General POV

  Spellfire exploded around him in the forest as Will ducked behind another tree, his heart hammering against his ribs while three of his teammates dissolved into particles of light.

  They'd been ambushed, caught between a rock outcropping and a team that moved like they'd been hunting together for years instead of being randomly assigned tournament participants.

  His remaining teammate Fen was pressed against a boulder twenty feet away, blood trickling from a gash on her forehead, and Will knew with absolute certainty they were about to lose everything they'd worked for in this tournament.

  But he couldn't lose, he had to win!

  Fen watched Will's desperate scramble for cover and felt nothing but bitter resignation settling in her chest. She'd known this would happen the moment they'd decided to split from defensive positions to hunt for points. Hells, she'd even argued against it until her voice went hoarse, but their team leader had insisted they needed to be aggressive.

  Team leader who was now nothing but scattered light particles drifting through the air. The enemy team was closing in what she could only describe as methodically. And they seemed to be enjoying this little thing, too. Their fire mage charged up something that glowed hot enough to make the air shimmer, and Fen already knew exactly how this would end.

  They'd be eliminated, their four hundred something points would transfer to these bastards, and she'd have to listen to everyone back at the academy talk about how people from Instance Three got knocked out so quick.

  Will's hands shook as he tried to form a defensive barrier. The mana responded sluggishly to his depleted reserves. The enemy team's leader was saying something about making this quick and painless, which was almost insulting considering how thoroughly they'd been destroying Will's team for the past five minutes.

  Then movement caught his eye through the trees, five figures approaching, and hope exploded in his chest so violently it made him dizzy.

  Another team was coming, and from the way the enemies suddenly spun around in alarm, they hadn't been expecting company either. Will recognized the tall girl in front as Tessia from Instance One, and if Instance One was here to help them, they might actually survive this.

  The newcomers hit the enemy team like a hammer striking glass. Will watched Tessia's ice spear carve through their hastily erected shields while a massive guy with an axe scattered their formation with a roar that made Will's teeth ache.

  The enemy fire mage's spell fizzled out as he desperately tried to defend himself from a barrage of wind blades, and Will felt wild laughter bubbling up in his throat because they were actually going to make it.

  These people were actually saving them.

  Fen observed the same scene and arrived at completely different conclusions. These newcomers weren't here to save anyone—they'd just identified an opportunity to catch two weakened teams at once.

  The timing was too perfect, and the way that blonde guy in the middle was hanging back suggested he was their point carrier, which meant they hadn't hidden away the guy and were rushing around to harvest points from whoever survived this fight.

  She could see it in how efficiently they moved, not rushing to defend Will or herself but dismantling the enemy team so fast that she couldn't believe it.

  When the last enemy fighter tried to run, the blonde one did something with his hand that made the air ripple, and the runner slammed into an invisible wall before getting speared through the back by Tessia.

  Fen's stomach clenched as she realized they'd just traded one predator for another.

  Will scrambled to his feet as the last enemy dissolved into light, his whole body trembling with relief and residual adrenaline. The blonde guy walked toward them with this casual stride, and Will felt gratitude so intense it almost brought tears to his eyes. "Thanks guys for saving us," he said, his voice cracking embarrassingly on the last word, and he didn't even care because they were alive, they still had their points, they could still continue in the tournament.

  Fen blinked, staring at Will in disbelief. No way, her teammate couldn't be that gullible could he?

  The blonde guy smiled, and it was such a pleasant expression that Fen almost missed the predatory edge underneath. "Who said we're here to save you?"

  Will's brain stuttered to a complete halt. "What?"

  Theodore found the confusion on his face genuinely entertaining as he raised his hand, that invisible force he'd been perfecting for months condensing around his fingers. The girl against the boulder at least had the sense to try dodging, but it didn't matter when he could feel every subtle shift in the air around them.

  He caught her mid-leap with a wall of compressed kinetic energy that slammed her back into the ground hard enough to crack the earth. Her elimination was rather immediate and decisive.

