I was so happy I think I had tears in my eyes.

“Now Jin. The true art of control lies in not only controlling your magic, and yourself, but also the battlefield. I have high hopes for you so I feel comfortable telling you that I have decided you will not receive my instruction if you don’t make it into the top five. As a spy, it will be difficult. But as difficult as it is, it is a matter of cunning and control. I can’t give you any strategy pointers but just remember, the key is control.”

With that, the recording cut off and Piercil was replaced with the shining symbol of a spy along with the pictures of nine other people, my fellow spies, I imagine. I bet this same image is being relayed to the entire stadium. I quickly studied the faces and memorized four of them. I’m not good enough to memorize them all and I knew those four already. None of my companions were on the list. It wouldn’t be a problem as long as Grey wasn’t on my team. Piercil had given me a hint despite all his ‘impartial’ bluster. The best way to avoid being found is to lead my team myself, and since I can beat nearly all of my classmates in a fist fight they’d at least respect me enough to let me do it as long as someone with a natural leader’s ability like Grey wasn’t there. Very quickly after I’d finished memorizing a few faces, the cubicle filled with light. It cleared after a moment, leaving me standing on a hill with fifty other people. I immediately found one of the four spies I knew of at the very back of the crowd and ran to him using traveler. As he turned to me I covered his mouth and carried him down the hill into the tree line.

“Run to the other hill. Don’t get noticed and don’t get caught. Once you’re there you’re going to relay information we send you.” I said and used traveler to run back up the hill. Luckily, the rest of the team was still milling about and didn’t notice me. “EVERYONE! ARE YOU ALL READY?” I shouted. “WE NEED TO—“

“We blitz them.” A calm voice coming from my waist interrupted my shouting. With a glance I saw a small, black communication device strapped to my belt. Oh good, we have communicators I wasn’t told about. Thanks Piercil. This wasn’t an ideal start. Grey’s voice continued speaking from the device.

“We have time on our side so we need to use it to our advantage. The other team will likely split up their forces into one assault team and one charging team to ready their cannon. We will do the same, but we will also eliminate the spies at the same time.” The authority in his voice was hard to argue with, and the few glances when Grey said ‘spies’ I got from my teammates told me that doing so would make things harder. “Fifteen of you kamikaze the point, the rest start charging the cannon.”

“What?? Are you crazy?” Another voice shouted through the device while several others came through the air.

“That’s stupid!” The outcries were understandable, he just left capturing the point to less than a third of us.

“Listen! Spies don’t respawn! If we send in waves of fifteen, we’ll always have at least five charging the cannon and there will be enough people hitting the point that they shouldn’t get much time off of it. None, if you all are good enough. Three minutes in and we’ll be sitting with a full cannon and no spies. If we sit around arguing then they’ll capture the point without us anyway.” The outcries this time were less energetic from most, and the only energetic ones came from a few faces I recognized. Unfortunately, Grey noticed this too. “You six, you two and that group there. You’re the first fifteen. Hold that point for as long as you can, the next group will be coming in thirty seconds. Go!” His orders this time were face to face. I guess it’s a leadership thing but when he told them to do it point blank, they went. Immediately after they left my communication thing buzzed a little and words appeared on it. It was like a cellphone crossed with a magic eight ball.

He got us. We’ll kill these guys and join our side. That should buy us thirty seconds on the point at least. Do the same with yours or figure something else out.

I grimaced. This was bad. Better see if I can survive this one. I looked around quickly then ran over to our fearless leader.

“Hey Grey. What do you want me to do? I don’t really have the mana power to do anything to the cannon.” Grey looked up from the apparent strategy meeting he was having with a few of his cohorts. Damn. I should have listened in first.

“Every little bit helps. Especially with Kel on the other team.” Now that he mentioned it he was right. The powerhouse was probably in charge of the other team’s cannon alone. “So charge it a bit for now and you can go with the next wave in about 30 seconds.” As he said that, fifteen more people ran down the hill. I obediently ran to the cannon and stood in position next to it. Of course, I had no intention of adding my mana. That would just lower my contribution and drain the mana I couldn’t get back. Instead I searched the cannon for faults. Since this was a trial designed to simulate sabotage, the cannon was constructed with plenty of weak points. The one I needed though was a weak point that couldn’t be seen from the outside. Sure enough, I noticed a pipe leading from the charging crystal that was absorbing everyone’s mana into somewhere deeper in the machine. I suppressed a grin and dropped a beetle made of ice onto the pipe, using every ounce of enigma I had in me to thin its presence. I had it quickly crawl up the pipe and out of sight.

