The Anomaly's Path

”Start!”

The word had barely left Professor Morgana’s mouth before the air in the center of the stadium changed completely.

I stood still, my hands still deep in my pockets, my eyes scanning the big wall of a hundred students rushing toward me from every direction. I recognized some faces in the front line.

Thomas Ward was leading the center, his steel blade already glowing with power.

To his left, Elena Ross was quickly drawing a fire spell, her hands sparking with red light. Further back, Dame Flint was getting ready to sprint, while a crowd of unnamed weapon-users nervously held their lines near the edges.

Beyond the gap in power or rank, the real difference between us came down to combat experience. I had way more combat experience than all of them combined.

Most of these students had barely fought monsters in controlled settings, while I had spent many times my life on the line. I had almost died in the trial, and after surviving that, I had fought in forbidden zones.

While these students had never truly risked their lives — except maybe for a moment during the exams, I lived in that extreme state. That gap in survival instincts made all the difference.

However.... they were not mindless monsters from the Sealed Valley.

They were living, breathing people. Fighting a hundred humanoids with different minds, affinities, and different paths was very different from clearing a wave of predictable beasts. They had different fighting style, different speeds, and a shared anger that made them unpredictable.

It was dangerous. Not because I thought I could lose, losing was not an option, but because a hundred spells and blades would wear down my stamina if I dragged this out too long.

I looked at the front line rushing at me, their footsteps shaking the sand below.

They thought they had the upper hand. They thought their numbers let them control the start of this fight. But... I was not about to stand around and let them form their attack patterns.

Before the front line could take another step, I disappeared.

Using Volt Step and Starlight Steps together, a single crack of black lightning burst under my feet. To the crowd watching, it did not even look like speed. I just stopped existing in my old spot. My body moved across the open sand in a flash.

Before the front line could even understand how fast I moved, I appeared right inside their defensive line.

Thomas Ward was at the center, his blade half-raised. His eyes went wide as my hand shot forward. I did not pull out a weapon. I slammed my palm into his throat, grabbed the back of his neck, and drove his face down into the hard dirt.

Alright, one down, I thought, a dry, bored feeling settling in. Only ninety-nine more to go. Great.

As Thomas went limp, his steel sword slipped from his fingers. I caught the handle mid-air with my left hand, quickly reversing my grip. I kept my right hand deep in my pocket, staying low and making myself a smaller target.

A sharp hiss cut through the air from my left.

Two vampire students rushed together, their fangs showing as their palms gathered a dark spray of blood mist. From the other side, Conas closed in, his rapier flashing with cold precision, while Dame Flint shifted her weight, tracking my path from the outer edge.

My Flash Instinct mapped out their moves instantly.

Instead of pulling back, I moved forward, ducking inside the rapier’s reach before the cold steel could fully extend. I hit the user’s wrist with the handle of Thomas’s captured sword, breaking his grip. I took the weapon from his hand and cracked the flat of my blade across his jaw.

Two down. Man, if they keep running into me one by one like this, I might actually get back to my nap before lunch.

The blood mist from the two vampires was already burning my skin, the stinging vapor starting to singe the edges of my coat. I did not back off. With a sharp move of my wrist, I used my Space power to fold a small pocket of air in front of my face.

The acidic mist hit the folded space, bending out of existence.

Before the vampires could even understand what happened, I was already inside their space. I drove a stolen iron dagger into the ground between their boots, sending a rush of my lightning affinity through the steel.

The current shot up like snapping wires, locking their joints in a second. I grabbed both of them by the hair and cracked their heads together with a heavy, sickening thud.

”Pin him! Do not let him move!” a dwarf yelled from the middle row. Three armored mages slammed their iron staves down, causing jagged stone spikes and frost to burst from the sand, shooting toward me.

At the same time, a big beastkin warrior carrying a heavy iron mace dropped from above, his bulk casting a shadow as he swung the weapon down to crush me.

The pressure was building.

A stray firebolt from Elena Ross hit my shoulder, burning through the fabric and scorching the skin under it, but my bloodline kicked in at once, pulling power from the stadium’s dense mana to dull the pain and heal the flesh.

I did not move away from the falling mace.

Instead, I ducked under a sweeping halberd from an oncoming human spearman, grabbed the shaft of his weapon, and pulled it out of his arms. Filling the iron tip with black lightning, I swung the heavy pole upward.

The shaft hit the descending beastkin’s mace dead-on. The lightning burst on impact, sending a shockwave back up the mace that broke the beastkin’s wrists and knocked him out before he hit the sand.

Without stopping, I spun the stolen spear in a low, sweeping arc, breaking the stone spikes before they could lock my legs.

I drove the blunt end back into the stomach of an approaching elf, then threw the weapon like a spear straight into the casting line in the back row, scattering a wave of incoming projectiles as Lucia scrambled to fix her bow.

A line of five human swordsmen rushed me next, their blades cutting a tight pattern of steel.

I stepped into the attack, using a small fold of space to get past their reach. My bare hands took the sword from the closest user, sent my lightning through it, and used the electrified edge to block three strikes at once with a loud ring.

I kicked the second swordsman back into his allies, then spun the stolen blade down, using Spatial Slip to make the edge appear behind the guard of the last two fighters. The flat of the steel hit their necks hard, dropping them into the dirt.

It was a fast, tiring sequence of blocks, broken lines, and stolen weapons hitting flesh. My speed was rising by the second as my bloodline adapted to the fight. In less than two minutes, nearly forty students lay scattered in the sand, groaning or completely out cold.

Alright, that is almost half of them gone, I thought, taking a quick breath as I stood among the downed students. I looked up, scanning the outer edge, and my jaw tightened a little. But damn it... there are still way too many left.

They were not backing down.

For every student that fell, more filled the gap, their spells realigning as they realized they could not hit me one by one. They were starting to form a tighter, overlapping circle to trap me with their numbers, their weapons locking together into a heavy wall.

Tch. They are taking too long, I thought, a deep tiredness settling into my chest as I watched them re-form their lines and shout orders. If I keep fighting them hand-to-hand like this, I will be here until sunset.

I stopped running.

I stood perfectly still in the center of the ring, letting my right hand slide out of my pocket. The relaxed posture vanished, replaced by a cold, focused stillness. I reached toward my waist and wrapped my fingers around the hilt of Tempest.

The moment my hand gripped the katana, a heavy pressure burst from my core. The air around me crackled with black lightning.

The remaining crowd froze mid-step. Their faces went pale as the stadium fell into a dead silence.

_

Author’s Note

Hey everyone.

So, yesterday I only uploaded one Chapter, which I know is less than usual. But I locked in last night and ended up writing a total of four Chapters. I actually started on the fifth one too, so yeah, I was on a roll.

That means today I’ll be uploading three Chapters. Maybe four if I finish the fifth one in time. So look forward to that.

I just realized that if you can lock in and focus, you can actually get a lot done. But... I’m lazy, so its rare. Anyway, enjoy the Chapters. I’ll upload three today.

Goodbye.