Runic combinations.

  Something I was initially reluctant to even touch. Not out of fear that I’d blow myself up or lose a claw, but because, frankly, there were two annoyingly practical reasons not to bother.

  First — I didn’t have access to any worthwhile runes. I knew a few, sure, but they were the kind of basic, entry-level glyphs every half-trained apprentice scribbles on their boots. There wasn’t much creativity you could wring out of those, no matter how much mana you poured in.

  Second — I never really had the time. Life had this irritating habit of keeping me occupied. Besides, when your natural equipment was enough to turn someone into a paté before they can finish a thought, the motivation to sit still and fiddle with magical doodles ranked pretty damn low. So, the second reason was basically, "Why the hell should I bother?”

  But recent events have a way of rearranging priorities. I realized that might not always be the case. Spellcasting— and the spells themselves— are tools. They take time to master, but once sharpened, they’re weapons worth keeping. And come on, it’s magic. What’s not to love about that? What self-respecting creature with a pulse and a brain isn't at least a little curious?

  So while I was busy honing and polishing the rougher edges of my technique, I started experimenting with the runes I had recently gained access to. Piecing together combinations, layering one symbol over another, I eventually stumbled upon something… different. Unique, or at least it felt that way.

  A moment later, I dodged left, slipping past a storm of razor-edged ice projectiles. Quite fun, really. Watching how a proper mage fought was like peeking into another world of thought and precision. From her expression, she clearly hadn’t expected me to move the way I did. She was muttering to herself, panicked, about “miscalculations” and “control variables,” which told me all I needed to know about her fighting experience.

  I could have ended the match right there. A single sweep would have shattered that flimsy barrier she called a shield, and a follow-up strike would’ve sent her flying—injured, but alive. The Colosseum’s magic would do the rest, teleporting her safely out before I did anything too permanent.

  But I didn’t. For two reasons.

  First: it would’ve been boring. Sure, it was the most efficient route to victory, and perfectly within the rules, but it would’ve felt like tearing paper, satisfying for a second, then gone.

  Second: I needed to maintain my disguise. Not just for the amusement of it (though I won’t lie, that was part of the fun), but because it was essential if I wanted to safely transition into the second phase of the Spirit Hunt, the real part of the game.

  There was a short intermission between the phases, a kind of ceremonial pause before things escalated. Phase two was when the Ancestors from the Astral Plane began paying attention to the contestants. Their gaze could change everything.

  If I broke my cover now, I’d expose who I truly was. That meant every other participant would immediately turn their sights on me. Not that I was worried, I could flatten the lot of them at once if I wanted to, but it would be a nuisance.

  The main issue is the Flameclaws might feel compelled to intervene directly. The Colosseum’s protection means they can’t hurt me until the festival wraps up, but who’s to say they won’t try something clever like restraining me? Trapping me in some magically-reinforced broom closet?

  While imprisoning a chosen champion would undoubtedly piss off the Ancestors, I had a sneaking suspicion those sanctimonious scale-polishers have a contingency for that, too. I mean, they’re already trying to kill me, a dragon, a species their own lineages treat as sacred.

  I still hadn't uncovered the "why" behind that particular bit of blasphemous insanity, but I know I would. Just not today.

  I wasn’t underestimating the enemy. Prideful? Sure. But not stupid.

  And honestly… this way was much more entertaining than just revealing who I was.

  So I watched this faerin mage, this absolute moron who was so utterly confident in her little shield that she just kept spamming offense. She moved with an almost obsessive precision, weaving her ice like a spider spinning silk, layering one thread after another until the entire field began to glisten with her intent.

  Soon enough, I’d be right where she wanted me: dead center in her little frostbitten web.

  Her mana spread out in a radius of about seventy meters — a rather impressive range. Inside that space, the air was saturated, sharp with frost. It felt like stepping into her domain; even pausing for a single breath might mean being sliced apart by the countless ice shards that shimmered around us like patient blades.

  And still, I kept circling inward, toward the center, where the mana density pulsed the strongest.

  So, what did I do?

  I indulged her. Let her think her plan was working. Let her see me stumble, just a little, as though I was falling into her trap.

  In truth, my own spell was already prepped, with the runes aligned and etched into place. I only needed to feed them mana. But not yet. Not while she was still watching me with that predator’s confidence.

  “My calculations were a bit off,” she muttered, adjusting her glasses with calm. “But no matter. The result shall be unchanged.”

  She closed her eyes for a brief moment, like a composer savoring the silence before a crescendo.

  Then I stepped exactly where she wanted me. And she grinned wide. Triumphant and so sure of her victory.

  I looked up.

  Every inch of the seventy-meter dome above was packed with razor-sharp ice spears, all angled straight at me.

  I couldn’t help but grin back. “This is an excellent demonstration of magic,” I said, and I meant it.

  Apparently, she didn’t think so. Her smile vanished. “I don’t need validation from someone like you, Toma?.” Her voice snapped as she lowered her hand. “Just go home and spare yourself any further humiliation.”

