The Draw Bubble.
It was one of the items that Guissepo had mentioned when he introduced the rules of the Royale. As all in this area had just noticed, it truly was a harmless little thing, however, its effect, in this context was beyond fatal, because it drew contenders together, seemingly over a vast range given the current number of them gathered around here.
Suddenly, it all became clear what the other items the Game Master had spoken of were; the Scatter Crystals, Revival Stars, and such. Each had effects that could prove useful, but for some, the effect propounded depended solely on the user.
The one who had been holding the Draw Bubble which had now faded after accomplishing its task wore a grin, and scanned across the other contenders. He had already counted how many they were just now, and was keeping tabs on them all, especially the Mage who stood calmly with his hands hidden behind the large sleeves of his robes.
"Hahaaa! This is too damn sweet! Hacking all of you to bits will get me 11,000 added Units! How fantastic is that?!" the short man said as he pulled from a scabbard at the back of his waist, a black sceptre with a floating coarse cube at its head end.
Everyone grew tense as the man spoke, readying himself to kill everyone as an amber neon glow started to boil around him.
The man grinned nastily, figuring in his mind, that he was intimidating to everyone else except the Mage.
"Here I com—"
But he stopped.
His constant attention to every one of his opponents' location, stopped at a vacant spot where a young man with an edgy outfit had stood a fraction of a millisecond ago.
It wasn't just him who noticed this.
Tallo looked up, and then everyone did.
A hole had appeared in the mass of clouds roughly ten meters above, and it was painfully clear that whoever was missing among them had shot up into the sky for some reason.
Not even a moment later, the livid mana bustling around them in this ritualistic settling... suddenly vanished.
No. To the lacking contender, it seemed like the mana had suddenly grown thin to the point of non-existence, but Tallo deduced what truly happened instantly. The mana had been sucked up to where the figure that was among them had flown up with such brisk, and masterful technique that he was almost made to applaud.
Then, fractions of a moment later, Tallo smirked before his figure turned into a mash of colour that got out of the way hurriedly.
The story wasn't the same for everyone else.
They only realised how dangerous the situation had gotten, when an invisible, overbearing mass had bashed against them from the cloudy heavens, forcing them to grunt, and hunch over.
But that wasn't all.
That wasn't the thick of it.
It was just a prelude.
A foreplay to the devastation that came a split of a moment later, before most could react... before most could even register that the figure that they thought was far beyond in the clouds had just shot down like a living torpedo of infinite mass among them, disregarding the sanctity of this place... and disregarding their lives.
A few died before they even knew how.
A bombastic weight of 155,000 tonnes, powered by the heavy dose of ambient mana that had been stolen fragments of time before, and a harsh force of gravity that bore down at breakneck speed over a wide radius with the descent of a mad Luman crashed down.
The auditory impact of the mess that cascaded outwards was left in the dust by the erasure of the proud stone pillars, the decimation of the hallowed ground, and the fierce arc of controlled mana that made its way in all directions with razor sharp cutting intent!
The explosion of the calamity only came after a ginormous dust mushroom had risen heights upon heights into the dark sky, sinking into the clouds, the pillars that were a bit of a distance from the ninety meter wide chasm that was forged by the disaster, leaning back with chips of damage on them, and their hollows.
The large, oval shaped crystal in the middle was nowhere to be seen, as were the offerings around it.
If there were legends to be written of its collapse, they would tell the tale of how it had been erased without a trace of it left behind, in its place, a wide, dark depth where chunks of crust fell into.
A dull silence ensued.
After a few seconds, agonised gasps were heard.
A slender woman who had the right side of her body shredded into a red fleshy, mangled sludge, with sprinkles of her off-white coloured bones sticking from it, pulled herself across the torn ground. Half her head was barely connected to the other, and saliva mixed in with blood poured pitifully from her ripped mouth as she crawled within the dust-covered field.
Above her head, the spinning, ethereal square animatedly shattered, and reformed, on top of it the number of Glass Units she had changing to '100'.
It seemed the attack that had left her in this state counted as more than one lethal hit, leaving her at a tenth of her original Units.
But not for long.
A heavy foot smashed into the back of her head, popping it like a melon.
Skullius, with a cold, pale face, dark rings under his eyes, scraped the bloody remains under his boots against the dry ground, and moved through the barely visible environment.
Above his head, was the number '4,800'.
Four kills, including this woman, had netted him 4,000 Glass Units. After all, if a contender died, all their Units would be transferred to their killer, if they were also a contender.
Skullius didn't seem to care for that though. He drew Demion's Dance from its sheath, and reverse handled it.
His figure darted with certainty through the flying dust, heading towards one direction in a breath.
A thick-faced man with a quiver behind his back, and a large bow was hiding behind one of the distant pillars, his heart beating like a drum.
