The silence on the gantry was thin and brittle. It was the kind of silence that usually preceded a thunderclap.

Isaac Glacium floated ten feet above the walkway on a disc of crystallized mana. He looked down at Vane with an expression that hovered between amusement and pity. The wall of Pale Eternity he had dropped was a monolith. It completely blocked the path to the beacon, sealing the victory behind three feet of supernatural ice.

"Pick the lock?" Isaac repeated. A faint smile touched his lips. "You are holding a spear, Vane. Not a key. And that door does not have hinges."

Behind Vane, Anastasia Aurelia wiped the last of the grease from her eyes. Her face was flushed with humiliation. A ripple of pure, white light pulsed from her skin. It was the manifestation of her Authority, Blessed by Mana. The filth, the oil, and the soot vanished instantly, scoured away by a passive wave of purification.

She stood there, pristine and glowing, her golden hair rearranging itself into perfection.

"Ignore the wall, Isaac," Anastasia said. Her voice was trembling with suppressed rage. "I will handle the rat."

She stepped forward. The metal grating of the gantry ceased to be rusted steel beneath her boots. It shined, sterilized by her mere presence.

Vane didn't turn around. He kept his eyes on the ice wall, but his senses were tuned to the girl behind him. He could feel the pressure of her existence. It wasn't the violent heat of Ashe or the crushing weight of Valerica. It was a sense of absolute superiority. The ambient mana in the room was warping, bending toward her, loving her.

'She is angry,' Vane analyzed. 'She is sloppy.'

Anastasia lunged.

"Die."

It wasn't a scream. It was a cold, whispered verdict.

It was a thrust meant to skewer him through the spine. It was fast, powered by her immense mana capacity, aimed with the intent to sever his soul.

Vane did not block. He possessed an elite-tier physique, capable of stopping a charging bull, but he knew better than to parry Anastasia Aurelia. Her rapier was made of star metal. Her Authority allowed her to cut through spell matrices and concepts. Blocking her was not a test of strength; it was a guarantee of a broken spear.

He dropped.

He collapsed his knees, letting gravity pull him straight down to the floor of the gantry. The rapier passed inches above his head. The white energy coating the blade sang as it sliced the air where his neck had been, leaving a trail of sparkling, purified vacuum.

Anastasia's momentum carried her forward. She stumbled over Vane's prone form.

She slammed into the ice wall.

Ting.

Her rapier hit the Pale Eternity. The tip of the blade dug a fraction of an inch into the blue surface before bouncing off. A spiderweb of white fractures appeared on the ice.

Isaac frowned. The ice healed instantly, knitting itself back together with a pulse of blue light, but the impact had annoyed him.

"Watch your aim, Princess," Isaac warned. "You are chipping the paint."

Vane rolled backward, springing to his feet near the railing. He had put Anastasia between himself and the wall.

"You missed," Vane pointed out.

Anastasia spun around, her eyes blazing with white fire. "You slippery little—"

BOOM.

The entire sub-level shook violently.

The floor of the boiler room, thirty feet below, exploded upward. A plume of debris shot into the air.

Ashe Razar vaulted out of the wreckage. She landed on the support beam of the gantry, her armor smoking, her greatsword resting on her shoulder. She looked battered, frozen, and absolutely delighted.

"Found you!" Ashe roared. Her crimson eyes, with their predatory slit pupils, locked onto Isaac. "You buried me in snow? Seriously? Snow?"

Valerica Sol climbed up behind her. The Titan didn't jump. She simply walked up the vertical support beam, manipulating gravity to change her personal "down" to the side of the pillar. She stepped onto the gantry, the metal groaning under her sudden weight.

Now the walkway was crowded. Four students. One narrow path. One wall.

Isaac sighed. He lowered his altitude slightly, hovering just out of sword reach.

"The cockroaches have climbed out of the sink," Isaac muttered. "I suppose I have to step on you again."

"No," Valerica said. She cracked her knuckles. "No more games. We break him."

The three Elites looked at each other.

There was no verbal agreement. There was no handshake. But they were the top students of the Academy. They understood the reality of the situation. Isaac was too strong to fight individually. He blocked physical attacks. He blocked magical attacks. He controlled the environment.

The only way to win was to overwhelm his processing speed.

"Together," Anastasia commanded, suppressing her urge to stab Vane. She realized the bigger threat was floating above them. "On the wall. Break the shell, and the beacon is ours."

Vane took a step back. He lowered his spear.

They had forgotten him.

To them, he was a nuisance. He was a provisional student with a sharp stick. In a clash of titans, he was irrelevant background noise.

'Perfect,' Vane thought. He merged into the shadows near the support cables. 'Be the ghost.'

"Now!" Ashe screamed.

The Warlord moved first. She didn't hold back. She invoked her Warlord Authority.

