It was instant chaos on the trial grounds. Spells, munitions, and weapons flashed and clashed. Many ran for the gates with preternatural speed. Others defended against attacks from their fellow participants. Already, he saw several people teleport away in pillars of light as they used their identifier necklaces to escape harm or simply bow out.

  Caen blocked a bolt of lightning on Chasma. Stormsong floated easily beside him as a Body-enhancement spell chain propelled Caen forward at great speed. Not towards any of the gates, but to the tunnel at the center of the wall.

  ***

  The night before, Caen sat in an armchair in Vai's Astral domain, viewing recordings of the previous Patronage trials with Aunt Vensha and Uncle Vai.

  “Alright, you've been avoiding answering this question for months,” Vensha said. “The trials are in a few hours. What tricks have you been cooking?”

  “Who says I won't just fight my way to the gates and solve as many as I can manage?” Caen asked with a straight face.

  They both turned to look at him.

  “Fine,” he said. “I'm using the tunnels. I don't plan to solve any of the gates in the first zone.”

  “That's a common tactic,” Vensha said, frowning. “Start from the second zone where there are fewer participants.”

  Vai nodded as he hovered in his rocking chair. “But you'd have to contend with the increased pressure from the suppression field, while making up for the lost points in the previous wall.”

  “I've seen recorded memories of the suppression fields,” Caen said. “They are rough, but I think I can manage. Also, I'll be skipping the second zone.”

  Vai laughed. “Starting to accrue points from the third zone! Now that's the sort of hubris I love to see. Are you confident in your abilities to pull it off?”

  Vensha looked concerned. “I've seen it done before, but not for nearly as many points as you're aiming to rack up.”

  “If you're worried about that, then this might not be the best time to mention that I'll be skipping the third zone too.”

  Vensha began to massage her temples while Vai slapped his knee, laughing.

  ***

  Not everyone participating in the trials cared about winning or earning points. Most factions registered participants for the sole purpose of eliminating others or thinning the herd. ‘Cullers’, they were called.

  Caen darted out of the path of a fireball, caught a bevy of projectiles against Chasma, and crashed through a pair of said Cullers standing in his way.

  A large, armored man with a warhammer stood at the entrance to the tunnel. A flock of red seagulls had been painted on his breastplate and pauldrons, marking him as a member of the Blood Birds faction. Just before Caen’s eyes, the man slammed his weapon into a participant's head, causing them to vanish in a pillar of light.

  In an instant, Caen Mimicked the man's Kinesis affinity and cast a basic spell that would intensify the amount of force he exerted by a small percentage. A painful surge of lightning spread through Caen's body, courtesy of his sword.

  The man brandished his weapon.

  Caen reached across and grabbed Stormsong’s hilt. He grit his teeth, growling as he swung with all his empowered might.

  Stormsong's enchantment made it easy for its wielder to carry it without strain, but this was not so for the weapon's victims.

  The sword folded the man at his waist, crumpling his armor and flinging him to the side. The man erupted into a pillar of light, vanishing the next instant.

  Caen disconnected from the man, then Mimicked Stormsong’s Lightning affinity, immediately putting an end to the shocks.

  “Such terrible form,” the sword said. “What was that just now? No technique, no power. Is this really the best you can do?”

  Caen let go of the sword as he crossed into the tunnel, and the weapon moved to its place by his left, hovering alongside him and guzzling his mana reserves.

  “You need to be re-educated and taught the mere basics. This is—”

  “Stormsong,” Caen said, through their cord of connection.

  “—mark of utter incompetence and is disappointingly—”

  “Stormsong,” Caen called again.

  “Yes?”

  “Shut up,” Caen said.

  A flurry of wind picked up around Caen, courtesy of the sword.

  “How dare you speak to me that way! Do you know how old I am? How many fools I've slain? Before you were suckling at—wait. You just spoke to me! How could someone as unworthy as you manage that?”

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  Caen zipped through the tunnel, overtaking a few other participants.

  “Hey, don't ignore me!” Stormsong screamed in his mind, wind picking up around them again.

  ***

  The second zone already had nearly a hundred participants in it. The pressure on his spirit, mind, and body intensified. He weathered a few more spells flung his way, slapping aside a couple of participants who attacked him, and hurtling into the tunnel once more.

  He repeated the same thing in the third zone, and as soon as he made his way into the fourth zone, he sprinted for a Flora gate. There were sixty fewer gates here and only a handful of people; one sole Culler was being harassed by a trio of Fire practicians. Caen interrupted the man's spells twice, allowing the trio to eliminate him.

  He reached the gate, climbed onto the platform, and immediately, a disembodied voice began counting down from fifteen. That was the number of seconds he had to solve the puzzle before the platform would eject him. He let Stormsong clatter to the floor.

  The puzzle was not particularly hard. Portions of a spell schema lay scrambled on the gate, and by placing his hand on the gate and channeling his mana into it, he could cast spells to reorganize them in the correct configuration.

