Jia fled through the forest, confident in her ability to outpace her pursuers. There were ten minutes before the fighting was to start, but nothing said she couldn’t use her abilities for other things. The problem was that she doubted she’d be able to lose them in that time if all she did was run. She’d just be delaying the inevitable as they cornered her against the other side of the forest.

That was fine. She’d been anticipating this, and she hadn’t spent all of her time over the last few days just watching her friends’ struggles. She’d been paying attention to the layout of the forest, mentally marking places that could be useful or dangerous. The vast swathes of burnt forest had been replaced after the first day—though Jia wasn’t entirely certain how—and were now even more dense than the rest of the forest. Conversely, she knew where every major clearing was—she wasn’t about to be blindsided by a large opening.

Jia made her way to one of the more densely wooded areas, weaving gracefully through the trees as her pursuers scrambled to keep track of her position. About halfway through the dense section, she stopped and leapt up into the treetops, making use of her claws and her enhanced agility to climb nearly as fast as she could run. Once there, she drew out a tiny bit of her shadow essence to hide her presence.

She didn’t hide herself fully—that would be extremely wasteful, and she had a very limited supply of shadow essence—but it would be enough to hide from the enhanced senses of half-spirits, and the mana-sense of most mages as long as nobody was staring straight at her. Once she was hidden, she doubled back across the treetops and over the heads of her would-be pursuers, barely even causing the branches to move as her passage was muffled by Steps of the Stalker.

It took them a few minutes to realize that they had lost her, by which time Jia had gotten well clear of the people chasing her and released Steps of the Stalker to conserve the rest of her shadow qi. They began to spread out to search for her, but now that she had gotten away, she could use her domain to keep track of those nearest to her and move to avoid them—or stalk them. Using the knowledge of the terrain that she’d burned into her mind, Jia kept away from the open areas while she followed the most isolated enemies she could find.

Because of her domain of unity, being separated from her friends and allies had weakened her. She could feel their lack like chains against her skin, holding her back more in their absence than if the bonds had never been formed in the first place. She imagined that this must be what Elder Qin would feel like if he broke one of his oaths. It was a valuable insight into the nature of her domain and how she drew strength from it.

However, unity was only one part of her domain, though it was by far the greatest. She was also shadow and hunger, and it was from these aspects that she drew her strength now. In the past, Lee Jia had always been the prey hiding in the shadows from the predators that would devour her. Now she drew from Eui’s experience and her own convictions to become the predator, lurking in the shadows and waiting for the perfect moment to strike.

She found her first target—a boy from Qin, wandering aimlessly all alone, carelessly searching the forest. His heart clearly wasn’t in it, and he was barely paying attention. Even without the benefits of Steps of the Stalker, she was able to get almost right over top of him without being detected. As the tenth minute passed, and the signal to begin sounded throughout the forest, she pounced.

He barely had time to yelp in surprise as she tackled him to the ground and delivered a flurry of pinpoint spear-hand blows to every pressure point she could reach, causing him to convulse in pain before passing out from the shock of her paralytic lightning ki flooding his meridians.

“Liu Shirong has been eliminated!”

Less than a second had passed since the start of the round, and she already had one down. Only thirty three to go.

Jia eyed her next target—or rather group of targets—warily. Those damn elimination announcements had given away the game, and now people were moving in groups of five or more, which was making her life difficult. Of course none of them were fighting each other—the group she was following had representatives of Qin, Yamato, and even a Goryeon half-spirit among them. They were under a truce until Lee Jia was eliminated.

She had mixed feelings about that. Her pride over being considered such a threat warred with her indignation over the unfairness of the odds stacked against her. The indignation was winning. She couldn’t help it—there was no way this had been drawn fairly! Not even Hayakawa had faced this kind of treatment. Then again, Hayakawa had also challenged her division solo, and most of her enemies had fled rather than try to face her.

Jia was not Hayakawa. She couldn’t face the entire group of fifty head-on and expect to come out on top. Sneaking around and eliminating them one by one? That, she could do—but these groups were becoming larger and more tightly knit as she went on, and she wasn’t sure how much longer she’d be able to keep it up. She’d managed to take down a few pairs and individuals in the first hour, but since then she hadn’t been able to find a group smaller than the five she was stalking now, and she still needed to eliminate over twenty more opponents.

She leapt to another tree branch and heard a tiny creak as it strained under her the force of her landing. Normally not a problem, but Jia had forgotten who she was following, and she cursed as she noticed the tell-tale twitch of the deer-like ears of the half-spirit in the group—she’d been noticed.

