Several hours had passed since the beginning of the exercise. My brow was drenched in a thick layer of sweat, my clothes were dirty from the plant life covering each tree branch. My progress had been steady but not particularly fast.

Between the rival sections of forest was a six-foot red zone line conjured via magic. The thick line had an extremely clear and obvious message: Beware, you are crossing into enemy territory. There was no room for mistakes past that point.

By now I had developed some understanding of the rules of the game. The ‘referees’ of this event were waiting, spaced in regular intervals all across the playing area, carefully monitoring the entire situation. There were referees inside the forest perched atop the highest of trees. Without my detection ability I’d have had no idea they were there.

The ones inside the forest were drastically fewer than those around the barrier. Realistically, it would be impossible for someone to enter or exit the battleground undetected. That thought brought me some peace of mind.

I recognized some of the referees as high ranking members of top guilds, but a lot of people were missing. Were they searching for the dragon egg right now? I couldn’t be sure, but I hoped so.

I had also gained some understanding of the enemy team’s formation. Each attacking team had a defending team following a ways behind them. If their attackers lost the bout, the defending team would intercept and clean up the engagement. It became clear after moving around and gathering information that there was more to the other side’s tactics than this setup. The number of teams I could sense didn’t match up at all. There were most definitely more defenders deeper into their territory, although I couldn’t determine their size and number.

I had already allowed several opposition teams to pass by me. The fact the exercise was still going meant they were most likely cleaned up by my defenders already. Judging by how little progress was being made by either side, this was going to take days. Those eliminated had to sit out for six hours and then they could rejoin the battle at their own team’s base camp. I came to understand this by lurking behind my fellow attackers and witnessing the resulting fights.

The next small team I encountered I decided I would intercept. I wasn’t sure exactly what I would do with them, but I was at least going to get my feet wet. Whether this would result in me fleeing, or attempting to push deeper… I didn’t know yet.

I was cautious, and definitely wasn’t expecting the opportunity that suddenly arose. According to my senses, a single person was moving in my direction. He wasn’t hurried and instead seemed almost out for a leisurely stroll. The fact he was alone instantly put me on high alert.

My eyes scanned the dense foliage in front of me for a figure, and eventually he came. It was a young man of around my age, maybe a bit older. There was a sword dangling at his waist and a shield protruding from behind his back.

He was a melee class at the very least with a high likely hood of being a tank. His signature and appearance screamed ‘mediocre at best’. My intuition told me this was wrong, but the feeling he gave off was… average.

My chance to stop him was coming soon, and would pass just as quickly. I calmed the contradictory thoughts in my head and moved to intercept him. What did I seem like to him? A lone mage perched in the treetops in front of him, with a staff as big as he was tall and all the indications of being a squishy caster class.

My opponent’s face showed surprise for a brief moment and then calm. He wiped the sweat from his brow nonchalantly before carefully peering around. His ability to hide the nervousness on his face was commendable, but his body could not lie.

“Where are your friends?” he asked. The shakiness in his voice slowly cleared up as he finished his sentence.

I wasn’t in the mood for conversation, but I humored him. He was only an enemy in a practice game. “They’re around. Yours?” I asked in jest.

My smile and tone of voice eased his worries somewhat. He smiled back, “Also around.” He pulled the shield from his back and hoisted it in front of him: no doubt a good decision when facing a caster.

Spell casters were unique in that the variation of magic was enormous. Not every spell had a cast time or even a clear indication that a spell was being cast. Our encounter could be over in a moment if he didn’t make preparations to defend himself. At least he wasn’t over-confident.

I raised my hand to cast and his figure immediately jumped several feet to the right. The branch cracked as a Glacial Spike pierced through the trunk where he had just been standing. Casting magic on a player was definitely more challenging than on a mob hemmed in by party members.

Monsters typically weren’t moving and instead were being tanked. A lot of spells had cast times and might be targeted on a specific location; others had a travel time: hitting a person that moved as soon as you cast would be difficult.

If it was only that my opponent was more mobile than usual, the problem could be solved quite easily. Here, though, I was not faced by a monster, but a flesh and blood Adventurer with great intelligence. The moment his feet landed after my cast, he pushed off a tree branch with great force.

His figure darted in my direction with the intent to close the gap between us and nullify my spell casting. This wasn’t outside my expectations. My body had already leaned back and I was dropping down from my current branch. A fireball formed in my hand that I tossed out as I fell back.

The fireball landed against his shield and exploded into multiple embers that disappeared into the wind. It wasn’t easy to gauge how much strength would be too much. The thought that I could seriously hurt someone lingered in my mind the entire time.

My enemy’s face registered surprise that I had managed to be so agile. His sudden charge had gained him no ground as we still stood the same distance apart, on two different branches. He took a defensive stance behind his shield and waited for me to cast.

I raised my hand and this time cast Arcane Missiles. He jumped to the side as I had expected, but each bolt from the void tracked him instead. Deep sounds like a ‘dong’ rang out as the bolts smashed into his shield. He could only brace himself and dig into the branch.