  …So, yeah. No idea what the original owner of this face did to earn all that animosity, but judging from the daggers in everyone’s eyes, he wasn’t exactly beloved. Especially not among the women.

  From what little I’d seen of him, he was a pompous, high-nosed noble, the kind that strutted around like the world owed him applause. But I’d only spied on him for a few hours; hardly enough to form a solid impression.

  He was my chosen disguise because Lysska had recommended him.

  Her words still echoed in my head: “You’d be doing everyone a favor by keeping him out of the tournament.”

  And honestly? She wasn’t wrong. He was the perfect candidate, easy to impersonate. All I had to do was act aloof, arrogant, and mildly insufferable. That part came naturally enough.

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  Unfortunately, wearing his face meant inheriting all his problems too. Whatever grudges people had against him would have to wait, they could take it up with the real one later.

  For now, I just needed to win.

  I felt the spell take root the moment I poured mana into it. The runes lit up faintly beneath my skin, each one pulsing in sequence as power surged through. Across the field, the faerin mage’s mana flared in response; she braced, reinforcing her shield even further.

  Her brows knitted in confusion. “Wha— ” But before she could finish her profoundly insightful sentence, I moved.

  She didn’t get to finish.

  One heartbeat, I was about to be skewered by a thousand ice spears. The next, I was behind her, surrounded by crackling arcs of blue lightning, with the air snapping and hissing around me.

  She turned, eyes wide in horror. Her shield hadn’t even registered what happened yet; there was simply a me-shaped hole in it. And, incidentally, one through her side, arm, ribs, lungs, and all.

  “What… j-just… happene—“ Even that pathetic gurgle was cut short as she coughed up a spectacular amount of blood and what I assume were a few random, solid organs. I felt the Colosseum's divine energy flare around her like a panicked medic, immediately regenerating the missing parts in a flash of light before she vanished entirely.

  So, that was how it worked. It doesn't just zap you out; it patches you up first if you're about to become a permanent stain. Good to know.

  One down. Several more annoyances to go.

  I flexed my claws and called the runes to life again. I’d named this one [Thunderclap], it was a spell born of sheer stubborn experimentation. At first, I’d tried creating a projectile by mixing Quantum runes with standard lightning-based ones, cycling through every plausible pattern. Tens of thousands of failed iterations later, I changed tactics.

  Instead of trying to throw the spell outward, I decided to turn it inward. A self-buff.

  If Quantum magic was all about targeting and positional manipulation, why not anchor it to myself? Channel Lightning as the base, and make the body the focus.

  And to my surprise, it worked.

  It didn’t even take long to refine once I realized how well it aligned with my affinities— Quantum, Lightning, and Darkness. With just a few minor rune adjustments, I could swap between each type on the fly, altering the buff’s properties entirely.

  Charging the spell took around ten seconds; after that, it simply required a steady mana feed to maintain uptime. Costly for anyone else, maybe, but I had more than enough reserves to sustain it without denting my pool. My regeneration rate alone was obscene, I was practically breaking even.

  [Thunderclap] functioned like a targeted dash, with pure speed condensed into motion. You locked onto a target, surged forward, and everything in between just… broke. It wasn’t so much movement as it was instant relocation in a trail of destruction.

  I kept the Quantum and Darkness variants unused, though. My current disguise didn’t have those affinities, and no sense in raising suspicions by suddenly displaying them.

  A deep, guttural roar echoed from the north, shaking the air. I glanced up.

  With a sharp kick, I activated [Thunderclap], slamming off the ground and streaking skyward in a flash of blue. The world blurred until I stopped midair, lightning still humming along my limbs. From above, the view stretched wide. A forest canopy broken by movement and glints of battle.

  The roar had come from a massive, gorilla-like beast, its entire body studded with crystalline growths that caught the light like glass. It lumbered through the trees, focused on a wolfkin who was darting through the underbrush, fending off shards of flying crystal.

  Right. They did warn us: watch your back, not just from other participants, but from the creatures that prowled this forest.

  Sounded like my kind of melody.

  And I hadn’t even opened my full bag of tricks yet. If the audience wanted a spectacle—

  Oh, they were going to get one.

  Hopefully, I wouldn’t get too carried away. Not that I could see the crowd’s reactions from up here anyway.

  ***

  Vanya locked eyes with her current opponent. It seemed the Colosseum had teleported everyone in pairs across the forest, though with the odd number of participants, that rule didn’t always hold true. Case in point: her situation. Three had appeared in her zone, herself and two men, both from the same sect.

  The waryns standing opposite her were just as tense, none of them daring to lower their guard for even a second.

  Vanya knew she couldn’t afford to lose here. The situation was already precarious enough.

  She ducked to the side as another strange energy projectile tore past her shoulder, hissing through the air before exploding against a tree. Regaining her balance, she refocused her breathing.

  She needed to get out.

  Especially if she wanted to teach that bastard the lesson he deserved.

  Just thinking about him made her blood boil. The nerve of that bastard Toma?, to show up here after everything he’d done?