I’m here

Suddenly, two people appeared back at the top behind us in a beam of light, followed by five more. Grey noticed this and frowned. He grabbed his, we’ll call it an 8ball, and yelled into it. “You all who just respawned! The point isn’t that close. How did you get knocked out!?”

“Sorry! There were spies in the group and they ambushed us!” One of the guys on the hill spoke into his 8ball and waved.

“Damn.” Grey frowned. “That’ll buy the other team too much time. Next wave! Head out now!” As he called, the spy counter dropped suddenly by two and two more figures appeared on the hill. “You there! How many were spies!” As I grouped together with the fourteen others in wave three I heard the two newcomers through my 8ball.

“There were six that got us. We got two for sure and the last one is almost down. We hit his leg with a shredder.” A shredder was the nickname for a stone spell where a bunch of stone spike rose from the ground at different angles under a target. The power wasn’t huge, but without some kind of healing it could seriously slow someone down.

“Jin.” Grey’s voice again came over the radio, but this time it looked like he was looking for me.

“Got it, Grey.” I responded and launched into the forest below the hill. Levelled up, traveler is only slower than supreme movement skills like acceleration, and I have the perfect set of skills to eliminate one slow enemy. I looked down at my 8ball while running.

Im hit. Im close to the point on the enemy side. Come back and get me.

There’s no time. The next wave will be there in less than a minute, just run.

I grinned a little. Grey had twisted my hand here. Whether I was a spy or not I had no choice but to eliminate this guy to avoid suspicion, but I have to admit this will make it easier. I grabbed my 8ball and open the spy channel.

Im almost there. Stand somewhere I can see you.

In just a few seconds I passed the previous wave and spotted a wounded spy in a clearing ahead. He really was almost at the point. Before he could spot me I made a ball of electricity and sidearmed it at him. It hit him in the chest and instantly caused the status, considered in the trial. My magic isn’t very strong, but downplaying its power so that people underestimate me is what I’ve been working on for nearly a month. As Piercil had told me on day one, “An awesome display of control with just the right power will scare the weak into thinking you untouchable, and when it does less than they expect, fool the strong into thinking you surmountable.” I immediately turned around and ran back towards my wave. I could almost feel the disapproving gaze of Piercil somewhere as I had chosen speed over a massive thunder dragon. I’d have to make it up to him.

“Enemy spy eliminated. Regrouping now.” I said into the 8ball. Then opened the spy channel quickly:

Everyone still on our original side, leak info

“Good.” Grey’s voice came over the device. “Now everyone take that point.”

Taking the point was stressful. We were right that Kel had taken the absurd job of handling the entire cannon herself. This meant that there were more than forty people from the enemy team on the point. Why, isn’t that wonderful? The team you are rooting for is doing splendidly! Yes and no. Yes, I’m happy that such a brute force method is working, and no I’m not happy that I have to survive forty people launching low-power magic at me and my fourteen friends long enough for one of them to ‘die’ so I can simulate the effect with light magic. My only saving glory was that the previous wave had taken care of Julian somehow and the enemy team wasn’t allowed to just unload on us as that might kill somebody. Right when we’d gotten to the point there were only two people from our last wave alive, and they were both spies. Apparently our identities hadn’t been spread around the other team enough though as we’d barely touched the point when potshots had eliminated both of them. By potshots I mean status magic.

“The enemy is focusing on using status magic at the point!” One of my compatriots shouted into his 8ball before collapsing. I think. He was promptly teleported back to our base with a little pop of light. The tricky thing about status magic is that you can’t see it coming like with an icicle or a fireball. You’re just suddenly stricken with it if you don’t resist. Luckily there is a way to negate it. The idea, assuming you don’t use healing magic- which I never learned since I’m pretty much a god of treatment- is to make a shield of the exact same type of status magic, and even though it’s invisible, shape into something cool like armor. The technique doesn’t work without that last part according to Piercil. I felt bad for the lightning earlier so I shaped everything but into cool invisible armor just for him. Well, I shaped all the common ones like paralyze, confusion, blind and curse. Sleep, for strategic purposes I guess, didn’t count as a but instead just put the enemy to sleep for however long their resistance couldn’t shake it. Either way, I had my out. Looking for the closest enemy, I spun wind magic into a small tornado to raise some dust. With all the magic I assume was being pumped out by the enemy team this may have been redundant but either way I ran towards the enemy and hugged him. I waited a heartbeat for him to be hit by my status armor before firing a pop with light magic and ‘teleporting’ with traveler. Once in the woods, I noticed I had a few counts of slow on me and dispelled them before running back towards our base. Before getting there I activated enigma and crept as quickly as I could to the respawn point then cast off enigma amidst a tower of light I made using light magic. Classy. As. Fuck. And also uncomfortably draining. That tower had taken me down to three-quarters my mana.