“Raventi”

Once Ruby said the incantation a blue streak shot out of her wand aimed at what seemed to be a random point in the sky above her.

It was but a moment later a small explosion happened where she had shot the spell as some sort of metal ball fell out of the sky.

Ruby knew the explosion wasn’t caused by her spell, she had fired off a simple magic missile, nothing that would usually cause such an effect, the explosion came from the metal orb.

And so Ruby walked up and examined the orb that had fallen out of the sky. Yet just like the previous three times, she found nothing.

It seemed that the enchantments on the object would self-destruct as long as it got interfered with. It was quite annoying to Ruby.

It had been ten minutes since she had been teleported to this unfamiliar place. She appeared in what seemed to be a forest, she still had no idea she was on an island.

There was one thing she did know though, she was being watched. As soon as she got teleported onto the island she could feel a gaze upon her, she managed to lock down on the position of the spectator and shot the first metal orb down.

Since then she had found a total of three others, shooting down all of them. Even though she didn’t have much to hide, she felt extremely uncomfortable when she felt a gaze upon her, it would limit her other senses.

At this point, Ruby was feeling annoyed more than anything else. No matter what she should still be in some sort of arena, and well, she was making a lot of sound.

Even though the magic missile was mostly silent, the runes’ self-destruction wasn’t. If she kept going around causing explosions everywhere, she would probably be surprise attacked and even though she could generally tell when she was being watched, it took about a dozen seconds to be able to pin down a proper position.

She wasn’t so stupid that she would underestimate her opponent, there were all great talents, if she wasn’t careful she might lose before even being able to face Villin.

And so, she came up with a plan.

The magic balls seemed to be placed in various crossroads within the forest. Perhaps if she went into the thicker parts of the wilderness the orbs wouldn’t bother her. This way she would be able to move much freer, she wasn’t sure what the time-limit was on the duel but if it was more than a day she was confident she could get a definitive advantage.

And so, she looked at the thick forest to her left. There was a clear difference between where she had been going and the surrounding area.

The ‘paths’ still very much looked like parts of a forest. There were plants in the way and sometimes a tree in the middle, but you could pass by all of it with a bit of effort, compared to the patch on her left it was nothing.

The forest to her left was filled with knee-high plants and vines that almost seemed as if they were purposefully holding you back.

Without magic, going there wouldn’t be much of an option, but well, Ruby had a way to get by, even being capable of doing so without harming the foliage.

She looked at the part she wanted to pass and aimed her wand in between some of the vines blocking the way “Greatsor Magicolia”

A few seconds after she finished her incantation, she promptly disappeared.

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Two hours had passed since the duels started and Villin felt completely exhausted. He was sitting on the dirt breathing heavily. Even though he cleared the areas too tough to traverse with his magic, traveling was still exhausting.

The ground was uneven making it so that he had to pay attention every step. And, of course, he couldn’t clear the entire way, sometimes he simply had to wade through some bushes, spending even more effort compared to usual.

This combines with half a dozen snake attacks he had to defend himself against made the traveling a true pain in the ass.

So he decided to rest shortly after creating another magic array that would alert him when someone passed by it.

---------

Kayley was feeling more and more nervous. Villin hadn’t shown up in the vision of any of the magic eyes for a long while. It was like this ever since he forced his way through some of the foliage.

Once this happened, a number of the runemasters began discussing the situation. Apparently, some of these runemasters were closely involved with the competition. One runemaster that went by the name ‘Lachlan’ was the one in charge of that island. He was sent there and decreased the amount of foliage in certain paths making the ‘paths’ and artificial clearings in parts of the island.

He had also cleared any dangerous animals close to these paths. The problem was that the further away you would stray, the more ‘wild’ nature would be. Apparently, the island had bears inhabiting it.

Unlike some of the other runemasters, Kayley wasn’t very worried about bears. She was confident Villin would be able to deal with bears, three at a time would be manageable she figured.

Ever since the advanced competition, everyone in their group had become a lot stronger. Any of them would be able to deal with a bear no problem, even Rein. And Villin, he was the strongest of the group even if Amelia and Kayley weren’t that far off.

As for why she was worried, she wasn’t sure. According to the runemaster, bears were the only large predators on the island, this should probably comfort her.

The problem was that he was heading closer and closer to the mountain coming from the south side. Even though there was a path toward the mountain, it came from the north, and it was one of the areas a fight was expected. The area to the south was mostly unexplored, after all, what runemaster would waste their time exploring one of the hundreds of thousands of tiny islands around the central continent. They were all about the same, small islands with a balanced ecosystem, at most, you would find a tiny undeveloped civilization which would grant you minor benefits.

Soon after, the conversation shifted to Ruby, apparently, she destroyed the magic eyes that were looking at her, this might be a problem for the next round. And then, she stopped appearing on any of the magic eyes that were set up. Seeing what Villin did people also assumed she went into the wilderness. As for the runemaster who took care of that island, he felt a bit awkward as the situation was quite similar to Villin’s.

But while the runemasters were discussing, someone stumbled onto Villin’s path.

Leonardo hadn’t actually been teleported that far away from Villin, when he arrived he was in the forest just a hundred-or-so meters a way from the beach. At the time he didn’t quite realize he was less than half-a-mile from Villin.

As soon as he arrived he opened his backpack taking out a few devices he had made in preparation for this challenge. His teacher, Lachlan actually knew of the contents of the second round since he was involved with it.

Even though he wasn’t quite allowed to say the contents of the challenge, he did give certain suggestions to the boy in the last couple of months, stating new objects he should try making to ‘get new insights’.

As such he was somewhat prepared for the situation. There were three things he valued the most closely. The first was a pile of blue dust. These were the ashes from ‘ghast rats’, he had changed their properties using the art of spell constructs. If he took some of the ashes and rubbed it on himself, he would be extremely hard to detect.

The second item he had was an enchanted ‘Beholder’ eye. The eye itself was very precious but his teacher had gifted him one, he had put a simple enchantment on it enhancing its properties slightly, this allowed him to use it in the competition.

And lastly, he had a ‘Cup of springs’ this was the item he was most proud of creating. His teacher had given him a lot of guidance that allowed him to make the object.

The cup of springs was capable of producing massive amounts of water. If he used it just to drink it could be used for a year before breaking. Now his was imperfect but it should still work for a month at least.

And so, with the help of the beholder’s eye, he found the beginning of Villin’s path. It was rather obvious, the grass was gone in the area and so were the bushes, the only thing that remained were some vines he would have to get through.

Once he found this he rubbed some of the ghast rats’ ashes on himself before slowly making his way through the vines blocking his path.