“She’s here!”

Lee Jia dove after the half-spirit that had noticed her, pulsing her Fetid Bog technique’s aura to stun the group and gain valuable moments for her opening attack. The mage faltered, but still managed to cast his spell, putting a wall of branches and vines between them. Jia had predicted the wall—a standard opening for most college-trained mages—and borrowed a trick from Eui, casting her own earth wall right under her feet to launch herself over. In midair, she pointed at the startled mage and cast a lightning bolt spell. The mage had clearly expected the wall to buy him time to prepare his other defenses, because he went down like a sack of rice without a hint of resistance.

“Yun So has been eliminated!”

The sound of her lightning bolt and the elimination announcement meant that her position had been given away, and she wouldn’t have much time. She would have to take out the rest of this group fast, or run away. She decided to take her chances fighting, since running would mean expending more shadow essence to lose her pursuers again.

She summoned another talisman from her ring—she’d learned her lesson about keeping them on her person after the tribulation bolt had destroyed them all—and prepared her mana shield as the two martial artists charged her. Once again, she wished Eui were here, so that she could smoothly transition to Soft Fist style and counter their aggression. Instead, she lightning-stepped forwards and met them with aggression of her own, catching one off guard with a few stunning strikes, but nothing decisive.

With one martial artist temporarily disabled, Jia could focus her attention on the second. She had to spend a few precious moments blocking and parrying his attacks while she got an impression of his style. Meanwhile, the two spiritual artists in the back weren’t wasting their time—as they both unleashed their techniques at the same time, Jia’s eyes flashed and she used Absolute Awareness.

She didn’t have much time—she could maintain the technique for less than a second of relative time before the headache overwhelmed her, and the slowdown wasn’t nearly as dramatic as when Yoshika used it. It was enough—she saw that one of the attacks was a blast of icy qi, while the other was a more subtle mud-element technique trying to create a quagmire beneath her and restrict her movements.

Jia’s eyes snapped back into focus as she ended the technique. She immediately adjusted her mana shield to warmth and dropped her noxious aura. The aura wasn’t as effective against groups of people anyway, and without Eui to boost her, it was mostly just a distraction. She channeled her second spiritual art instead, a brilliant, multi-hued aurora enveloped her body in a manner that was almost, but not quite reminiscent of flames.

The icy blast of qi spent itself harmlessly on her mana shield, while the muddy quagmire instantly baked hard wherever she stepped. Jia pulled the martial artist she was engaged with into the quagmire with her, slowing his footwork down enough for her to land a decisive blow to the temple.

“Nomura Toshio has been eliminated!”

Jia clicked her tongue in irritation. This was already taking too long. The second martial artist was beginning to regain his bearings but she ignored him, using her lightning steps to close the distance to the spiritual artists instead. They took nervous steps back as she appeared next to them, intimidated by the rainbow-hued flames that surrounded her.

They shouldn’t have been—Jia still hadn’t quite figured out how plasma worked. It moved like mana instead of fire, and only seemed to be hot when interacting with other expressions of mana. Against people, or anything naturally occurring, it seemed to be completely harmless. On the other hand, it was very pretty and seemed to do a good job scaring people, so there was that.

Jia took advantage of the faltering spiritual artists, throwing one into the other before falling upon both of them with a series of precision strikes and disabling them with her lightning ki.

“Mao Jianyu and Guo Liwei have been eliminated!”

She was glad she hadn’t had to use the penultimate form of the Lightning God Transformation style yet. Her familiar paralyzing pressure-point strikes had always had the weakness of being ineffective if she was unable to actually hit the pressure points—either because her opponent was faster than her, like Hayakawa or Ienaga, or because they were just too flexible and mobile, like Fujino or Yuuko. Her newest form solved that problem in a way that felt like complete overkill.

Her final opponent had finally gotten his bearings again, but without any support, Lee Jia was able to make short work of him.

“Tsuchiya Shouichi has been eliminated!”

Lee Jia immediately checked her surroundings with her domain—someone had to be on the way to investigate the sound of the lightning bolt and the eliminations. As she swept her attention in a spiral pattern around her domain, she didn’t find a single person in her vicinity. Confused, she reached out further only to still sense nothing. Only when she had expanded her domain to the absolute limits of its range did she finally discover an enemy. All of her enemies, in fact.

