Exclamations and cheers rose without interruption from the Arena of Fire and Blood, soaring to the horizon. The air in the whole of Eichemalar seemed to be shaking.
An arcane master in charge of routine patrols walked out of a tunnel and looked at a scoreboard beside the field. This man wearing a silver-white mask on the left side of his face, apparently around the same age as Carter and the others, smiled faintly and mumbled to himself, "This year, all the teams from St. Lauren seem pretty good. Agate Academy is actually leading Hunter Academy three to one."
After talking to himself, this arcane master no longer looked at the field. He swept his eyes over the stands in front of him, looking for any potential suspicious person.
His body froze just then. A terrible aura hard to put into words suddenly got a hold of him.
All the stands around him, including the sky above the arena, everything seemed to have become incomparably pale in his eyes.
These cheers and acclaims arising nonstop from the stands also seemed to be separated from him by countless layers of space, as though they were infinitely remote.
"Hueff… Hueff…"
He heard his own strange breathing, but he couldn’t make any sound right now. What made him thoroughly chilled was, his arcane particles were also entirely frozen.
There was an icy aura that seemed to pervade his insides, nearing his heart, becoming in his perception an icy claw that clutched his heart.
"Reynolds, how many years has it been since we last saw each other… It’s the first time in so many years I set foot in the arena, I didn’t expect you to be the patrol I’d happen to come across. This must be fate, don’t you think?"
A faint voice came from behind this arcane master wearing a silver-white mask on one half of his face. The voice seemed to make the world around him even paler and more remote.
"Dias!"
Blood thoroughly froze in this instant for this arcane master called Reynolds. "How dare you actually come to Eichemalar!"
"That’s because I missed you people so much."
The voice sighed softly behind his back, "Reynolds, you were among the arcane masters who chased and tried to kill me back then. If not for you people following so tight behind me, not leaving me any time to stop over and replenish my arcane particles, maybe I could have saved my younger brother. That said, haven’t you spent these years in too much comfort? You really made so little progress, you surprisingly can’t even resist a single arcane skill of mine."
Reynolds kept silent.
"Before I kill you as revenge for my brother, since we’re old acquaintances from the olden days, do you have any last words?" the voice behind him quietly said.
"Eichemalar will be the end for you," Reynolds coldly said. "No matter what kind of sinister plan you came to Eichemalar with, you’ll still end up defeated just like before. You’ll be exposed as soon as you act. You won’t be able to run away this time. This is also your fate."
"Too bad, I never believed in any sort of fate…"
The voice behind his back started laughing quietly.
The pale wan world around him turned black. His vision also became completely black; his entire consciousness turned to ice. His heart stopped beating, as though the God of Death had touched it with his hand.
…
In the stands, no one noticed this arcane master’s life fading away, his body becoming icy-cold.
But after several seconds, a bizarre layer of grayness emerged on the face of this already dead arcane master. Some dots of revolving pale-white light suddenly flashed in these eyes that had already lost their life-force.
His already stiff hands suddenly lifted toward the countless spectators in front of him, entirely unaware of what had transpired. Pale rays of light flashed on his hands.
"Ah!"
The many spectators in front of him finally sensed a terrifying aura behind them. When they turned their heads around and saw the pale light gushing from his hands, saw the aura of death flowing on his face, they yelled with horror, overwhelmed with shock.
"Reynolds!"
"This is…!"
"Evil Spirit – Seal!"
At this instant, many urgent voices and chants rose at the same time.
More than a dozen transparent chains suddenly wrapped around Reynolds, then sank inside him.
Reynolds bellowed then. An ashen-gray stream of air rushed out of his mouth.
But his body didn’t move any further. The sickly white light also immediately vanished from his eyes and his hands.
"Swish!" "Swish!" "Swish!"
Three figures appeared around Reynolds’ corpse in a triangular formation.
"This is Di…"
"Don’t… panic…"
"Search…"
In quiet whispers, the three arcane masters who’d appeared near Reynolds concluded their rapid conversation within mere seconds. Even the ones closest to them in the stands couldn’t clearly hear what they said.
…
"Did something happens in the stands over there?"
"The elite arcane patrol team took away with them some spectators in the back rows."
"I don’t know, is there someone suspicious in the back rows?"
Some people in the stands saw something unusual happen in the back rows in the stands over there, but none of them understood what was truly happening.
"Connie, do your best!"
Ayrin and Charlotte hadn’t noticed the anomaly in the stands on the left behind them. They were entirely unaware that, just a few minutes ago, a hackles-raising revenge and murder had taken place.
