Chapter 5
— ✦ —
Diana raised her hand. Quickly, energetically, with an expression that said: if you don't give me the floor, I'll explode. "Yes, Diana. Your hand is up.
What's troubling you?" "It's not fair!" Diana stood from her chair. Blonde hair trembled and frost flickered across her fingers for a moment — emotions and magic were connected in her. "We're weak! Compared to other guilds we're newcomers! We won't survive this!" Igi looked at her. Calmly. Patiently. With that infuriating unshakability that drove Diana insane. "You're probably forgetting what protection we have." Diana stopped. Opened her mouth. Closed it. Looked out the window — at the forest beyond Elysium. At the forest where beings lived against whom the entire five were like children on a playground. "Dragonesses," she whispered. "Dragonesses," Igi confirmed. "Red. Green. Black. White. This is not an ordinary guild. Elysium is a protected island. And Guild Wars take place on guild territory." He let the words hang in the air. "Whoever teleports here with the intent to attack will have to deal not only with me and my golems. They'll have to deal with the guardians of this island." Peter raised his hand. "So... we won't participate?" "No. I certainly don't intend to risk your lives. Not for Guild Wars. Not for anything." Igi pointed his staff at the doors. "When the day of the attack comes, you'll go to the castle. All six of you. You'll wait there for the result. The collars will prevent you from running around the castle and doing stupid things — I know, Peter, I'm thinking specifically of you — and when it's all over, I'll let you out." Peter raised his hands in a defensive gesture. "Me? Stupid things? Never." "Always." "Mostly." "Always." Igi returned behind the lectern. The chalk on the board behind him was writing: GUILD WARS — CHALLENGE ACCEPTED ONE WEEK TO PREPARE ATTACKERS → TELEPORT TO ELYSIUM TARGET: GUILD BANK EQUAL LEVEL SUM DEFENSE: GOLEMS + DRAGONESSES FIVE + ARWEN: CASTLE. WAIT. DON'T LOSE YOUR MINDS. "Questions about Guild Wars?" Jana raised her hand. "Sir... what if they come stronger than you expect?" "I'll tell you something not widely known," Igi said, leaning on the lectern. "I wanted to know if I was so strong I was unbeatable. Ego. Everyone has it. Even me." He paused. The classroom was silent — that specific silence when Igi spoke about himself, which happened once in a blue moon. "I'll tell you this so you don't have to waste
points asking a god. Because I asked — and was answered." The staff tapped the floor. Once. "For the game to be balanced, nobody is unbeatable. Nobody. No player, no being. The maximum level is the average of the hundred strongest — meaning a hundred players have a very similar or equal level. That means at the very top there isn't one king. There are a hundred equals." He stepped before the blackboard. "And now the important part. If at least five of that hundred join forces — those five can defeat any single individual. Anyone. Even the strongest. Even the one who thinks he's unbeatable. Five coordinated players at maximum level can take down one, no matter how powerful." He looked at them. At each of them. "And don't forget — retreat is also an option. Retreat is not shame. Retreat is just a fight postponed for later. For a moment when you'll be ready. For a moment when you'll wipe the floor with the enemy."
ARENA Igi turned to Kaelen. "Now. Today I'm focusing on you, Kaelen." The half-orc straightened in his chair. He always straightened when Igi addressed him by name. Instinct — when the master speaks directly to you, you listen with your whole body. "The last update added new features to the arena. Battleground Arena — ranking system, matchmaking, rewards for victories. I thought we'd go try it out." Kaelen's eyes lit up. Not literally — but almost. The arena was his world. Fighting was his language. And a new system meant new opponents. "Have you been yet, Kaelen? To the new arena?" "So," Igi began, looking at the five. "You've probably studied up on the arena. Or not." Silence. Peter acted like he had. Diana was reading something under the desk. Kaelen nodded — he had studied. Jana and Hazela looked neutral, which could mean anything. "Whether you did or didn't — let's go through it for the others."
