Night shrouded Compus as the moon rose high in the sky. As the golems got to work, since sorcerers didn’t do the menial tasks, night life in the city had began. I walked into a dark alley accompanied by the sounds of clanking from the shackles bound around my feet and hands, barely able to keep up pace with the people escorting me.

“Are the shackles too tight, Boss Kendra?” one of my escorts asked me.

“Can you loosen this a bit, Flexia?” I ordered to which she obeyed.

“Hey, hey, kiddo. Don’t make it too obvious. We’re trying to bait Flexia’s employers, not actually give you to them,” Master interjected as he stopped Flexia.

“Got it, High Overboss!” Flexia excitedly responded.

“Is this really a good idea?” I asked.

“Yeah, sure. Don’t worry about anything, Kendra.” Master stopped then pointed at a door at the end of the alley. There was a floating candle in front of the old wooden door, but the sign on top flashed ‘Private Property’. “Go over there and knock.”

“What about you?” I asked him.

“I’ll arrive later as reinforcements, when the time is right,” he assured.

Nope. I am not assured at all.

I sighed and moved towards the door anyway. Flexia grabbed the leash to my shackles and knocked against the door. It didn’t take long to get an answer as the door’s sliding peephole opened up, revealing a man’s face.

“Flexia? I thought you died,” the man said.

“Well, I didn't. I brought the target with me,” Flexia answered as she held up the leash.

“You were tasked with killing her, not capturing her.”

Flexia enlarged her arms then flexed. “Oh yeah? What’s wrong with showing off my skills as a sorcerer? To capture my kill target right under everyone’s noses, that is to show true magical skills.”

The man laughed then started opening the door. After a brief armlock with Flexia, he said, “That is true sorcerer way! Show them punies what true magic is capable of! Come, we show your prize to him.”

I was pulled by Flexia into the inside of the building. It was strangely empty, and I almost thought that I was tricked until I got onto the small circle in the middle of the room. The circle glowed brightly for a moment before it started sinking under the floor.

After a quick descend downwards, it stopped in front of a large room filled with musclemancers. They were seated on various exercise equipments and were exercising until I arrived. At the center of the room was a large muscleman sitting in front of a table.

He wore a great coat, had aged gray hair, and there was a scar across his right eye. His glare punctured through me as he examined me from head to toe, and I could feel the tension in the room peak higher than the highest mountain in The Continent.

The old man beckoned, and Flexia brought me to him. Before he could say anything, I walked up to him and said, “So you’re the ugly pig-faced hooligan that sent an assassin to kill me, huh? Just know that damnation is only a blade away, and you’ll have to sleep with your eyes wide open starting from now, that is… if you get away alive.”

The old man strained his face, then stood up. He swept his hand across his hair, took a deep breath, and cried, “Why are you sooo rude? I’m just a receptionist here, hunny! Why’d you have to say such mean thiiiings?!”

“Hey! You can say that to Biggie!”

“Yeah! What a rude girl!”

“She makes me want to lift some boulders out of anger!”

The surrounding musclemen were roused up as I felt my head turn red. I whispered to Flexia, “Why didn’t you tell me?!”

“But you spoke up first!”

“What is going on here?” a voice joined the conversation when a new person entered the room. It was a man dressed in purple while wearing a full plate helmet. Around his hip was a small shovel with a sharpened tip.

“This rude girl ruined my day! I am going home! I need to fix my makeup!” the old man shouted as he left through the elevator. Unfortunately, I was too embarrassed to apologize to him before he could make his exit.

The purple man pointed at me then asked Flexia, “I had thought you died. Why is this girl here?”

“I wanted to show off my skills!” Flexia boasted.

“I see. This is unprecedented as I did not expect sorcerers to have the intelligence to think of anything but smashing things to dust,” the man replied which garnered grunts and groans from the surrounding musclemen. “But this is also acceptable. Still, my scouts couldn’t sense you nor this girl when you entered Compus.”

“What do you mean?” Flexia asked.

“After we lost contact with you, we sent scouts to find you and the girl, but none of them returned with any results,” the purple man explained.

Wait, was that why Master kept bugging me to tag along with him all the time? He was shrouding my presence the entire time?

“So you’re the one that sent assassins against me?” I asked.

The purple man turned to me and bowed. “Of course.”

“Why?”

“My organization has interest in keeping track of the ragtag group of children known as the ‘Heroes’ Party’. It just happen so that we noticed that you have a suspiciously high amount of death essence emanating from you, especially during your time in Cahalot.” The purple man fished a monocle out of his pocket, then placed it against his helmet. “Even now, you’re still giving out essence of death. I can see it. It’s so strong that…”

“That… That what?” I urged him to continue.

He turned towards Flexia then said, “Wait. Why are you also giving out essence of death?”

Right as he finished his sentence, one side of the room suddenly exploded, spreading dust and fire everywhere. From the smoke, I could see a familiar figure sliding across the room while holding a disc of pure energy on his hand.

“YOU FOOL! YOU HAVE DECIDED TO COURT DEATH, SO I HAVE DECIDED TO SEND YOU TO HIM MYSELF!” Master screamed as he jumped out of the smoke.

“YOU’RE FACING THE WRONG SIDE!” I retorted out loud.

“Oh, crap!” Master cursed and turned himself around. “YOU FOOL! YOU HAVE- Oof!”

Master was blasted towards the wall by a combination of muscle magic and demonic magic. He managed to balance himself mid-air and retaliated by throwing the magic disk across the room. Several musclemen were instantly shredded to pieces, but the man in purple had a barrier around him which dispelled the disc.

