"Congratulations." Caeden smiled as Cat made her way back to their seats. Cat had shown an overwhelming victory with her new mnemonics. Something about her shroud's domain, Soul, made the techniques much more effective, granting bonuses far beyond what the others in the group received. It had let her win a fight involving nine other people without too much struggle.

"Thanks." Cat had a genuine smile beaming at the three of them. "That was exhilarating. I've never been able to physically overpower anyone before. Though I think if any of them had slowed down and thought about it, they might have done better."

"You didn't give them time to do that. It was well executed throughout. It was impressive, watching you manage so many shroud constructs at once." Caeden praised.

"They pick up a lot of the slack, honestly." Cat almost looked bashful. "They're more intelligent than you would expect."

"Still, well done. Seriously." Caeden couldn't help but feel proud, seeing his friend overcome a big weakness and reach a personal goal. "I'll bet your rank shoots up after this."

"That would be nice." Cat nodded.

Caeden was the next to be called down only a couple of matches later. Considering there were roughly two hundred people in the observation room, they had twenty group battles to get through. Once he got to the floor of the arena. Caeden discovered there were ten other people down here with him, not nine. The discrepancy came from the imperfect number of students. The entire student body couldn't be divided neatly into groups of ten, so a couple of matches would have an extra person tacked on.

Considering the free-for-all nature of the match, Caeden decided to go for a defensive strategy. With his thorns, he didn't have to worry about any battles of attrition, and he had come up with a couple of mnemonics that would make defending a set position easy. Caeden took up a corner of the arena, as much as he could with the arena being round, and settled in. He set Forged Infinity to 004, the spear. He went even further and moved to 042, which extended the length of the haft and blade on the spear until it was twenty feet long. His reach now covered the distance between him and his closest neighbors, who took note and shifted away from him.

"Begin!"

Caeden immediately added Sharp to the tip of his spear and ran it along the floor of the arena in an arc. No one came at him for nearly a minute. Apparently, his overly large spear was enough of a deterrent. Caeden just rested, calling up five thorns to recharge the Sharp he had spent. Something Caeden had noticed with his new ability to restore his shroud; if he reached his maximum capacity, he couldn't recharge beyond that. However, if he held that shroud in manifestations, he could technically have more than his actual limit. To that end, swirls of red lines began to circle around him, growing ever thicker as he generated more and more Sharp.

Finally, one of his closest neighbors finished off their current opponent and worked up the courage to come at him. The man held a mace wrapped in some kind of spiky plant, and he had thick vines wrapped around his body like armor. Charging in, the man let out a warcry.

Caeden paid him no mind. He wouldn't make it far.

As he expected, the man stepped across the faint line Caeden had drawn with his spear, triggering the trap. Lines of Sharp burst upward from the line in long spikes, ramming into the legs and feet of his would-be attacker. He instantly collapsed, ripping long furrows through his own flesh as the spikes tore his flesh on the way down. This was one of Caeden's new mnemonics, spike trap. It was easy to sus out if someone used investigative sense, but in the middle of battle, that wasn't always a priority.

Caeden shook his head as the plant-covered man screamed on the ground. If he had been using even a little infusion on himself, just the barest bit of physical enhancement, the relatively fragile spikes would have broken on his skin. Some people weren't merely as cautious as they should be. A flicker of shroud picked up the downed students and moved him from the arena. The teacher had decided the poor boy was incapacitated, even if he was still conscious.

Caeden went back to waiting, the lines of sharp swirling around him growing ever greater in number. He almost had enough to finish this fight. At least, he hoped. The next mnemonic he wanted to try was more of a guess, or a hypothetical. He had the mnemonic and technique in his head, and it all worked on a smaller scale, but he hadn't had time in the last couple of days to sit down and do the full-size version. Technically, it required more shroud than he had.

Feeling inexplicably nervous, Caeden made another five thorns, wanting to hurry up and be done. Everyone else in his group seemed intent on drawing this out. Multiple times, he had seen someone drawn into a losing fight only to disengage and make for another person. The only people out right now were the one Caeden had cut up and the one that guy had beaten. The other eight were just pairing up endlessly, never committing enough to a fight to secure a win for fear that they would get blindsided.

"This is all a little too balanced," Caeden muttered. The problem with gathering a bunch of people very close in power and skill was that it was difficult to find a winner. Especially when they could disengage to another fight if they started losing. Caeden was hoping his next attack would be able to change that.

The whole basis for this new mnemonic was from a random thought Caeden had. If he could make thorns, couldn't he use that already existing mnemonic to create an even bigger, more powerful mnemonic on top? Basically, he wanted to use the already existing technique as a springboard for an even bigger technique.

After another minute, Caeden felt he finally had enough. This was all new territory, and he had no idea if this would work or if he had enough shroud. Really he was just guessing. But, his plan only involved using the excess shroud he had created, so it was no real loss if it didn't work.

Caeden moved all the excess shroud circling him into a ball hovering in front of him. All together, it was almost as big as him, roughly five and a half feet in diameter. Then, Caeden took his ten thorns and started pressing them down into the ball, forcing his shroud to compress. He sent the thorns careening across the sphere's surface until they were speeding blurs. The ball started to shrink in on itself as the thorns forced the rest of his shroud to occupy less and less space.