"The last update added the Battleground Arena. The most important thing — and remember this, because it applies to our practice one too — you cannot die in the arena. One HP and you've lost. The system ejects you. So
no fear. The arena is for training, for ranking, for testing. Not for death." The staff tapped the floor. "The arena is a real place. It exists somewhere in the world — a physical building, a physical sand field, physical bleachers. You need to find it on the map. Nowhere does it say exactly where — that's part of the game. Find it yourself or ask someone who's been." "I haven't been there," Igi added. "I don't plan to go. I have no reason to stand in line with warriors who think a big sword is a personality." Peter snorted. Kaelen didn't. "If you decide to go in person, the advantage is — signing up for a match costs fewer points. Physical presence is cheaper than remote connection. You get there via city portal or you come yourself. There'll be vendors, a tavern, shops, everything you'd expect around a big arena." Igi raised a warning finger. "And there'll be something else. You can bet on winners there. And win." Peter's eyes lit up. Igi saw it. "I forbid it." Peter's eyes went dark. "It's a pointless addiction. Gambling in the Q world devours points the same way drugs devour health. You start with a small amount, win, feel euphoria, bet more, lose, bet even more to recoup, and in a month you have no points for anything. I've seen it a hundred times. Not with you. I won't see it with you."
"The second option — and for most of you more practical — is system registration. Simply select the Arena tab in your system. There you'll see the ranking — who's placed where, what rank, what score. And there'll be an option to register for a match. Matchmaking will find you an opponent at your level." "Registration costs points. Like everything in the Q world. Nothing is free." "But — and pay attention here — you must be in a safe place. A safe place means a room in a tavern or your private residence. Not the street. Not the forest. Not a dungeon. Not a bench at the market. A place where nobody will attack you and nothing threatens you." Diana raised her hand. "Why?" "Because when you register for the arena, your body stays where you are. Your consciousness transfers to the arena — but the body is here. Motionless. Defenseless. If someone attacks you during
that time — if even a single HP drops — the wait and the ability to register are interrupted. You're ejected from the arena immediately. And unpleasantly." "And one more thing," Igi added. "After the arena, you return to the same place you registered from. No free teleportation. If you're in a room, you return to the room. If you're — despite what I just said — somewhere in the forest, you return to the forest. With everything that comes with it." Igi looked at Kaelen. "That's why I'm telling you — tavern. Room. Locked door. And then arena." Kaelen nodded.
"Summary. Arena — you cannot die, one HP and it's over. Physical location somewhere in the world — find it. System registration — from a safe place, costs points. Betting — forbidden, don't even think about it. Ranking — watch, learn, but don't obsess over numbers." The chalk on the board behind him was writing: ARENA — 1 HP = DEFEAT, NOT DEATH PHYSICALLY: CHEAPER, VENDORS, TAVERN SYSTEM: FROM SAFE PLACE, MORE EXPENSIVE HP ATTACK = INTERRUPTION BETTING = FORBIDDEN RANKING = WATCH, DON'T OBSESS "Kaelen — this afternoon. Your room, locked door, system registration. First match. I want to know how you hold up against someone you don't know." Kaelen stood. The axe on his back clanked. "Ready."
Battleground Arena — First Blood
BATTLEGROUND ARENA
Kaelen locked the door to his room. Checked it twice. Then sat on the bed, closed his eyes, and opened the system window.
Battleground Arena — Matchmaking.
The notification appeared instantly. Gold text on a dark background, pulsing with that quiet hum the system always made when it wanted your attention.
[BATTLEGROUND ARENA]
Searching for opponent... Match found.
Arena type: 1v1 + Companion
Preparing battlefield...
The world shifted. It wasn't teleportation — not exactly. More like the room dissolved around him and something else grew in its place. Sand beneath his boots. Air that tasted of dust and iron. A circular arena —
larger than the Elysium training ground, with high stone walls and empty bleachers stretching toward a sky that wasn't quite real. The Battleground Arena didn't exist in any physical place. It existed in the system — a space between spaces, built for one purpose.
Fighting.
Kaelen stood on one side. Opposite him — forty meters of open sand between them — stood his opponent.
THE ARCHER
The man was lean. Not thin — lean the way a bowstring is lean. Every unnecessary ounce stripped away, leaving only muscle, tendon, and intent. He wore leather armor — dark brown, tooled with patterns Kaelen didn't recognize. Light. Flexible. Built for movement, not for taking hits. On his back, a quiver bristling with arrows. In his hands, a longbow — already strung, already nocked, the arrow resting against his fingers like it belonged there. And beside him — a beast.
A white tiger. Massive. Shoulder height nearly to the archer's chest. Its fur was the color of fresh snow streaked with pale grey stripes, and its eyes — ice blue, intelligent, predatory — watched Kaelen with the patient focus of a creature that had killed before and would kill again. A companion. Not a pet — a partner. The way it stood beside the archer, matching his stance, told Kaelen everything he needed to know.