'What- what the hell was that?! If I hadn't drawn myself away at the last second, I would have been dead! Is anyone else still even alive? Am I the only one left?!' he wondered in horror as he gulped down a mouthful of saliva, though the salty taste hinted at the fact that he was perspiring so hard he had sucked in some sweat too.
'Come on! I knew the risks! It's just dumb luck that I landed upon a monster first! What do I do?! Ah! I could use that arrow to haul myself far away from here, right?! All I need is an opening!'
The man shakily peeked from behind the pillar while focusing his unsteady senses to try, and discern if there was anyone else who was still alive.
There was nothing he could sense.
Was he truly alone? Or was everyone else left good at hiding their presence?
As he planted himself against the pillar again, feeling a bit more hopeful, he found a silhouette in front of him that wasn't there before he decided to take a peek behind just now.
At first, he was alarmed, and hurried to nock an arrow on his bow, but then he realised...
This figure was walking away from him, his back turned.
What?
Why?
What was... going... on?
The thick-faced man suddenly felt his thoughts get displaced and jumbled.
Weird.
His body felt of numerous ringly stings, and then it slid off into nineteen slices of archer that plopped to the ground... along with thirty slices of the pillar he had been hiding behind.
Skullius' figure dissipated into the dust again, but a figure came rushing towards him at an astonishing speed, a neon glow around it that boosted its physicality.
Yet, none of it could stop the Insurgent Magnus.
Before this random figure could reach within Skullius' range, they found themselves being pulled by the hair roughly. Their target had somehow swept past them, drawing them in the opposite direction.
A green blade slid to lightly touch the throat of the figure who immediately stopped squirming, a dark, horrified look on their face. Their eyes darted to Skullius' face, and they were nearly turned to stone, petrified by the rigid, and uncanny coldness on it.
Skullius stopped.
[Primal Caution] sprung a warning this time, and not a moment later, a large, spiked glow of white appeared before him. It was a tightly condensed ball of mana, rigged to shatter outward as soon as it appeared!
It wasn't the only one that Skullius sensed in the brief moment he had to process things.
The one who had created these was extremely capable.
Dismantling this would take too long, and even activating [Destined Warp Steps] was likely just as inefficient, as Skullius wouldn't be able to escape completely, much to his own surprise.
Thus, he just stood there.
BOOOOM!
Simultaneously, loud bursts of explosions swept in different directions, clearing the heavy dust around, but not without doing damage of their own to the ground... and to their targets.
While not nearly as destructive as what Skullius had done – harnessing the full might of the WEIGHT property of his mana, and the Gravitation property of his mana core – the force of the blows came quicker, meaning defending oneself fast enough was extremely difficult. Possibly impossible.
The results showed themselves when everything seemed to clear.
It seemed only five figures remained on this presumably hallowed ground.
One was a tall man with a single braid of blonde hair trekking across the centre of his head. He wore a white cloak that had its sleeve burnt, and smoking, the hand under it having a charred, dark skin tone that spoke to the efficiency of the attack just now. A dull neon glow was surrounding him though, as he had learned his lesson.
The other, was the man who had used the Draw Bubble.
He had been wearing a heavy, diamond scale armour, but now, his torso was bare with a few bloody marks on it – he was tearing the remains of the armour which had borne severe damage. A Unique grade item wouldn't have stood a chance. He held his black sceptre firmly in his hand, and looked around with a rough glare.
Different from the two, Maxim stood confidently.
One of her hands was over her hip, while the other was flirting with a thin, glass-like rectangular object that depicted at its centre a large, spiky glow of mana, the same thing that had blown up in everyone's face just now.
She had turned it flat, and rendered it useless, the annoyed look on her face showing that she felt insulted.
Last, stood Skullius.
He too was completely unharmed, but the random figure he had been holding was barely discernible on the ground beside him, having taken the full brunt of the exploding mana attack.
A thin film of blue was layered around him. It had always been around him from when he had dropped down like an emissary of the divines, and began slaughtering the other contenders one by one, but they all couldn't see it.
"I'm glad you all survived," Tallo called, causing everyone to turn to him. No, rather look up to him as he stood atop one of the pillars, looking down at the four.
"Arma Users, Form Users... I've always wondered if your existence is necessary at all. Are you even able to push an accomplished Energy Former to the mildest brink? To cause a rush in their blood that awakens something profound? Something deeper, and primal?" he asked sincerely.
The four looked at him with thinly veiled rage, their bodies blazing with taunted might.
Tallo's nut brown eyes shimmered, a pitiful look on his face that barely matched what he said next appearing.
"Please... please make my wasted time here worth while."
Updat𝒆d fr𝒐m freew𝒆bnov𝒆l.c(o)m