasn’t entirely sure what they were doing to stop themselves from being taken out, but judging by the feelings of desperation emerging from them, it seemed like they were putting a lot more work into it than the first presence. At the same time, they were moving underneath Kamal, even as they rapidly formed shields in midair. I wished I had a way to physically view through my senses, because they had to be doing something, I just couldn’t tell what.

The third and final person weathering the storm was a combination of desolation and abnegation, and they seemed to be drawing the ash and destructive power into themselves while keeping some minor barriers. Out of everyone, they seemed to be having the easiest time, or at the very least the most fun time, as they dove in and out of the expanding ash cloud, firing off spells at people as they ran, picking off other competitors one by one. 

Then, finally, after what felt like an hour but was probably only around a minute – which to be fair, is an eternity in a fight – the cloud of ash began to die. The mana Kamal had kickstarted the spell with had run dry, and it wasn’t bringing in enough magic to sustain itself. As it began to diminish, Dusk hopped onto my shoulder, muttering in the sound of coyote yips about how she’d finish repairing her cloud later. We stepped back out, holding ourselves in the air in the exact same position where I’d entered her realm. 

The air was still hot and thick with power, but not so much that I needed to keep running my regeneration spell in order to survive it. The ash was fading quickly now, and I angled to look up. As the sunlight peeked through the defensive dome once again, I got a look at the half-phoenix. 

“You know, that’s impressive,” I called out. “I’ve never seen someone empty out an entire fourth gate to do nothing at all before.” 

Kamal screamed, but this time his words were more intelligible than 

“Why?! I have the power, but no matter how hard I work, it’s never enough! I lose, I train until I’ve surpassed where others were, only to find they’ve blown past me again! What is with you people?!”

“What’s your name?” a new voice called, and I glanced down to see a young man with curly black hair. He was holding a handful of grass in his hand, looking up at Kamal. 

“His name is Kamal, son of the Lady of the Sunscorched Desert!” I called out. 

“Yes,” Kamal said, sounding confused. “What… what is this? Are you trying to act the part of some knight or something?” 

“No,” the man said, then clenched his fist. Dark liquid seeped out of it, and I felt the surging of his blood magic and abnegation magic working in unison. When he spoke again, his voice resonated in a strange way. “Kamal, son of the Lady of the Sunscorched Desert, I command your magic to break!” 

In the sky above me, Kamal’s eyes widened. His armor dissolved as if there was no magic flowing into it anymore, and he plummeted from the sky. I knew that third gate abnegation mages could disrupt a person’s ability to channel their mana for a second, ending or even breaking spells, but it could be resisted by those with sufficient mana manipulation. But to rip through Kamal’s massive reserves in only a second, he had to have been doing something strange with blood magic. 

That was when the next two struck. The man with telluric and physical mana leapt into the air, and I saw he held a sword in one hand, with two more floating behind his back. One blade was made of force, the next of stone, while the one he held in his hands seemed to be half force and half stone, split vertically down the center. He swept his sword down at Kamal with the finality of an executioner. In the same moment, the woman with abnegation and desolation mana slid up next to the blood mage. She raised her hands and released a crack of lightning, tinged black by some sort of powerful boosting effect that reminded me of Liz’s full-gate, up at Kamal. 

With Kamal’s mana essentially locked down, either attack on its own would have potentially removed him from the fight. He did have some regeneration from his legacy, so he might have survived, but it would have been a rough thing. With both the bolt of black lightning and the sword swinging for his neck? He never stood a chance. Kamal vanished in a small flash of light, and for an instant, the arena stood still. Everyone currently in the arena had been impacted by Kamal’s spell. It was impressive, if only in size and scale, and it had marked him as a dangerous competitor. One who several others had to work together in order to take out. And for that, people simply… watched. 

For a moment. The stillness was shattered as someone shot me. Not with a spell. With a gun. A woman with a metallic prosthetic arm, clearly a mineral mage of some sort, had raised her flesh hand and fired a gun at me! Like, an actual, physical gun, fired with a simple alchemical propellant. The lead tore through the mask and struck me in the forehead, bloodying me a bit before it dropped. I snagged it out of the air and tucked it into a pocket, more stunned than I was hurt. 

That seemed to be the signal, as everyone leapt back into fighting one another. After all, top sixty-four had yet to be determined. We were close, but not there yet. 

Several people in the arena seemed to take a cue from the woman who’d shot me, as spells, arrows, and more bullets tore through the air where I’d been, but I quickly teleported away, moving right into the mass of people who had been at the edges of Kamal’s massive spell, while leaving a Refine Illusion enhanced Lesser Image Recall where I was. It was risky, but I’d had to expose some spatial magic to escape Kamal’s volcano spell. 

One person noticed and stabbed at me with a spear, but I spun, leaving a trail of illusions behind me as I danced out of the way. I teleported, left Material Echoes, illusions, cast Combat Echo to punch people, and used every bit of skill that I’d earned from years of training in martial arts with Ikki to simply keep on the move, not letting anyone focus on me. 

Given the absolute enormity of Kamal’s spell, the bell that signaled the end of the free for all felt rather anti-climatic. Sure, I’d had to dodge swords, spears, arrows, and spells in order to make it to the top sixty-four, but none of them had strained me in the same way as the fight with Kamal.

But as the bell rang and the Patriarch of the Silent River Sect’s voice boomed out, announcing the victory of the sixty-four opponents still remaining in the competition, I still felt a little bit of pride. After all, I was one step closer to victory.