The Winnowing

The final syllable had barely left Aureli’s lips when the arena erupted, and it wasn’t a gradual start by any means! 

It was an instantaneous explosion of violence.

A hundred spells detonated simultaneously at the sound of the gong. Fireballs, ice walls, lightning arcing through the dust clouds, it was all happening simulatenously!

Almost instantly, the weaker contestants, mostly commoners or unaligned mercenaries who had scraped by through the trials by sheer luck, were decimated, their bodies ragdolled outside of bounds amongst the smell of burning fabric and iron from fresh blood.

Amidst the chaos, the students of Dojo Ryōzan moved with terrifying efficiency, flowing like a waterfall of pure lethal efficiency and tactical awareness as Musashi smirked from the VIP box, watching his efforts bear fruit.

Shinosuke danced through a phalanx of heavy knights with his katana flashing in silver blurs that bypassed their armor entirely, severing tendons and straps with surgical precision causing the horde to fall comically as he waltzed passed them. To his left, the Ninja twins were a blur of synchornicity, Hattori’s weighted chains ensnaring a mage attempting to cast a shield and dragging him to the ground as Amara leaped off her brother’s back, her kunai finding gaps in the defenses of three different opponents, immobilizing them before she even touched the ground, carving a path of silence through the noise like a pack of grim reapers.

The Sol Academy students were not going down without a fight either, zooming about the battlefield with expert precision and capability. Rain Sol stood her ground in the center of the melee, summoning a floating arsenal of mana-swords that spun around her like a blender, parrying attacks from all sides like a walking tornado of steel as Runa cackled, floating ten feet in the air manipulating gravity to make heavy brawlers float helplessly, before slamming them back down. Then up, and down. Up. Down. 

"Don't mess around Runa! You're getting in the way!" Rain called out annoyed 

"Right.." Runa replied, flinging her toys out of bounds to be eliminated.

Kami on the other moved like a ghost, using the larger combatants as human shields, his eyes locked not on the enemies, but on the exits and flow of the battle, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. 

And then there was Noah, still amongst the carnage, a statue in a hurricane, walking forward nonchalantly as if he were bulletproof. A stray bolt of lightning aimed for his head, sizzling through the air and vanishing as he raised a hand, his molding magic instinctually reshaping the raw mana into a tangible shield, leaving the attacker beffudled but Noah didn't rush him.

Instead, he looked down at his hands, the "Spare Heir"  feeling the weight of a weapon he hadn't yet formed. The world was screaming, but for the first time in days, the static in his head was quiet. The violence didn't scare him, it felt like home, like the inner world he was trying to sweep under the rug had come out and enveloped him, allowing him to push himself beyond his capacity as the melee quickly devolved into a bloodbath.

The distinct styles of the Academy and Dojo, perfected through rigourous training and study, clashed against the desperate flailing of the common sellswords and self taught mages who failed to compare or compete on the same level as Sol Academy's finest. Azrael Noor stood in the eye of the storm, yawning as a massive axe swung for his neck, his figure shimmering like a heat haze, causing the axe to pass harmlessly through his afterimage, embedding itself in the stone, leaving the attacker in disbelief.

"Too loud," Azrael muttered, snapping his fingers as the attacker’s eyes rolled back, hypnotized, before he turned and began hacking at the others in the arena. Azrael walked behind him laughing, a master of puppets with various contestants now his pawns in the fight.

Nearby, Summer was hyperventilating as a trio of mercenaries rushed her.

"Focus, Summer!" Kami's voice cut through the din beside her in an instant, parrying a sword thrust with his small dagger while shoving Summer behind him.

"The floor. Now." Summer nodded, slapping her palms against the obsidian causing Neon-blue sigils to be ignited beneath the mercenaries' feet, exploding upward in pillars of concussive force that sent them ragdolling into the air and out of bounds as Kami fist bumped her on his way towards fighting others on the field.

The Sol Academy students were performing exceptionally but the students of Dojo Ryozan were not going to be shown up! Hina and Naru turned the eastern quadrant into a blazing inferno as Hina danced through the fray, laughing maniacally whilst scattering paper talismans, soaked in gasoline, all around like peices of confetti, akin to a bridesmaid throwing flowers about as she walked down the aisle.

"Make it pop, Naru!" she squealed, turning back to wink at her partner as the tall shaman adjusted her glasses and snapped her fingers and the talismans ignited, creating a wall of emerald fire that trapped a dozen mercenaries, burning them alive. As the men screamed, Hina simply skipped through the flames, protected by her voodoo charms, sticking ignited talismans onto the backs of fleeing opponents.

"They are actually killing each other..." Vanessa commented, horrified at what she was witnessing. 

"Don't be shocked. This is the nature of this tournament. Blood is the price for ascension. It always has been" Silver replied, serious and focused as he lit a cigarette, watching his students.

"Trust in them"

Back on the battlfield, Shinosuke was putting on a performance as a no name barbarian swung a spiked mace in his direction. Shinosuke didn’t even draw his katana fully as, with a bored expression, he performed a Kagura step, his body swaying like a willow branch in the wind, reading the flow of the air to avoid the attack as the mace whooshed harmlessly past his ear. In the split second the barbarian overextended, Shinosuke drew, slashed, and sheathed his blade in one fluid motion, his eyes closed the entire time. The barbarian took two more steps before his armor split cleanly open, spraying blood across the obsidian floor, causing Vanessa to instinctively put her hands up to he mouth which had slackjawed out of horror. Even as Silver told her this was to be expected, it was still a gore fest too bloody for her liking.