  The guy, Will, didn't even manage to move before Theodore's second strike took him center mass, folding him in half like a piece of paper before he burst into those pretty light particles everyone became when they got knocked out.

  Their points flowed into Theodore's accumulation, bringing their total quite high. He turned back to his team with that same pleasant smile, genuinely curious why they all looked so exasperated with him.

  It wasn't like those two had any chance of winning anyway, and this way was much more efficient than letting them run and having to chase them down later.

  Lastly, this was a goddamn tournament, it didn't quite matter if this particular event was focused on hunting beasts and not humans.

  Tobin stared at Theodore with the kind of exhaustion that came from dealing with someone who operated on completely alien logic. "Why did you even get their hopes up?" he asked.

  Theodore tilted his head with what appeared to be genuine confusion. "What do you mean? It's fun this way." He said it like it was the most obvious thing in the world, and Tobin wanted to bang his head against the nearest tree because how was he supposed to respond to that level of casual sociopathy?

  He wondered not for the first time what exactly had happened during that training Theodore kept vaguely referencing. Normal people didn't think like this. But then again, normal people couldn't solo Beast Kings either, and Theodore had done that just a while ago as if it hadn't been anything special.

  "Anyway, let's go," Theodore said. "Another team has already defeated a Beast King, so two of them are down, only five remaining."

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  Theodore paused for a moment, and Tobin could practically see him running calculations in his head, those eyes of his going distant as he processed information. "Two of which are too far away and already too injured—they should be eliminated soon."

  The certainty in his voice made Tobin's skin crawl because Theodore couldn't possibly know that, except somehow he did, somehow he always knew things he shouldn't know, and at this point Tobin had given up trying to understand how.

  "So what's the plan then?" he heard himself asking, already knowing he probably wouldn't like the answer.

  "We need to tackle one more Beast King."

  Meanwhile, elsewhere not too far away, something unprecedented was happening that would shift the entire dynamic of the second event.

  It was something that had never happened in prior tournaments, and it seemed like it was a surprise element inside this event.

  A beam of light erupted into the sky which wasn't like the others that had marked Beast King deaths throughout the Instance. This one burned twice as bright and lasted three times as long, it was a pillar of pure mana that made everyone who saw it feel an instinctive dread settling into their bones.

  Everyone who saw the beam instantly knew what had happened.

  Two Beast Kings had done the unthinkable, fusing their cores together in a desperate bid for survival, creating something that shouldn't exist within the tournament's parameters.

  "What the hell was that? No way that's a normal Beast King," someone whispered from their hiding spot in the underbrush, voice trembling with the kind of fear that came from witnessing something fundamentally wrong.

  "That's not possible," another voice responded "Beast Kings don't fuse, they're territorial, they'd rather die than—"

  "Well apparently these two are obviously different," his teammate cut him off, already calculating the implications. "Look at that light signature, it's got to be worth double points, maybe triple. Peter's definitely going for it, look, his team just changed direction completely."

  "Of course he is, that psycho never backs down from anything. Sven's team is moving too, saw them abandon whatever they were hunting."

  "Don't forget Victoria, she was already in that area."

  "The ice queen? Fuck, this is going to be a bloodbath. Eddie's team was closest, they'll get there first for sure."

  "Doesn't matter who gets there first if they all show up at the same time."

  "A hundred thousand aurums says they kill each other before they even touch the Beast King."

  "No bet, I'm not stupid."

  Teams across the Instance either rushed toward the phenomenon or fled in the opposite direction, and within minutes the clearing where the fused Beast King waited had become the center of everyone's attention.

  Peter's team burst from the trees just as Sven appeared from the opposite direction, Victoria materialized from the shadows to the east, and Eddie's group emerged from behind a rock formation like they'd all planned it.

  Just as someone had predicted, they all came together, and they immediately started throwing spells at each other.

  Peter launched something that screamed through the air, Sven's barriers flared to life, Victoria's ice spears multiplied mid-flight, and Eddie's team retaliated with pure force that shattered trees fifty meters away.

  The exchange lasted maybe five seconds before they all stopped, completely uninjured, sizing each other up.

