Yoshika and her team quickly split up into three groups. Thanks to Yoshika’s two bodies, it was possible to maintain instant communication between two of the groups. Theoretically, it could have been possible to instantly communicate three ways, if a certain lazy cat wasn’t so slow to pick up human language—she felt a vague sense of unapologetic sympathy from Heian in her soulscape. Instead, she had to rely on some simple signals that she could exchange with Yue using their domains—Rika’s domain control wasn’t good enough to pick up on them.

The three groups consisted of Rika and Yue, Jia and Eunae, then Eui and Dae. Yoshika had been tempted to put Dae with Yue as a tiny bit of petty revenge on her part—she was still pretty mad about him helping Tae work on countermeasures for her—but Rika and Yue were central to the plan. They split up, each heading towards the places where Sun’s team were already preparing their traps. Once again, Sun was choosing to play the passive role, but Yoshika was more than happy to bring the fight to her.

“They’re setting up a perimeter in order to force us to cross their traps to get to them! Eunae and Dae, come with us to flank opposite sides of their perimeter. Yue and Rika know what to do, we’ll wait for their signal.”

Yoshika got curt nods in response. She knew that her plan was convoluted—much more than was necessary. All they needed to do was get any of her teammates within touching distance of any of Sun’s and her Fetid Bog technique would do the rest. Ancestors, knowing what they had planned in advance, Yoshika could have easily taken the entire team on by herself by just sacrificing one body to a trap and using the other to go over the barrier and take them apart. But that wasn’t the point—Yoshika didn’t want to simply win this time. Sacrificing one of her bodies to a seal? Taking backlash to disable it? Sustaining the inevitable injuries from a six on one engagement?

No. Yoshika was done letting Sun think that she mattered. It wasn’t about winning this time, it was about crushing her so thoroughly that she’d never consider opposing Yoshika again. She needed to dismantle Sun Jaehwa and her team with perfect precision, and without taking any casualties. Neither Yoshika, nor a single one of her friends would be injured today, even superficially. After today, Sun Jaehwa would know her place, and Yoshika could finally forget about her for good.

“The north and east formations are complete. The south one is nearly finished as well, but Jeung is having trouble managing the spell-inscription on the west formation.”

Sun Jaehwa clicked her tongue irritably, but gave the girl a reassuring smile. Which one was this again?

“Not to worry, Chang Ki, I’ll go assist her in completing the formation myself.”

“Um, I’m Won Meekyong, Lady Sun.”

“That’s what I said—pay attention when I’m speaking to you, Won.”

“R-right, sorry.”

Won hung her head, and Sun had to fight to suppress a sneer of contempt. She was going to need new pawns soon. These ones had seen her embarrassed, and after multiple failures, they were starting to doubt. They wouldn’t betray her, she knew, but they might just abandon her—they were already showing signs. They were clearly nervous—they worried that they’d fail again, worried about retribution from Lee’s cohort. To a degree, Sun couldn’t blame them. She had no idea how Lee had managed to insinuate herself into Seong Eunae’s circle, even if she was the disgrace of her clan. Nobody wanted to face retaliation from the Seong. They needn’t worry, however. Sun Jaehwa had it on good authority that Seong Misun—the only representative of the clan present—would be more than happy to see her little sister embarrassed.

She found—what was her name, Jeung? She found Jeung struggling to control the advanced spell-scribing formula and shook her head. Sun would need to be more discerning with her help next time, as well. She’d assumed that everyone at the academy would be exceptional, and hadn’t been choosy in assembling her entourage—alas, lesson learned.

“Step aside, Jeung. You’ve done enough—I’ll take it from here.”

Jeung bowed apologetically, thanking Sun Jaehwa profusely for the assistance. Sun kept the forced smile on her face, though she rolled her eyes internally. How hard was it to cast a rote-memorized spell? It was exhausting trying to pretend that she cared about these leeches. After a quick spell to wipe away the incompetent girl’s clumsy attempts, Sun Jaehwa cast the spell-scribe, focusing on maintaining the strict image, as Tae In-Su had instructed her. At least he was competent, albeit unreliable. He wasn’t loyal to her, and he’d made it clear that he didn’t want to make any more trouble for Lee or An. It was only because this was a competition that she’d convinced him to help her at all. Well, he was also a bit of a pushover—and she was pretty sure she could talk him into all kinds of things if she put her mind to it. He was a nearly perfect pawn, but just a little too willful for her liking.

With the formations in place, there was nothing left but to wait. There was some concern that they might bypass the formations by flying over them, but Sun was prepared for that—she had plenty of Pressure Cutting spells prepared. They wouldn’t escape her wrath this time. Sun could admit—to herself at least—that she’d underestimated Lee in the singles qualifier. She’d never say it out loud of course, but this time she was taking her opponents as seriously as possible. They were defended from Lee’s strange aura attack, the traps would seal her and her team off from each other. The plan was perfect.

“What if An Eui uses that devastating technique that destroyed the arena?”

Sun Jaehwa scowled before quickly schooling her expression. Who said that!? She turned, in the general direction of the speaker, not letting her eyes give away that she didn’t know who it was.

“That technique had enormous backlash, and she couldn’t control it very well. If Eui attempts to break free, she’ll hurt herself and her team more than anyone else. We’ll be ready for it and simply finish them off.”

She heard a sigh from next to her, and had to resist slapping Tae In-Su.

“So you say, but I witnessed that technique up close. Never mind finishing them off, if she directs it at us we won’t be surviving. Do as you will, but if I see that red and black aura, I’m not approaching anywhere close to it.”

Sun hated the way Tae In-Su would openly undermine her like that. It weakened her position in the eyes of her entourage, but he was too valuable an ally for her to give up right now. Something she wouldn’t have to concern herself with if not for that damned Lee Jia ruining everything. Stealing Eui from her had been bad enough, but Lee had ingratiated herself with most of the high status individuals from all three nations, and worst of all publicly embarrassed Sun Jaehwa twice! After today, Lee Jia would know her place, and Sun Jaehwa could finally forget about her for good.

Her thoughts were interrupted by shouting from the direction of one of the barrier traps, and she ran over to see what the commotion was about. Her long ears perked up at the sound of a strange, melodious humming but it quickly faded into background noise as it was drowned out by excited shouts. The trap had been activated, they’d caught one of Lee’s teammates already! Sun was grinning ear to ear as she saw who it was they had caught. She let out a sharp, incredulous laugh.

“Hah! None other than Miss Lee Jia herself! Did you think your little sneaking trick would work on us? That you could just creep on past our traps and scout us out like the qualifiers? Not this time!”

She couldn’t help but gloat. She’d known that it was a good strategy, but this was infinitely better than anything she could have expected. To get the leader right off the bat—the very subject of her ire. It was almost too good to be true. Lee Jia didn’t say anything in her defense, only glowering defiantly as Sun Jaehwa laughed at her.

“Oh, I am going to enjoy this! You just sit pretty while I—”

“Another barrier’s been triggered!”

Sun very nearly slapped Tae In-Su in the face for interrupting her, but the content of what he had said and the sly smirk on Lee Jia’s face gave her pause.

“Chang Ki, stay here and watch Lee! Everyone else to the other barrier!”

“My name’s not—”

Sun ignored the girl’s protests as she and the rest of her team dashed to the opposite side of the perimeter staked out by their sealing traps. When she saw who had been caught, her jaw dropped. There, glaring balefully at her was An Eui. Sun Jaehwa couldn’t believe her luck—literally couldn’t believe it, something wasn’t right. She schooled her expression before anyone could notice her gaping, and narrowed her eyes suspiciously.

“This is a trick, isn’t it? I know you have talented illusionists in your team. Using your weak links as sacrificial pawns isn’t going to fool me into dropping my guard! Which are you, really? That Yamato bitch, or the slut Yan Yue?”

Sun knew that the rumors about Yan were false, of course. She had been the one to start them, after all. Yan Yue made a convenient scapegoat, and her close association with Yan Hao’s other disciples had made the rumor easy enough to sell. Besides—she was quite beautiful. Sun wanted her, and she had been prepared to add the girl to her entourage before everything blew up in her face. Oh well, she didn’t seem to share Sun’s proclivities anyway.

Predictably the girl in the trap didn’t answer—whoever she was. No doubt her voice would have given up the game. If she recalled correctly, Yan’s illusions were made from song, which suggested that it was Takeda in the trap, but Lee hadn’t spoken either. Ah! She remembered that strange humming sound she’d heard from Lee’s trap. She called out to her subordinates.

“Don’t be fooled by the illusions, we haven’t caught Lee or An yet! This one is Takeda Rika, and the other is Yan Yue.”

Sun smiled as the false An Eui’s eyes widened in shock. What a joke, trying to trick magi with illusions. At least there would be no more tricks now that their illusionists were out of the picture. She returned to the center of the clearing, where Tae In-Su began pacing nervously.

“Something wrong? They’ve managed to scout our traps and sacrificed their two weakest members already. A pathetic attempt at trickery to bait us into thinking they’d already lost their trump cards.”

Tae glanced up at her and sighed.

“Maybe. I’m not sure. How are they maintaining their illusions from within the circles? They shouldn’t be able to affect our minds from inside.”

Sun waved his concerns off dismissively.

“They aren’t affecting our minds. Yan Yue can manipulate light and darkness, and Takeda’s illusions are created from mist. They are just disguises, that’s why even Yue’s sound-based techniques couldn’t mimic their voices—she couldn’t influence our minds.”

Tae In-Su frowned, still doubting.

“Perhaps, but—”

Tae’s words were cut off by more shouting as two more traps went off. They really were just throwing sacrifices at their formations. Sun scoffed—it wouldn’t work. There were enough traps for all of them with some left over, and the active barriers doubled as a fortification that prevented their passage. The only way in would be to fly over the active barriers, and Sun was ready for that.

Sun Jaehwa began to grow concerned when two more traps went off. It couldn’t be that easy, could it? She didn’t hear an announcement of their victory, so something wasn’t right. She checked on the traps, and found that each one held a different member of Lee’s team. By all appearances, they had just walked into them. What concerned Sun Jaehwa the most was that the last two traps weren’t Lee and An as she had expected, but the two illusionists that she had thought were the first to get caught.

Her mind raced—the victory hadn’t been called yet because it was possible to escape the barriers, as An Eui had already demonstrated once. Yet there was only one person in each trap, and even if An broke herself out she would be alone and injured against Sun Jaehwa’s entire team. None of it made any sense! It seemed as though she had won, but it shouldn’t have been so easy! She had come up with contingency after contingency—a dozen different ways in which her plan could have gone wrong, and how to account for it. How could she believe that victory was hers and all she had to do was wait?

Sun’s blood ran cold as her fears were realized—another shimmering golden barrier went up at the edge of the clearing. Before she even had time to check it, another trap was sprung, then another. Soon, every formation had been activated, each one empty save for the ones that contained Lee and her teammates. Her captives silently smirked at her each time she checked on them, but didn’t seem to be trying to escape. Sun Jaehwa wiped the cold sweat from her brow and turned to Tae In-Su.

“What’s going on? How is this possible? What kind of attack is this? Have we been caught in some kind of illusion?”

She failed to keep the panic out of her voice as she pressed her ally for details. He swallowed nervously, clearly no more comfortable with the situation than she was.

“I’m not sure, Lady Sun. My mana sense isn’t detecting anything out of the ordinary. The barriers were genuinely triggered, and there’s nothing unusual about our surroundings.”

Sun nodded. She could confirm the same. It would take a more powerful illusion than any of Lee’s allies were capable of producing to fool a well-trained mana sense. The only problem was that the barriers blocked everything, and there was no way to confirm their contents with mana sense.

“If the barriers are all active, and our surroundings are unaltered...then we’re fine, right? They can’t get past the defenses.”

Both of them glanced up urgently, but there was no sign of an attack from above, and only An Eui had a flight technique anyway. Tae nodded slowly.

“That...should be the case, yes.”

Sun was struck by a sudden sense of paranoia. A mage’s insight was a powerful thing, and she leaned into that feeling. Sweeping her magical senses across the clearing, she focused on the auras of her teammates, searching for anything out of the ordinary. She froze when she realized that two of them were missing.

“Ancestors damn it! That’s how they triggered the extra traps! Chang, Jeung, stay close to me and Tae In-Su. The other two have been lured into triggering our own traps. Stay alert and don’t trust anything that you can’t confirm with your mana sense.”

Won didn’t even protest the wrong name as the two girls paled and huddled up closely behind her and Tae. The other mage shook his head frowning.

“No, hold on! That doesn’t make sense, Sun. If only two of our teammates are missing then how did—hngh!”

Tae In-Su suddenly collapsed as he spoke, clutching his stomach and falling to the ground, retching. Sun’s eyes widened as she recognized the effects of that horrible technique that had nearly killed her back when she first tried to teach Lee Jia a lesson. She didn’t understand, Tae’s defensive spell should have protected him, how—

Sun Jaehwa noticed the glowing talisman on his back, then met the eyes of Jeung standing behind him, with her arm outstretched. No—not Jeung! Sun Jaehwa whirled around to face the girl standing behind her, readying an offensive spell, but she was too late. The girl slapped her across the face with a similar talisman, and Sun instantly felt the shield of purity protecting her from Lee’s technique evaporate. She was quickly brought to her knees by the overwhelming nausea.

The imposter leaned down towards Sun with a gentle smile that didn’t match her face or the situation. Her eyes were closed as she whispered in Sun’s ear—her voice was not that of Won Meekyong.

“I told you my name’s not Chang, Lady Sun. You should learn to pay closer attention.”

It was Seong Eunae—the forgotten princess. Somehow Lee had snuck imposters into Sun’s ranks and dispatched of the others without her even noticing. She fought back tears along with the urge to throw up as the illusion faded. Revealing Seong’s true form, as well as the identity of the other imposter, Hyeong Daesung. Most alarming was the fact that the illusions of her other teammates revealed that they hadn’t been missing. They too had been replaced—by the two girls that had become her worst nightmare. Lee Jia and An Eui grinned down at her, their expressions identical, their heads moving in perfect unison as they spoke in chorus.

“Surprise! What’s wrong, Jaehwa? Aren’t you happy to see us? You took such pains to give us a grand welcome.”

Sun grimaced at them, searching around for Lee’s other teammates. The ones that were to blame for this catastrophe.

“Where’s your pet barbarian and the slut, Lee? They’re the ones who did everything.”

Yan Yue appeared from the edge of the clearing, approaching from the same direction as the first trap that had been set off.

“It was a team effort, I assure you. I had to keep my distance, Miss Sun. You would have noticed if there was something present where there should have been nothing. Rika should catch up soon—she was the one setting off the traps, once we ran out of idiots to lure into them.”

Lee and An nodded at the same time, speaking in that odd synchronized way of theirs—had they practiced it?

“Yue and Rika lured your allies away one by one, tricking you into thinking it was us you were catching. Once it was down to just the two of you, Yue could use her song to place the illusions straight into your heads.”

Yue chuckled.

“She makes it sound so easy. This was one of the most exhausting tasks I’ve ever performed. I hope you’re satisfied with the results, Yoshika.”

“We had to move fast after that. Setting off all the other traps using Rika’s copies to distract you while Dae built us a path over one of the active barriers. By the time you thought to suspect that something was amiss, we’d managed to complete the infiltration. Then it was just a matter of getting Dae and Eunae close enough to disable your defenses.”

Sun Jaehwa shuddered. She had been completely outplayed.

“But why!? Why such an elaborate strategy when you could have won so much sooner?”

The two girls smiled in a predatory manner as they approached and leaned down towards her in perfect, disturbing tandem.

“We’re glad that you understand that, Jaehwa. The reason is simple—we’re tired of dealing with you. Done worrying about what kind of schemes of revenge you might have against us. We didn’t want to defeat you, Jaehwa.”

They paused, and Sun Jaehwa realized that she’d made her last mistake. She’d kicked over a hornet’s nest, and now she was going to pay the ultimate price. She refused to allow herself to cry, staring defiantly into the eyes of her killers.

“We want you to surrender.”

It was too much. The tension in Sun’s body flooded out in an unstoppable torrent as she broke down, weeping. It took her minutes to compose herself, with Lee’s team letting her sob in silence before she finally managed to squeak out her final surrender.