Her crimson aura exploded outward, saturated with such intense Killing Intent that the air itself seemed to darken. She poured everything into her massive blade, activating a supreme Weapon Communion. The steel screamed as it was pushed past its theoretical limit. The sword became a conduit for absolute conflict, wreathed in a jagged red-black energy that wasn't fire, but the visual manifestation of pure violence.

She swung the blade in an overhead arc that broke the sound barrier.

Valerica followed instantly.

She activated the Celestial Heart. She clapped her hands, compressing the space between her palms until it screamed. She fired the result like a cannonball—a point of infinite density designed to implode whatever it touched.

Anastasia completed the triad. She raised her rapier. The ambient mana in the room whined as it was forcibly dragged into her blade. She was the Sovereign. The mana had no choice but to obey.

She poured the power of Blessed by Mana into a single thrust. It was a divine judgment. The blade didn't emit a laser. It emitted a command. A ripple of absolute, purifying white light shot forward, ordered to unmake the magical bonds holding Isaac's ice together.

Three ultimates. All aimed at one point.

Isaac's eyes widened. Even he couldn't ignore this.

"Stubborn children," Isaac hissed.

He dropped from the air. He landed heavily beside the beacon as he slammed both hands onto the floor.

He invoked the Glacial Fortress.

The ice wall didn't just thicken. It exploded upward and outward. It curved over Isaac's head, swallowing both him and the beacon in a perfect, three-hundred-and-sixty-degree dome.

It was no longer a wall. It was a bunker. Layers upon layers of compressed mana ice formed a shell five feet thick. The air around the dome froze so hard it began to weep, liquid condensation dripping onto the grating.

CRASH.

The attacks landed.

The sound was beyond deafening. It was a physical blow that ruptured the eardrums of everyone in the room.

Ashe's Warlord strike slammed into the dome, the red-black energy eating into the ice with the hunger of war.

Valerica's gravity bomb twisted the space, cracking the outer layers of the shell with sheer mass.

Anastasia's severance strike drilled into the center. It didn't melt the ice; it unraveled it. The mana bonds holding the molecules together were cut, turning the diamond-hard barrier back into harmless snow.

Steam and mana debris exploded outward. The gantry swung violently, cables snapping.

Vane held on. He squinted through the chaos.

He watched the dome.

It was breaking. The combined might of three Special Admission monsters was too much, even for Isaac. The outer layers were shattering. The killing intent was consuming the mana reinforcement. Anastasia's command was overwriting Isaac's will.

But Isaac was repairing it.

From inside the dome, blue light pulsed rapidly. For every inch of ice they destroyed, Isaac grew an inch back. It was a war of attrition. A stalemate of destruction and creation.

'Look for the gap,' Vane told himself. His eyes watered from the mana pressure. 'Look for the seam.'

He saw it.

It wasn't a hole. It was a hesitation.

Ashe's violent aura was eating the mana on the left side. To counter it, Isaac had to shift his density to the left.

When he did that, the right side—where Anastasia's white light was unraveling the spell—became brittle for a fraction of a second.

The mana distribution wasn't perfect. Isaac was reacting, not predicting. There was a lag.

A lag of maybe 0.5 seconds.

'There,' Vane thought.

He gripped his spear. He began to cycle his mana.

Pain shot through his arm. It felt like tearing wire. His mana channels, already strained from the fight, screamed in protest at the thought of activating his Authority again so soon. Isole had warned him. His body wasn't ready.

Vane ignored the warning. He bit his lip until he tasted iron.

He had to wait. He had to wait until the Elites had pushed Isaac to his absolute limit.

"Push!" Valerica roared, blood trickling from her nose. "He's cracking!"

"Break!" Ashe laughed maniacally, her muscles bulging as she forced the sword deeper.

"Submit!" Anastasia ordered, driving her rapier into the breach.

The dome shook. A massive crack appeared down the center.

Through the crack, for just a fleeting instant, Vane saw the red glow of the beacon.

It was still inside. Encased in the last layer of ice.

Isaac was inside too, his face pale, sweat freezing on his brow, his hands outstretched as he held the collapsing fortress together by sheer will.

He was focused entirely on the three monsters in front of him. He was pouring every ounce of his concentration into stopping the war, the gravity, and the command.

He wasn't looking at the shadow near the railing.

Vane stepped forward.

He moved into the kill zone. The mana pressure was immense. It felt like walking into a hurricane. His skin stung. His coat fluttered wildly.

He raised his spear.

He targeted the crack. Not the center of the crack where the energy was highest, but the edge. The hairline fracture where the ice was stressed, pulled taut between the gravity and the repair spell.

He took a breath.

The air in his lungs tasted of ozone and burnt sugar.

'One thrust,' Vane thought. 'No do-overs.'

He forced his channels open.

He activated the Silver Fang.

The mana around the spearhead vanished, sucked into the blade. The metal turned a dull, matte silver. It was the property of severance. It didn't shout. It didn't burn. It just cut.

He initiated the spiral circulation.

The spear hummed as mana rotated around the shaft.

Vane didn't scream. He didn't announce his presence.

He simply launched himself.

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