While Leon was engaged in a fight with the leader of the group. The rest of his team were also fighting their own battle. Though most of their opponents were still blinded and groaning on the ground.

Eva and Natalya stood back-to-back, facing down two of the enemy team’s 3rd Circle mages who were recovering fast from Leon’s blinding spell, but still appeared dazed from the attack.

One was an earth mage who had already formed stone armor over his arms, chest and legs, his body hunched forward like a charging bull. The other one was lean and wiry, fire already gathering in the palm of his hands.

“Looks like we drew the tough ones,” Natalya muttered.

Eva nodded while her eyes were locked at their opponent. “Be careful. Let’s take them down before they regain their full strength.”

The armored earth mage roared and charged first, chunks of stone flying off his boots with each step. He raised his arms and aimed a crushing blow down on Eva’s head.

But before he could get close to them.

“Blooming Chains.” Eva muttered under her breath.

Vines As thick as ropes and spiked with thorns, exploded out from the earth. They latched around the mage’s legs mid-charge, yanking him off balance and slamming him face-first into the ground with a resounding thud.

“Got him.” Eva looked at her downed opponent just as a blast of flame scorched toward her from the second mage.

But Natalya was already moving.

She while standing on Eva’s back threw up an ice wall just in time to stop the attack.

“Glacial Barrier!”

The fireball slammed into it with a hiss and a burst of steam.

Eva darted behind the ice wall and said, “Thanks. I owe you one.”

Natalya nodded, already reforming her next spell. “Let’s finish them.”

The fire mage looked around, and seeing all of his teammates were being taken down one by one, began weaving through the underbrush, using the tall shrubs to hide from their view and flee.

“Stupid.” Eva calmly placed her hand to the ground.

“Whispers of the Forest.”

The shrubs began to respond to her call, slithering silently toward the place the fire mage was hiding.

“Gotcha,” Eva whispered.

The vines coiled around his legs, and before he could react…

“Frost Bloom!” Natalya declared.

She launched a wide burst of freezing mist in his direction. The moment it touched the moisture on the vines, they froze solid, locking him in place like a cocoon of ice and thorns.

“Two down,” Natalya muttered, dusting her hands.

The earth mage roared again, finally ripping the vines apart with brute force and charging once more, his arms covered in stones.

Eva didn’t retreat, she stepped forward and punched the ground.

“Verdant Pillars!”

Spiked pillar of hardened roots erupted upward beneath his feet, catching him mid-step. One slammed into his jaw, launching him backward with a spray of blood and shattered stone armor. And after the attack the earth mage didn’t get up.

…

Meanwhile, on the other side of the clearing, Finn, Sophia and the others swept through remaining opponents.

Many of the enemy’s 2nd Circle mages were still half-blinded, groaning and swaying as they clutched their eyes. Finn didn’t waste time.

“Wind Step” he muttered.

He disappeared in a blur of motion, his body surrounded by razor-thin wind. He reappeared beside one of the groaning mages and delivered a spinning roundhouse to the side of his head. His opponent crumpled instantly.

Sophia was right behind him, using gusts of air to disorient those trying to recover.

“Gale Burst!” she cried, sending a localized shockwave of air that knocked two recovering mages back against a tree, dazing them completely.

“Finish them quickly!” Finn barked as he looked towards his teammates. “Don’t let them regroup!”

He zig-zagged through the field, his movements hard to track as wind propelled him faster. He ducked under a punch and landed a jab to the gut, followed by an uppercut that sent the attacker sailing through the air.

Sophia focused on area control, her wind forming swirling vortexes that disrupted spell casting and knocked weapons from trembling hands. She kept them off balance while Finn and the others closed in to do the damage.

Within minutes, the battlefield quieted.

Their enemies were downed, groaning or unconscious, some still twitching in half-frozen vine traps or writhing in disoriented confusion.

The team regrouped, Eva wiped a smear of dirt from her cheek. “Anyone injured?”

“Not a scratch,” Finn grinned, wiping sweat from his brow.

Sophia crossed her arms. “That flash spell of Leon’s saved us the worst of it.”

Eva looked around, her expression thoughtful. “Still… They targeted us, this wasn’t random.”

Leon stepped forward, nodding as he dispelled his conjured light weapon. “I have kept the leader conscious, but he is refusing to answer anything…”

Finn cracked his knuckles. “Well, then what are we waiting for? Let’s beat the sh*t out of him, and we will see if he answers or not.”

All of them nodded, this is the only thing they can do to get answers. They gathered all the unconscious bodies and wrapped them up in vines, and appeared before the leader of the attacking team.

…

The clearing was silent now, save for the distant rustling of leaves and the occasional groan from one of the defeated enemies wrapped tightly in vines or encased in frozen traps.

