When he entered the class, Villin was on high alert. He was awaiting the first stage of the teacher’s usual attacks, the fiery line close to the ground.

Yet instead of this, the class before him disappeared as he suddenly found himself standing in a large circular arena. To his left was Kayley the red-headed beauty who was about as good as him when looking at battle sense. To his right was a scrawny youth with pitch-black hair. He had shown the greatest improvement in battlesense over the last couple of weeks, he was also the student who got last weeks spell blueprint. He was also a loner in class, similar to Villin.

The three instantly put their backs to each other. Even though their teamwork wasn’t great they acknowledged each others’ strength and could put some trust into the other parties.

Now he recognized they weren’t just standing in a regular arena, it looked more like a colosseum. There were twelve gates spread out across the circle, each of which was about a hundred meters away from them. When he tried looking at the stands he felt as if his vision went fuzzy, he was certain there were some spectators in the stands but he couldn’t see where they were or what they looked like.

“We could fire at the stands and try to get out that way. I do have a decent levitation spell which could help us climb up.” the scrawny kid said.

Villin thought about his suggestion for a bit as he looked at the distance they would have to cover. There was a gap of a full ten meters between the arena floor and the spectator stands. He would probably be able to get himself to float that high if he had learned the levitation spell he picked up earlier. There was no idea he would be able to do it using only his wandless magic though.

“If anyone has a diversion-type spell we can do that, otherwise we should probably just try to get out without attacking what we can’t see.”

This time Kayley was the one that spoke, but Villin had a similar thought to her so he decided to stay quiet for now and keep paying attention to his surroundings. About a dozen seconds had passed already yet none of the gates had opened, he checked the sky occasionally as well, if one paid close attention they would even be able to see two tiny paper airplanes about five centimeters long flying around the group, just in case something they couldn’t see was approaching.

“I can see them. There are about twenty people on my side. Most are wearing mortal clothes, two of them have pure red robes instead. I don’t recognize any of the people standing here but it seems very possible they are contracted.”

Villin thought about his suggestion for a bit more. He obviously wouldn’t ask as for why the boy could see them as, at this point, he knew it wasn’t very polite to ask others about their spells or abilities. After a second of silence, Kayley was the one that answered.

“Let’s go through your side then Rein, I suggest we go slowly until they open one of the cages on your side, after all, we don’t want to be in a close-quarter fight with anyone or anything.”

All three of them approved of the plan. It wouldn’t be easy to enact their plan. It was likely the organizer of this ‘event’ either wanted to provide entertainment for the viewers or test their skills. Hence if they moved slowly they would probably only release something they would be able to handle. During the fight, they could try to position themselves close to the wall so they could use Rein’s spell to get over the wall. If they rushed for the wall instead whoever was controlling this place would probably know of their plan, they might even panic and send out more than what the group could handle.

The group remained back-to-back as they inched toward the gate right in front of Rein. They had only moved about five meters when the gate opened with a loud screeching sound. Villin and Kayley instantly turned around and stood to the left and right of Rein. Kayley had obviously noticed Villin’s tiny airplanes and counted on those to detect enemies behind them.

The trio looked at the now-open gate intensely, Villin also heard Kayley begin a spell incantation, she didn’t finish the entire spell as she waited with her final connection, it would be idiotic to shoot off a spell into a dark room when the enemy hasn’t appeared yet.

All three of them had a somewhat nervous expression on their face as they swallowed heavily, not daring to blink.

And then, something ran out of the darkness. Villin quickly identified it as a wolf. It had light-grey hair and a mean expression, it seemed to be growling as it ran toward them at top speed. It would only take such a wolf a dozen seconds to reach them.

Kayley and Rein immediately shot out their spells while Villin waited. Kayley pointed her wand to an area about five meters in front of the wolf, the sand in that area immediately began shifting, and within a second, they formed sharp spikes about ten centimeters tall.

Just when the wolf was about to arrive at the now-spiky sand, Rein’s spell hit. A pitch-black beam had come out of his wand, it looked as if there was something trying to break out of it as it shot toward the wolf. It hit the wolf’s right shoulder, a distinct cracking sound could be heard as the wolf cried out, losing his footing. The wolf’s luck was rather terrible as his head fell forward right onto a spike, the spike wasn’t long enough to instantly end its life but it had hit a critical point.

The wolf trashed around unable to breathe, blood was gushing out of its neck and it was constantly whimpering. Its cries sounded truly terrible, even though it was seventy meters away it was still quite loud. Villin’s mood instantly plummeted as he saw this event. He pointed his wand forward and a second later a pike shot out of it, going through one of the wolf’s eyes, killing it.

The trio looked at the wolf’s corpse. Their main emotion was no longer nervousness, instead, a sad atmosphere had taken over. They had even forgotten about their plan for the time being. They had just seen a living, breathing thing die. All of them had helped kill it as well. Kayley probably felt the worst since she was the one that had indirectly caused the suffering but the other two didn’t feel much better themselves.

Kayley wiped away a tear with her off-hand before looking at the duo beside her. “Let’s escape using our plan, it’s probably all an illusion anyway right? Right?”

She seemed to be trying to convince herself more than anyone else but they all knew that wasn’t the case. Nonetheless, her words were enough for the boys to get back on task, they were about to move forward further when they heard a series of howles coming from the gate that had opened earlier. Hearing the multitude of wolves they hurriedly walked back a few steps.

A second later a dozen wolves exited from the gate rushing at the group once more.