Sophie loses control as Tacita changes her field, and the mute girl disappears.

Even while that is happening, Sophie keeps her hands moving as she sets up her web. She works quickly, creating floating constructs the size of bees that roam the battlefield in a chaotic fashion, drawing nearly invisible threads of mana behind them.

Sophie detects something and waves her arm, causing the ground to bulge a few steps away from her before bursting into a large spike and piercing high into the air. She spins swiftly causing another three spikes to burst from three more points.

It’s almost impressive to see how little this distraction seems to trouble her as she continues to build her web and more constructs.

For a moment, Tacita appears, dried blood under her nose, ears, and eyes, and the skin over her collarbone bleeding down her shirt. She stands there calmly, dagger coated in her own blood. Did Sophie just force Tacita out of her stealth skill?

Changing her grip the mute girl takes a step.

A dozen or so constructs take off after Tacita, each one its own, self contained trap, ready to trigger their effect the moment it’s destroyed. The arm holding the dagger turns into a blur and all of the constructs disappear, each of them having been cut to ribbons in the span of a second.

When the spikes pierce the ground, Tacita avoids them gracefully, jumping from side to side, avoiding them with ease, even while dancing between the threads of Sophie’s web.

Every second she is moving closer to Sophie, who continues to throw everything she can against her. Her web, constructs, earth spikes, wind slashes, and even the air over Tacita changes, attempting to focus the light and burn Tacita like an ant under a magnifying glass.

And every time Sophie tries to use her mind manipulation, Tacita creates a short dagger out of mana and throws it at Sophie in a beautiful straight line. The dagger leaves a trail of blue mana in its wake, forcing Sophie to defend herself as it pierces through multiple barriers with ease.

When Tacita gets just a few steps away, Sophie shrinks her web, pulling the constructs into a tighter perimeter, before spinning a number of threads together, and attacking the mute girl.

The web actually seems to affect Tacita’s movement now, hampering it, as it pulls oxygen out of the air, restricting her ability to breathe, hell it even seems to be altering the temperature, and density of the air.

Seeing all this, Tacita continues to walk slowly, playfully dodging her opponent's attacks as needed, her arms the only parts seeming to move, her speed causing them to vanish in a blur as she deals with each attack. She looks angry as she does. The angriest I’ve seen her yet.

One step away from Sophie, she moves her arm and jams her dagger into Sophie’s neck.

Sophie tries to grab Tacita´s arm, which would improve her manipulations, but Tacita pulls the dagger free, before removing Sophie’s entire arm and taking a step back.

Then they face each other. Sophie, bleeding from her neck and the stump of her arm, and Tacita watching and waiting for her to die.

There is an invisible fight we can’t see or sense, but I’m sure [Manipulation] and Tacita’s skill or trait are clashing even now.

Gradually, Tacita squeezes her dagger, blood once again flowing from her eyes as her hand moves. Turning the dagger against herself, the tip of the blade pierces the skin over her heart.

Then the movement stops, and in a lash-out-like movement, the arm swings, sending Sophie’s head flying and reducing her into a cloud of shiny particles.

Soon after, Tacita also gets teleported outside.

The crowd under the screens becomes extremely loud, with different groups of people chanting the names of the girls. Some erupting in celebration, and others complaining as they rush to check their bets.

Sophie doesn’t seem to be happy but quickly finds herself drawn into a conversation with the others, all the while trying to keep her sister from noticing, though I'm sure she can still feel it.

As I wait for the next fight to start, I create a black orb over the palm of my hand and, as always, it tries to fight back while I shape it, creating a projectile, dagger, and other constructs. I’ve found that Mana Cycling helps here a lot too, though I probably should have expected that from a technique left to me by that cockroach-like Absolute. Not to mention all the progress I’ve made with the aid of my duplicate and all the training I’ve been doing here.

As we approach the end of the tournament, I plan to continue my testing. In particular, involving the combination of black mana and my [Mana Crown] and trying to use it to power my skills in interesting ways.

The result will probably be… well… explosive. Excited as I am, I figure I’ll need to put it off to work on improving my control, just a bit more before moving on with the attempt.

Lately, I’ve thrown a lot of effort into trying to master black mana and I can’t shake the feeling that my basics are still lacking. It might not be a bad idea to slow down a bit and work on the basics. In the long term, I’ll be better off than I would rushing to use powers I barely understand.

Then there is also Miwa and her arm and her desire to meet Tent… the first-ranked crafter, damn it.

“Maya’s up against Savant,” Izzy pokes me, jolting me back to focusing on the screen once she’s done speaking with Sophie who she still calls dumb.

“Why is Noodle growing so slowly, it seems like he eats a lot of mana,” I ask as I turn to the screen.

“I told him to not grow too quickly so that I can continue to carry him around and pet him! He’s cuter at this size.”

I see, that makes sense.

Poor danger noodle.

Meanwhile, back on the screen, dark blue armor starts to surround Maya, and before the helmet can cover her head, I take notice of the cold and focused expression on her face. She must know she doesn’t have much of a chance, but that won’t stop her from trying.

Maya activates her [Boost], and her high dexterity increases even more as she charges Savant, short swords in hand.

This time, Savant doesn’t use his domain and pulls out the broken Sword of Aeons instead, not seeming to care that it only has half a blade. He uses it like a long dagger or a very short sword.

His strengthening combined with the short bursts of mana he uses to reinforce his body are nearly perfect. Better than anyone from Hell difficulty, he strengthens his body with his mana. In very short bursts, he becomes almost as quick as Tacita.