  "Holy shit, did you see that? Peter just—"

  "Victoria's shield didn't even crack, how is that possible?"

  "Eddie is already preparing another spell, this is insane!"

  The observers whispered frantically to each other, trying to process what they were seeing, but the exchange ended as quickly as it began much to their disappointment.

  Regardless, the conversations continued in hushed tones as more and more teams either rushed toward the fused Beast King or desperately moved in the opposite direction. The middle-tier teams knew better than to get involved when the monsters came out to play, but they couldn't help watching, and more importantly recording the whole fiasco.

  This was about to sell like crazy.

  "Well this is fun," Peter said, grinning like he'd just found a new toy.

  "Your definition of fun needs work," Victoria replied frostily.

  "Can we skip the foreplay?" Eddie interrupted. "That thing's just standing there watching us. Granted, we haven't engaged it nor entered its range, but it's a fused Beast King, it could be unpredictable."

  "He's got a point, we could keep trying to kill each other, or..." Sven added, his golden armor still glowing from whatever defensive skill he'd just used.

  "Or we could pretend to be civilized for five minutes," Peter finished, though his tone suggested he found the idea hilarious.

  "Alliance then?" Victoria proposed, her voice emotionless as always. "Kill the Beast King together, whoever gets the points gets them?"

  "Sure, no hard feelings," Eddie agreed way too easily.

  "No hard feelings," Peter said with a grin.

  "This should be interesting," Sven said.

  The observers hidden throughout the forest knew better than to believe any of it.

  These were all peak Rank 4 fighters, some of the strongest their Instances had to offer, and none of them had gotten there by playing fair. People were conversing all around:

  "They're lying through their teeth."

  "The second that thing dies, they're turning on each other."

  "Whatever point-carrier gets those points is completely fucked."

  "Unless they're strong enough to defend themselves."

  "Against those three teams? Nobody's that strong. Look at how they're positioning themselves, they're already planning the betrayal."

  "Peter's team is spreading out way too much, he's definitely up to something."

  "Victoria's got her assassin somewhere in those shadows, guarantee it."

  "Eddie's holding back his best fighters, look, two of them aren't even powered up yet."

  "Sven's the only one being obvious about it, his whole team's ready to pivot the moment that thing drops."

  "This is going to be a massacre," someone said, and nobody disagreed.

  "Should we leave?" a teammate whispered to their leader from their hiding spot.

  "Are you insane? This is history in the making. The organizers set this up as a surprise, this has never happened before in a tournament."

  History or catastrophe, nobody could quite tell, but the distinction hardly mattered now.

  "That's not even fair, how are the rest of us supposed to compete with that?"

  "We're not, that's the point."

  "Whoever wins this basically wins everything."

  "If anyone survives to win anything."

  "Ten thousand aurums says they all kill each other and some random team swoops in for the points."

  "Twenty says Peter snaps and just starts murdering everyone."

  "You've seen him fight?"

  "Saw him in the academy tournaments, guy's a complete lunatic. He broke someone's limbs after they'd already surrendered."

  "Victoria's worse, she doesn't break arms, she just freezes your blood while you're still conscious."

  "Eddie's the one who scares me, all that lightning affinity stuff."

  "Sven's the only normal one there."

  "Normal? He soloed three Rank 4 simultaneously eariler!"

  "Yeah but he didn't laugh while doing it, that makes him the normal one."

  Meanwhile the subjects of everyone's chatter were sizing each other up, none willing to move first.

  "So how do we do this?" Eddie asked.

  "Simple," Peter said. "We hit it until it dies."

  "Brilliant strategy," Victoria said dryly. "Did you think of that all by yourself? Gods, I'm wet."

  "Children, please," Sven interjected. "Let's at least pretend we're professionals."

  The fused Beast King was a hydra, and it had two heads, one a lion, the other a snake's tail, and it roared with two mouths simultaneously.

  Several observers involuntarily step back despite being nowhere near the actual fight zone.

  The moment stretched out like a held breath, everyone waiting for someone else to make the first move, the Beast King included.