Dark Magus Returns

The entire transformation of the area had only taken a few moments, and it all felt so strange. Not only were they seeing strange walls appear in front of them, disappear, and move about, but they also felt the very ground underneath their feet moving as well. They were being jumbled all over the area, to the point no one knew their position anymore.

They had no clue where they were, and when it eventually stopped, the walls were so high up, and the space so narrow between them that they could no longer see the crowd or anything around them. It was a first for the martial arts tournament; they had never seen anything like this before. It was clear that the Light Faction was pulling out all of the stops.

"Do you think the Light Faction are trying to show us how great their power is?" Gavin from the Moonshield Clan asked.

"It's hard to just outright say," Murkel replied. "The way they built this thing, and the strange small mirrors that are floating about, it feels like an artifact from another dimension, and a strong one at that."

"Usually, the factions tend to keep these things quiet, so we don't know their strength. Could you imagine what this item could do in the middle of warfare?"

This was Gavin's and every other member of the Dark Faction's worry. Changing the state of the field in the middle of a war, that was a powerful item.

And then the mirrors on top of that, being able to sneak in behind enemy lines and show what others were capable of. Thinking about it more and more, Murkel felt like he had made the right decision, to make the students go through what they had done. Otherwise, he had no doubt in his mind the Light Faction would have acted.

---

Beret found himself in the middle of two grey walls, with only two options: to turn around or go directly in front of him where he could see an option to turn left and right.

'I planned to win this one all by myself anyway; that Jake seemed useless from the first event anyway.'

Right then, part of the floor had opened up, and right in front of Beret, he could see a small Charging Rat. It was bigger than a rat, more like the size of a small dog but looked just like a rat apart from its beady, fully colored red eyes.

It turned around, and the moment it saw Beret, it made a run for it straight ahead.

"Haha, this is just my luck!" Beret shouted as he charged forward. He pushed off his feet which appeared weightless and was following the rat quickly. The mirror camera was closely following him from behind.

"It looks like the first person to run into one of the Charging Rats is from the Demonic Faction; can they make up for their last place position in the last event!" The announcer exclaimed.

Beret continued to catch up with the rat, and slowly he was making progress. At the turns, he was faster; he was so focused on the rat that he didn't even know how many turns he had taken, that was until he could see a dead end right up ahead.

"I've got you now!" Beret thought.

The rat continued to run toward the wall though, and when it reached the wall, it dug one foot after the other and started to run up the wall.

"Don't think that's going to stop me!" Beret then jumped from side to side of the wall, raising himself up.

He started to think why didn't he do this before; there was no need for him to go through the maze. At that point, he had seen the rat climb over and head back down.

Just as he was about to reach the top, right in front of his eyes, a wall slab appeared. A ceiling covering the top of the wall stayed in place, and he had crashed his head right against it, causing him to fall back down onto the ground.

"Oh so close!" The announcer said. "Unfortunately, this maze is designed to make it easier for the beasts and harder for the contestants."

"If contestants try to scale the walls, they will be stopped; if they try to destroy the walls, they will be rebuilt! However, the beasts are able to scale the walls freely with no trouble at all."

The crowd was enjoying the event more than they realized, and it was because of a few reasons. Due to the multiple screens in front of them, they could witness a top-down view, seeing when students were getting close to one another.

At the same time, they were able to witness the other students taking part in the event from anywhere they were sitting as the screens changed view based on what was the most action-packed for them.

And the crowd had witnessed something that made them break out in a large cheer because they had just seen the students Charlotte and Harmon meet up with each other.

"It looks like we were quite lucky, right," Charlotte said with a smile as she lifted up her hand, and the bracelet around her wrist was glowing.

"Right," Harmon replied, his hand was down, but his bracelet was glowing as well. "With the two of us, this whole thing should be easy, no matter who we run into."

Elsewhere in the maze, Mada had been split up from Ricktor; he had seen one of the rats and had attempted to chase it, but it was too fast for him to catch up with.

"I thought the maze would be to our advantage, but it's harder with it," Mada commented. "In the real world, we can use large range skills or set up traps.

"Is this event designed so we work with our partner? With two of us, I guess one person can trap, and the other can get ahead."

"I guess I should go looking for Ricktor and hope I don't run into anyone."

Mada started to run through the maze, just choosing random paths; there was no reasoning in his head, but he wasn't outright sprinting either to conserve his energy.

He continued to run but eventually slowed down his pace as he took a turn until he stopped staying still.

"Oh look at this, it looks like there is another meeting between two contestants, and this time, it's from the Dark Faction and the Demonic Faction."

Right in front of Mada's eyes, he knew who was in front of him straight away, and it was none other than Raze.

Standing there, he saw Raze just walking by; he continued to walk forward, step by step.

"Stop… don't get any closer, or I'll attack! I'm just looking for the rats!" Mada shouted.

The memories of Raze were flooding back into Mada's mind. Of what had happened during his time in the Dark Academy.

The amount of time he felt like his life was on edge, and the feeling right now, it was even thicker than before. Mada had once tried to kill Raze at night, and it had ended up with him in terrors.

As Raze got closer, Mada just stood there; he did nothing, and eventually, Raze walked right past him as if he didn't even exist.

The crowd watching everything was left with confusion; for the second time in this event, no action was taken by the enemy.