He avoids her attacks with extreme accuracy, sometimes by a hair’s width, merely by stepping to the side or jumping back, occasionally moving so little as to simply tilt his head.

He matches Maya’s speed, and each time their weapons clash, he uses the bare minimum level of force, preferring to absorb the excess with his skill. He even manages to make use of the absorbed energy and releases it as needed to strengthen his attacks.If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

I think his skill is probably something along the lines of [Absorption], [Counter], or [Redirection], or something with a similar name. Though the skill allows him to absorb attacks and store them for a while, it likely comes at the cost of his mana. The longer he stores it or the more powerful the skill is, the more it’s going to cost him.

His skill must be really good too, given the way it was even able to store [Disintegration]. Either that or it was a higher level than Lily’s skill and required Savant to use a lot of mana.

It doesn’t worry me that much. With my reserves, I should be able to overpower it quite easily. There is no chance he can endure it with his pitiful reserves.

Savant dodges and lashes out with his sword, the blade’s edge glowing in the gentle orange light of his domain. It easily cuts through Maya’s armor and causes a serious wound.

Without hesitation, Maya creates a patch made of mana to stop the bleeding, and instead of using [Boost] to enhance her healing, she uses it to attack again. She keeps changing her weapons, switching from daggers to hammers to swords, all in an effort to catch Savant off guard.

At times she even creates additional limbs made of mana from her back and attacks with them instead.

It still isn't enough and the fight ends a minute later with Savant barely warmed up and Maya's armor flickering as she starts to lose control. At that point, Savant ends it with a few swift swings of his sword, slicing through Maya's creations like nothing.

“So who do you think is stronger, Nat or Savant?” Aaron asks Maya when she gets out.

Maya, in a state of deep concentration, takes a moment to jolt back to reality, and then a few more as she stares at the blonde boy.

“Savant may be ridiculously skilled, but Nat is crazy to the point of being suicidal.”

“So Nat?”

“It’s hard to imagine Nat losing, but I don't think that Savant showed everything he can do, so I would expect him to have some nasty surprises in waiting.”

“So Savant is the smart kid who finds it easy to study while Nat is just a dumbass spending his nights brute-forcing the lessons?”

“No, Nat sets the class on fire and then uses the distraction to cheat while getting terribly burned.”

“The fuck?” Aaron shouts, stealing the words from my mouth.

For now, I may as well ignore the pokes at my surely normal personality.

On the screen, the scrawny man who beat Min-Jae wins his fight, becoming the finalist for his group. I think he’s from BenDover’s group. A similar assassin build, but unlike the 30-something BenDover, the scrawny man must be over 50, though it’s not like it matters that much anymore with the benefits granted by our stats.

A few fights later, and the group fights end, leaving us with our 16 finalists.

Congratulations on becoming the finalist for your group. The finals will start in 1 hour!

Group 1 - Swordmaster

Group 2 - Noname

Group 3 - Brainiac

Group 4 - Bard

Group 5 - Gareth

Group 6 - FoodFood

Group 7 - Wanderer

Group 8 - Zenith

Group 9 - Savant

Group 10 - Rook

Group 11 - Meridian

Group 12 - Sset

Group 13 - Tacita

Group 14 - Vesper

Group 15 - Luminary

Group 16 - AnotherOneHere

Having seen the groups in their full glory, I can’t help but think about just how unlucky Group 4 was. A lot of them met someone from our group or Beyond, preventing them from making the finals.

There are even two people from Hard difficulty who were lucky enough to get groups without anyone from Hell in them, Zenith and Meridian.

The duels are announced as well, while the participants are split into two groups.

Group 1 - Swordmaster vs Group 2 - Noname

Group 3 - Brainiac vs Group 4 - Bard

Group 5 - Gareth vs Group 6 - FoodFood

Group 7 - Wanderer vs Group 8 - Zenith

Group 9 - Savant vs Group 10 - Rook

Group 11 - Meridian vs Group 12 - Sset

Group 13 - Tacita vs Group 14 - Vesper

Group 15 - Luminary vs Group 16 - AnotherOneHere

It looks like I need to win against Swordmaster, followed by either Brainiac or Bard. Then that leaves either Gareth or Biscuit. The winner of this mini-group will go against the winner of the other mini-group. Likely Savant, Tacita, or Tess.

“Are you happy with your group?” I ask Tess as we read from our system windows.

“Well, I need to win my fight and then I’m up against Savant. It’s a shame, I wanted to fight Tacita, but there’s nothing I can do.”

“Already giving up?”

“Of course, I will throw in my best, but I think out of everyone you’re the only one who can reasonably face the guy.”

“He hasn’t shown off much. He got an arcane weapon during the first event, and had a high [Restriction] during the second and third.”

Tess chuckles in response, “That’s more than enough for someone like us to make a judgment, right?”

“I guess.” I sigh.

Then I look at the mana stone I’ve been keeping in my pocket. It's the one Savant gave to Lily in exchange for restoring his arm. The stone contains research on healing made by Hella, a disciple of Champion Tristan.

Knowing Savant had it since the second floor, it's obvious that he saw the research as well. There’s a lot here about body modification, more than there is about healing wounds or regrowing limbs and organs.

Things like taking parts from someone else and making them your own by “healing” them into place, and simply making your body accept them.

Every bit of it is nasty, descriptions of taking the corpses of long-dead Champions and trying to use them. Changing limbs, transplanting the hearts and flesh of more powerful humans, even body parts containing traits. It also talks about the risks inherent in such procedures. Rejected traits, the body fighting back against foreign organs. Such procedures are extremely dangerous should the new part be rejected.

And I wonder how much of this knowledge that guy has used and how much of that body is still his own.