Tornado of Terror

[STADIUM FIELD – NORTHWEST HILL]

Kaine and Amelia moved like a sharpened spear through the chaos. Every step they took was a push uphill—both in terrain and resistance. A trio of lightning users tried to ambush from above, but Amelia shattered the ledge beneath them with a flick of her wrist, sending them tumbling. Kaine followed it with a precision fireburst that forced the survivors to scatter or burn.

Another squad—some outer duchy kids with tower shields and reinforced barrier scrolls—tried to form a blockade. Kaine punched straight through the first with dark-imbued flame, Amelia tripping the rest with summoned wind pressure around their ankles.

Every fight was fast. Dirty. Relentless.

By the time they reached the top, the flag stood on its spire—unattended. Not because no one wanted it.

Because no one could hold it.

Without a word, Kaine walked up and pulled it from the base. The flag's glow flared bright—then dimmed into his grip.

One down.

[STADIUM FIELD – SOUTHERN QUADRANT]

Further away, where the dust hung thicker and the fighting was more primal, an entire mob of participants were grouped like a storm around a single figure.

A golden blur shot across the field—then up.

Students screamed as the wind beneath their feet lifted them. Not a breeze. Not a gust.

A force.

A pure, targeted manipulation of air pressure that pulled their bodies straight off the ground before slamming them into each other midair like thrown dolls.

At the center of it all hovered a wom with radiant gold-blonde hair, tied in a looped braid that drifted in the air like it too bent to her will. She didn't wear armor. She didn't even have a staff. Her robe shimmered faintly with warded protection, but nothing else. She hovered several meters off the battlefield, one leg tucked under the other, her hand raised loosely like she was about to flick a fly.

Princess Sylphine Evarion.

The youngest royal of the Evarion Empire.

A known prodigy.

A wind-born monster with enough mana to shake small towns off their foundations.

Her eyes were calm. Focused. Bored.

Below her, more than a hundred students—most of them grouped from lesser factions, banded together for protection—had surrounded her in the first ten minutes.

Didn't matter.

They came at her in groups. She scattered them.

A barrage of flame? She smothered it mid-cast by pulling the oxygen from the air.

A charging brute with iron fists? She launched him fifty feet straight up and let gravity handle the rest.

Shield users tried to close in?

FWOOOM.

A compressed arc of cutting wind tore their shields clean in half. Several flew backwards like ragdolls, screaming.

"She's not even using chant delays," someone yelled nearby.

"Where's the casting time?! She's cheating!"

No. She wasn't.

Sylphine simply lowered her hand again, eyes disinterested as she flicked her wrist. Dozens of floating wind needles formed instantly, surrounding her like a barrier. Anyone who approached got skewered or lifted out of position and dropped like garbage.

Jake's voice cracked through the announcer's box.

"ARE YOU SEEING THIS?! THIS IS DOMINANCE!"

Elira's voice stayed composed, but even she sounded impressed.

"Princess Sylphine is known for having one of the most unpredictable wind affinity skill sets in the empire. Her training regiment under the Grand Mage of the Evarion Court is rumored to have left her with nearly zero casting delay. The result… is this."

The southern battlefield was no longer a battle.

It was a massacre.

Bodies littered the broken stone ridge—most still conscious, groaning, twitching, crawling. A few lay face-down where the wind had flung them too far, or too hard. A cracked boulder still echoed from the last poor bastard who'd tried to take Sylphine from behind with a spear.

He'd flown ten meters sideways without even understanding why.She floated.

Casually. Effortlessly.

Wind curled around her like silk threads. Her mana didn't burst or flare—it breathed, deep and wide, pressing on everything around her like atmospheric pressure.

And when she moved her hand—just slightly—three students screamed as they were yanked forward, their feet leaving the ground, pulled straight into a spinning wall of pressure and spat out like trash bags.

A sword-wielder tried to flank from her left.

CRACK—

His blade bent in half mid-swing.

She hadn't even looked at him.

A boy further back—a mage from the western steppe clans—dropped his staff and backed up so fast he tripped over a chunk of rubble.

"RUN!" he screamed. "IT'S NOT WORTH IT!"

And suddenly, the panic spread.

The few remaining groups that had stayed behind to "wait it out" began fleeing in all directions, scattering like insects in daylight. Half didn't even try to grab teammates. The sight of Sylphine hovering calmly while bodies rained around her broke whatever false courage they'd come with.