It was at this moment that I realized his previous comment was not in jest. There were three people coming in my direction: no doubt the team he said were ‘around’. The entire situation was odd. Was he simply bait? But why?

I had seen all that I needed to see. This battlefield I was currently in was not suited for magic usage at all. My AOE spells worked much better on ground and my patterns of attack could be more varied. Here in the treetops a caster was severely nerfed.

He rushed me again like before, and truthfully, it was his only option. It was different this time though: he used a skill. The greaves on his feet lit up and turned bright red as he launched from his branch like a rocket.

From the speed and height of his jump, he was intent on tackling me from the air. For any normal caster this would be the end, fortunately I was not at all a standard caster. In my eyes, his movements were slow, and nothing short of clumsy.

My hand rose again at his charge and the shield that covered his diving body. I was not casting any offensive magic, but instead used Shackle. This was the perfect moment to see how it interacted with a target in flight.

The spikes spawned in the air all around him and a single chain managed to wrap his arms against his body. It did not stop him flying so long as he was travelling in my direction. I had expected this, as there was nothing to latch the other end of the chain to.

What the spell did do, however, was stop him from adjusting his body in anyway. In fact, it turned out to be a more potent spell than if he was sitting on solid ground. His body had no leverage while in flight, and he could not even lower his raised shield.

He was going to crash head first into the tree trunk on his own. It would probably knock him out and not kill him, right? I was anticipating the crash, when he let out a loud shout that caused the Shackle to break.

He managed to steady himself and land on the branch just next to me. His face was red, not from anger but from fatigue. Whatever ability he had just cast had taken a toll on him. We were only a few feet away from each other.

The smug smile on his face insisted this was checkmate. “Surrender!” he said while stepping towards me.

I shrugged slightly as if it was unavoidable. His friends were at most fifteen seconds away. “Sorry, no can do.” I used Phasestep as soon as I finished speaking. He didn’t even react as my bare staff smacked into the base of his neck.

No doubt to him I was a blur in that moment, and then darkness. His body started to slouch from the impact and I caught him before he would fall from the tree branch to below. A fall like this could definitely prove fatal, there was no way I would let that happen. I managed to sit him against the broad trunk just as his friends arrived.

The three looked at me cautiously, their eyes darting here and there through the thick canopy. A beautiful woman with golden blonde hair and lithe figure within a green dress, came around the tree trunk. Two men stood on either side of her. One was tall and well built around the chest. His stone-like face showed no emotion at all. A longbow rested across his back, his quiver barely peeking over his right shoulder.

The other was shorter and more slender. Two razor-sharp daggers peered from below his waistband: an assassin no doubt, one adept in agile movements. He looked playfully at me, and seemed the most dangerous of the three. I weighed my options carefully. I didn’t think it was an impossible battle.

We were in a stalemate, not because they were concerned about my abilities, but by the unknown. It was obvious they suspected I had friends waiting in ambush as well. Only a fool would be here alone; a fool I was, though. The urge for battle was strong, but a prickling on the back of my neck told me to flee.

My ‘sixth-sense’, as I called it, had been good to me, and I wasn’t about to tempt fate any longer. “He should wake up in a little while. I only bopped him on the head,” I called out to the three opponents.

There was a moment of confusion among them. By all accounts I was a caster, and one that definitely wouldn’t fare well in melee combat. Their suspicion that I wasn’t alone visibly increased, and I took that moment to retreat. I could hear them bickering amongst each other as I fled.

In the end they chose to not follow me. The prickling sensation didn’t abate in the slightest though. In fact it was growing stronger, and no matter where I moved through the trees I couldn’t quite grasp the source of it.

I tried moving to the opposite side of that group, and even took a defensive position away from the opposing team; nothing seemed to work. The prickling remained and yet I couldn’t feel anyone following me. No one had paid me any special attention after the event had begun.

It was a tortuous feeling, one that I couldn’t push to the back of my mind and forget. No, it was always there. I moved forward again to where I had my first encounter and patiently waited. Something was coming for me, what it was I couldn’t know just yet.

Many enemy teams passed me by without noticing my presence. I was perched high in the treetop, and even garnered some stares from those watching over the event. They looked at me curiously, but only for a moment, and only when a new guard was put in.

They changed their shifts every few hours it seemed, and over the course of my wait I had seen three new referees perch just dozens of yards away from me. The night was pitch black, and the prickling at the back of my neck hadn’t abated at all.

The situation on the ‘battlefield’ below was lost to me, but clearly no one had won yet, or even made any remarkable progress towards victory. I heard the occasional outbreak of fighting below, but as the moon crept higher the surroundings grew more quiet.

The prickling on the back of my neck slowly abated. My eyes were growing drowsy as the stress of the last few hours piled on. I was preparing to close my eyes and sleep when I realized something was wrong.

The referee was nowhere to be found. He had been just a dozen yards away from where I rested. Vanished without a trace, and while that could be normal, no new guard had come to replace him.

A jolt of electricity raced up my spine as I dodged a killing blow. Casting Phase Step multiple times in quick succession, I barely managed to avoid having my head cut clean off. A figure looked at me from the darkness ahead.

