Chapter 58: Empty Throne
Leon’s team had moved before the scoreboard reached 00:00:07.
Three other first-years, each with their own beast, spread outward from the throne in a formation that looked less like protection and more like terrain. They didn’t ask where to go. They moved as the question had already been answered somewhere earlier.
The student with the Stone Tortoise positioned between Leon and the two largest open approaches without instruction. His beast didn’t need a command because his body language had already made the point. Stone rose in a section wall, placed with rehearsed efficiency.
The student with the Marsh Serpent circled the perimeter in a wider arc, and the ground where her beast moved changed texture in exactly the way that mattered when someone was sprinting toward a target.
The student with the Wind Falcon had gone furthest, climbing a broken pillar to the highest position, his beast already banking wide to scout the entire approach.
Leon looked at the battlefield from his throne.
"Wall," he said.
The stone wall had already started, and it cut off the tamers coming from the sides. The east approach closed.
"Mud."
The ground began to turn damp, making it hard to run through and forcing some students to jump. But this left them more open as a gust of wind struck them, sending them flying. The team around Leon was all responding to his command without hesitation.
Leon watched this and laughed.
Arthur, standing still with his team at the edge of the action, was also smiling. "No wonder they spent the entire month in the area."
"They were working on their teamwork and trust." Athena nodded.
"But to think it reached this level so fast..." Sun muttered in disbelief.
"But it isn’t just them." Mithra glanced over to Amanda’s team. "
"They’re amazing as well." Arthur nodded as his gaze shifted to Silver’s team, already moving into position. "And Silver’s team as well."
Sun stared at him. "Arthur."
"Yeah?"
"Could you stop complimenting everyone who’s trying to eliminate us?"
Arthur blinked. "...Should I?"
Sun sighed. "I’m beginning to think that’s why everyone looks stronger after talking to you."
"Nah, the reason is the opposite," Mithra said with a chuckle.
"Huh?"
...
The third-years had been watching. Not waiting the way the unprepared wait, but gathering information before using it. Amanda’s team, Silver’s team, and one other had positioned themselves separately, watching each other across the chaos of first and second-years attempting approaches the more experienced students had already evaluated and dismissed.
When they moved, they moved together.
Not sequentially. Together.
Amanda’s beast struck the stone wall from the north at the same moment Silver’s position attacked from the east, at the same moment the third team drove through the mud zone from the south, turning soft ground into a path instead of an obstacle. Mephistopheles reacted to all three at once, one more attack than even a Golden Dragon could fully cover.
The wall shattered.
The Dragon was pushed back.
Leon left the throne, not by choice but by physics.
The scoreboard registered it.
LEON: 00:00:37
Above the main timers, his individual score appeared: top five among all thirty teams.
Leon hit the ground, found his feet, and laughed. "Again," he said.
He looked at the throne, where a third-year now sat.
Amanda claimed it.
00:00:18
00:00:29
00:41
01:00
01:02
01:03
A spear struck her shoulder and sent her rolling across the ground.
The scoreboard was updated.
AMANDA: 01:03
Silver took the throne next.
00:00:05
00:00:22
00:00:37
00:00:50
00:00:52
An explosion sent him backward.
SILVER: 00:00:52
Another person took the throne. But then he was sent flying in a matter of seconds. The throne changed owners so quickly that some students hadn’t even finished celebrating before the scoreboard updated again.
Every second felt expensive.
...
Arthur quietly watched the numbers. "...Nobody is able to keep it for long."
Athena followed his gaze. "No."
"The throne belongs to no one right now."
Sun’s hand found Arthur’s arm before Arthur had visibly decided anything.
"Don’t," Sun said.
Arthur looked at him.
Sun pointed toward the spot where Leon had just been launched, where Amanda was now in a three-way fight with the other third-year teams. "That is where people significantly stronger than us are competing."
"We’re probably one of the weaker teams that qualified," Athena said, stating it like a plain fact.
"Running in there now means volunteering to be the distraction everyone takes out first," Sun said. "We’d spend our whole time getting knocked around and never hold the throne."
Arthur watched Leon already fighting his way back toward it.
He nodded. "Okay," he said.
Sun looked at him, mildly surprised it had worked.
"We watch," Arthur said.
...
Arthur watched the scoreboard.
Amanda: 00:00:58
Silver: 00:00:57
Leon: 00:00:37, climbing as he fought to reclaim it.
Another third-year who’d held it briefly: 00:00:41.
A second-year who’d caught a three-second window while two stronger teams were distracted: 00:00:03.
Arthur watched the pattern and waited for what the numbers were showing him. The first major holder had managed thirty-seven seconds. The next, twenty-two before being forced off. The one after that, eleven.
Then seven.
"It’s getting harder," Arthur said.
"The longer the challenge runs, the more information every team has," Athena said. "They know each other’s weaknesses now. They’re all better at taking the throne and worse at keeping it."
Arthur looked at the throne, occupied now by Amanda, with six teams closing from different angles.
"So the throne is worth less the longer someone’s been sitting on it," he said.
"Yes," Athena said.
"Which means the best time to take it is when everyone else is exhausted."
Athena adjusted her glasses. "Yes," she said.
...
The next several minutes were chaos, organized only in the sense that nothing about it was random.
Giant vines erupted from a beast on the eastern side and wrapped around two broken pillars, forming a barrier that also became a weapon once someone figured out how to swing from it.
