Seven bodies lay in a loose semicircle. Two Mana Heart Rank 1 criminals. Four Mana Heart Rank 2. One unlucky Rank 3 who had thought ambushing a resting cultivator was a sound tactical decision. His head rested three meters from his body, which still had Kael’s boot print on the chest.

Kael sat on the pile like a throne of corpses, one leg crossed over the other with his chin resting on his fist. His expression was bored.

He checked his bracelet.

[3,050 PTS]

Fifth place. Acceptable but not where he wanted to be. The problem with hunting criminals and beasts was efficiency. It was clean, methodical, and utterly uninteresting. No adaptation required. No pressure. Just application of overwhelming force against targets who couldn’t fight back.

Kael’s eyes tracked an approach without his head moving.

He looked up.

A female walked toward him with the grace. Green hair cascaded past her shoulders, but it didn’t move like normal hair. It shifted and swayed like living vines, each strand seeming to respond to a wind that wasn’t there. Green eyes regarded him with cool amusement. Bronze skin caught the gray light of Valdris.

Exotic. That was the word most people would use. Kael preferred dangerous.

Ravenna Silva. Vice Captain of Empyrean Celestial Academy. Peak Mana Heart Rank 3. One of the great Silva family’s most celebrated geniuses in three generations. The Silva family, whose power rivaled the Vorn family’s, whose territories abutted Vorn-controlled worlds, whose history with his family was written in blood, betrayal, and careful mutual avoidance.

Kael had thought they were all up there and he hadn’t sensed them. That was concerning. Either she had been hiding her presence since entering the city, or his perception had a blind spot he hadn’t identified yet. Neither option was comforting.

"Kael Vorn," Ravenna said, stopping ten meters away. Her voice was warm, melodic, like honey laced with arsenic. "Sitting on corpses like a warlord. How barbaric."

"Says the woman walking through an abandoned city full of criminals," Kael replied, not bothering to stand. "Did you get lost on your way to the beauty pageant?"

A smile touched her lips. "Still sharp. I heard the Vorn sixth son had a tongue that cut deeper than his blades. The rumors were not exaggerated."

"And I heard the Silva family’s vice captain was terrifying in combat. So far I’m just seeing a woman who likes to hear herself talk."

Ravenna’s green eyes narrowed fractionally. The warmth in her voice cooled by several degrees.

"While don’t we dance a little, afterall, you are going to lose to this lady who likes to hear herself talking," she said.

Kael’s lips curved into a smirk.

"Who says I’m going to lose?" He paused, letting the smirk widen. "After all, he’s here."

Ravenna’s head turned slightly. A subtle shift. She had barely sensed it.

Cassian Vale materialized from the shadows to Ravenna’s left, his three-section staff collapsed into a single rod in his hand, his silver hair catching the dim light. He hadn’t been there a second ago. Now he was. That was simply how Cassian operated.

Ravenna’s expression didn’t change, but her hair moved. The green strands shifted like a nest of disturbed snakes, vines reaching toward her shoulders in a subconscious defensive response.

"Cassian Vale," she said. "The time manipulator. I wondered when you’d show up."

"Fashionably late," Cassian said, his voice carrying its usual deadpan calm. He sipped from a cup of tea. "As always."

Kael finally stood, brushing corpse dust off his black combat uniform with deliberate casualness. He reached into his storage ring and drew the Void Edge MK. II blades, the Tier 1 weapons appearing in his hands with a soft hum of void resonance as he says, "You got to tell me what kind of exotic product that tea is that you take it so much."

Cassian flicked his wrist as he smirk. The staff extended, segments separating with metallic clicks until the full three-section chained staff hung loose in his grip.

Ravenna’s hand moved to her storage ring, and a whip materialized in her grip. Green, vine-like, covered in thorns that glistened with a faint oily sheen. Poison. The thorns were coated in it.

The three of them formed a triangle. Ravenna at one point. Kael and Cassian at the other two. Twenty meters of ruined street between them.

Kael moved first.

He launched forward, Void Edge blades trailing darkness, gravity propelling him at speeds that made the air crack. Cassian matched his pace from the opposite angle, staff whirling.

Five meters from Ravenna, Cassian’s voice cut through the rush.

"Stop."

Kael’s boots skidded on the concrete. He came to a halt so abruptly that his momentum nearly pitched him forward. Cassian stopped beside him, staff raised defensively.

"Cover your nose," Cassian said, already pressing his sleeve against his face.

Kael didn’t question it. He raised his collar over his nose and mouth. The faint smell hit him immediately. Sweet. Floral. Like flowers rotting in a greenhouse.

"What is that?" Kael asked, voice muffled by fabric.

"Invisible poison gas," Cassian said, eyes fixed on Ravenna. "Concentrated in a field around her. Probably extends eight to ten meters in every direction. Breathing it in for more than a few seconds would start dissolving lung tissue."

Kael activated the Spirit Eyes of the Dark Emperor. The world shifted, shadows deepening, details sharpening, and there it was. An invisible white mist clinging to the air around Ravenna in a perfect sphere, so thin it was imperceptible to normal senses but glaringly obvious to his enhanced vision. The mist moved with her, shifting like a living shield.

Ravenna’s seductive smile spread across her bronze features.

"I’m surprised you were able to figure it out," she said, her voice carrying genuine pleasure. "Most people don’t realize until they’re coughing blood. The Silva family’s poison arts aren’t exactly subtle, but this particular formulation is my own creation. Colorless, odorless to normal perception, and fast-acting." She tilted her head. "Though I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. A Vorn and a Vale. Between your family’s paranoia and his family’s obsession with the future, of course you’d detect it."

