Fatera looked around the environments around her, trying to spot out where Augen had gone before the tall girl with the massive glowing sword drew her attention right away. She walked with a strange pace, an air of elegance emanating from her body.

Fatera put a finger up to the sides where the views around them seemed to have been frozen in time like a painting, "What the heck is this?"

"That's my Cast, Battle Segregation." The tall girl replied, her voice magnetic and mature, and Fatera can't help but admire her as a physical specimen. Her breasts are big, her hips thin, with muscular arms holding onto the glowing blade and strong round legs down below serving as the perfect foundation, "And I shall be your opponent."

"That means if I beat you up, the Cast will go away?" Fatera asked, loosening up her shoulders before flicking her wrists around.

"No." The girl shook her head and lowered into a stable combat stance, the blade held up in her hands and Wave flowing all throughout her body, "The Cast will only be undone when all five battles resulted in one fighter standing."

"Oh..." Fatera lowered her hands and sighed, "So...it's almost a team effort."

"You won't be able to carry your teammates as you have always done, Fatera." The tall girl said, the glowing blade made of pure Wave seemingly getting thicker and brighter in between her hands, and Fatera stared at the heatwave as it brushed into her face.

"You are mistaken." Fatera said, lowering her body and launching forward as the tall girl chopped forward in a lunge, her blade blasting a massive shot of Wave forward as the white light swallowed Fatera whole. She felt the intensity of the attack, and layers of Wave poured out from the body of the crimson-eyed Channeler before she planted her feet firm and took the attack head-on.

Sensing the drop in intensity, Fatera then launched her body high up into the air, gloves and boots forming around her limbs before she slammed down onto the body of the tall girl. She tilted her glowing blade to the side, creating an angled pillar that deflected Fatera's attack. However, the hit also created an explosion as the body of her blade cracked once.

"What ridiculous power..." The tall girl smiled nervously before she stepped back, leaving the glowing pillar in place before clapping her hands together as strands of Wave flowed back towards her hand, forming a new blade. Fatera watched her closely, and Fatera attacked before the new blade is fully formed, moving even faster in her Hard Mode before slamming her foot straight into the trunk of the tall girl, sending her flying back like a piece of a pebble.

"ARGH!" She cursed, her hands still glowing but the blade no longer keeping its form.

"Submit." Fatera said, looking at her, "And we will end this battle. You cannot win this."

"Maybe not..." She admitted, "But my squad will win. Your teammates are nothing without you."

"That's where you are wrong." Fatera said, leaning in as her crimson eyes locked onto the tall girl who slowly puts her hand up and tried to reconjure her glowing blade, "They fight alongside me because that's the best way for us to win as a whole. However, that doesn't mean they can't fight on their own."

The tall girl clenched her fist together, strands of Wave extending out from both her hands and the glowing Wave blades she left behind before it tried to pierce through Fatera's body. However, instead, Fatera half turned her body and grabbed onto the strands of the Wave itself, holding the tall girl in place before pulling up the chunk of the Wave and slinging it onto the body of the tall girl.

"Submit!" Fatera called out once again as the swinging mass of her sword whooshed overhead. However, before it could crash the body of the tall girl underneath, she caught it with both hands, reforging the connection between herself and the blade before unleashing a massive explosion to send Fatera's body flying back.

"We all got a job to do." The tall girl said, her voice defiant and eyes determined before she brought her hands together and creating a sword bigger than even Ver's largest attempt for her Sky Splitting Sword. The entire slice of the battlefield now blowing up with her power, "And mine is to keep you here."

The glowing sword charged with overwhelming power, and for an instance, it dwarfed the power from even Fatera herself. Faced with the Cast that stood far bigger in size than her own physical body, Fatera simply steadied her breathing further and watched on, her crimson eyes seeming about as peaceful as it had ever been. Listening to the rhythm of her own heartbeat, she then retracted all of the Wave back into her own body.

Before, Fatera was competing against the tall girl's own glowing Wave sword for the dominance in the Wave, but there is no competition. Not anymore. All of a sudden, Fatera had nothing at all in the Wave. No presence, no energy, no existence.

There was simply a peaceful breath.

Then, it all exploded. The dark red aura flooding out from her body as the ground next to her feet started quaking before being turned into powder as a small red cloud started swirling around her body, stirred up by a wind that carried no shape nor sound. It was as if the cloud was also there, simply existing.

Just like Fatera, and just like her dominance.

Like a candle being snuffed out by the stormy night, the glowing sword of the tall girl was blown apart into strands of the Wave too thin and weak to be seen anymore. Surrounded by the hurricane of raw power, she looked down at the Cast lines on her hands when they themselves started to burn into her skin.

