"Formation two!" one of the opposing tamers shouted.
They rotated. Quick, efficient. A massive rock-armored beast rotated to the center while three illusion-type contracts (resembling a butterfly, purple seahorse, and white cat) belonging to an opponent with eerily kaleidoscope eyes, repositioned to confuse the front lines. Mist thickened. And identical doubles of each opponent formed, making it difficult to track the correct targets.
The multicoloured eyes of the opposing beast-tamer with the obvious illusion-affinity lit up as he clearly activated a gift.
A burst of warped light shimmered across the battlefield, and the illusions began to replicate—each false copy splitting once and then again. In mere moments, every remaining spiritual creature from Obsidian Moon Valley had 4 identical copies of itself on the field.
Twelve contracts had survived the opening clash and avoided the embarrassing fate of being sec-killed by Dark Moon College. With their numbers quadrupled, there were now forty-eight opposing bodies on the field.
Kairos’ floating sword zipped forward and stabbed one of the mirror images clean through the chest. It vanished in a puff of light and reappeared in the same spot, but didn’t retaliate.
"Hmmm," Kain muttered. "No combat abilities themselves. It’s like a far downgraded version of Prismarin’s ability."
But that didn’t mean it was ineffective.
For a lower-ranked college, this was an extremely impressive gift to have, and likely this student was cherished by Obsidian Valley. Each duplicate could move and even mimic simple gestures. It would’ve easily overwhelmed less coordinated teams.
Unfortunately, such an impressive ability was useless against Dark Moon College.
Inside the minds of every Dark Moon beast tamer, a microscopic split of Bea formed. The Pale Thought Field had unfurled and enveloped everyone on the field.
But Bea’s initial focus wasn’t on taking control of the enemies, but on entering the minds of her allies.
It wasn’t invasive—well, not terribly—but it was noticeable. Bea’s microscopic splits reached out and connected with the mental signatures of every ally like a mental walkie-talkie.
Kain. Serena. Soren. Kairos. Dwayne. And their contracts.
None resisted. They’d been through this dozens of times during training. The initial repulsion to the infiltration had long since faded.
Now it was just a soft connection. A shared awareness. Tactical clarity.
’Link stable,’ Bea’s mental voice whispered into Kain’s thoughts. ’Starting cleanup.’
And just like that, the match began to collapse.
Each illusionary copy—no matter how perfect—was just that. An illusion. And illusions didn’t have minds. No mind. No mental defences. No mental signature.
To Bea, they may as well not exist.
She marked them. The real ones. And then instantly transmitted their locations to her allies’ minds.
Kain didn’t have to speak. No one did. They all just moved.
Soren’s Wind Dragon peeled left and struck at a duplicate. It passed through without resistance. Then the dragon’s tail whipped sideways and crushed the real body standing one pace behind it.
On the right flank, Serena’s Starweaver flickered once, then blinked to the top of the arena wall. From there, it launched a beam of starlight at one of the illusion tamer’s real contracts—the seahorse. The seahorse screeched and collapsed to the ground as it failed to even slightly resist the unexpected attack.
Kairos’ cursed sword vibrated with glee and flew through three more doubles before bisecting the real butterfly that had been hiding near the back.
Dwayne’s Siren sang one sustained note, and the Leviathan released a targeted stream of water pressure at the final real illusion-type creature—the white cat. It was crushed against the arena wall before it had a chance to even process the exposure of its real body.
Meanwhile, Bea was getting busy.
With the illusions pretty much useless and the battlefield mentally mapped, she turned her attention to the real minds.
Weak ones. Flimsy ones. Several were practically begging for infiltration.
She didn’t implant full splits—not worth the effort when they’ll probably win the match in less than a minute. Instead, she focused on producing contaminated thought particles using the skill Neural Seepage. Large amounts of the particles will cloud judgment for a brief period in those with no defences.
One Obsidian tamer tried to give an order and forgot what it was halfway through. Another shouted the wrong command to the wrong contract. A third simply stood still, blinking slowly, trying to figure out why her contract had just curled into a ball and refused to move.
’They’re mentally compromised,’ Bea reported calmly to the group. ’All non-illusion targets are open.’
And with that, Dark Moon surged.
Soren’s dragons became a storm. The Amethyst Dragon crackled through the center, a living lightning bolt that tore a six-meter trench through three enemy lines. The Wind Dragon whipped up a miniature cyclone, flinging enemy contracts into the air and leaving them open for follow-up strikes.
Serena’s Elemental Guardian, the fusion finally having worn off, shifted fully into its wind-attribute state, dissolved into a gale and reformed behind the enemy’s main defensive contract, which resembled a large bear made of metal. Its conjured wind blades sliced through three defensively weaker contracts before any of the Obsidian tamers realized what had happened.
Dwayne’s Leviathan wrapped its large serpentine around the confused metal bear that had just been bypassed and constricted it into unconsciousness, while his Noxious Cloudling spread a curtain of poison mist that forced several enemy tamers to recall their heavily injured spiritual creatures entirely.
Kairos’ cursed sword disarmed three more with surgical strikes, while the cursed book lobbed a black ’bomb’ into the densest cluster of remaining enemies—it didn’t heavily injure any of them, but it did disrupt their formation.
He didn’t move. He didn’t have to.
He simply stood there like a goddamned monument while Bea mentally carpet-bombed what was left.
Not because the referee declared it—though that happened five seconds later—but because everyone in the audience could see it clearly.
Obsidian Moon Valley had come prepared. But not for this. If anything, for a college of their ranking, they’d put up a decent fight...but it was far from enough.
As the illusion Gift finally deactivated and the mist faded, there were only two severely injured contracts still not recalled to their owners’ star spaces on the opposite side—and both were visibly trembling and barely standing. The opponents voiced their forfeiture.
"Dark Moon College wins the five-on-five!" the announcer cried, almost breathless.
The crowd roared. The Obsidian tamers slunk off. And Dark Moon College walked off the stage like they owned the arena.
Because, for now, they did.