Progression:

  Current Points: 152

  Current Rank: #1

  Current Contestants remaining: 11

  Time Remaining: 00:03:54

  I looked at the screen again and grimaced despite myself. I’d half-expected this, sure, but the way the hours slipped past still caught me off guard. The last twenty-four hours had blurred into a relentless cycle: hunting Blessed Monsters, getting hunted in turn by red cores working in aggravating little alliances, stacking enchantments, chaining artefacts, and generally making themselves a nuisance on principle— and then circling back to hunt them again with whatever crooked little idea I could scrape together at the moment, all while trying not to reveal too much.

  I’d even been forced to fight my own clone a few more times, just to put some visible weight back into the event and remind the onlookers that it wasn’t all foregone conclusions.

  All things considered, I hadn’t really rested at any point. Not that I felt worn down. But still, an hour or two buried under a generous amount of floof wouldn’t have offended me.

  “You’re giving that weird look again.” Denis’s voice pulled me out of the spiral.

  I turned a grin on him. “Whatever do you mean?”

  He shook his head. “The one you give when— ah, forget it.” He drifted off for a moment after that, gaze unfocusing as he likely checked his own system screen. “Damn. Only three minutes left.” His attention shifted to the massive corpse sprawled across the ground between us.

  It had the head of a crow, the body of a lion, and a grotesque excess of limbs, two additional arms and a set of wings so broad they dwarfed the rest of it.

  “Still can’t believe it took you nearly half an hour to bring this thing down,” he said, then added with a faint scoff, “With your speed, no less.”

  I shrugged. “Not like I could fly. And it was a bit too clever for my liking.”

  It really had been my hardest fight in a while. The moment I locked myself out of flight, the problem became painfully clear: monsters that could take to the air didn’t become dangerous so much as unbearably difficult to pin down. A threat wasn’t quite the word for it. An irritation, perhaps, one with wings and a sense of timing. I had ways to reach them with lightning, but this one was sharp and agile enough that clean hits were a luxury. So I worked the wings over time instead, bleeding its mobility away piece by piece, shortening every ascent, shortening every escape.

  In the end, all it demanded was patience.

  Patience, unfortunately, feels like a personal insult when you’re also racing a clock.

  I stared at the screen once more. At least the haul had been good.

  And more than that.

  Name: Jade

  Level: 55

  Species: Quantum Arbiter (Draconis) (V)

  Alignment: Judgement (Lightning), Freedom (Dark)

  My eyes widened before I could stop them, and a grin followed close behind. I genuinely hadn’t expected it to be so… straightforward. Not easy, never that, but straightforward in outcome, if nothing else. I was overloaded far beyond what my tier should reasonably allow, true, but I still hadn’t even dipped into the full breadth of what I could do. Tracking Blessed Monsters alone had been a task in itself. Hunting them through the infuriating resilience and borrowed prowess the Colosseum layered onto them was worse. Working around all of that with clean methods, without brute-forcing every exchange, had taken a fair amount of careful thinking.

  Still, when your mind could run through hundreds of conclusions in the span of a heartbeat, what felt taxing on the inside rarely showed on the outside.

  And judging by this, I just might be able to reach the level cap, eighty, assuming it held true this time, within the second phase itself.

  That was, of course, assuming the second phase didn’t take a sharp turn into something obscene.

  There was no way to know which historical memory the Colosseum would dredge up and shape into our next trial. The only certainty was that it would be tailored, specifically and viciously, around the eight champions from Phase One.

  And since I was among those eight, I had no illusions about what that meant. Whatever it built to challenge me would not be gentle. It would be crafted with intent.

  The thought set a faint tightness in my chest. I was, to my own mild annoyance, actually a little nervous.

  I had no idea what kind of scene I would be thrown into next. The feeling reminded me uncomfortably of the first time I’d opened my eyes as a hatchling in that dungeon, surrounded by murderous things that masqueraded as deranged chandeliers. Everything unknown. Everything hostile. Every shadow waiting for an excuse.

  The difference this time was simple.

  This time, I would be stepping into it willingly.

  I shook my head to clear the spiral. My goal for the second phase wasn’t just survival. It never was. I intended to thrive in it, and one way or another, I would.

  With nearly two minutes still on the clock, I decided to sit down beside Moru and Denis for a moment.

