As we watched on the live broadcast of The Treasure Hunt, I couldn’t help myself from getting excited over every single encounter. Each encounter would always end up with either a duel or a team fight. But what worries me was that half of Team Stardust were almost defeated by Team Buddyz.

Those guys were still not strong enough to defeat them from the looks of it. If only I could join them though. But I can’t. I have some other things I need to focus on. One of it was researching about White’s Time Manipulation ability. This was probably the first of its kind since I never found any single record of any wizard to have this ability from any written history. Unless, this magic were used during a far more ancient time. Maybe even before written history. Perhaps a time before time itself? Let’s not get ahead of us though.

“Hey Haz. Who are you betting to win the whole Magic Duel?” Zone asked me as he spins around the office chair he was sitting on.

“I don’t know. The chances are that Team Purity could win the duel. But Team Brilliance also have a number of interesting members. And don’t forget Team Supernova.”

“What do you think about our team, Stardust?”

“I have a lot of hopes about them but right now it doesn’t seemed that Team Stardust has a bright future ahead of them. They don't looked prepared to me.”

“I guess all we can do now is hope for the best for them, right?”

“Indeed. But!” I raised my right hand.

“But?”

I put down my right hand and said, “The Stardust will certainly make an impact in this year's Magic Duel. I mean look at that ‘Lone Wolf’ out there.”

I pointed at one of the screen that was broadcasting White hiding among the trees and buildings. Zone looked at it and grinned.

“I see what you are talking about. We still haven’t seen their true stripes yet right now but sooner or later everyone will know about Team Stardust.”

“Like an underdog tale…”

“Okay. That sounded cool.”

An underdog tale, that was probably what Team Stardust will create. Other than Blax, non of them had any presence around the school. Those guys were nearly nonexistence. To top it all out, White was totally cease to exist in the eyes of other students and teachers. I don’t know if either they don’t like about him being a nobody or the fact that White really wanted to be alone. Wanting to be alone was fine, I think. But being alone every time doesn’t seemed very healthy in my opinion.

In any case, I hope White does something about his loneliness problem. I don’t really know how to help him but I will at least try to make him less lonely by giving away my prized creation, Seven. Seven, also known as Infinibot Version 0.7. The only version where it had a personality module in it. I ended up adding the personality module on all new version that I’m planning to do later.

Anyway, as much as I can monologue as I wanted. I think I should ask Zone for something,

“Hey Zone. Mind if you help me out with something?”

“What do you want?”

“Mind if I show you something?”

“What is it this time? Don’t tell me it is one of your latest invention, Mr. Inventor.” Zone crossed his arms and gently raised his wicked eyebrows.

I got up from my warm office chair and walk toward a door. The door was locked behind a key code lock. I pressed in the passwords on the keyboard and pressed on the ‘open’ key. The door was then unlocked after the sound of ‘beep’ was heard.

“Very dark.” Zone looked around.

“Where’s the light…” I tried to look for the light switch.

Zone found the switch and switched it on. The next thing we saw was a room filled with all of my research. There were testing chamber, 2 working table, a desk, chemical containers were placed accordingly on the shelf. Live specimens were kept inside their personal shelters. It was also a mess.

“Jeez, Haz. I can’t believe you managed to make a mess in just a single day! And you were discharged from the hospital yesterday! How do you move all of these things again?” Zone was dumbfounded of how I moved all of this from my room.

“Obviously I used my Reanimation on all of them.”

“Ain’t that a life hack for you...”

“At least it is not a curse, right?” I tried to jab Zone a little with that joke.

Zone looked at me feeling annoyed after hearing that, “You know, you really know how to make a person mad without even trying.”

“I aim to please.”

Zone was confused but then he let it slide and laughed.

“Anyway…what do you wanted to show me?”

“Oh yes. Over here.” I walked toward my desk and click on something on my desktop computer.

Once I clicked on one of the shortcuts that I made, I activated something inside the room. One corner of the room suddenly flipped around and revealed a hidden path.

“Okay. That’s new…”

“It is still a work in progress.”

“What do you mean?” Zone asked.

I tried to explain, “Well considering that I only just got released from the hospital last night. Yeah. Last night. Exactly when I saw you guys putting up those fireworks.”

“Oh that…” Zone laughed insecurely.

“Using the multiples Infinibot that I have, those guys managed to make this underground area. But from the looks of it, they probably have not build a whole lot of it yet. According to the blueprint that is.”

“How big are we doing this?”

“You’ll know it soon.” I answered him that but it actually made Zone even more curious about it.

We went down and saw Infinibot workers were busy digging the underground area to make space for our headquarter.

“You really done a lot haven’t you, Haz?”

“It’s the least thing I could do for all of us.”

“So this is what you wanted to show me then?”

“Precisely, and I also wanted to ask you something.”

“And what would that be?” Zone scratches his head.

I started to scheme, “You see, these Infinibots require a certain amount of Infinitum energy to be activated. Sooner or later today, my Infinitum energy will run out. So how about this. You go outside and find some people and ‘trick’ them with your Cheat.”

“Wait hold on!” Zone quickly responds. “After all of what I’ve been through last night. I’m not going to receive the same punishment like that again. I’m not doing it.”

“Don’t worry about this. I’ll cover for you. I guarantee it.”

“Then…what do I get in return? You know that covering me up is not enough for someone like me.”

I laughed a little and told him, “I knew you would say that. In return you will gain an all access to the school’s database. I pretty much have the school database entry connected to my desktop computer. Just don’t you dare mess around with it. You can read anything but don’t. I repeat. Don’t touch anything else.”

Zone gave me a welcoming smile and put out his hand to me, “I guess that’s a deal then.”

We shake our hands and nodded at each other. We got out of the underground area and headed back to the main room where we left the live broadcast.

“Oh shoot. What is Blax doing there?” I flinched a little after I suddenly saw Blax’s arm was already wearing the ‘armor’.

“That doesn’t look good.”

“Where is Rulend?”

“Beats me…Anyway…I gotta go do your thing. Remember my reward.” Zone got off the headquarter and went to find some help for our underground area.

What was going on when we weren’t watching them anyway? I certainly hope that it was not something out of their league. I waited a few more seconds and saw why Blax activated his ‘armor’. There was a huge man-eating plant and apparently it was trying to gobble up Rulend. It looks like Mr. Z decided to up the ante on the 3rd interval.

It was only The Qualifying Round but The Magic Duel has already had a number of surprises that they officially made. I wonder what they are up to for the next round. In any case, this was the last interval so no more gimmicks from the school.

If I remembered correctly, the 1st interval was when all of the plant and trees were on a high level threat. A lot of the team was eliminated thanks to that. Then on the 2nd interval, all of the plants and trees became less aggressive. But still, the damage has been done on the 1st interval where a lot of the participating team were eliminated easily. The school done this because of the increasing numbers of team participating the Magic Duel this year.

And from the looks of it, on the 3rd and final interval, the whole forest itself were mixed in together with old and abandoned buildings to make it seemed like a forgotten modern city. It reminded me of that one city where the whole place was filled with radiation. I’m not really sure what happened but it seemed no one was able to live in that city thanks to radiation it got that was still floating around the city. Who knows what secrets lies in that empty city.

In addition to that, the school also decided to make the plants and trees becoming even more aggressive than the 1st interval. If it was the 1st interval, Blax could simply cut his way using his sword. But in this case, he was even forced to use his ‘armor’. I don’t like it when he use that ‘armor’. I sense a curse from it. If only I can take a look on it. But Blax was too secretive about it. I hope he is okay…

TO BE CONTINUED