After a moment or two, the prince and the future duchess ungracefully tried to get back up… only for several more stony hands to erupt from the ground and grab them.
The hands gripped their heads, wrists, legs, necks — dragging them down until both Thalia and Willem were practically groveling, their faces pressed into the dirt.
“F-Fuck—” my sister spat.
“Y-You… You bastard—” the prince groaned, trying to lift his head, only for another rocky hand to slam it back down.
“You should’ve knelt,” I said flatly.
But, of course, just as I was about to move in and eliminate them from the test—
I caught movement from my left.
It was Alice. She was zeroing in on me with terrifying precision.
I willed more jagged spikes to burst from the earth, but she either slipped under or soared over them, blasting away the ones she couldn’t dodge.
“Huh,” I scoffed.
She was fast. Too fast.
She barely let her feet touch the ground as she continued hopping, zigzagging, and constantly shifting direction like she was dancing across the battlefield.
I could tell she was trying to keep her movements as unpredictable as possible so I couldn’t trap her.
It was working.
I summoned a wave of large stony hands to shoot up from the earth and grab her mid-leap.
But Alice surprised me again by somersaulting over one, stepping off another like a springboard, using a third to launch herself even higher in the air.
Then she kicked off a third hand, twisted midair, and blasted a fourth clean out of her path with a burst of fire.
She ricocheted between grasping stone limbs like a gymnast, working her way through the chaos like it was a damn parkour course.
Hand after hand whipped around her, flailing like wild serpents — reaching, coiling, snapping shut — but she maneuvered through them masterfully. Up, around, and over.
And before I knew it, she was airborne.
Right above me. High in the sky.
She raised both hands overhead, and within a heartbeat, flames roared to life — swirling, blazing, and gathering into a massive inferno above her palms.
The fireball rapidly grew in size until it dwarfed the one she’d thrown at the Spirit Beast horde earlier.
This one was easily the size of a truck.
“Is she actually trying to kill me?!” I muttered, as the night sky lit up in shades of gold and orange.
I wouldn’t exaggerate and say it looked like a miniature sun had spawned above the ruins… but the comparison wasn’t far off.
There was no doubt Thalia was still empowering her, fueling Alice’s flames while the princess herself poured every last ounce of her strength into that attack.
I clicked my tongue and willed the ground beneath me to rise — morphing into two colossal hands of stone.
They burst forth with a localized tremor. The whole scene looked like a titan trying to claw its way out of the underworld.
The hands rose and curved in, fingers interlocking above me, forming a protective dome of solid concrete.
At the same time, two more gigantic hands surged upward to meet the incoming fireball that Alice finally dropped on me.
The inferno descended like a meteor.
And the stony hands reached up — as if trying to catch a nuclear football.
They didn’t.
They couldn’t.
The moment the fireball touched them—
It exploded.
—BOOOOOM!!
The explosion unleashed a devastating shockwave.
A rattling thunderclap tore through the air, ripping roofs clean off the crumbling buildings nearby. Ash billowed upward in thick mushroom clouds, turning the night sky murky.
My hastily raised dome cracked and groaned, molten lines streaking across its surface like veins of magma. Even sealed inside, I felt the heat washing over me. It was blistering and suffocating.
The dome began to collapse in on itself, chunks crumbling from the ceiling like overbaked clay.
And yet I held it.
Teeth gritted. Muscles trembling.
I dug my heels into the scorched earth and held.
Then, with command of will, I shattered my own barrier from within.
Stone burst outward like shrapnel. Steam hissed as the dome exploded in all directions.
The ground cracked beneath my feet as I stepped through the wreckage, my golden blade still in hand.
Smoke curled over my shoulders like a living cloak.
I took a few deep breaths and tilted my head up.
Alice was already falling.
She looked spent, drained, and broken.
She fell like a marionette with its strings cut, crashing into the ground hard — not enough to kill her, but more than enough to leave her sprawled and groaning in agony.
Silence returned heavy. Only the faint crackle of burning debris and the low groans of the defeated royals broke through it.
I looked around.
Thalia’s face was still buried in the dirt, held down by dozens of stone hands I had conjured.
Willem lay crushed beneath a mound of rubble, probably unconscious.
Alice was barely breathing. Her eyes fluttering and limbs quivering.
All three of them were… defeated.
The air stank of scorched pavement and smoldering stone.
I let out a breath and raised my blade again — lazily this time, resting it against my shoulder like a farmer done tilling his field.