  Too bad for him, the Colosseum’s failsafe only triggered when wounds turned fatal. Until then, he was fair game. She’d make sure every moment before that counted, painfully.

  She didn’t care that the entire fight was being projected before a roaring crowd in the main arena. Let them watch. Her family’s relationship with the Taranovs was already bad enough that this would barely scratch it. If anything, her father might applaud her afterward.

  Whatever happened, that man would end up wishing she’d just killed him outright.

  But… her current situation was dire. There was no way, in any straight fight, she could go against two red cores. One of them was a high red, and the second a mid red. While she was a skilled metal mage at the mid-red stage and could probably hold her own against the high red in a one-on-one, taking on both simultaneously was a death sentence.

  She had done her homework, of course. It wasn't hard to get her hands on the list of participants. From there, it was a matter of leveraging the extensive network her family had established to dig up the kind of cultivation path each participant walked. And she knew she wasn’t the only one who’d done it.

  Vindheim was an unforgiving place, fully dominated by waryns and urgoths— mainly waryns. The four who had come here were all from prominent families, and the paths they walked weren’t something you could just dig up with a casual inquiry. The uncertainty made her nerves feel like live wires.

  But it felt like the waryns were just as in the dark about her abilities as she was about theirs. They were probing, trying to get a feel for what she was capable of with those testing attacks. That hesitation might be her only saving grace. After dodging their half-hearted assaults a few more times without revealing her own hand, she decided the charade was over.

  With a thought, she activated the traces of mana she’d been subtly leaving around the clearing like breadcrumbs while she’d been running.

  Immediately, massive blades of rusted metal erupted from the soil, the trees, the very air.

  And with a sharp snap of her fingers, they all simultaneously shattered into a swirling storm of razor-sharp, piercing shrapnel.

  Perfect. The shrapnel storm was just enough to force the waryns onto the defensive. Seizing the chaos she’d sown, Vanya didn't hesitate as she vaulted onto her hoversword and, before the scaled idiots could even clear the metallic mist, shoved a torrent of mana into the device and shot into the canopy.

  Finally, free—

  The thought was severed as a primal scream of premonition tore through her mind. She wrenched her body downward, swerving violently toward the ground. The air where her head had just been was torn apart by the claws of a four-legged, vulture-like beast that had perfectly camouflaged itself against the sky.

  Crouched on the forest floor, Vanya glared up as the creature, seeing its ambush had failed, shimmered and vanished back into nothingness. She shook her head with a grimace. So, transversal by sky was a complete no-go. The ground was probably teeming with unseen threats too, but at least there she could plant her feet and fight properly. She was far more powerful on terra firma than playing target practice in the air.

  Finding Toma?, though, suddenly looked harder. First she needed to know whether he was even still in the game or already carted off in disgrace. She wouldn’t have been shocked if he’d been eliminated, he was the kind of lucky idiot the world kept rewarding for no reason. Never learned combat properly, never put in time, never earned anything the hard way; still, fate handed him gifts like charity.

  Luckily, she had a method. Being a metal mage granted her certain divination capabilities, crude ones, but effective.

  She pulled out a small, carefully preserved locket, retrieving a few strands of hair she’d kept for the express purpose of one day finding a skilled enough curse-weaver to make that motherfucker's life a living hell. She enveloped the strands in her power, as a wave silvery, liquid metal coiled around them like a venomous snake, forming a needle.

  Invoking the Scaled Ones with a quick prayer, she completed the ritual.

  Immediately, the silvery needle formed from her mana began to spin. For a moment, it shuddered and went completely still. Vanya’s face fell. No way. She was joking earlier, but had he really been eliminated in the first few minutes? What a pathetic cun—

  The thought wasn't even finished when the needle shuddered back to life. Its pointed head snapped with decisive force toward the north-west.

  Vanya frowned. She was one hundred percent certain she’d seen the divination fail, something that typically only happened if the target was completely gone, not just out of range.

  She shrugged after a moment. Maybe it was a delayed response, the magic struggling to latch onto such a faint, unworthy presence. No matter. There was no time to dwell on the intricacies of scrying for garbage.

  A feral grin split her face, and she broke into a sprint. Ahead of her, massive blades of metal mana erupted from the ground, hacking a clear path through the dense undergrowth. She would finally get her vengeance. She would make that bastard regret the very day he was born.

  Jade (The overqualified arsonist dragon): Enjoying her new spell far more than expected. Many trees have fallen. More will fall.

  “I call it Thunderclap. It’s like a door!... except it slams things.”

  Faerin Mage (exasperated researcher): Miscalculated everything. Will later publish a paper titled Why Assumptions Kill.

  “Note to self: stop smiling before you doom yourself.”

  Waryn & Fluffy Wolf: Currently locked in an epic duel with nature’s finest chandelier ape. Evenly matched, still checking over their shoulders for ambushes.

  Gorilla Beast (audience favourite): IT’S A CRYSTAL-STUDDED GORILLA! OF COURSE THE CROWD LOVES IT!

  Vanya (vengeful metal mage): Plotting an age-restricted performance. There are so many creative uses for rusty metal.