Fire crossed the space between a broken stone staircase and a position held by a second-year team, and they scattered.
Three different beasts collided at once.
The explosion shattered the top half of a pillar.
The broken stone crashed into another fight.
That fight crashed into a third.
Suddenly nobody knew whose battle they were in anymore.
Ice formed on a bridge that had been a contested crossing point, and nobody crossed it after that. A pack of wolves burst from the smoke of someone else’s fire and moved through an empty corridor at speed.
Lightning.
A roar that shook stone.
Crystal barriers catching light beautifully for a moment before someone shattered them.
Kong, on Sun’s shoulder, watched everything with the focused expression of a small creature doing very serious analysis.
Arthur’s team traded observations.
"They’re all building toward the same six positions, and none of them have acknowledged that," Athena said.
"Three of the second-year teams have been waiting for the third-years to tire each other out," Sun said. "It’s actually smart."
"The teams with support beasts are managing their stamina," Mithra said. "They’re not going full output on anything."
"Everyone’s watching the scoreboard," Arthur said. "Not the throne. They’re tracking where they need to be relative to everyone else."
Arthur realized that was exactly what he’d been doing too. It felt like the right call.
He looked toward Amanda. Then Silver. Then another third-year.
"...They’re all amazing."
Sun sighed. "...Again?"
Arthur looked confused. "I’m observing."
"You’re admiring the competition."
"They earned it."
Sun rubbed his forehead. "I don’t know whether to admire you or worry about you."
...
The ground moved.
Not from a beast or a skill. The entire battlefield shifted, and the effect was immediate: everyone stopped.
Teams mid-attack stopped. Teams mid-retreat stopped. Even Leon, who’d just closed within striking distance of a second-year team protecting the throne, stopped.
Cracks spread across the arena floor, connecting into lines.
Steven’s voice arrived.
"Real battlefields," he said, "rarely stay the same."
The floor broke. The walls on three sides collapsed inward, and from beneath them came the sound, then the sight, of things that hadn’t been there before: stone beasts moving through the rubble, wolf packs pouring through the new openings, winged predators descending from above, smaller things tunneling up through the ground.
Not one kind. Every kind. And not a small number.
The monsters attacked every team present, because monsters didn’t care about compositions, scoreboard positions, or strategies that had worked for the last eight minutes.
One second-year laughed. "They’re only Bronze monsters."
His beast raised a crystal shield.
The nearest Stone Beast didn’t slow down. It walked straight through the shield.
The crystal shattered.
The student froze. "...What?"
The Stone Beast kept walking as nothing had happened. Nobody attacked immediately after that. For one brief moment, the entire battlefield hesitated, and then everything exploded into motion.
The wolf packs split into smaller groups, covering more ground faster than one pack could have. The winged predators didn’t just attack from above; they forced the entire vertical dimension of the fight into something everyone now had to account for.
Everything that had been organized became something else.
Two teams retreated immediately, pulling out of contested ground but also away from the throne. Three teams pivoted to fight monsters while trying to hold position. One team quickly realized the chaos created openings coordinated teams usually closed off, and started using the monster assault as cover to advance toward the throne from angles that would have cost them dearly thirty seconds earlier.
Leon laughed as the walls came down, then spun his spear once. "Now we’re talking."
The Stone Tortoise user sighed. "...He’s enjoying this."
"Far too much," the Wind Falcon girl agreed.
Mephistopheles roared. "This is what I’ve been waiting for."
He was already adapting.
"Mephistopheles, stop encouraging him!"
"And Leon! Didn’t we talk about not going crazy in times like these?!" the student with the stone tortoise shouted.
"No point trying to stop him when he’s like this," the girl with the Wind Falcon said, sighing.
The student beside the Marsh Serpent didn’t wait for another command. He shifted the wall slightly to close an opening that had just appeared.
Amanda had shifted from offense to something more sustainable, reading the new terrain like someone who’d handled unpredictable environments before. Silver and his team had pulled back into a defensible formation, not retreating, just refusing to commit to a position that was about to get harder to hold.
Every plan built across eight minutes was now just a starting assumption.
Arthur had been quiet.
The scoreboard above the teams read 5:30.
He smiled.
Sun noticed immediately. "Wait, don’t tell me you’re going to rush over there now?"
Arthur looked at him. "I have a plan."
Sun paused. "How dangerous is it?"
"It isn’t dangerous," Arthur said.
Sun exhaled. "Good."
Arthur considered. "Probably."
Sun’s exhale reversed itself. "You added that second part," He said with his lips twitching. "You added it deliberately."
"I was being accurate," Arthur said.
Mithra laughed. "What’s the plan, Arthur?"
Arthur looked at the battlefield. At the monsters moving through the space between teams. At the teams managing monsters while managing each other. At the scoreboard, where no one had held the throne longer than ten seconds since the floor broke.
At the throne, sitting empty, he gripped his spear.
Arthur smiled. "It’s time..." His eyes shone. "...we stop fighting on the battlefield."
Sun blinked. "...What?"
Athena frowned.
Mithra blinked.
Melo tilted her head.
Athy gave him a look.
Vedas simply smiled. "Victory is already ours then."
Arthur looked at him. "You don’t even know the plan."
Vedas nodded. "But I know you."
"Hahaha, I suppose that’s true." Arthur looked toward the monsters. "We’re going to make the battlefield fight for us."
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