“What was it you used to say to me, Princess?” I asked mockingly, kneeling beside Alice’s crumpled body.
She looked up at me weakly, her eyes swollen with bruised pride and silent fury.
She tried to rise — only for me to stomp my feet down on her head, grinding her face into the dirt.
“Weaklings… get… punished,” I said, pressing harder against her skull.
“Arghh!” Alice screamed low through clenched teeth — until her orb shattered with a flicker of light sparks.
With that, she was eliminated.
I stepped off her as she lay twitching, her cheek streaked with ash and gravel, her lips parted in a gasp.
In hindsight, I should’ve gone for the flag. I should’ve rushed to the center and claimed victory.
But seeing her broken at my feet?
I wouldn’t lie. That satisfaction was almost worth more than anything I had ever desired in my life.
It just felt so good reducing her to that state.
“You know, Alice… I used to fear you,” I murmured, half-laughing at the absurdity. “When we were kids, you were untouchable. A force of nature. Simply perfect. It wasn’t just your tiara. It wasn’t just the fact that you were a literal princess. It was everything else too. You were everything I wasn’t. Everything I wanted to be.”
I paused. “But now… when I look back, I don’t remember your strength. I remember your cruelty. You weren’t untouchable. You weren’t strong. You were a bully.”
I bent low and grabbed a fistful of her braided hair, lifting her face to meet my eyes.
Her gaze wavered with seething rage, cold pain, and bruised pride.
And while she tried to hide it, I saw something else beneath it all…
I saw fear in her ember eyes.
Raw, unfiltered fear.
Oh, what a beautiful sight it was.
I smiled.
“But one thing I recently learned about bullies is that,” I whispered, “sooner or later, they always fall.”
I dropped her face. Let it fall back into the dirt with a dull thud.
And stood up.
That’s when Thalia’s grunts reached my ears. She was still struggling, still wrestling against the dozens of stony hands pinning her in place.
I rolled my eyes. “And you, dear sister… you’re not even worth my time. Bring your army at me during the mock war. I’ll run you to the ground there as well.”
Thalia let out another feral grunt which was probably an unladylike curse, but I merely flicked my wrist.
The earthen hands holding her down moved.
They whipped her sideways, flinging her armored body through the air like a ragdoll.
She didn’t even have time to scream.
Her frame slammed through a cracked pillar, pulverizing it to dust, then crashed straight through the rotting façade of a crumbling building behind it.
Stone, ash, and debris erupted in her trail as she vanished into the ruins with a deafening CRASH!
The entire structure groaned, buckled — and then partially collapsed in on itself with a roar of grinding stone and splintering wood.
I straightened, exhaled, and turned around.
Okay, with that out of the way, it was time to win this thing.
•••
More Spirit Beasts continued to come at me.
A lot more.
But I didn’t slow down. I kept dodging the monsters to the best of my abilities, while pushing away or straight up killing those I couldn’t.
In under five minutes, the flag was nearly in reach.
I could hear human screams in the distance. Other Squads must’ve been getting close.
But they were still too far away.
I’d win long before they could even catch sight of the flag.
…Or so I thought.
The pole was right in front of me. Victory was within arm’s reach.
My fingers were about to close around the flag—
When I felt something — no, someone — appear on my right in a blur of movement.
I only had a second to react before a front kick came flying at me.
—CLANG!
I blocked it with my sword, but the impact shook my entire arm.
The force behind the strike threw me backward, my heels dragging across the cracked stone as I skidded several meters away from the pole.
Before I could recover, another figure lunged at me from the left — swiping toward my torso like a wild beast.
My breath hitched in surprise but once again, I managed to block the blow with the flat of my blade.
And once again, the impact was enough to shove me several steps back.
I stumbled and barely stopped just short of crashing into the wall of a withered building.
But before I could even have a second to breathe, I felt someone descending on me from above.
I looked up just in time to see a young man falling, sword swinging, aiming for my head.
I planted my foot and parried his swing with enough force to knock him away like swatting an insect.
He hit the ground, rolled once, twice — then rose to his feet in a single motion, sword gleaming in hand, pointed right at me.
“Ah… it’s you guys,” I muttered in exasperation after identifying my assailants.
I really, really hoped I wouldn’t have to deal with them during the test today.
But of course…
The universe wouldn’t allow me a wish.
So the main characters were here to take the spotlight.