She turned towards Fatera, a mix of disbelief and fear in her eyes as the latter simply took a single step forward, a blast of air then crashed forward like a surging dragon, ramming the tall girl into the ground and throwing her off the boundary of the slice of battlefield.

She flopped down, the brunt impact knocking her out immediately, and Fatera withdrew her power just as quickly as they arose, as if nothing has happened between the two.

"Well...I was hoping for more of a resistance..." Fatera sighed, sitting down on the ground and looking up at the still image of the sun above, "But...I suppose that will have to wait a bit..."

In the meanwhile, Augen, now facing against the short man with a small dagger, had the playing cards floating around his body and his Wave sensing abilities tuned up to the maximum.

"Summer Lotus!" Augen commanded, massive buds of his ranged attack Cast forming around the air besides him before massive blasts of the Wave filled the entirety of the battlefield slice. He knew of the battlefield's volume the moment it is created, and from the last two sensations he felt before everything went silent, it was a combination Cast of the tall girl and the short brown-haired man that lead to the separation of Wu's squad.

"Dagger of Silence...mute the Waves." The man murmured, the dagger spinning in his hands in a flurry before thin white flashes appeared in the air in front of him, his hands moving so fast that it was nothing more than a blur. Then, Augen's blast was completely separated and deflected to the side, the Wave rebounding off the boundaries of the battlefield before dissolving into thin air.

Then, from behind the explosions, the short man emerged and dashed forward, his body slipping straight through the opening he created through Augen's Cast as the sharp tip of the dagger sliced straight through Augen's stomach. The green-haired boy let out a pained grunt before dropping forward, his blood pouring out from the abdomen.

"As I expected. You are one of the weak links of the group." The short man said, half turning around and pointing the dagger straight towards Augen, "You are not worthy of my time."

"Wha...what are you intentions..." Augen asked, his vision starting to become more and more blurry as his words started to slur, "I...I mustn't die here..."

"Unfortunately, you will." The short man said, "Many squads were given executive order to hunt you down. However, we only care for the will of our master, and our master only cared for the way of the sword."

"Is...is that all?" Augen said, his body collapsing forward and breathe slowly leaking out from his body like a lifeless balloon, "Is...that worth the blood..."

"Such is the way of the Sword, and the way of the Academy." The short man replied, turning around and returning the dagger back behind his cloak. However, he started feeling a strange itch from around his hips, and soon, strange grey cracks started spreading all throughout his body, and he looked down to see parts of his hands slowly started to disintegrate into dust.

"Forbidden Spring...Deadman Walking..." Augen murmured, rolling over as a piece of glowing green card was embedded into his stomach. He sat up, though strangely so, a phantom of his dead body was left behind like a projection, and as he stood up as if nothing's happened, the dead version of himself started fading away until it was no more than an illusion, "Forbidden Autmn...Decaying Inevitability..."

"What...what did you do?" The short man inquisited, reaching for the dagger once more, but he had already lost his hand before he collapsed onto the ground as the decay continued on his body.

"I casted the forbidden Cast onto my blood, and when you cut me, it spread onto your dagger." Augen said, sitting down and looking towards the short man as he grasped onto the parts of the body that still remained. Now, the seemingly harmless boy with green hair, pale skin, and a thin frame looked like the grim reaper himself with a look of devilish sympathy on his face.

"You..."

"The tactics to separate us was one based on...some semblance of logic..." Augen said, "It would seem that divide and conquer was the best strategy...but in trying to set us back, you also sacrificed your own strengths, didn't you?"

"What...do you mean?"

"After all, the only success of your squad in separating us was a team effort." Augen said.

The short man's eyes widened, and he thought back to moments ago, before they engaged Wu's squad according to Nana's plan. He thought back to the start of the Summer Selections, when the five swordsman moved like a unit, securing number of strongholds along the way during the practices. He thought back to even before that, when they trained days and nights together as a squad, vowing to reach the apex of power...

He thought to the bright smile of the tall girl, and the snarky jokes of the girls with bangs covering her eyes, and odd remarks from the boy with Cast lines all over his body...

All of those memories and all those dreams...tossed by the wayside, the moment Nana knew of Ver's possession of the Sky Splitting Sword.

"I...don’t want to die alone..." The short man said, his voice lightening with every syllable, "Not...alone..."

"You won't be." Augen said, calming the spirit of the fallen as the last of the decay swallowed up his face, and soon, all of his existence was erased.