"Inefficient," Sakura commented, watching the blood spray from a safe distance, casually standing with her arms crossed within a circle of fallen bodies as a rogue lightning mage tried to flank her, charging a bolt in his palms. Sakura didn't turn, instinctively calculating the trajectory of his approach as she simply thrust the butt of her spear backwards. The shaft caught the mage squarely in the throat, crushing his windpipe and canceling the spell instantly, leaving him to choke on the ground as he gasped for air. She spun the spear, the blade flashing, and tapped the mage on the forehead with a glowing seal. "Seal: Paralysis." 

The mage froze with his hands clasped around his throat, hoping to catch another breath of air, the light slowly fading from his eyes.

In the center of the storm walked Tsukihime, moving slowly like Noah, her snowy white yakata unstained despite the constant spray of blood in all directions around her. Her enemies shook with fear as a desperate swordsman, seeing a small girl with a weapon too big for her, lunged at her back. Without looking, Tsukihime grabbed the handle of the massive Odachi slung across her shoulder with only one hand. It seemed it would be an impossible feat for her, considering how frail her arms seemed in comparison, but it appeared effortless from afar.

Tsukihime didn't swing it, the sheer weight of the unsheathing creating a shockwave which sent her attacker stumbling backwards as she spun, the flat of the giant blade catching the swordsman in the ribs, launching him thirty feet through the air like a baseball, smashing into the wall near the audience enclosure, spiderwebbing the wall upon being blown into it. She rested the giant sword on the ground with a heavy thud that cracked the stone, her expression unchanged.

On the other side of the arena, the air smelled of gasoline as Hina and Naru were cackling, the shaman duo turning the battlefield into a furnace, forcing Kami to dance backwards, his face a pool of sweat. He hurriedly scribbled an invocation in the air to summon a spectral barrier just as a wave of fire washed over him, barely surviving as the heat singed his eyebrows. "They aren't fighting to win," Kami realized, coughing in the smoke. "They're fighting to burn it all down."

Rain thinned the herd on her own, seeking to bring order to the chaos as her floating mana-swords continued to act as a phalanx until she locked eyes with Sakura, the spear wielder walking over from the man who's throat she had just crushed moments ago. As the two locked eyes, they knew the battle was on as Rain sent three blades hurtling forward, but Sakura didn't retreat. With a smile that was almost pitying, Sakura spun her crimson spear in a blur, deflecting the magical blades with terrifying precision. It was inevitable that the Dojo students would come face to face with Sol Academy's finest as the herd thinned. 

In another part of the arena, Noah found himself face-to-face with Shinosuke, the branch-tattooed dancer moving like water, his katana flickering towards Noah’s throat as his Instincts took over and his molding magic surged, the mana coalescing instantly in his grip. He didn't form a sword but rather an obsidian tonfa as the steel met molded magic with a deafening clang. Shinosuke’s eyes widened slightly, impressed by the ability of a competitor to block his hypnotic movements, before he spun away, using the momentum to slash a mercenary who tried to intervene, staring down Noah and taunting him to approach. Noah stood his ground, the thrill of the fight pumping color back into his hollow cheeks as a wry grin appeared on his face.

The battle was getting fierce and beginning to spill out of the field as a massive fireball missed its target, spiraling wildly out of control and slamming into the translucent barrier separating the audience pit from the lower ring as the magical shield put up by Chernobog rippled violently, the heat intense enough to singe the hair of the front-row commoners. Akiko screamed, clutching Kenji’s arm in a panic as the flames licked the other side of the invisible wall, inches from her face, while the nobles in the middle ring simply clapped, sipping their wine, amused by the "realism." of the festivities.

The arena was rapidly filling with bodies, but the chaos was becoming suffocating. High above the bloodbath, Runa wrinkled her nose, staring down at the fighting like looking at a procession of fire ants fighting black ants.

"Ew," she muttered. "It’s getting way too sweaty down there. I can’t even see Summer or Noah." she pouted, floating higher until she was thirty feet in the air. "I think it’s time to take out the trash."

She raised her petite hands, purple cosmic energy spiraling around her fingers, distorting the light. The air grew heavy, pressing down on the lungs of every fighter in the ring.

"Gravity Art: Celestial Repulsion!"

She slammed her palms downward.

The impact was silent for a split second, and then the world inverted.  A crushing dome of gravitational force expanded outward from her center like a shockwave. The stone floor cracked, spiderwebbing in all directions. The commoners, mercenaries, and weaker mages stood no chance; they were lifted off their feet and blasted backward as if hit by a freight train with the force of a typhoon or a hurricane! They flew like ragdolls, smashing against the high outer walls or being tossed clear out of the ring into the muddy overflow pits.

Following the attack, a massive cloud of dust puffed up, obscuring the sun and covering the arena in the aftermath. When the silence finally settled and the dust cleared, the arena was nearly empty. Only two groups remained standing, anchored by their immense power.

Standing firm on one side were the students of Sol Academy, some kneeling, some shielding their eyes, but all anchored by their magic. They knew what was coming before it happened, having faced Runa's wrath before

Opposite them, untouched and unimpressed, stood the students of the Dojo, looking bored. Tsukihime brushed a speck of dust from her yakata, while Shinosuke simply sheathed his blade and the ninja twins high fived.

It was done. The chaff had been winnowed. Now, only the monsters remained.