Two enemies. Not one.
Kaelen reached behind his back and gripped the handle of his weapon. Not the battle axe and shield — not today. Today he'd brought the two-handed axe. The big one. The one Igi had once called "compensation for a lack of subtlety." Heavy, brutal, with a double-edged blade that could cleave through armor like parchment. It was a weapon for ending things
quickly.
He lifted it to shoulder height. Adjusted his stance — feet wide, left foot forward, weight on the back leg. The classic half-orc fighting posture — coiled, heavy, ready to explode forward. No shield today. No defense. Just the axe and the body behind it.
He waited.
[BATTLEGROUND ARENA — COUNTDOWN]
The numbers appeared in the air between them. Golden, enormous, impossible to ignore.
10.
The archer's fingers tightened on the bowstring.
9.
The tiger lowered its head. Muscles coiling beneath white fur.
8. Kaelen breathed. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. The axe was steady.
7. 6. 5.
The archer shifted his weight. Subtle — barely visible. But Kaelen saw it. The man was planning to move the instant the countdown hit zero. Not forward. Backward. He wanted distance.
Of course he does. He's a ranged fighter. Distance is his life.
4. 3.
The tiger's tail stopped swaying. Still now. A predator before the pounce.
2.
Kaelen exhaled one last time.
1.
ROUND ONE
The tiger moved first.
It launched from the archer's side like a white bolt of lightning — silent, impossibly fast for something that size, paws barely touching sand as it closed the distance. Forty meters became thirty. Thirty became twenty. Twenty became ten. Its jaws opened — teeth the size of daggers, a roar that shook the air in Kaelen's chest.
Kaelen didn't flinch. Didn't step back. Didn't raise the axe to defend.
He waited. One heartbeat. Two.
The tiger leaped.
And Kaelen swung. The two-handed axe traced a horizontal arc — not elegant, not fast, but devastating. The full weight of Kaelen's body — the half-orc's natural strength, the years of training, the raw fury of a warrior who lived for this moment — channeled through the blade. It caught the tiger mid-air. The impact was catastrophic. The beast's body folded around the axe like cloth around a fist, its trajectory reversed, and it hit the sand six meters away in a spray of dust and blood.
[COMBAT LOG]
Kaelen → White Tiger: Sweeping Strike
Damage: 99 (Critical Hit)
White Tiger HP: 1/100
Status: Near Death
One HP. The tiger done. Teleported out of fight.
The arrows were already in the air.
ICE AND POISON
The first arrow hit him in the left shoulder. Not a normal arrow — it detonated on impact. A burst of cold that spread through his arm, across his chest, down into his legs. Ice. The tip was enchanted with frost magic. Kaelen felt his muscles stiffen, his joints lock, his movements slow as if the air around him had turned to honey.
[COMBAT LOG]
Archer → Kaelen: Frost Arrow
Damage: 12
Status applied: SLOWED (movement speed -40%, duration 5s) Kaelen HP: 88/100
The second arrow followed immediately. This one struck his thigh — and with it came something worse. A burning that wasn't fire. A sickness that crawled through his veins like liquid rust. Poison. His HP bar began to tick down — not fast, but steadily, like a clock counting seconds he couldn't get back.
[COMBAT LOG]
Archer → Kaelen: Venom Arrow
Damage: 8
Status applied: POISONED (5 HP/s for 6s)
Kaelen HP: 80/100 (and falling)
Two arrows. Two status effects. And the archer was already nocking a third, his fingers moving with the mechanical precision of someone who had done this ten thousand times.
He's dismantling me.
Kaelen knew this type. He'd heard Igi lecture about it. Ranged fighters who didn't just deal damage — they controlled the battlefield. Slowed you. Poisoned you. Kited you across the arena while your HP bled away. Against a melee fighter without a gap-closer, they were nightmares.
But Kaelen had a gap-closer.
CHARGE
He activated the talent in the same breath he made the decision. No hesitation. No calculation. Pure instinct.
Charge. The ability surged through his legs like fire poured into iron. The slowness from the frost arrow shattered — not gone, but overridden. For two seconds, Kaelen's movement speed didn't just return to normal. It tripled. The sand exploded beneath his boots as he launched forward — not running, not sprinting, but charging, the way a battering ram charges a gate. Unstoppable. Linear. Brutal.
