"Are you ready?" Celio's voice was fierce with excitement as he gripped the glowing sword, his whole body covered in a glorious light.

Edris wasn't given time to respond as the youth sprung forth immediately, launching an attack in his direction. Both his strength and agility were visibly enhanced as a result of his attribute, and his sword crashed into the ground beside the dark-haired man, who barely managed to avoid it by a millimetre.

Edris gulped as Celio lifted his sword, revealing a deep dent on the ground.

"You can even avoid my attributed attack..." His eyes sparkled. "You're amazing!"

No. You're amazing.

Edris held back a groan after the young boy's naive yet energetic demeanour.

Amazingly scary, that is.

He was going to treat himself to a feast if he managed to come out of this in one piece.

Unaware of Edris's internal thoughts, Celio began chanting a spell. In normal circumstances, incantations were unneeded to manipulate mana if the individual was already used to performing the type. However, this wasn't a normal situation, and the skill wasn't the average skill.

Celio planned on triggering a dormant attributed skill for the first time. An advanced one, too.

In order to overcome his inner obstacles, Celio had first to surpass his physical limits.

"Let's see if you can dodge this one!'

At that moment, golden streaks of light spiralled out all around him. The large pool of mana shrunken and reduced into a wing-like pattern, engraving itself onto the weapon in his hands. Celio raised the sword into the air, eyes widening as he channelled all of his mana. Spectators could only stare, speechless. The golden spirals grew exponentially in size, their wings expanding almost towards the end of the arena. It grew greater, and greater, and greater...

— …

An ominous feeling arose within Edris as spirals, now blowing violently, stretched beyond the fields and reached towards the spectator seats. One of the streaks of magic, almost entirely crystallised, crashed into a stone pillar at the side, causing the structure to collapsed into pieces.

Standing front and centre of the chaotic lights was none other than Celio, who now bore a distraught look on his face.

"I-I can't control it!" he yelled in exasperation.

Then why did you use it?!

Edris grimaced as he steadied himself amidst the typhoon of magic that was now devouring the entire arena.

At that moment, several people guarding the Crown Prince positioned themselves amidst the spectators. From the third-floor balcony, mages were entering formation under the command of the Crown Prince, who had leaned forward with furrowed brows.

"Keep vigilant," he said to the guards and took in the wary gazes of the spectators. "No incidents are allowed to occur during my host event. If he completely loses control over his powers, we'll restrain him before anyone gets injured. It'll be problematic if someone like him goes berserk."

"Understood, Your Highness."

While Edris had exhaled in relief after seeing the Crown Prince finally on guard to take action, he was now confronted with a greater issue.

What about me?

With the spectators under protection by the knights and mages, if anyone were to be affected by Celio's absurd abilities, it would be Edris.

He frowned as he faced the turbulence of magic, which had coalesced into a hurricane at the centre of the arena grounds.

"If I'm hit by that..."

Just the thought was enough to make him shudder. Forget about being sliced like pudding–he would evaporate on the spot.

To make everything worse, he then recalled the spectators who currently were oblivious of the destructive power of the attributed, let alone one that had gone out of control.

— Even the mages here won't be able to stop this. At least not without preparations in advance.

"Ace."

Thanks to the deafening chaos, Edris could speak normally without anyone hearing him.

"I know you can use mana."

— …

The voice's silence reaffirmed his hypothesis. Everything in the world came with a mana capacity. Assuming this also applied to formless entities, it would make no sense for an advanced, system-like being like Ace to not have access to any mana.

— My channel's been scattered. I can only use it in small, focused waves.

"But you're still capable of using them."

— ...Correct.

"Then that's all that matters."

At that moment, Edris spun towards the hurricane, confronting the daunting pressure around him. "Remember. If I die, there would be no one to help you recover your memories."

He made eye contact with Celio, who was now restricted to the centre of the arena as his powers ran wild.

"I am leaving my life in your hands."

— You're being this dramatic?

Despite Ace's initial confusion, he soon understood the meaning behind the man's words after seeing a certain item in his hand.

The Sacrificial Hourglass.

Edris caressed the pendant with a bitter smile. It was truly ironic; he was planning to rely on the ominous-sounding item to save him from an equally ominous situation.

Focusing his vision on the Sacrificial Hourglass, he felt a surge of mana rippling within him. Sculpting its shape in his head, Edris pressed the pendant to his chest.

Aptitude was determined at a young age by testing the individual's mana channel through a detection device. The device would activate one's channel, opening up the child's doors of magic potential. Although Edris couldn't access his mana channel, he intuitively knew that he wouldn't need it to activate the sacred artifact.

At that moment, Edris heard an unfamiliar voice inside his head, which did not belong to Ace. It was a monotonous, mechanical voice.

Give-and-Take is a necessary cycle for equilibrium.

Would you like to give a part of yourself to the world?

Edris let out a mocking laugh at the Sacrificial Hourglass's question. The sinister words were truly fitting for a sacred item rejected by humanity. Bottling up his complaints, Edris took a deep breath. His response was simple:

"Yes."

All eyes were on Edris. The spectators who had shown apprehension regarding the match progression a minute ago were now in utter shock as the traveller, one step after another, inched towards the centre of the light.

Even with the dangerous situation at hand, with his dark hair flying wildly in the wind, with the area enclosed in a torrent of dust, Edris smiled with an eerie calmness, as though he was on a picnic stroll.

Rational. Coolheaded.

Now that Edris thought about it, he had always been like this. The direr a situation and the more at stake, the easier it was for him to keep sane, to step out of the situation and determine the best, most profitable course of action.

While the Sacrificial Hourglass's words had daunted him initially, Edris was no longer worried. It was because of something the item had mentioned before its question.

Give-and-Take is a necessary cycle for equilibrium.

If the Sacrificial Hourglass was built upon the idea of balance, that changed everything. It meant that he was not sacrificing anything but only giving something in return for something else.

Distinguishing the slight difference reassured his heart, and Edris felt better knowing he wasn't being forced into an unfair deal.

— You really...

The tone in Ace's voice was oddly complicated, but Edris had no time to ponder upon it as countless colliding noises drowned the voice from his head. Despite his mind being lucid, his body was reacting to an unknown source of energy that swarmed into his insides.

At that moment, a darken haze poured out of Edris's hands; it revolving around both him and Celio until it completely devoured the latter's golden light. The haze, thick and almost an obsidian black, condensed as it developed into a spiralling web, its lines squiggling into the air. The dark web soon amplified in size, growing exponentially until it was the size of a heavy storm that filled the entire amphitheatre.

At the same time, an oppressive aura surged out of the dark-haired man, sending shivers throughout the arena. It was to be expected. Regardless of one's knowledge on magic or mana manipulation as a whole, anyone who witnessed the traveller's current state would reach a unanimous conclusion:

The traveller had also lost control over his powers.

A thick barrier of purple suddenly enclosed the arena, separating the spectator seats and the inner field.

"A protection barrier?" The Crown Prince blinked at the large shield before his eyes.

"It's the traveller? Even amidst such a situation, he was trying to protect us?"

"But by putting himself in danger like this..."

Mutters here and there, the spectators fell restless in their seats as they focused all their attention on the barrier, various emotions stirring in their hearts. Although it acted as a protective barricade, its opaqueness was similar to the traveller's ring of fire and prevented them from seeing anything within it.

Strangely enough, Edris found himself in the same state.

It was eerily quiet on the inside, but he knew that the situation outside was a chaotic mess.

Edris recalled the agreement he made with the Sacrificial Hourglass. He had asked for something that could neutralise other forms of magic. It was so he could cancel out Celio's destructive powers to prevent it from running wild. He thought it would be troublesome if it ended up destroying the stadium and, even worse, injuring others.

Activating an attributed skill required a large mana consumption, so the boy was likely to be knocked out unconscious by now. Putting that thought behind his head, Edris glanced around him.

Indeed, he received the neutralising barrier he wanted, but even Edris didn't expect it to have such a flashy appearance.

While the fire storm was created through the reactions of mixing different potions, he had still been able to discern the outside environment within the torrent. However, the purple storm that Edris had instigated just now acted like thick curtains, secluding everything from its interior, including light.

Securing the Giving Segment... Securement complete.

Now preparing the Taking Segment...

The mechanical voice echoed throughout the darkness, causing Edris to frown. It was unsettling to be stripped of something without knowing what it was. Even worse, the only thing he could perceive right now was darkness.

As if responding to his thoughts, the area around him brightened, and Edris blinked to readjust his vision. The air, the surroundings—everything felt different. It was as if he was in another dimension. What surrounded him was a state of emptiness, completely unrelated to the arena setting.

"Ace? Can you hear me?" Edris called out to the speaker in his head. He received silence in return.

As he was about to attempt a second time, a tapping sound echoed around him. Then a shuffle. Amidst the open grounds, a shadow trudged towards his direction.

Soon, Edris could make out a silhouette. His eyes widened after recognising who it was.

"How are you still here?"

Celio, having regained control over his powers, stood before him and blinked several times in confusion. He pointed to himself.

"Me?"

At that moment, another voice sounded in his head:

The Taking Segment will now commence.

Edris had never felt closer to death.