“Hmpf. What nonsense. I am immune to magic. What could you possibly do against me?” the purple man sneered.

“This!” Master ran across the room with blazing speed and grabbed the man’s arm. He kicked the purple man’s shin, then twisted his body around and slammed the man down onto the ground with a bone-crushing suplex. The man in purple was suplexed so hard that there was a crater under his body.

“Mother…” the man in purple cried faintly.

“No, I’m going to make you scream Uncle unless you tell me the location of the other hidden bases in Compus,” Master threatened.

“Never!”

Master turned to Flexia and asked, “Do you know any other hidden bases in Compus?”

“I know all of them, High Overboss!” Flexia replied with a thumbs up.

“Y-You traitor!” the man in purple shouted.

“It’s not betrayal since she was raised from the dead, you know” Master retorted.

“Impossible! The anti-corruption mana circulating within our bodies cannot be touched by undead magic!”

“Oh, yeah? But my foot can touch your face!” Master ended the conversation with a kick to the man’s face.

“Is this really alright?” I asked as I unshackled myself.

“Why? Do you want him alive? Flexia has all the information we needed. We’ll be doing this to every base, so don’t throw away your shackles yet,” Master remarked.

“What?! Why not just directly attack the bases if Flexia knows where they are?” I protested.

“I told you, I can’t detect the presence of these weirdos,” Master pointed at the purple man and continued, “so if I brazenly crashed into a base, there’s a chance that these guys could get away. They’re trying to kill you, right? So you want them dead as well. In the end, you got no choice but to stick with my ingenious plan.”

I groaned loudly, then placed the shackles around my hands. “Fine, let’s head to the next base before the local guards gets here!”

*

*

*

I nervously tapped my finger against the planning tables. Within the meeting room, there weren’t just sorcerer-apprentices from my city-state, there were sorcerers from many different city-states as well. My fellow sorcerer-apprentices and I all came to the same conclusion: Cahalot is a threat.

Game after game, Cahalot had somehow crushed all oppositions without even straining a muscle. The other city-states were wary of the Cahalotian students’ performances, and it was about time we act before Cahalot wipes the floor with our abs!

I turned my back towards the crowd of sorcerers and bent my body slightly downwards. “My fellow sorcerers, I must admit that these Cahalotians aren’t the usual puny muscle-less bookworms they send in every year,” I announced.

“I agree. My team was overwhelmed with intense bloodlust even before our match against Cahalot even started!” cried a little boy as he flexed his arms.

“That is why we are here to find a way to get rid of them… by any means necessary,” I said.

“We can try to get them to be late to the events,” a sorcerer-apprentice suggested.

“We’ll have to find them during the off-times. I heard they’re usually touring around with that Cahalotian sorcerer, Master Yomi,” another one added.

“Wait, then it’ll be hard to keep them all occupied. What if we block off the paths to the stadiums?”

“That’ll cause too much suspicion.”

“Compus will surely help fellow sorcerers.”

“Compus is known for their fairness and justice. They will not tolerate this.”

“Fine. What do you suggest then?”

As the ideas were bounced back and forth, the discussions steered towards a darker tone. “We should kidnap them. You know, not harm them. Keep them somewhere until the end of the Games,” a large sorcerer suggested.

“We can hire thugs to scare off the Cahalotians!”

“You fool, not even thugs could intimidate them! We’ll need professionals! My gym has connections to certain groups!”

“Do we need to kill them?”

“If we have no choice…”

As the arguments rolled back and forth, I rubbed my forehead in exhaustion. By chance, I noticed that there was a large cloaked student taking refreshments from the drinks stand.

“Excuse me, the one by the drinks. Try not to drink all of the protein shake, please,” I called out.

The student stopped serving himself a drink then placed the cup he was holding back onto the table. “Ah, my bad. I didn’t know this was protein shake.”

“I see. Do you have any ideas?”

“Ideas? For what?”

“To get rid of the scrawny Cahalotians.”

“The Cahalotians? You mean… me?!” the student turned around and threw the cloak off, revealing a student in Cahalot’s uniform. His body was well-built so he was well-camouflaged among the students, which was probably why nobody raised an eye.

“Get him!” I shouted as I prepared as spell.

Several students started casting their spells, but they were subdued by Cahalotians who appeared from the shadows. Lightning, fireballs, ice shards, and stone pellets flew across the room, creating more disarray in the already chaotic room.

I don’t know how, but the Cahalotians had managed to pull off some extremely advanced techniques such as turning the surrounding furnitures into man-eating monsters. It was a horrific scene watching a student get mauled to dust by a pack of chairs.

The stern-faced boy that I called out rushed towards me. It seemed that he was confident in his close quarters skills, but everyone knows that true sorcerers are superior in close-ranged- BWwHAA!

Before I realized what had happened, the stern-faced boy boosted his body and crashed into me like a steel ram. He repeatedly punched me with no mercy until I started screaming for mercy.

“You-... You Cahalotians… how did you… how did you all find us?!” I spat.

“We have trained Old Sorcery Tracking skills which were used by old magi-bounty-hunters,” the stern-faced boy replied with an unchanged expression. “We would know that sooner or later, you would target us, so we decided to target you first!”

“Monsters! You are all monsters!” I flexed in horror on the floor.

“You’ve… never seen a true monster,” the stern-faced boy said before walking away to mop up the rest of the sorcerer-apprentices.