Thirty meters vanished in a heartbeat.
The archer's eyes widened. He was good — his reaction was immediate. He leaped backward, pivoting on his left foot, bow rising to fire at point-blank range. A reflex shot — no time to aim, no time to choose an enchanted arrow. Just an arrow, fast and desperate.
But Kaelen was already swinging.
The axe came down in a diagonal arc — shoulder to hip, the killing stroke, the move that ended fights. The archer twisted away. Fast. Impressively fast. The blade didn't catch him clean.
But it caught him.
The edge of the axe scraped across the archer's side — leather armor splitting, flesh beneath opening in a line of red. Not deep. Not fatal. But real.
[COMBAT LOG]
Kaelen → Archer: Cleave (glancing)
Damage: 48
Archer HP: 52/100
Half. The archer's HP dropped to just over half. One solid hit — one real hit, not a glancing blow — and it would be over.
But Charge was spent. Cooldown: thirty seconds. And the archer knew it.
THE BARRAGE
The archer didn't panic. Didn't run. He created distance — three quick steps backward, each one precise, each one calculated to stay outside the range of Kaelen's axe. And then the arrows came.
Not one. Not two. A barrage.
Arrow after arrow, fired in a rhythm that was almost musical — draw, release, draw, release, draw, release. Each one aimed at Kaelen's center mass. No enchantments this time. No frost, no poison. Just raw, physical damage, delivered at a rate that turned the air between them into a corridor of whistling death.
Kaelen did the only thing he could. He held the two-handed axe before him — flat side forward — and used it as a shield. The broad blade was wide enough to cover his torso if he angled it right. Arrows struck steel and ricocheted — sparks in the dust-filled air, shafts snapping, heads biting into the axe's surface and sticking there like angry insects.
Not all of them missed. One slipped past and buried itself in his forearm. Another grazed his neck. A third punched through the gap between his shoulder plates and sank into muscle.
[COMBAT LOG]
Archer → Kaelen: Rapid Fire (8 arrows)
Deflected: 5 | Hit: 3
Total damage: 21
Poison tick: -15 (3 remaining ticks)
Kaelen HP: 32/100 Thirty-two HP. The poison was still eating at him. The frost debuff had worn off, but the damage was done — he'd lost time, lost positioning, lost initiative. And Charge still had fifteen seconds on cooldown.
Kaelen gritted his teeth and waited. Axe up. Arrows bouncing off steel. Eyes locked on the archer through the narrow gap between blade and handle.
Fifteen seconds. Just fifteen seconds and I'll end this.
The seconds crawled.
THE TRAP
Charge came off cooldown. Kaelen felt it — the warmth in his calves, the readiness in the talent, that quiet pulse of the system telling him:
available.
He didn't hesitate. Same play. Same instinct. The talent activated and his body launched forward — sand exploding, axe cocked back, eyes locked on the archer who stood twenty-five meters away with another arrow already nocked.
But this time the archer was ready.
He didn't dodge. Didn't shoot. He smiled.
Kaelen's left foot hit something in the sand. Something that wasn't sand. A rune flared beneath his boot — bright, angry orange, pulsing with magic he didn't recognize until it was too late.
[COMBAT LOG]
Kaelen triggered: Hunter's Snare
Status applied: ROOTED (immobilized for 3s)
Charge: INTERRUPTED His legs locked. Not slowed — locked. Completely, absolutely, immovably frozen in place. The rune wrapped around his ankles like invisible chains, binding him to the spot mid-stride. His momentum died. The axe, cocked back for a devastating swing, hung uselessly in the air.
He couldn't move.
And the archer was already firing.
Chapter 6
— ✦ —
The first arrow hit his chest. The second his stomach. The third his shoulder — the same shoulder the frost arrow had struck earlier, the joint already weakened, already burning. The pain was extraordinary — real, visceral, the arena's cruelest feature. No death, but all the agony that preceded it.
Kaelen roared. Not in surrender — in rage. His arms still worked. He swung the axe at nothing, at the air, at the arrows that kept coming. The flat of the blade caught one. Two. But three more slipped through.
[COMBAT LOG]
Archer → Kaelen: Arrow x6
Deflected: 2 | Hit: 4
Total damage: 31
Kaelen HP: 1/100
One HP.
[BATTLEGROUND ARENA — RESULT]
Player Kaelen was defeated by Player Sorin.