"Flattering," Kael murmured. "But talking won’t save you."

He raised his right hand, lightning crackling around his fingers. A Lightning Fang formed and launched toward Ravenna.

She didn’t move. Vines erupted from the ground beneath her feet, thick green stalks with broad leaves that unfurled like shields, intercepting the lightning bolt. The electricity grounded through the plant matter, dispersing harmlessly into the earth.

CRACKLE-sizzle.

More vines surged from the rubble around her, not just defensive but offensive, whipping toward Kael and Cassian like living whips. Cassian’s staff blurred, deflecting three vines in rapid succession. Pam. Pam. Pam.

Kael cut through two with his Void Edge blades, dark energy cauterizing the severed ends.

Schlick. Schlick.

But more vines replaced them instantly. The ground around Ravenna was alive, green stalks pushing through concrete, wrapping around rubble, creating a thicket of hostile vegetation that served as both barrier and weapon system.

Kael tried another Lightning Fang. A wall of vines intercepted it again. He tried SILENCE. The lightning bolt descended from the sky, and a massive flower bloomed open above Ravenna, its petals acting as grounded lightning rods that caught and dispersed the bolt in a web of electrical arcs.

Crackle-crackle-crackle.

"Lightning is useless against me," Ravenna called from within her garden. "Plants are natural lightning conductors. Every bolt you fire, I ground through my children. You’ll run out of mana before I run out of vines."

Kael’s eyes narrowed. She was right and wrong at the same time. Afterall, mana was something he had in excess. He shelved lightning entirely and shifted to gravity, darkness, and blade work.

Cassian’s staff separated into its three sections, connected by chains, and he began his own assault. Time stuttered around his movements. A vine whipped toward his head. He saw it coming a second early, sidestepped, and drove a section into the vine’s base. The plant recoiled, severed, but two more replaced it. Over time, Cassian had trained his reaction speed to start keeping up with his future sight. But even that was still difficult.

PAM. CLANG. WHIP.

Ravenna moved through her thicket like water through reeds, the vines parting for her and closing behind her, creating an ever-shifting maze that made direct approach impossible. Her poison whip cracked through the air, each strike leaving a trail of that sweet-smelling gas, forcing Kael and Cassian to constantly reposition.

Kael activated a Barrier Rune on a coin and flicked it toward Ravenna. The barrier expanded, cutting through a cluster of vines. Ravenna raised her hand, and a thick vine shield absorbed the expanding barrier, the rune’s energy dissipating against living plant matter that simply grew thicker where it was cut.

Cassian found a opening. Time slowed around him as he activated a one-second freeze, darting through a gap in the vine wall that would have closed in normal time. His staff section lashed toward Ravenna’s shoulder.

She was fast. Faster than he expected for someone fighting inside her own terrain. The poison whip caught his staff mid-swing, thorns wrapping around the chain links. She yanked, pulling him off balance, and a vine slammed into his ribs from the side.

PAM.

Cassian grunted, skidding backward. The impact had bruised but not broken anything. He rolled with the momentum and came up in a guard stance, eyes calculating.

Kael pressed from the other side, Void Edge blades carving through vine walls with darkness-enhanced cuts. Shadow Step carried him past a whip strike, reappearing inside Ravenna’s outer defense. She reacted instantly, a vine column erupting from the ground beneath his feet.

Kael used gravity to launch himself over it, descending toward her with a Sky Rending Technique, Third Form slash. Ravenna crossed her arms, and a cocoon of woven vines enveloped her body, the dense organic material absorbing the slash.

Crack.

The cocoon held. Barely. Kael’s blade had cut three-quarters through before the vine density stopped it.

Ravenna exploded the cocoon outward, thorned vines spraying in every direction like shrapnel. Kael created a gravity shield, deflecting the projectiles. Cassian ducked behind a collapsed wall.

Pam-pam-pam-pam-pam.

Three beasts, attracted by the combat mana signatures, came charging into the battlefield. Two Mana Heart Rank 1 wolves and a Rank 2 armored lizard, all of them drawn by the chaos.

Kael didn’t even look. A gravity well opened beneath the wolves, crushing them into the ground with a wet crunch. Cassian’s staff whipped around, the chain wrapping around the lizard’s neck. One sharp tug and a time-accelerated jerk snapped its spine.

CRACK.

The beasts died in under four seconds. Neither Kael nor Cassian had broken stride in their engagement with Ravenna.

The three fighters separated, each retreating to their corner of the ruined street. Ravenna stood within a thicket of vines that had grown to the size of a small building, her poison mist churning invisibly around her. Kael and Cassian stood side by side, twenty meters away, breathing harder than they wanted to admit.

"She’s strong," Cassian said quietly, wiping a thin line of blood from his lip where a thorn had grazed him.

Kael flicked a piece of vine off his blade. His eyes tracked the shifting thicket, mapping the patterns of growth, the density distribution, the gaps that appeared and closed.

"It’s to be expected," he replied, his voice carrying that particular brand of arrogant calm that made lesser cultivators want to hit him. "She’s the vice captain of an academy that has dominated this tournament for decades. If she wasn’t strong, it would be an insult."

Ravenna’s laugh drifted through the vine walls, warm and musical.

"Such lovely compliments from the boys who are about to lose," she called. "But please, take your time strategizing. My garden grows stronger with every second you wait."

The vines around her pulsed, thickening, spreading, the thicket expanding another five meters in every direction.