The leader of the attacking group was tied to a tree, with his wrists and ankles shackled by thick vines. His cloak was torn, face bruised and smeared with dried blood from his earlier clash with Leon.

Leon stood in front of him, with his arms crossed. “Are you going to tell us who sent you after us?” he asked in a low and flat tone.

The leader of the attacking team chuckled, hearing that. “Heh… even if you knew,” he rasped, “do you think you can do anything to us?”

Leon clenched his jaws.

Finn stepped up behind him, casually patting Leon’s shoulder with a sh*t-eating grin on his face. “Leave it to me,” he said. “After I’m done with him, he’ll be vomiting everything he knows to us.”

Leon gave a small nod and stepped aside.

Finn cracked his knuckles. “Alright tough guy,” he said, crouching down until he was eye-level with the bloodied leader. “Let’s have a little heart-to-heart.”

Then he started swinging his fist at the face of the leader.

Thwack.

“Still don’t want to talk?” 

Smack.

One after the other punches started to land on the leader’s face.

“Do you think you can get away with this!?” the leader screamed in between the blows, struggling against the vines.

“I’m going to kill you… you bas*ard!”

Thwack! Finn slammed a punch into the guy’s gut this time, causing him to retch.

A minute later, Finn staggered back, huffing and wiping sweat off his forehead. “Bloody hell… this guy is tough!”

Sophia snickered from the side, “Looks like your method didn’t work.”

Finn scoffed. “Humph… I don’t believe he won’t crack. Let me beat him up again…”

“Wait,” Eva interrupted.

Everyone looked as she walked toward one of the unconscious attackers lying nearby. She knelt down, reached into his spatial pouch, and rummaged for a few seconds. Her hand emerged holding the team’s token, the one that was used to collect all their precious points.

She turned and approached the bloodied leader. “You’re going to tell us everything…” she said, in a cold voice. “Otherwise, you can forget about the tournament.”

The leader’s head snapped up. His bloodied and swelled face froze the moment he saw the token in her hand.

His eyes widened. For the first time, panic took root in them.

“No… no! Please don’t! That token…if you break it…!”

“Then talk,” Eva said, tightening her grip on the token.

The panic broke his pride, “Alright! Alright!” he cried. “I’ll talk!”

He coughed, chest heaving, blood trailing down his chin.

“It…it was Damien… Damien Raventhal. He ordered us to find and target the students from Velcrest Academy.”

Leon’s brows furrowed. “Why?”

After that the leader recounted everything he knew to them. Damien was mad that he couldn’t become the champion in the previous tournament because of a student from their academy and he was even imprisoned for six months due to him. So he wanted to take revenge by eliminating the students of Velcrest Academy from the tournament this year.

“That’s all I know…I swear!”

The group exchanged glances. The name Damien Raventhal wasn’t unfamiliar to them. They had encountered him just the previous day at the restaurant, but none of them had expected him to stoop to this kind of pettiness.

Eva stared at the bloodied leader for a long moment, her face unreadable. Then she spoke coldly.

“You shouldn’t have attacked us.”

The leader’s face twisted. “Wait…no…wait! You said if I talked…!”

Eva didn’t say a word. Her fingers tightened, and the token snapped like glass.

Crack!

The leader screamed. “NOOOO! YOU PROMISED! YOU SAID…!”

“I don’t remember saying anything like that,” Eva replied flatly and turned her back on him.

Leon smirked. Sophia gave a slow nod of approval, and Natalya looked downright impressed.

“Let’s get out of here,” Eva said. “We don’t know if there are more teams trying to target us.”

Everyone nodded and followed her out of this area.

As they walked away, Finn leaned closer to Leon and whispered, “Remind me to never offend her.”

Leon chuckled quietly. “Noted.”

…

Moments after the team vanished into the forest, a ripple spread through the air and a staff member of the tournament emerged as he dispelled his invisibility spell. He wore the robes of a senior tournament adjudicator and hovered a few inches above the ground with an air of casual disinterest.

He scanned the clearing, noting the groaning, and bound participants.

The staff member approached the conscious leader still tied to the tree, who was still muttering curses under his breath.

“Since a token from your team is broken,” the staff said calmly, “your team is disqualified from the tournament.”

“Wait…no! That’s not fair!” the leader yelled. “It wasn’t us! It was someone else who broke it!”

The staff member crouched slightly and chopped him lightly on the neck.

The boy slumped, unconscious.

“And who said they couldn’t?” the staff muttered, straightening.

He raised his hand and cast a spell. One by one, bubbles of protective magic formed around the unconscious bodies of the disqualified team, suspending them gently in the air.

The staff sighed and floated up into the sky, towing the bubble-wrapped students behind him like balloons.

“And this year’s tournament was supposed to be less dramatic,” he muttered.

The forest returned to silence. And deeper in the woods, Arthur was still hunting, unaware that his teammates had just made their own mark in the competition.

***

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Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep