“Jin!” I turned to see Grey waving at me.

“What’s up?” I answered after jogging over to him. As I jogged I spared a quick look around and noticed that the people charging the cannon had changed. Also, the indicator on our 8balls showed that the enemy team had only managed twenty seconds so far, and that our team had six spies left while Grey’s team still had eight.

“There are still six spies. I had hoped to get more, but six managed to avoid getting killed in our wave plan. Most likely, they did the same as the first three and ran to the other side. While that would be fine usually, they still have their communicators.” A tall, dark haired girl next to me explained all this while Grey continued giving orders. He’d also had someone make him a map somehow in the last ten minutes which was actually incredible. Ah. Wait. His map included both sides of the field. He managed to contact his spies. Shit. I should have realized that with twenty spies, someone else would have realized how useful being an actual SPY would be. “So, we’re going to send instructions in code. The hill is green zone, the point is red zone, right is white, left is cleft, back is hump. Got it?” I nodded once.

“Green hill, red point, white right, left cleft, hump back. Pretty easy.” The girl nodded too.

“Good. Now Grey has a job for you, I need to tell everyone else the code.” She said before jogging over to the respawn point. I watched her go for a moment before turning to Grey. He finished issuing orders then did the same.

“Jin. You just respawned, right?”

“Yep.” I said while throwing a sloppy salute.

“Huh. Really thought you were going to be a spy.” Grey looked off into the distance and rubbed his chin like ‘wow something new happens every day.’

“I think I’m insulted.”

“Well no time for chit chat!” Grey clapped his hands together. “You’re an assassin. I need you to take out those spies. Our own spies have already identified the ones that went back to their own base and they should be taking them down right about…” I glanced at the spy counter on my 8ball just in time to see the number decrease to 3/10. “…now. There we go. We had no intel on any others going back so the other three are in our camp. If we want to take that point without just using brute force, timing is important. So take them out as quickly as you can.” Grey nodded to me then turned back to his map and spoke into the 8ball. “We’re not pressuring them enough. Wave 5 hold back for a moment and go in with wave 6. We’ll lose another ten seconds but we need them on that point.” Just as Grey said, we lost a quick ten seconds: putting ‘my’ team at thirty to Grey’s zero. Right after telling me that communications were compromised he gave orders through the 8ball? Maybe he’s trying to force them off the point with superstition alone. I looked at the spy channel to see that his orders had been faithfully relayed to the assassin channel. Oh shit. He wanted to see if he had gotten everyone on their side. And now he knows that he didn’t. I dropped a smoke bomb to be mysterious and ran to the trees. Grey literally just told me to look for spies so this should be fine. I quickly type into the channel.

Eliminate the spies over there. I’ll handle here.

The only way I can see this fight going our way is if we can remove the pests first. “They’ve moved off the point. Charge the point from zone white.” This one I anticipated. He probably gave everyone different codes so that wherever the enemy went they would know who the spy was. Luckily, I can use this too. I turned around and sprinted back up the hill until I found a spot I could watch as many people as possible from without being found. Then I cast one of the dark magic exclusive to professions like mine, eavesdrop. As thoroughly as I could, I watched everyone while waiting for proof. And, almost immediately, the tall dark haired girl from earlier and a sandy-haired Halfling at the cannon both glanced down at their 8balls. No chatter came through, which meant I found who I was looking for. Time to make Piercil proud. I raised one hand with two fingers pointing up in a v. at the tips of these fingers I made two ice mosquitoes. Both mosquitoes were translucent, and in their abdomens I put paralyze poison. So they aren’t acting like real mosquitoes and pumping instead of sucking, bite me. It will look cool and that’s what matters. Well, it’ll look cool to only me and maybe Piercil if he can see what I’m doing. Anyway I sent the mosquitoes to their targets before making a very large, very obvious, black snake out of earth and sending it to a different target. With how much concentration it took to control not only three elements but also three different animal shaped magics I almost missed the words from my 8ball.

“Jin.” I immediately got up and used traveler to hop down to Grey.

“What’s up?” I leaned on his map-desk, trying very hard to look like I wasn’t controlling two tiny mosquitos, a beetle and a snake. Actually. I glanced over at the cannon. It was empty. Ok cool, that means they just fired it. I ordered the beetle to chew through the pipe then wait there.

“The cannon?” Grey. Sharp-eyed as usual. “Yeah we fired it.”

“Isn’t that kinda wasteful?” I looked back at Grey to find him laughing .

“Not at all. We gave out false information and the spies ate it right up. Look at the numbers.” I did. Grey’s stunt had put him at 2 minutes, while my team was still at 1min 30s. He took it and used the cannon to wipe their attempt to retake it. Damn he’s good.

“Nice! So we won right?” Playing it cool. Yeahhhhh

“Almost. Did you find the spies?” Grey turned towards his map while he continued speaking. Somehow I felt like he was still testing me. It was a really unpleasant feeling.

“I found one. I put some earth magic on her but it takes a little bit to- ah there we go.” As I was speaking, my snake bit the last friendly spy on our side and paralyzed her, dropping the count to 2/10. Grey looked at the drop and grinned.

“One to go then. I’m counting on you.” He said while staying focused on the table.

“Of course.” I replied with an exaggerated bow. As I did I whispered into the spy channel on my 8ball.

The cannon has been disabled. Attack when ready.

When I straightened I saw the dark haired girl pull out her 8ball and look at it.

“What??” She shouted. As she did I had the mosquito bite her hand. “Ah!” She dropped the 8ball just as Grey was whipping around. Just in time to see the girl vanish with a pop of light. I innocently turned my head towards the respawn area and buried her 8ball with earth magic.

“Grey! It’s urgent!” The voice of the sandy-haired Halfling pulled Grey’s line of sight towards his 8ball. When he looked away I tossed a dart coated in paralyzing poison to where the girl had been standing and ordered my mosquito to finish the Halfling. “It’s the—“ Grey snapped his head up to see the Halfling vanish as well. Ah. I need to put a dart somewhere over there. I thought about it for a second then reshaped the beetle into a dart. Luckily, the distance you could control your magic over was a matter of control, and how much you could control it was a matter of brute force. Since I was still pretty weak when it came to brute force, the beetle ended up looking like a shabby ice syringe the size of a pinky. But, well, the less pretty it is the less likely I made it, right?

“Hey Grey.” I poked Grey with my elbow.

“What?” He growled back.

“Uh. I don’t know how long it’s supposed to take but those guys aren’t back yet.” I glanced sidelong at him while retaining the best poker face I had, which was a pretty damn good one from my reckoning.

“It was you, wasn’t it.” Grey stepped back once and started to draw his sword. Dammit. Stomping a foot on the ground I fired the dark-haired girl’s 8ball into my hand then slammed a smoke bomb into the ground, running as fast as I could toward the other base while wrapping bandages around the long cut Grey had just left on my side. Shit. I grabbed my 8ball and yelled into the spy channel.

Protect the cannon. It’s our last shot.

Almost simultaneously, words appeared on my stolen 8ball.

Destroy the cannon immediately.

I hoped my guy on the other side could handle the other spies. Which left me with two options: help him, or take out as many of Grey’s forces as I could. I skidded to a stop on the leaves. It’s not even a question. I turned 90 degrees and ran into the forest to the sound of Grey’s voice echoing from the 8ball. “Everyone head to the point! If you don’t have at least 50% mana suicide first, but get there now!” I glanced up at the numbers while unraveling wire from my claws. 2/10 spies left on our side, ah, 1/10 spies left on our side and 0/10 spies left on theirs. Kinda hope that went well. And 2:30 min to 1:30min. Well, would I be more useful as the info guy? Or as an assassin?

“Assume point AlphaDragon using formation seven.” Rattled over the 8ball.

Ok, assassin it is. With that I started stringing wire all over the forest between Grey and the point. These weren’t infused with mana to cut like my other ones but rather with status. Very quickly I ran out of wire. It would naturally replenish using my mana but I needed mana right now so I took off my claws. Hopefully the wires will stop them. With my traps laid, I ran to the point. At the point it was pure chaos as mages from both sizes wantonly fired status, fire, electricity, and god knows what else randomly into the crowd of people. On the point itself, there were at least forty people brawling with reinforcement magic. I checked my mana. I had used almost none of it since the light tower. I was tired due to how hard it was to control half of what I used, but mana-wise my use had been little. I really wish I could tell my plan to someone on my team but I was just as likely to get shot trying as I was to succeed so fuck it. I reached under my tunic and removed my badge. Immediately, screams started rising all over the place along with the popping sound of multiple people being teleported away. Just like that, the point was clear in a matter of seconds. With only a few people left standing, the ones who had been firing magic from the trees all came dashing out to secure the point. The time was 2:47 them and 1:30 us. I waited until the point was once again filled with people firing magic indiscriminately before I used my own. Sinking all the mana I had left into it, I crafted a whale. The whale was formed with electric mana and was a vibrant blue as it sailed lazily up above the point. People on the point saw it and began coating themselves in anti-electric magic, unfortunately for them, this particular whale was stuffed with every status ailment I could control at once. Stun, paralyze, curse, confuse, and sleep. Like that, I had the whale turn once in the air for good measure, then open its mouth and rush the point. There was a bright explosion for a moment with sounds like popcorn popping then silence. I laughed quietly and ran onto the point. The whale itself was probably weaker than a garden variety taser, but only Piercil’s senior students could defend against it and five statuses all at the same time where two of the statuses would immediately respawn you and the other three would stop you from blocking the whale-taser. In summary, I was alone on the point. 2:47 to 1:52.