Around thirty of them, gathered together in a clearing—including Sun Jaehwa, Tae In-Su, Zheng Long, Han Yu, and most of the lackeys that had joined in on the ill-fated attempt to burn her house down. Sun Jaehwa and Tae In-Su were working on some kind of formation.

“Fuck!”

Lee Jia immediately recognized what kind of formation it was. She’d seen enough of them recently, after all, and had even spent the last few months fruitlessly trying to decipher the most powerful one she’d ever encountered. They were drawing a barrier. Sun Jaehwa was going to use tried and true Goryeon tactics against her—a siege behind a shield formation. How was Jia supposed to single-handedly defeat a defensive strategy that the nations of Yamato and Qin hadn’t been able to break in over a thousand years?

By the time Lee Jia made it to the clearing, the barrier was up and all of her remaining opponents had retreated within it. Sun and Tae were already beginning to draw up attack formations that would be able to fire outside of the barrier. Jia kicked the edge of the barrier in vain and growled in frustration.

“Ugh, really!?”

The occupants of the clearing eyed her warily, but didn’t make any immediate moves against her. Tae In-Su glanced up from his work and grimaced.

“Eh, no hard feelings, Miss Lee. It’s just a competition.”

Jia rolled her eyes.

“Oh sure, you’re looking real competitive in there.”

“We’ve...agreed that you are the greatest threat. We’re unlikely to eliminate you without taking extreme measures, so we’ve decided not to fight each other until you’ve been eliminated.”

“You don’t have to eliminate me—there are fifteen other slots! Just compete for those!”

Tae In-Su wilted a bit, but Sun Jaehwa looked up from her own work with a venomous glare.

“You don’t deserve a single one of them, you worthless thief! How can you not understand your place? You hide behind your patron and rob your betters of what should rightfully be theirs. Now, destiny has seen fit to allow us a chance to strike back against you. Did you think we wouldn’t take it!?”

Jia scratched her head and grimaced in confusion.

“Patron? What are you even talking about?”

Zheng Long stepped up and scoffed.

“Han Yu told me all about the favor you received from Qin Zhao, and Miss Sun has confirmed that you have a xiantian backer. I don’t know what that traitorous imperial is thinking, but it’s obvious that you’ve been taking advantage of his protection to oppress those superior to you.”

Lee Jia held a hand to her temple, already getting a headache from the delusional ranting. She knew that not all nobles were like this—she’d met plenty that she got along with just fine—but it felt as if they would twist reality in the most absurd ways to protect their own pride. She gave up on the fragile egos of the apparent leadership, and turned her attention to the others.

Most of the boys that had trapped and accosted her back when Sun Jaehwa tried to burn down her house were there, one of them still missing an eye—Yue could be pretty brutal when she resorted to physical combat. Alongside them were the girls that had worked with Sun during that same incident—looking extremely nervous as Lee Jia met their eyes.

“Why are all of you agreeing to this? Sun and Zheng I get—they’re deranged—but what do the rest of you have against me? What’s the point? And haven’t you already learned your lesson? You’re just tools to them—they’ll sacrifice you just as readily as the ones that served as a distraction while you set up this barrier!”

The half-spirit girls shifted uncomfortably, the boy missing an eye touched his face self-consciously, and Tae In-Su shook his head, sighing as he returned to his work. None of the others showed any signs of being receptive to her, either glaring, mocking, or outright ignoring her. Han Yu shook his head and chuckled.

“Miss Lee, your attempts to turn us against each other are pathetic. It’s over—you’ve been outplayed, and there’s no way for your pet imperial to intercede in front of all the other instructors and visitors. You should just save us the trouble and surrender now so that we can get on with the real competition.”

This was ridiculous—Jia didn’t even care about the single-combat division that much, but the idea that she could potentially be denied from competing by a bunch of entitled brats with wounded pride rankled. She wasn’t sure how she was going to get past the barrier, but surrendering was the last thing on her mind now. They’d made their decision and she had made hers.

“Fine. I was warned this would happen—that you’d keep coming after me again and again unless I put you down for good. I’ll deal with it as many times as I have to. I hope it’s comfortable in there, because I’m going to spend as long as it takes to crack this shell.”

Jia turned to leave—she didn’t want to still be here when Sun and Tae finished their attack formations. As she did, she heard Zheng Long’s smug voice calling back after her.

“Good luck, Miss Lee! I look forward to watching you break yourself against our defenses.”

She just shook her head. She almost pitied him for how proud he sounded of hiding behind someone else’s work. And they accused her of taking credit for things she didn’t deserve. Hypocrites.