  He split his mind in two, working on the problem from both ends and multicasting to quickly adjust the schema.

  “Thirteen,” the disembodied voice said. “Twelve, eleven, t—solved.”

  The gate swung inwards for him to walk through to the next zone.

  But Caen stepped off the platform. The gate swung closed. He grabbed Stormsong and sprinted towards another gate.

  Spirit-healing this time. He solved the puzzle in seconds, left the platform, and headed to a Body-enhancement gate. A bare-chested man was running towards the same gate. When he spotted Caen, he came to a halt and raised his hands as if in surrender.

  Caen ignored him, stepped onto the platform, solved the puzzle, and when the gate swung open this time, he went through. He was immediately teleported to a resting area, which preceded the fifth zone.

  “Safe zone!” a disembodied voice said. “Performing hostile actions of any kind within this area will result in an immediate disqualification.”

  The suppression field was not active in the safe zone, and the temptation to wait a while and catch his breath was strong. There were about thirty people present, sitting on the ground or leaning against the walls.

  Caen quickly rushed through another open gate that teleported him to the fifth zone. It felt like being kicked in the stomach as a painfully uncomfortable prickling sensation spread all over his body.

  Here, the pressure on his spirit, mind, and body intensified a great deal. His affinities still weren't all that much hindered in the suppression field. The suppression field was designed to impede higher affinities, which were an unspoken requirement for participants.

  Caen's affinities were certainly being restricted, but not to the extent that he imagined others’ affinities would be.

  There were people here, too, but much less than there'd been in the resting area.

  A group of Cullers exited a tunnel and panned the zone before attacking a nearby participant. Two Cullers split off and rushed for him, but he was already headed for a gate. Before they could intercept him, he stepped onto the platform and solved the puzzle. Flora magic.

  Stepping off the platform, he sprinted for another gate. With a great swing of Stormsong, he smacked a Culler into the wall on his way there. The other Culler retreated. They were slower, more cautious about how they cast spells, and preferred easy prey. Mana expenditure under conditions like these was wasteful and difficult to manage. Caen didn't share their concerns. His passive augmentations greatly improved skills he already had. This was his playground.

  After his third gate, which was Body-enhancement, he solved four more: Dream-guarding, Blood-healing, Fire, and Vibration magics.

  By the time he went through the Vibration magic gate, so few participants had made their way into this zone.

  In the sixth zone, Caen stepped onto a Flora gate and solved it in half the allotted time. He was breathing heavily from the strain, in spite of his breathing sequence.

  Seven more to go, he reminded himself.

  ***

  Lamori Ereshta'al stepped through a Wind magic gate in the eighth zone and was instantly teleported to the victors’ lounge. She stumbled to the floor, shakily catching herself on a knee and panting. Fawning attendants flocked over to assist her, but she waved them away as she rose to her feet, composing herself.

  The victors’ lounge was a vast hall, larger even than the waiting area they'd stuffed them in this morning. There were pretty trees in the corners. Comfortable seats and resting cushions littered the hall. Tables were stacked with food and drink, and attendants were standing beside them.

  Enchanted projections on the walls showed the trials in real time, where the others were struggling. Commentators could be heard droning on about this and that. She heard her name mentioned a few times.

  Lamori felt a rush of triumph as she walked towards a table, waved aside the attendant, and fixed herself a plate of food.

  She was the only participant here. She’d completed the trial in just under five minutes.

  That was still nearly three minutes slower than the best time ever, but she was very pleased with herself.

  There was a hidden mechanic in the first trial that focused the intensity of the suppression field on those who were performing particularly well. Even with such a handicap, she'd still outperformed all her batchmates. The scoreboard would certainly rank her at the very top.

  Look at me caring so much about my placement in vain public rankings.

  She thought she'd abandoned such a competitive spirit in her twenties. She bit into a bun with jam, relishing the taste.

  Her eyes drifted lazily to one of many projections on the wall where her face and alias were now being displayed.

  Butterfly Mask. First position. Forty points; the bare minimum to pass the first trial. But such was the price for speed.

  Points weren't the only determinant for a participant's rankings. Many other things came into play, like speed, combat prowess, tenacity, and most of all, sheer spectacle. Breaking records or coming oh so close to doing so. That was what the judges and onlookers enjoyed.

  Oh, she'd be the talk of the island for the rest of the week. No one had gotten this good a time in nearly a decade.

  She glanced at the name listed just below hers. Herb Mask. An unimaginative name. She remembered seeing him briefly in the fourth zone before she stepped into the resting area.

  When she noticed the number of points beside his name, she did a double-take. Then her plate fell from her hands, breaking into pieces on the marble floor.

  “One hundred and twenty points?” she sputtered. And he wasn't even done yet. “W-what?”

  Attendants were fussing over her, but she couldn't hear anything they were saying. There was a rush of air in her ears, and the sweet jam in her mouth tasted sour.

  Before her eyes, Herb Mask's name and visage ticked up into the first position, displacing her. At the same time, his points score went up by five.

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