The air around her hissed. Pressure tightened again.

Another squad tried to use smoke scrolls to hide their retreat.

She waved one hand.

FWOOOM.

A horizontal pulse of wind—fast, thin, invisible—tore through the smoke cloud and dropped them all flat. The crowd gasped when the screen zoomed in to show one poor bastard's enchanted breastplate peeled back like a tuna can from the slicing force.

She hadn't even blinked.

[COMMENTARY BOX]

Jake was yelling, still half-standing.

"She's not just winning, SHE'S CLEARING THE ENTIRE DAMN PEAK!!"

Elira said flatly, "That hill now has no remaining active participants. Every competitor either fled, was knocked out, or disqualified due to injury. "

And there it was—zoomed in on the central screen above the stadium:

The southern flag.

Still planted.

Still untouched.

No one dared approach it.

[VVIP ROOM – ASTREA ACADEMY SKY DECK]

Silence.

The only sound was the soft clink of ice melting in untouched crystal glasses.

The floating screen showed what was left of the southern peak—cracked earth, unconscious bodies, scattered weapons. And at the center, above it all, Princess Sylphine Evarion hovered alone, hair drifting like sun-kissed threads in the breeze she commanded.

No one spoke for a long moment.

Then, from the far left of the seven chairs, a woman finally exhaled and muttered under her breath—

"…She got stronger again."

Her voice wasn't awe-filled. More… resigned. Like someone watching a storm they knew would only grow.

Someone else, further back in the room, let out a faint scoff.

"Strong, sure. But don't act like it's divine intervention. She still only has wind; she doesn't even have rare affinities."

The silence held a moment longer—until another voice, older, rougher, but steadier than the rest, cut through with pointed finality.

"Are you blind?"

All eyes turned.

It was the woman in black—one of the fourth-year elite watchers. She wasn't seated in the circle. She didn't need to be. Her name alone held weight. A dueling champion. A peak-tier graduate with battlefield experience.

She kept her eyes on the screen.

"I don't care what affinity she has," she said coldly. "You ever seen anyone do that in their first year?"

No one answered.

Because they hadn't.

She gestured at the screen with her jaw. "She didn't chant. She didn't gesture. She didn't even look at half of them. And she still controlled dozens of targets at once. Not wide area spells—precision control. That's not something a wind mage does. That's something a monster does."

[STADIUM FIELD – NORTHWEST RIDGE, FLAG PEAK 3]

"Switch," Kaine muttered.

Amelia nodded and passed the flag to him without missing stride, panting slightly. Her cheeks were flushed—not from exhaustion, but from the sheer chaos they'd just carved through to keep this thing for more than five minutes at a time.

Their makeshift strategy was simple: alternate holding the flag to split the point gain evenly and keep each other fresh while fighting off the endless waves of greedy bastards trying to jump them. So far, it was working.

Kaine now held the glowing relic—light pulsing faintly in sync with his mana signature.

But all around them?

It was still a war zone.

[COMMENTARY BOX – JAKE + ELIRA]

"AND WE'RE BACK to complete mayhem!" Jake shouted over the roar of the crowd. "Every hill is boiling with conflict—flags being stolen, dropped, caught mid-air—yes, that happened, ask the person next to you if you don't believe me!"

Elira cut in smoothly, eyes flicking across the floating screen projections. "With only five minutes left, here are your current flag holders…"

The magical screen changed again—five symbols glowing above the arena map, zooming into the faces of each current flag bearer:

[Flag 1 – Holder: Eryndor Velkhart]

The boy stood at the base of a canyon now, cloak tattered, arm wrapped in a fresh ward—but alive, flag hovering beside him, guarded by multiple layered glyphs.

[Flag 2 – Holder: Sylphine Evarion]

Hovering calmly above her scorched peak, one leg crossed, untouched. No one dared approach.

[Flag 3 – Holder: Kaine Kaelthorn & Amelia Solwyn – Alternating Possession]

[Flag 4 – Holder: Theo Meryll]

Battered but still holding position, his squad barely hanging on behind a half-shattered defensive wall.

[Flag 5 – Holder: Frostwing Clan's Mira Velra]

Surrounded by a dome of ice and chilling winds, a wall of elemental force keeping out most attackers—so far.

Jake whistled.

"Talk about heavy hitters! All five flags are in elite hands—but any second now, that could all flip!"