The emerald beacon swept rhythmic waves of light across the shattered plaza, casting long, shifting shadows over fractured concrete and razor-sharp rubble.
Twelve students stood frozen around it, six facing six, while an absolute silence swallowed the battlefield, interrupted only by ragged breathing and the distant groan of collapsing structures.
Above them all, Director Nazari’s Topological Distortion continued to crush the very fabric of their surroundings, pressing down on their shoulders like an invisible mountain and reducing every breath to a burning struggle.
Eighty percent of their Spirit had been forcibly sealed away, leaving every muscle screaming beneath the impossible weight.
As the dust slowly settled, Issa Kaneshiro emerged from the haze.
He adjusted his glasses with trembling fingers, his exhausted face hollowed by strain, while the sleeves of his uniform hung in tatters, coated with the pale dust of the arena.
The remaining members of Squad Seven stopped beside him without uttering a single threat or displaying any theatrical bravado.
Whatever rivalry had existed before had been ground away by exhaustion, leaving behind nothing but twelve teenagers standing at the absolute limit of their physical and psychological endurance.
Kaïs shifted his footing just enough to shield Leila behind his body, pretending not to notice the searing pain tearing through the muscles of his arms.
Across from him, Caleb stopped lazily spinning his combat knife and locked his grip around the steel handle until his knuckles turned white, while Elian Torres silently lowered his center of gravity, every muscle in his jaw tightening as he prepared to lunge at the slightest hostile movement.
Nobody wanted to attack, yet nobody could afford to trust the other side either.
“Lower your weapons,” Issa said quietly.
“If we fight each other, none of us is getting out of this.” His voice was flat, almost extinguished beneath layers of exhaustion, carrying neither hostility nor desperation.
Kaïs spat onto the cracked asphalt without taking his eyes off Squad Seven, forcing himself to remain upright despite the throbbing agony in his arms.
“This isn’t a supply point, Kaneshiro.
There’s only one beacon here.
Somebody has to lose.” Issa slowly tilted his head toward the cylindrical structure pulsing in the center of the square.
“Look at the base.” Tariq narrowed his eyes, trying to pierce the blinding emerald glow.
Beneath the scratched metal plating of the beacon, a damaged touchscreen flickered weakly, displaying a single sequence of digits.
0/12.
“It isn’t a timer,” Issa explained between heavy breaths.
“The Commission rigged the entire device.
One person can’t overload the sensors.
A squad of six can’t either, not after Nazari stripped away eighty percent of our output.
The beacon only activates when twelve separate Spirit signatures resonate simultaneously.
We need every single person standing here.” Goman Arashi wiped the corner of his mouth with the back of his sleeve, his complexion pale beneath the faint scar stretching across his neck.
Maintaining atmospheric pressure against Captain Kei’s shadows had drained his body far more than he cared to admit.
“So you’re telling me,” he muttered bitterly, “that the Academy expects us to hold hands with your squad just to turn this thing on?” “I’m telling you we don’t have enough energy left to kill each other and activate it afterward,” Issa replied without looking away.
“If we fight, every one of us loses.” Soura kept both hands buried inside his jacket pockets while studying the beacon with the suspicion of someone accustomed to hidden traps.
His dark eyes slowly examined the mechanism before settling on Issa again.
“How exactly does your scrap heap work?” “Two people have to place their hands on the side panels,” Issa answered, pointing toward the recessed interfaces.
“The other ten inject Spirit directly into the ground around the base until the resonance threshold is reached.” Caleb tightened his grip on his knife as his pale eyes swept across the ruined buildings surrounding the plaza.
“And while we’re standing in the middle of an open square acting as living batteries…” he asked quietly, “…who’s watching whatever decides to come for us?” None of the students answered.
The ground answered instead.
A deep tremor rippled beneath their boots, sending shards of broken glass dancing across the pavement.
It wasn’t the distant rumble of another collapsing building.
It was a heartbeat.
Slow.
Organic.
Horribly unstable.
Each pulse seemed to drag the oxygen out of the plaza itself, squeezing every pair of lungs at once.
The shadows cast by the beacon stretched unnaturally across the asphalt, thickening like coagulated blood.
The temperature plunged by nearly ten degrees within seconds, while the air filled with the nauseating stench of ozone and rotting flesh.
Tariq felt his stomach twist violently as instinctive terror threatened to lock every muscle in his body.
Then something screamed.
The sound resembled the shriek of steel girders being torn apart with bare hands, echoing across the shattered skyline.
Clinging to the exposed façade of the commercial tower overlooking the square was a mass of distorted muscle, unstable Spirit, and corrupted flesh that defied every recognizable biological structure.