Kaelen HP: 1/100 | Sorin HP: 52/100
Companion (White Tiger) HP: 1/100
Result: DEFEAT
Rating change: -12
THE ROOM
Kaelen opened his eyes.
He was sitting on the bed. The same bed. The same room. The same locked door. As if nothing had happened — no sand, no blood, no arrows, no pain. The system had returned him exactly where he'd registered. Without wounds. Without scratches.
Just with a lesson.
He sat there for a long time. His hands — whole, unbroken, not a single mark on them — were clenched into fists so tight his knuckles had turned from green to white. The axe leaned against the wall beside the bed, clean and unmarked, as if it had never tasted blood or bounced arrows off its face.
The anger was not hot. It was cold. The kind of anger that didn't scream or break things. The kind that sat in the chest like a stone and stayed there, heavy and patient, until you did something about it.
He baited me. Twice.
The first Charge had worked because the archer hadn't expected it. The second had failed because he had. And between those two moments — between surprise and preparation — lay everything Kaelen needed to learn.
I'm predictable. ■■ervená said it. Igi said it. And now a stranger with a bow and a cat said it louder than both of them. He opened the system window. His stats glowed in the dim room. HP: full. Mana: full. Status effects: none. As if the fight had never happened. But it had. The memory of frost crawling through his veins, of poison eating his strength, of roots locking his legs while arrows punched through his armor — that was real. The arena took back the wounds but left the experience.
And the experience said: you are not good enough. Not yet.
Kaelen closed the system window. Stood up. Picked up the axe.
He didn't go back to the arena. Not tonight. Tonight was for thinking. For replaying every second of that fight in his head and finding the moments where a different choice would have led to a different outcome. The tiger — one-shot, good. The Charge — effective the first time, suicidal the second. The trap — he should have seen it. Should have
watched the sand. Should have known a hunter who fights with a beast companion would have tools for exactly this situation.
Next time.
He sat back on the bed. The axe across his knees. The stone of anger still in his chest, but now it had a shape. A direction. A purpose.
Next time I won't use the same move twice. Next time I'll watch the ground. Next time I'll close the distance before he has time to set traps. Next time I'll kill the tiger and the archer in the same breath.
He didn't say any of this aloud. He didn't need to. The words lived in his jaw, in his fists, in the way he gripped the axe handle until the leather wrapping creaked.
Somewhere in the system, his Battleground Arena rating had dropped twelve points. A number. A small, meaningless number that would mean nothing a month from now.
But right now, sitting in a locked room in the dark, it meant everything. Kaelen closed his eyes.
Tomorrow he would train. The day after, he would train more. And when he entered the arena again — whether against this archer or another — the result would be different.
He swore it.
Guild Wars Day
10:00.
The heavy doors of the castle closed behind them with a sound like a tomb sealing.
Kaelen stood at the window and looked down at the city. From the castle — the tallest building in the center of Elysium — the entire island was visible. The training ground. The forest. The main road leading to the gate. And beyond the gate — a meadow, wide and green, stretching toward the dense forest that surrounded everything.
Peter leaned against the wall with his arms crossed. Diana sat on a stone bench, frost flickering absently on her fingertips. Hazela stood motionless by the opposite window, elven ears tilted forward, listening for something nobody else could hear. Jana sat on the floor with her tail curled around her legs, stroking it slowly. Arwen pressed herself against Hazela's side, small and silent.
Six people. Locked in a castle. Waiting.
Igi had brought them here himself. Led them up the stairs, through the iron-banded doors, into the great hall on the upper floor. Then he'd turned to face them — staff in hand, hood deep, that unreadable expression that could mean anything from amusement to murder.
"You will wait here," he said. "The fight begins at twelve hundred. By thirteen hundred, it will be over."
Jana stepped forward. Her voice was steady, but her ears betrayed her — pressed slightly back, the way they always did when she was worried.
"Sir — don't you need our help?"
Igi looked at her. For a moment — just a moment — something softened behind that hood. Not much. Just enough.
"No. Thank you," he said. "If it depended on your help, we'd have already lost. And I don't intend to risk your lives."
He paused. Then added, with a smile they barely saw:
"At least not this much." The doors closed. The collars around their necks pulsed once — a gentle reminder. Don't leave. Don't do anything stupid. Wait.
Peter immediately tried the door. Locked. He tried the window. Too high to jump. He looked at the others and shrugged.
"So. Anyone bring cards?"
THE GATE
11:30.
The city gate of Elysium was not grand. It was functional — thick oak planks reinforced with iron bands, wide enough for a cart, tall enough for a mounted rider. Four meters. Closed.
On either side of the gate stood two statues carved from grey stone. Identical. Each stood as tall as the gate itself — four meters of sculpted warrior, broad-shouldered, expressionless. In one hand, each held a shield — large, round, battered as if it had seen a hundred battles carved into its surface. In the other hand, a sword — the blade pointed downward, its tip resting on the ground. The weapons were stone too. Everything was stone. Silent sentinels that had stood there since the day Elysium was built.
They were not golems. Not yet. But the runes carved into their backs — hidden, subtle, visible only if you knew where to look — told a different story. They were waiting. As everything in Elysium waited.
Before the gate, on the road, stood a single figure.
An old man. Grey robe that fell to his ankles, the hood pulled deep over his face so that only the chin was visible — pale, lined, unremarkable. In his right hand, a wooden staff — worn smooth from years of use, unadorned, without gems or runes or any visible enchantment. He could have been a beggar. A wandering hermit. A nobody. Before him stretched the meadow. Wide, flat, covered in grass that swayed gently in the midday breeze. Beyond the meadow — the forest. Dense, dark, ancient. The kind of forest that looked back when you looked into it.
The sun hung directly overhead. Noon was approaching. The light fell straight down on the old man, and his shadow — stretched behind him toward the gate — was unnaturally black. Not dark. Black. As if something lived in it. As if the shadow had more substance than the man who cast it.
Igi stood and waited. He didn't fidget. Didn't adjust his robe or tap his staff or look at the system clock. He just stood, still as the stone statues behind him, watching the meadow.
He had done this before. Not here — elsewhere, in another life, in another guild. But the feeling was the same. The quiet before the storm.
The moment when everything was in place and the only thing left was the enemy.
11:45.
The wind shifted. It came from the forest now — carrying the scent of pine, of damp earth, of something older. The grass on the meadow bent toward the city as if bowing.
11:50.
Nothing.
11:55.
They came.
THE SYNDICATE Five figures materialized on the meadow. Not a gentle fade-in — a hard teleportation, the kind the system provided for Guild Wars. One moment the meadow was empty. The next, five bodies stood in a loose formation a hundred meters from the gate.
Classic party composition. Igi saw it immediately — the way a chef sees ingredients, the way a general sees a battlefield.
The tank stood in front. Massive. Not as large as Kaelen — few were — but close. Full plate armor, heavy shield, one-handed mace. The armor was good. Not great, but good. Scratched, dented, used. A fighter who had been in real battles, not just arena matches.
Behind and to the left — the healer. Robes of white and gold, staff with a crystal at the tip that pulsed with soft light. Female. Young. Eyes
already scanning, already assessing. She was the smart one. Igi could tell by the way she positioned herself — behind cover, with sightlines to all four of her teammates.
To the right — the mage. Male, mid-twenties, dark robes, hands already glowing with prepared spells. Fire, from the color. A fire mage against a guild built on a forest island. Someone had done their homework. Or thought they had.
Flanking wide on the left — the rogue. Female. Light leather, two curved daggers, a hood that did nothing to hide the predatory grin beneath it. She moved constantly — weight shifting, eyes darting, fingers drumming on the daggers' pommels. Restless. Eager.
And in the back — the archer. Longbow, quiver full, positioned to see everything and be reached by nothing. The classic backline. The last to die and the first to deal damage.
Five. The Syndicate. A guild Igi had researched the moment the challenge was accepted. Mid-tier. Aggressive. Known for fast attacks and faster looting. They'd won eleven Guild Wars out of fourteen. Good record. Not great. Not against what waited for them here. The tank squinted at the gate. At the statues. At the single figure standing before it all.
"That's it?" He had a deep voice. The kind of voice that came from a chest built for shouting. "One old man?"
Igi didn't raise his hood. Didn't move. When he spoke, his voice was quiet — but it carried across the meadow as if the wind itself was helping.
"Good day to you. Welcome to Elysium. My name is Igi. Not pleased to meet you."
The tank barked a laugh. The rogue smirked. The mage exchanged a glance with the healer.
Igi continued, conversational, unhurried, as if they had all the time in the world. "I see there aren't that many of you. So you must be the best."
The tank took a step forward. "Shut your mouth, old man. You're going to die anyway. Alone? Where are the others hiding?" He looked left, right, at the walls, at the gate. "Oh — let me guess. They wanted to finish lunch first? Was it good? Did it taste nice?"
Igi didn't answer.
He didn't need to.
Because from the left — from beyond the treeline, from somewhere in the forest that had been silent and still until this moment — came a sound. Not a roar. Not yet. Something deeper. A vibration that traveled through the ground, through the bones, through the teeth. The sound a mountain makes before it falls.
And from the sky — from the left, banking low over the treetops, wings spread wide enough to cast a shadow that swallowed the entire meadow — landed a dragon.
Red. Red hit the ground like a meteor. The impact shook the earth. Grass beneath her claws withered, browned, and burst into flame. The air around her body shimmered with heat — visible, tangible, oppressive. Temperature rose ten degrees in a heartbeat. Twenty. The meadow grass in a ten-meter radius turned to ash. The ground cracked. The air bent.
She was enormous. In full dragon form — not the human shape they knew from the classroom, not the woman with lava plates and a burning sword. This was the real Red. Scales the color of molten iron, each one the size of a man's chest. Wings that blocked the sun. Eyes like twin furnaces — orange, ancient, burning with intelligence that had nothing human in it.
And from the right — from the opposite side of the meadow, from the frozen silence of the northern forest — came another.
White.
White descended like winter itself. Where Red burned, White froze. The ground beneath her crystallized — grass turning to glass, soil to permafrost, moisture in the air condensing into a fine mist of ice crystals that hung suspended like frozen rain. Her scales were the white of fresh snow, iridescent with shades of blue and silver. Her wings were translucent — like sheets of ice stretched over bone, filtering the sunlight into cold, pale beams.
She landed opposite Red. Between them — the five members of The Syndicate. Behind the dragons — the gate, the statues, and the old man.
The meadow now existed in two worlds. To the left — summer turned to hell. Red's heat baked the earth, turned the air into a furnace, made breathing itself an act of endurance. To the right — winter arrived in an instant. White's cold seeped through armor, through skin, through bone. The boundary between heat and cold — the exact line where fire met ice — ran directly through the center of the meadow. Through the center of the five invaders.
The tank swallowed. It was a small thing. A single contraction of the throat. But it told Igi everything. The man had fought dragons before. Maybe even killed one — it was possible, at his level, with a full party, with preparation. But he'd never stood between two. He'd never felt fire cooking his left side while frost ate his right. He'd never seen two apex predators land on either side of him and look at him with the shared understanding that he was not a threat.
He was a meal.
The healer had gone pale. The mage's fire spells flickered — his concentration shattered by the proximity of Red, whose dragon fire made his magic look like a child's candle. The archer had an arrow nocked, but his hands were shaking. Only the rogue seemed unaffected — still
grinning, still restless, still drumming her fingers on those daggers. Either brave or stupid. Possibly both.
Igi spoke again. Same quiet voice. Same calm.
"Ladies and gentlemen. Last chance. Surrender. Drop everything you're wearing. I'll create a nice portal for you, and you never show your faces here again."
Silence. The tank was calculating. The healer was whispering something — a prayer or a buff, hard to tell. The mage was sweating.
The rogue spoke.
"Oh, come on." She stepped forward, daggers spinning in her hands, that grin widening into something that was almost admiration. "Dragon meat. Why not? It's been a while since I had a challenge."
Igi looked at her. For a moment — just a moment — he almost liked her. Stupid courage was still courage.
"Very well," he said. "You've been warned."
He raised his staff. Once. The system responded.
[GUILD WARS — ELYSIUM vs. THE SYNDICATE]
Battle commencing in: 30 seconds.
"Thirty," Igi said.
The tank drew his mace. The healer activated a barrier — golden light spreading over the five like a dome. The mage's hands erupted in flame. The archer drew his bowstring. The rogue vanished — or tried to. Black wasn't here, but the shadows on this island had their own opinions about uninvited rogues.
"Twenty."
The tank pointed his mace at Igi. "When this is over, old man, I'm going to use your staff as a toothpick."
"Ten."
"And your robe as a dish rag."
"Five."
Igi lowered his staff. He didn't speak again. He didn't need to. The countdown was running, the insults were meaningless, and the outcome — well.
The outcome had been decided the moment they'd accepted the challenge.
He simply whispered, so quietly that only the system heard: