The twilight light of the moon slowly peeked through clouds. The forest murmured its distant roars. There were 221 people left in this realm, and the duo walked with scorched clothing.

“Do you think the Stadium would be empty about now?”

“No. Some people watch in daylight, others during nighttime. Or, some watch the morning, skip the afternoon, and watch the night. Either way, there’s probably a mass of people currently watching us even now.”

“Must be pretty interesting to watch two people walk through the night.”

They had entered a more concentrated potion of the land, swerving between trees as they continued moving towards the right of the map.

Rain blinked his eyes, a mass of fluttering yellow had suddenly appeared around him. Squinting into the darkening surroundings as his footsteps stopped, he made use of his . The tree up ahead, no, the base of every tree in their surroundings seemed hazy.

“What is it?”

“We’re surrounded.”

Maria’s eyes blinked a golden trace as she glanced around the area.

Hazy red light stared back at them, attached to bodies of black wolves.

“Midnight Wolves,” Maria thought.

Demonic beasts resembling the lesser Silver Wolves and normal wolves, they had a dark luster upon their black furs and the ability to camouflage into their surroundings, amplified within the night. Of course, the beasts had picked the wrong duo to use such a trait on.

They equipped their weapons.

“I’ll take this side, you spotted them first, you can right the other side, right?” Maria said, splitting the encirclement in half.

The boy nodded, gripping two swords. His mystifying pair of eyes almost seemed to suck in all the light in the surroundings.

The wolves pranced around them before lunging in.

Her blade blocked fangs, cutting into the mouth of a wolf. She placed more strength into her arm, forcing it back as she slashed its jaw off.

Jumping back, she avoided a lunge from another and raised her leg.

-BANG-

The wolf slammed into a tree and she swerved between another, drilling her sword through a Midnight Wolf’s skull.

“It almost feels like cheating,’ She thought.

She had used nothing but swordsmanship, but her stats alone seemed to overpower the wolves. She was stronger, faster, more agile, and her reaction time was top notch compared to them.

Finally, she stood still, staring as three wolves charged from behind a tree and towards her person.

‘3 left.’

She released her weapon.

There was a soft hum as it hovered before her.

White light wallowed from her body and gathered into the surroundings, taking shape and forming 10 blades that spun around her Radiant Sword.

Their motions briefly stopped, then shuddered.

The air whistled in conjunction with the flying weapons as they shot forth.

The sight was not pleasant. Swords piercing through flesh, accompanied by the howls of dying wolves and the butchering and flinging of body masses. The radiance of her weapons were a stalk contrast to the reality before her.

In the end, the three wolves fell as her weapon returned to her hand.

She turned around to see a boy sheathing his weapons, dead beasts strewn about, as he stared at her.

“. . .”

“What?”

“How could you even compress mana to such a degree it becomes blades?”

“I just tried it and it worked. Although, a human would have an easier time with them. My Mana Swords are still brittle things at the moment, that’s why I pair them up with my Radiant Sword.”

“Crazy, your mana is crazy, no normal person can do that without magic or atleast a Combat Art.”

She shrugged.

Neither of them seemed to have broken a sweat. A good thing too, because the ground rumbled moments later. The grassy-land cracked open, revealing a worm-like mouth that swallowed three wolf corpses and a tree.

“. . .”

“. . .”

It rose into the air and, no sooner after gulping the tree, it turned towards them.

“How lucky of us. . .an Earth Demon.”

It looked like a warm, a bastardized version of what a giant might consider a worm, with a lengthy, brown, body as tough as rocks that only contained a gaping hole for a mouth. An Earth Demon was a creature that lived within the earth, ‘swimming’ through and breaking out whenever it saw something to clamp its mouth on. Evidently, that something was the two of them.

The ground rumbled, the mouth of the beast leaped down.

“!” Maria swiped her hand up.

The surface of the thin film cracked under the weight of the creature and soon shattered.

However, they had already dodged as

It crashed into the earth, diving beneath them.

Maria and Rain looked around as the ground rumbled.

“Wait for it. . .” The boy muttered.

The earth beneath them cracked.

“Now.”

The two jumped back.

Maria took her stance, watching the beast rise.

She jumped up.

“.”

Her blade burned, slicing a section of the creature’s ‘face’ off, blood splashing into the air.

As she dropped down, a figure jumped into the air, bringing a blade with him and slashing up, leaving a trail of blood upon the creature’s body.

It staggered back, screaming through its jaws, but the boy’s motion didn’t stop as he unsheathed the weapon on his back.

Falling down, his figure spun in a hazy halo of blue light.

“.”

It was like a small hurricane of water.

His blades dug into the skin of the beast, slashing and ripping it to shreds as the spinning waves around his body protected him.

As his feet touched the ground, he slashed both weapons.

“!”

Two cross-beams of azure dived into the remains of the beast, mangling a deep slash onto its body.