The abomination pulsed erratically while enormous bone-like appendages dug deep into the concrete, its body swallowing the beacon’s emerald light as though the darkness itself were feeding.
“Orange-Level…” Elian whispered, taking an involuntary step backward.
It was the same Suppuration Captain Thiago Vane had confronted inside the business district.
The creature gave them no opportunity to react.
Releasing its grip on the building, it hurled itself into open air like a living meteor, descending directly toward the center of the plaza with enough force to flatten everything beneath it.
“Circle formation!” Kaïs roared, his voice cracking beneath raw terror.
Every trace of distrust vanished instantly.
The twelve students converged around the beacon without hesitation, pressing their backs against the cylindrical structure as they formed a hopeless defensive ring against the descending monstrosity.
BOOOOM!
The Suppuration struck the pavement barely ten meters away, obliterating what remained of the old fountain.
The impact wave exploded across the square with overwhelming force.
Tariq instinctively crossed both arms before him, forcing a thin membrane of absolute void into existence just long enough to absorb the marble fragments screaming toward his face.
The creature rose slowly from the crater.
Its grotesque bone appendages cracked back into place one by one, spilling thick black fluid across the shattered pavement.
It possessed no recognizable face, yet a vast fissure split open across what resembled its torso, exposing a pulsating core of corrupted Spirit that illuminated its innards with an unhealthy crimson glow.
“Leila!
Elian!” Issa shouted above the monster’s guttural roar.
“The panels!
Now!” The two students sprinted toward the beacon’s base and slammed their palms against the touch interfaces.
A deep mechanical hum echoed through the structure as it immediately began draining their remaining Spirit reserves.
The digital indicator flickered uncertainly, struggling to register their weakened output beneath Nazari’s overwhelming distortion.
The Suppuration unleashed another deafening roar before charging.
Its immense body distorted the surrounding space with every step, making the violence of its movement feel fundamentally unnatural.
“It’s way too fast!” Raad yelled, stumbling backward while desperately searching for an opening.
“Goman!
Slow it down!” Kaïs barked.
For once, Arashi offered no argument.
He already understood that pride had become meaningless before an existence like this.
Pressing his palms together, he forced every remaining fragment of concentration into his Spirit.
The veins bulging along his neck swelled dangerously as the atmosphere directly ahead of the creature compressed into an invisible wall of crushing pressure.
The Suppuration lurched violently.
Its colossal limbs drove deep into the asphalt beneath the weight of Goman’s artificial gravity, cracking the road apart beneath each staggering step.
Blood trickled from the corner of Goman’s mouth as his own body threatened to collapse beneath the internal pressure.
“I…
can’t…
hold it…” he growled through clenched teeth.
“I’ve got it!” Soura answered.
Planting both feet firmly into the ground, he thrust his arms forward.
Moisture already chilled by the creature’s corruptive presence condensed almost instantly throughout the air, and Soura ripped every suspended droplet free before driving the torrent directly into the monster’s unstable joints with surgical precision.
“Raad!
Hit the water!” Raad launched himself forward, forcing the largest electrical discharge his battered body could still endure.
His fist slammed into the soaked ground, sending an ionized current racing along the water Soura had distributed.
The electric surge struck the Suppuration head-on.
The monster howled.
Violent spasms ripped through its enormous body as electricity burned its tissues from within, yet it refused to fall.
Spirit far beyond anything they had imagined flooded through its corrupted flesh, already rebuilding the damaged structure while expelling superheated steam in every direction.
With terrifying speed, one of its massive appendages swept sideways toward Goman.
The attack came too quickly for him to evade.
A figure intercepted it.
Caleb.
The blade of his combat knife ignited with a dull metallic glow as he condensed its density to the absolute limit of his Spirit.
The reinforced steel collided head-on with the creature’s appendage.
The impact was catastrophic.
Caleb slid backward across the pavement for nearly two meters, his boots carving deep trenches through the asphalt as showers of sparks erupted beneath them.
Every muscle in his arms screamed beneath the crushing force, but the reinforced blade held.
“Move!” Caleb snarled through gritted teeth.
Kaïs exploded into motion.
Ignoring both exhaustion and the certainty that his own body would suffer the consequences, he drew back his left arm and drove it directly into the monster’s exposed flank.
His explosive fluids detonated instantly.
The resulting shockwave tore through the Suppuration’s side with devastating force, ripping away enormous sections of corrupted bone and flesh before showering the plaza with blackened fragments.
But the recoil rebounded immediately through Kaïs’s own arm.