The soul signature was familiar: the assassin had returned to finish the job. Her eyes were all I could see covered in her garb, remarkably beautiful, yet deadly at the same time. My hair was standing on edge. I summoned Mana Scythe and crossed it in front of me.

Her figure in front of me faded into smoke. Silence reigned all around me as I scanned my surroundings. She seemed gone, and I could feel nothing. I felt nothing at all, except a sudden burning across my neck.

I moved as fast as I could manage, but it wasn’t enough. A stinging heat seared the side of my neck. I had barely managed to avoid having half my neck cut into, but the cut was still there. Warm blood trickled down my collar. It quickly grew cold as wind rushed past my face.

There was no one else but us two. I could feel nothing at all around me regardless of how far I searched with my senses. Should I run? I abandoned that idea immediately. Turning my back would have me dead faster than standing my ground.

She faded into smoke again and before I could even think to react another gash appeared on my right shoulder. Energy Shield couldn’t keep up to the sheer speed of her attacks and only flickered after blood was already flowing.

My blood was burning. Fear, dread, excitement… desire. There was a hunger inside of me to do battle. I did something I’d never expected while staring into those deadly eyes. I smiled, “Will you dance with me?”

A flicker of confusion appeared in her eyes.

No hesitation anymore: I Phase Stepped and slashed at her with all my might. The lack of impact as the scythe swept through the air let me know she had already vanished. Another slash appeared across my back.

I went again, and this time the slash on my leg was shallow, and the next even more so. The wounds were shallow, but building nonetheless. It was a cold night but I was burning up. We flickered like fireflies under the moonlight.

Casting any spell that had a travel time was pointless against this woman, that much was clear. I had not attempted Shackle nor would I until I felt more comfortable. A gash tore the lower part of her veil on her face: a thin line of red across her cheek where I had barely managed to connect.

My mouth opened and words came out, but my mind couldn’t even comprehend what I had said. Anger flashed across her face as she came again and her dagger clashed against Mana Scythe.

There was a remarkable power trapped in her thin frame. This was a dance with death, and I had glimpsed the reaper several times already. My blood loss was now fogging my thoughts and it took everything I could muster to avoid a fatal blow.

A torrent of slashes pushed me back, from tree branch to tree branch. It was a struggle just to hold my vision and blood dripped into one of my eyes. I made some distance and immediately began to cast Frost Nova.

It was a gamble that paid off remarkably. Just as she was about to slash across my chest, the nova of ice pulsed outward, encasing her feet in two solid blocks of ice. I allowed her that blow to my chest for a deep gash across her arm.

For the first time since battle had started it was her who leaped backwards. There was a new emotion buried in those beautiful eyes: uncertainty. A decision was being made, whether to run or continue fighting. Blood dripped onto her garb as her right arm hung lifelessly at her side.

The dagger moved to her left hand and she rushed at me again. Her resolve seemed to be that even if she died she would kill me. That was the emotion I could see in those eyes. Despite that, I couldn’t feel the slightest ounce of hatred or malice towards her.

This was the final moment and time seemed to slow. She was going to allow herself to be hacked down in exchange for putting a dagger through my heart. There was no way around it. A power surged through my arm as I channeled World Cutter and aimed directly towards her.

My MP depleted at an astonishing rate and I forcefully cut it off before it drained me dry. I would go unconscious if I couldn’t shoot it now. She was just a few feet from me when the crescent formed in mid air.

Shooting faster than either of us could react, it sliced across her left arm, right at the elbow. A splash of blood and a hand with dagger still gripped within it flew through the air. Her body collided with mine square in the chest and sent us both tumbling.

The impact, as well as the strain on my body from World Cutter, left me immobilized. We were tangled together, plummeting. Tree branches snapped below as I felt my back being torn to shreds.

I was expecting a backbreaking impact that sent every ounce of air from my lungs any second, but it never came. The trees around me stopped moving and I realized I was floating in place.

My body was weightless in place. I searched before spotting the Adventurer’s Guild Master floating just a dozen feet above me. The assassin was also suspended in the air. “The assassin…” I managed to fumble out.

I glanced at her now uncovered face and realized it was a dark red. There was a tremendous pressure on her, or she was straining herself to an incredible degree. Even the blood that had been pouring from her arm was locked in place.

“What... is happening?” I looked up.

“She was trying to commit suicide. Grab the poison from her mouth,” he demanded. I felt a moment of hesitation before I put my fingers in her mouth and found a small capsule. “They keep it behind their teeth just in case.”

The assassin’s face returned to a normal color once the capsule was in my hand. She had resigned herself to fate. Moments later more ‘referees’ appeared and began demanding answers and trying to figure out what the spell fluctuation they felt was. I didn’t answer, but I knew it was World Cutter.

Rhea was summoned as well, and soon I was healed. The assassin was healed as well. As if reading my mind, the Adventurer’s Guild Master tapped his head. “I have questions, and she has answers. Can’t have her dying on me.”

Despite the healing from Rhea I felt completely exhausted. My MP was dangerously low and my head throbbing in pain. The only thing keeping me awake was my curiosity. I also wanted to know who this woman was, and why she was after me.