He leaped aside.

A radiant sword flew across the space as Maria threw it.

For the first time since she had accidentally awoken Arthur’s magical talent, she activated the blade’s first, and only unlocked, rune.

“!”

Its weight leapt to 1 ton, half the maximum, as it dove into the beast’s mangled mouth.

-BANG-

And escaped the other side, spluttering mounds of flesh across the forest before disappearing into light.

The Earth Demon crashed down onto the earth, its body fully mangled.

The two stared at the creature.

The area around them had been uprooted. Trees overturned and earth broken in gashes.

“I suppose none of them were the Golden Beast,” Maria commented, as the map did not pop up for neither the wolves nor the Earth Demon’s death.

“We couldn’t be that lucky.”

The night had darkened but their stomachs rumbled. There was silence for a moment before Maria continued.

“. . .say, Rain?”

“Yes?”

“You wouldn’t happen to know how to start a fire?”

“Nope.”

“Right.”

Save for the rumbling of their stomachs, it was silent once again. The two suddenly missing a certain arrogant pyromaniac.

Unless they somehow leaped into the ‘Rising’ rank, they were going to need food and water to survive, they could go some time without either due to their bodies, but they would need them sooner or later. Water wasn’t a problem, there was a river on the map. Actually obtaining food was even less of an issue, as the deceased demonic beasts surrounding them would prove useful. . .however, they could not eat them without flames.

“I have an idea, but I don’t know if it’ll work,” Maria said.

“What is it?” The boy asked, anything was better than nothing.

Albion’s Light, First Form, was a rather interesting skill that had taken her three months or so to master.

As a first note, the set of Combat Art required at least a 70% Purity level of the light element in your weapon—essentially, what it was made out of in conjunction with how it had been forged.

Maria’s blade was a summoned light weapon so she already had a 100% purity, making most of her attacks, when using the forms, at least 30% stronger than they would be at just the bare minimum. The first hadn’t been a problem for her, in fact, even the second requirement to activate the First form had been easy to achieve; it was simply compressing her mana into her blade, something she had been practicing since years past to develop her Mana Blades.

What had been a challenge for her was the third and final step in activating the skill; getting into the required stance and slashing at the right speed, while vibrating the compressed mana, to the point where they would be ‘ignited’ with just the right heat in a thin line along the blade of your weapon, slicing through whatever was in your way as long as you had enough blunt strength.

Move too slow and nothing would happen, move too fast and your compressed mana would simply crumble. Finding the right speed had been what took her 3 months, it wasn’t something that could simply be taught, you had to earn it with your experience. Of course, she hadn’t practiced it from dusk till dawn, she had other things to do, but the point remained.

“So, essentially,” She said to the boy, “if I can stop my slash at just the right timing, I can produce enough heat to start a fire.”

It was a thought similar in nature to that of using a concentrated ray of sunlight, except, all the heat would come from the edge of her blade.

“. . .you’re crazy.”

“It’s worth a try.”

They dug a hole with their weapons then moved to one of the already uprooted trees an, gathered branches and dried leaves, surrounding a thick trunk with them before throwing it all in.

Maria stood before that makeshift thing as she took her stance.

‘Okay, right, I just have to stop my strike just before I fully slash. . .’ She thought, ‘how hard can that possibly be?’

She only had to light one of the branches or leaves sticking up and the rest would catch on.

She compressed her mana into her weapon and slashed.

Her hand faltered and quickly stopped on a leaf.

“. . .”

Only a gentle breeze blew.

Rain blinked.

“You were a little less than a second too slow.”

“I know.”

“Your legs and especially arm muscles tensed up at two points. One, when you started the slash. Two, when you tried to stop it. You lost some speed in the beginning and lost even more momentum in the end. So, although you stopped it at the right time, you failed to ignite your weapon.”

“How do you know that? It’s correct.” Maria stared at the boy.

He smiled and pointed to his eyes, “They allow me to see. . .really fine details.”

“I see, interesting, so what’s the solution?”

He shrugged.

“Be more confident in your skill with the blade. You failed because you hesitated.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Fine.”

She simply had to not hesitate.

‘Slash, stop, slash, stop.’ She envisioned her movements, and the end result.

She took her stance.

‘Slash,’

She swung.

“Stop,’

She stopped on the tip of a leaf.

She waited for a second. . .

And a blaze of fire quickly took over the thing.

The two quickly got on their way to roasting beasts.

“. . .”

Within the stadium, Arthur facepalmed along with the shocked audience. Using a Combat Art just to cook meat? It was a ridiculous notion, but it had worked.

“Hahaha, I can't tell if that girl is crazy or a genius," Lambert, the duke, laughed at his side.

"I will lean toward genius." Ais said.

“I will. . .just go to sleep,” The prince said, preparing to return to the Mansion, he would continue watching the next morning, he decided.