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Time ground forward. Competitors pushed deeper into the Relic, and the comfortable early phase ended. Ruin Guards grew more numerous, more aggressive, and more willing to Combine into larger threats. On top of that, competitors were running into each other, and the resulting fights added a second axis of danger.
Eliminations accelerated.
"Why won't these things die?" Audrey Langford gasped the words through labored breaths, her boots skidding on damp stone as she cut another corner. Behind her, the relentless thudding of mechanical feet didn't slow.
She'd advanced to the second stage on merit, but her strength placed her in the lower middle of the surviving field. Her best cards had been two Five-Stars, and one of them was already dead, destroyed forty minutes ago by a pair of Combined Ruin Guards that she hadn't expected to merge. She was down to a single Five-Star now, a spirit-type card called Veiled Wisp that worked better as a scout than a combatant.
And she was being hunted.
Nearly ten Five-Star Ruin Guards formed the wedge pursuing her. Sword Dancers and shielded variants, all with the Heat Source Induction that made running pointless. The fog hid nothing from them. Every time she tried to duck into a side corridor, they adjusted in seconds, the front-runners reading her thermal signature like a beacon.
Veiled Wisp ghosted beside her, insubstantial as smoke, its pale form flickering in and out of visibility. It couldn't tank a hit. It couldn't trade blows. All it could do was spot threats and scout the fog ahead. And right now, the Wisp was the only reason Audrey wasn't already dead.
If they catch up, I have to teleport out. There's no other option.
The thought tasted like ash. Using the Teleportation Card meant forfeiting. Eliminated after barely an hour in the second stage. The humiliation would follow her for years.
Behind her, the wedge of Ruin Guards compressed. Two of the Sword Dancers on the outer edge began actively weaving their blades, accelerating for a final burst. Audrey felt the shift in their formation the same way a deer feels the moment a wolf decides to charge.
She was almost out of time.
Veiled Wisp. Scout forward. Find anyone. Anyone at all.
The Wisp peeled away and vanished into the fog ahead. Seconds of silence. Audrey's breathing was ragged. The thudding behind her grew louder.
Then a pulse came back through their mental link. Someone fighting, maybe four hundred meters ahead. One Card Master. One card spirit. Engaged with a small group of Ruin Guards already.
Audrey's head snapped toward the new direction. Her face split into a desperate grin.
Sorry. Really sorry. But better you than me.
She changed course. Dove hard to the left, cut through a thick bank of mist, and pointed herself directly at the signature Veiled Wisp had just marked. The Ruin Guards' formation adjusted with mechanical precision, still locked onto her heat signature, the whole wedge pivoting to follow.
Every step took her closer to her unknown savior. Every step took the hunting pack closer too.
If they lock onto the new target, even for a moment, I can break off and lose them in the mist.
It was a terrible plan. It was also the only plan she had left.
-----
"Your competitor is playing dirty, Webb." Harrison's displeasure was audible even from the far side of the monitoring deck. His eyes were fixed on the screen showing Audrey's trajectory.
Dorian Webb, president of the Crestbrook City branch, folded his arms and kept his face carefully neutral. "It's a competition, Harrison. Every competitor in the Relic is an enemy to every other. Her choice is tactically sound."
"Tactically sound? She's dumping her problems on someone else."
"She's adapting to her circumstances." Webb's tone was the measured dispassion of a man who had no intention of defending his student's character when he could defend her strategy. "If I were in her position, I'd do the same thing."
The two men had never been friendly. Crestbrook sat a notch above Ashenvale in the usual rankings, and Webb had a temperament that reminded you of it constantly. Harrison's disapproval rolled off him without impact.
But beneath the composure, Webb's eyes flickered toward the other screen. The one showing Audrey's diversion target.
If she's running to Luke Mercer…
He'd seen Luke's first-stage match. The memory of that Silence Seal wasn't something anyone had been able to put down easily.
Audrey, please don't run toward the kid who erased a Thunder Prison like it was a paper decoration. Please.
"I hope you can maintain that attitude," Harrison replied flatly, "when it blows up in her face."
Around them, the other branch presidents watched with spectator detachment. Not their fighter, not their problem. A few privately calculated that losing Audrey in exchange for burdening Luke would be an acceptable trade. Luke was a legitimate threat. Audrey was not.
-----
Inside the Relic, Mana's head snapped toward the right.
"Master. Stop." She halted mid-stride, staff already humming. "Two signatures. One Card Master, one spirit. Running fast. And there are Ruin Guards chasing them. A lot of Ruin Guards."
"How many?"
"At least nine. Possibly more. Moving in a hunting wedge."