Muscles split apart beneath the violence of his attack, and blood sprayed from the ruptured tissue.
Kaïs collapsed onto one knee, his face twisting in unbearable pain.
He refused to scream.
Even after losing an entire section of its torso, the Suppuration had already begun regenerating.
Ignoring the students attacking it, the creature turned instead toward the beacon itself, drawn instinctively toward the concentrated Spirit Leila and Elian continued feeding into its core.
“We’re at sixty percent!” Leila cried, sweat pouring down her face.
The unstable green light surrounding her hands flickered wildly as the beacon greedily consumed her remaining strength.
She couldn’t even turn around to heal Kaïs anymore without interrupting the synchronization.
Tariq stared at the advancing monster.
Less than ten meters remained.
If it reached the beacon, every one of them would die.
He lacked Kaïs’s destructive power.
He lacked Goman’s raw force.
He lacked Caleb’s resilience.
“Issa!” Tariq shouted desperately.
“Tell me where it’s going to strike!” Issa adjusted his glasses.
His eyes darted frantically across the monster’s body, calculating weight transfers and momentum while a splitting migraine threatened to tear his concentration apart.
Every instinct screamed for him to stop thinking, yet his mind refused to surrender.
“Tariq!” Issa roared.
“It’s going to push off its front leg!
Cut away its support!
Its own weight will bring it down!” Tariq moved.
He ignored the suffocating stench pouring from the creature and sprinted directly toward it.
He wasn’t aiming for the monster itself.
His eyes locked onto the exact point where its leading foot would land.
The Suppuration raised its colossal body.
Dropping to both knees, Tariq slammed his palms against the fractured pavement and poured every remaining fragment of Spirit into the earth.
Terror clawed at his mind, threatening to shatter his concentration, but he forced himself to maintain absolute control.
He created a void.
Not a hole.
Not an explosion.
A perfect absence of existence itself.
A flawless gap where matter, space, and physical resistance simply ceased to exist opened beneath the creature’s supporting leg.
The Suppuration committed its full weight.
There was nothing there.
Its enormous body plunged forward as inertia instantly betrayed it.
Unable to find purchase, the abomination lost every trace of balance before crashing face-first into the ground with a cataclysmic impact that shook the foundations of the entire arena.
“Leila!
Now!” Tariq screamed, collapsing to one knee as dust filled his lungs.
The beacon emitted a shrill mechanical whistle.
Its display suddenly flashed brilliant emerald.
12/12.
Critical Threshold Reached.
A dome of impossibly dense emerald energy erupted from the cylindrical structure, expanding outward in a perfect fifteen-meter sphere.
The shockwave hurled the Suppuration backward, and the instant its body collided with the barrier, thick smoke erupted from its corrupted flesh as the beacon’s frequency violently rejected its existence.
The monster released one final howl of frustration.
Realizing the prey inside the barrier had become unreachable, instinct overrode rage.
The creature turned heavily before disappearing back into the darkness beyond the ruined streets, fleeing from the sanctuary of emerald light.
Silence settled beneath the dome.
Heavy.
Absolute.
Every student collapsed where they stood.
Tariq remained kneeling, palms flat against the ground, each breath burning through his lungs.
A few meters away, Leila finally lost consciousness against the beacon’s metal frame before Elian caught her at the last possible moment, his own strength nearly exhausted.
Kaïs lay on his side staring blankly at the pavement while ragged breaths escaped through clenched teeth, his ruined left arm completely numb.
Goman sat slumped against a broken concrete block with his head tilted backward and his eyes half-closed.
Raad, Soura, and Caleb leaned against one another without the slightest concern for squad divisions anymore, desperately trying to draw oxygen into bodies abandoned by adrenaline.
Nearby, Issa slowly approached the terminal on shaking legs, forcing himself to stand upright despite every muscle threatening to collapse.
The display now showed a single official message.
Stage One: Cleared.
Safe Zone Established.
Authorized Rest Period: Five Minutes.
Issa turned toward Tariq.
Through the shimmering emerald barrier, the two boys exchanged a long, silent look.
The Commission had never been measuring firepower.
It had been measuring whether they possessed the ability to survive hell together.
“We did it,” Tariq whispered as he painfully pushed himself back to his feet, tasting blood across his lips.
Issa nodded quietly, wiping away a bead of cold sweat that blurred his vision.
“That was only the first stage,” he answered.
“The examination has only just begun.” Beyond the fragile warmth of the emerald dome, the shadows of the South Arena slowly folded back into themselves.
Night had not yet fallen.
The worst was still waiting.