  Denis was currently ranked #4, sitting at just under seventy-four points. Which, in its own way, was reassuring. It meant we weren’t the only efficient hunters on the field. The main reason I held the lead was simple enough, I’d been the one to finish off nearly every contestant we ran into while Denis backed me up. Sending them back with neat holes through their chests had its benefits, not least of which was claiming half their points for myself when the Colosseum reapportioned the loss.

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  Efficiency had its privileges.

  Still, I was glad my small cohort would at least be making it into the second phase with me. I could very much use some emotional support floof in whatever brand of terror the Colosseum decided to conjure next. I gave a firm nod to myself at that thought. There was, quite simply, no such thing as too much floof.

  Time dragged as it crept toward its end, stubborn and unhurried, but eventually the countdown slipped into its final ten seconds. I fixed my gaze on the numbers, barely containing the coil of excitement tightening in my chest. I truly couldn’t wait to see what sort of reward came with holding the #1 rank. The system had been very clear, rewards would be tailored according to both rank and accumulated points. And considering the fixed prize for all eight champions was already a flat hundred points to every stat— which was absurdly generous on its own— it left only one question.

  What exactly did the Colosseum think was fitting for first place?

  The anticipation gnawed at me.

  I. Couldn’t. Wait.

  ***

  “ARGH!!” Vanya screeched as yet another armoured moth darted at her. She barely twisted out of the way in time, momentum carrying her into a counter as she carved into its reinforced wings. At the same instant, she shaped a metallic, spiked shield to intercept the second creature’s strike. The impact cracked the barrier apart, but it held just long enough.

  The moth in front of her shrieked as its wings were shredded clean through by the empowered blades formed of metal mana. A heartbeat later, it lost its head. Its partner followed seconds after, severed just as decisively.

  But it still wasn’t over.

  Vanya remained ensnared in the silk trap those bastards had constructed to catch her. The threads clung tight, layered and stubborn, and she couldn’t believe how resilient the material was. It felt less like silk and more like being wrapped in reinforced metal woven into webs. She was already battered, wounded in more places than she liked to count, and tearing this stuff off her skin was only going to add to that tally.

  By that point, she was thoroughly convinced the Colosseum was a sadist that took genuine pleasure in suffering.

  With a slow breath, she began cutting herself free using thin, precise blades of empowered metallic mana. It was a careful, methodical process. Slow. Agonizing in places. But eventually, strand by stubborn strand, she freed herself from the trap.

  The moment she was clear, she pulled up the timer.

  Her face fell.

  Almost half a minute left.

  She had spent the last twenty-four hours hunting for that bastard Toma?. And he hadn’t been eliminated before her, something she’d been quietly pleased about at first, right up until hours passed without so much as a trace of him. Now the worry was starting to sour into something more desperate. Was that coward hiding somewhere? After all, Vanya knew perfectly well she wasn’t the only one with reasons to despise him and his equally arrogant family.

  The memory still burned sharp.

  She hadn’t forgotten the sheer disrespect and humiliation she’d endured at their hands. The recent Vor’akh disaster in the middle district had thrown the city into chaos. She, along with several friends and backing from their families, had proposed additional support for those caught in the aftermath. It had been a proper, necessary cause. And yet, the head of the Taranov family, Toma?' father, had publicly torn her down during the very meeting where she’d been trying to secure aid from other nobles. He dismissed her efforts as “na?ve fantasies.”

  Worse still, Toma? had hidden behind his so-called father and never once stood up for his own fiancée.

  Later, in private, he had even mocked her for it.

  Selfish, greedy bastards.

  She’d known what kind of family she was being tied into, but that moment had been the final fracture.

  She’d wanted to make him pay for that humiliation today. Truly wanted it. And she would have, if only she’d been able to find him.

  Now… it didn’t seem likely.

  With a slow sigh, Vanya lowered herself to the ground. Above her, the night sky stretched wide and clear, the faint promise of a new dawn beginning to bleed through its edge. Phase One was ending.

  She looked down into her hands as a pitch-black sword condensed from drifting embers. Her fingers closed around the hilt, and she studied her own reflection along its dark surface.

  There was no chance Toma? had made it this far without relying on some manner of trickery. Perhaps he really had been hiding all along. If that was the case, good. He would never make it into the second phase.