Ayrin only thought about shouting encouragements at the top of his lungs for Connie, the second fighter to take to the field for Agate Lake Academy.
Previously in the match, Helena, the first one to fight for Agate Lake Academy, had defeated back to back two contestants from Hunter Academy, and she’d even made the third contestant waste more than half his arcane particles. Coming into the field after her for Agate Lake Academy, Connie had already defeated team Hunter’s third contestant, and was now waging a fierce battle with Bishu, the fourth contestant from team Hunter.
Right now, Connie had already used Agate Lake’s secret skill "Radiant Goddess."
"Radiant Goddess " was a formidable secret skill very few people in Agate Lake Academy had managed to comprehend in the past few years.
In an odd combination of arcane particles and arcane energy, a radiant goddess three meters tall, holding a scepter in her hand presently took shape around Connie.
This Radiant Goddess didn’t merely look like a huge armor, withstanding the battering of arcane skills coming from the opponent. It even, from time to time, fired shining red-hot beams of light.
Under the pounding of these beams of light, Bishu, the fourth member of team Hunter, seemed in a very dire situation. His body was already suffering many burns.
But Bishu suddenly chanted just then, as though he were staking everything on it, "Skunk Devil Summoning!"
In the air in front of him, a shadow suddenly appeared, and in the next moment, a skunk fell on the ground with a flop. It was about five or six times the size of a normal skunk, its whole body stripped like a zebra.
"Puff!"
The moment it fell down, this stripped skunk sprayed a yellow fog from his tail section, just like a fart.
"Ah!"
Connie clearly had the upper hand previously, but now she suddenly shrieked. The Radiant Goddess around her swayed.
"It stinks!"
"It stinks even from so far away!"
"Oh crap, it smells worse and worse!"
"Ah! I’m going to puke from the smell!"
All around in the stands, the spectators seemed to do the same thing at the same time: desperately hold their breaths and cover their noses.
A stink hard to put into words was spreading in the arena, even getting stronger and stronger.
"What the hell is this?"
"Is that a summoning skill or a stink bomb? There’s actually such a strange skill… That said, it’s really very hard for the opponent to launch arcane skills like that."
Charlotte also felt dizzy from a single whiff of the stink.
Right now, even the referees seemed to have green faces. It was easy to imagine how strong the stink was in the center of the field.
"Skunk Devil Summoning!"
However, seeing that his skill was effective, this shorty from Hunter Academy called Bishu was suddenly reenergized. He once again moved his hands in the air.
"Puff!"
Another stripped skunk suddenly appeared, spraying another yellow fog from its rear.
Seat-pounding noises suddenly came from the stands.
Almost everyone wanted to hurl abuses, but no one dared to let go of the hands covering their mouths and noses. They could only show their discontent by pounding their seats with their free hand.
"Puff!"
"Is he done yet or what!" What made every spectators almost faint was, Bishu seemed even more spirited. Another giant stripped skunk landed again.
"Boom!"
The Radiant Goddess towering in the field crumbled completely.
They saw Connie inside the Radiant Goddess fall flat backward, her face green.
"She directly passed out from the stink…"
"How miserable. A girl like that actually passed out from the stink caused by the opponent’s skill."
In the stands, every spectator wanted to laugh, yet was extremely sympathetic at the same time.
"Raging Winds!"
"Great Hurricane Whirl!"
"Unending Rain!"
After Kleis declared the end of the fight, at least three assistant referees couldn’t hold back from launching arcane skills, desperately dissipating the vile air in the arena.
"…"
Even so, Charlotte was itching to rush away and immediately take a bath, because she felt as if Bishu’s skill had smoked her whole person full of stench.
"What? What’s up with your expression?"
When she turned her head around and looked at Ayrin though, she actually stared again in a daze.
Because, though Ayrin was also holding his nose, his face showed an extremely proud secret snicker, like a fox who just managed to steal chicken eggs.
What was so amusing about this kind of stink?
"Did you get a feel again for another skill from the match?" Charlotte looked at Ayrin, very much at a loss, but after a staring a while, she immediately understood. She quietly exclaimed, "Don’t tell me, you feel like you can learn that Agate Lake’s ‘Radiant Goddess’ that combines attack and defense?"
"No. Connie only used it once, plus the light immediately formed the Radiant Goddess, I couldn’t clearly see how she invoked it."
Ayrin shook his head, his face taking on a strange expression. He threw a glance at Bishu in the field.
Charlotte finally understood. She almost passed out. "Ayrin, you’re talking about that skunk summoning skill?"
"Haha!"
Ayrin couldn’t help but laugh out loud when he saw Charlotte’s face. Then he nodded.