Luke reoriented immediately, turning to face the direction Mana had indicated. The Indicator in his hand dimmed slightly, which meant he was no longer pointed toward the core. But some things took priority.
"They're heading right for us." He said it without surprise. In an environment where heat signatures couldn't be hidden, using another Card Master as a diversion was the obvious move. "Someone figured out the easiest way to lose Ruin Guards is to make them our problem."
"What do we do?"
Luke's eyes narrowed, calculating.
"Kill them all, including the diverter. We need vouchers." He smiled, thin and unamused. "And we need everyone here to understand that running toward me is a bad decision."
The fog ahead began to lighten. Footsteps. Pounding, uneven, desperate.
Audrey Langford burst into their zone of visibility at a full sprint, a pale wisp of a spirit flickering beside her. Her chest was heaving, her face flushed red with exertion, and her eyes were wild with the particular mania of someone running purely on adrenaline.
She saw Luke.
Her expression transitioned through shock, recognition, horror, and resignation in the space of a single heartbeat.
It's HIM. Of all the people in the entire Relic, I ran straight toward HIM.
She remembered his first-stage match vividly. Silence Seal wiping out Thunder Prison. Dark Magic Burst vaporizing two Five-Star Perfects in one hit. Audrey had specifically added Luke Mercer to her private mental list of people to avoid at all costs.
And now she'd sprinted directly into his arms, dragging a hunting pack of Ruin Guards behind her like a banner.
Her feet didn't stop. Momentum carried her forward even as her brain screamed abort.
If I just pass through fast enough, maybe the Ruin Guards will target him instead and I can slip away in the confusion…
"Mana." Luke's voice cut through the fog like a blade. "Dark Magic Burst. Wide angle. Don't spare the runner."
"Yes, Master."
Mana's staff rose. The emerald orb at its tip didn't just glow this time, it ignited, a miniature star flaring into existence at the apex. The magic circle that unfurled beneath her feet was larger than the one she'd used against the Ruin Guards, wider, layered with three concentric rings of arcane script, each ring rotating in a different direction. Violet-black energy bled up from the circle's edges in vertical ribbons, converging on her staff tip.
The sphere that formed at the staff's apex was visibly denser than her previous spells. Compressed dark mana, edged with fractal lightning, pulsing in rhythm with her heartbeat. Big enough to swallow a small building.
Audrey saw it coming. Saw the scale of it. Saw the trajectory clearly enough to understand that she was standing exactly in its path, and that no amount of forward momentum would carry her out of the blast radius in time.
Her hand slammed onto the Teleportation Card before her conscious mind even finished processing the threat.
"DARK MAGIC BURST!"
Mana's spell released.
The sphere screamed across the distance, warping the fog into spiral trails as it passed, its mere proximity crushing the ambient mist into crystalline ice that showered down in a sparkling curtain.
Audrey's body vanished. The Teleportation Card's coordinates activated, and she was displaced back to the Capital Association plaza in a pulse of white light, a fraction of a second before the Dark Magic Burst tore through the space she'd been occupying.
The spell continued. It didn't care that its first target had vanished. It plowed straight into the hunting wedge of Ruin Guards that had been pursuing her.
Detonation.
The explosion was concentric. A sphere of dark energy expanded outward from the impact point, consuming Ruin Guard after Ruin Guard as it grew. Veiled Wisp, which had been flickering alongside Audrey, caught the edge of the blast and dispersed into nothing, its insubstantial form unable to survive even the shockwave.
When the fog rolled back in, the hunting wedge was gone. Nine Ruin Guards, reduced to scattered slag across a thirty-meter-wide crater in the Relic floor. Nothing moved. Nothing twitched. Nothing attempted Combination. The blast had been too complete, and the debris was too far apart for Combination protocols to even initiate.
A streak of light shot from the point where Audrey had teleported out and settled into Luke's open hand.
*「 Magic Card Voucher 」*
"Two." Luke tucked the second Voucher alongside the first. "Took long enough."
He walked to the edge of the crater and surveyed the destruction. Extract would pull usable materials from the larger chunks of wreckage. Mana floated beside him, staff still radiating faint heat from the casting.
"Master, that one ran toward us." Her tone was curious more than confused. "Why?"
"Because she thought I'd die fighting her problem for her." Luke crouched beside a mostly-intact Ruin Guard torso. "She miscalculated."
Extract activated. Green light spiraled through the wreckage, converting the mechanical debris into component materials. Luke pocketed the drops and stood up, dusting his hands.
"Let's keep moving. Eight more Vouchers to go."
The Indicator's needle pulsed as he turned back toward the core's bearing. The fog closed in behind them as they walked, swallowing the crater, the slag, and any evidence that nine Ruin Guards and one foolish competitor had ever been there at all.