  And if, by some foul twist of fortune, he had…

  Vanya tightened her grip and brought the sword down. A wide crescent of sharp grey-blue energy tore forward from the blade, shearing through dozens of trees at their trunks before dissipating into nothing.

  If he stood in the second phase—

  She would make sure her revenge followed.

  ***

  Elder Svetlana stood before the inner sanctum of the Colosseum. Towering support pillars rose around her, their surfaces twisted and densely etched with markings that warped the eye and unsettled the mind. The illusion they formed was said to drive lesser souls into madness. Even though Svetlana was far beyond such frailty, she was not untouched by their influence.

  Before her loomed a massive door.

  Its surface bore the same sigils, carved in the forgotten language of their long-lost deities. The Scaled Ones. A dominion so thoroughly erased that the world itself no longer remembered it. Only those who were truly ancient, those who had survived the divine clash long ago, still carried any memory of what the Scaled Ones once ruled.

  Slowly, she lifted her hand and traced the markings with her fingers.

  Her eyes dulled as the assault of terrible visions surged through her. She had been powerless back then, nothing more than a child, a slave beneath those who wielded true authority, but she had still been there. Not during the war itself, but born into the ruin left behind in its wake.

  Those were dark times.

  Beastkin now had no understanding of how their freedom, how everything they stood upon, had been built with the sweat and blood of those who came before. Ones who had ripped hope from the jaws of a hopeless nightmare and forced it into existence. Ones who had once believed that hope itself was nothing more than a refined poison.

  Svetlana remained still until the visions receded.

  Then she pushed the door open.

  Ancient shadows stretched and pooled within the threshold beyond, shifting like something half-aware. She regarded them without expression, crimson eyes steady, and stepped inside.

  This was a chamber only a single being could ever enter, one who had cleared every trial of the Colosseum perfectly and emerged as its sole champion.

  Svetlana was the only one who had ever done so.

  And she knew exactly what the second phase truly was.

  The Colosseum was not the blessed, righteous crucible the masses imagined it to be. It was an insidious bastard, one that sought out every wounded place within a soul and pressed against it again and again, breaking you further with each pass.

  The only thing that lent it any illusion of grace was its blessing: the force that made true death within impossible, that wrenched challengers away at the edge of ruin. Without that single mercy, no sane being would ever dare face it. Because stripped of that protection, only two things awaited within— death and trauma.

  Svetlana straightened her spine and advanced into the chamber she had never once believed she would enter again.

  Yet it had to be done.

  If that abomination wished to play its games with her, then she would answer in kind.

  A lone flame burned within the shadowed chamber, casting the space in a muted crimson glow. The ancient shadows recoiled, skittering back as far as the bounds would allow.

  “Let us see how you will face your nightmare,” she spoke evenly, “without the comforting protection of the Colosseum.”

  Svetlana already knew the truth.

  It would not.

  No one ever truly did.

  Even her own survival had been nothing more than a fortunate stroke of fate.

  And just like that, she had sealed the fate of seven of the most promising young beastkin alive.

  Yet it was a small price for the continued existence of their species.

  She had no doubt that when the moment arrived, those noble souls would have given themselves willingly.

  She was merely here to claim the sacrifice early.

  ‘Toma?’ (The Winner Dragon):

  Of course I was #1! Was there ever a doubt?

  Currently waiting for the perfect moment to discreetly harvest morphogen from all those “hard-hunted” beasts.

  (Absolutely no ulterior motives. None.)

  Denis (the only one here with a functioning danger sense):

  Knows something about his partner is… off.

  Not commenting on it. Not touching it. Not dying today.

  Also genuinely proud he made it this far.

  Moru (the Precious Floofy Wolf):

  Sadly whimpering because hunts are over.

  Enjoyed hunting with ‘Toma?’.

  …Maybe more than with his own master.

  Currently glaring at an annoying system pop-up about “evolution.”

  Will evolve later.

  Now is cuddle time.

  Vanya (the walking trauma response):

  Face-down in the forest.

  Was screaming into the dirt, politely, because she was raised well.

  Now staring at the sky in silent resignation and re-evaluating every decision made since birth.

  Svetlana (the calm, ancient, overqualified fossil):

  Just finished communing with eldritch geometry.

  Moments away from toggling the switch labeled:

  “Disable Colosseum Blessing (Are You Sure?)”

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