When the sphere had halved in size, only three feet in diameter, Caeden felt a change in the shroud at the sphere's core. The compression shifted its structure in a way he wasn't expecting. It was like his domain's power became more intense. He felt like that new, denser shroud could cut through far more, sharpen far more than his normal shroud could. Interested, Caeden pushed on, increasing the pressure of his thorns. He wanted to see what this more intense shroud could do.

In less than a minute, Caeden had reduced more than five feet of shroud down to a ball the size of his head. It was so intense, his thorns were having trouble holding it together. Caeden had to put forth a large portion of his will to keep the whole thing together. Suddenly, his formation slipped. Caeden wasn't sure what went wrong, but the steady motions of his thorns created a small gap on the opposite side of the sphere from him. In an instant, all that compressed shroud shot out.

A beam of red energy blazed across the arena, barely missing a few people before slamming into the far wall and carving into it, tearing apart the bronze-like butter. A deafening whine of ripping metal squealed out of the groove his shroud was rapidly digging into the surface. Through his shroud, Caeden could feel infusions under the initial surface layer meant to reinforce the structure, desperately trying to stop the flood of cutting force carving into it.

The beam lasted nearly thirty seconds, trying to dig out the wall until it reached the air on the other side. Luckily the walls won out, barely. Caeden could feel the infusions reaching the limit of what they could take just as Caeden's shroud ran out. He was left with his ten thorns and his normal reserves. All excess shroud had worn itself into nothingness against the wall. Caeden had tried to stop it, but there was no holding it back once the pressure was released.

Suddenly, the focus of all eight other people was on him. Three who had been close to the beam immediately surrendered. Apparently they didn't want to risk Caeden throwing another one of those death beams at them. The other five looked much more violent, and Caeden had managed to make himself the common threat.

"Well, that was dumb." Caeden drew on Physical Enhancement for the first time in this fight, taking on his gold body. No reason to hold back now. Three more of his opponents took his transformation as a signal to charge, while the last two began preparing long-range attacks of their own.

Caeden flicked out three thorns at each of the two long-range types while he swept his spear in an arch, preventing the approach of the melee users. He deliberately kept his motion well below his true speed, hoping to bait one of them into doing something stupid.

Sure enough, one on the far side of him couldn't resist and tried to rush in past his guard. Caeden thumbed the controls on Forged Infinity while interfacing with the intellect in the shrouded weapon. The transformation went much faster than usual at Caeden's insistence. The dial spun to 046, and his spear shrunk down to an eight-foot length while the head changed to a halberd, with an added axe head and spike set perpendicular to the spearhead.

Moving at his maximum speed, with the overconfident man now firmly outside the guard of the much shorter weapon, Caeden swung the axe head into his side. He didn't want to kill the guy, just take him out of the fight. The unexpected shift in both weapon and speed caught the man completely off guard, and Caeden landed a solid hit, the halberd cutting into his ribs. It hit bone, most of the force traveling into his skeleton rather than cutting through his flesh. Caeden could feel, through Forged Infinity, the man attempting to mitigate the damage with infusion. He was mostly successful, but Caeden still broke two ribs and left a nasty gash running up his side.

Caeden's thorns caught up with the long-range people at the same moment. The bladed, drill-like constructs went right for the face. Caeden's thoughts were so much faster in golden body, so he took a moment to direct one of the thorns from each group to circle around under the cover of the other two and get the ranged students from behind.

Meanwhile, his up-close threats were looking far less confident with one of them going down in under ten seconds. Caeden wasn't going to give them a chance to regain their courage. Another thought to Forged Infinity, which was ecstatic about the combat, and Caeden had a spike coming out the back of the shaft of his halberd. Caeden used it to stab back at the opponent on the far side of him from the man with the broken ribs.

He jumped back, covering more ground than he needed to and effectively removing himself from combat for the moment, letting Caeden focus on the one remaining. Caeden bought his halberd around, threatening the man with its spike head opposite the axe. Simultaneously, he sent two thorns from awkward angles, ensuring his opponent would get caught in at least one attack no matter where he moved.

Instead, he lifted his hands in surrender. Moments later, the one who leapt away, and the two long-range fighters, who were still being harassed by thorns from different angles, followed suit. Apparently, no one wanted to fight the nine-foot-tall golden man with a halberd that shot buzzing drills of death at them. Caeden stopped all his attacks before anyone could get more hurt than they already were. The students being harassed by thorns had picked up a few glancing cuts.

Letting out a sigh, Caeden settled back into his seat. That had been more intense than he would have hoped. "Well, that was stressful."

"Are you alright? That…beam didn't look intentional." Lily asked. Caeden felt relieved. Her tone was still odd, and he figured she was still in that weird headspace her brother had put her in, but her concern was gratifying.

"Yeah, that went way farther than I planned. Originally, I wanted to use the compressed shroud to increase the speed of my thorns and fire them faster than anyone could dodge. Then something weird happened when I started doing the compression, and I kept going." Caeden shrugged. It was an experiment gone wrong. He was just happy no one had been hurt.

"Liliana Meteoris."

"That was quick." Cat snorted.

"Don't worry; I'll end this quickly," Lily stated matter-of-factly.

She did. The minute Lily walked into the arena; every other student was watching her. They were under no illusion about who the biggest threat was, and they were going to take her out first. Lily didn't give them a chance. Once the start was called, Lily stomped her foot and flung her arms out, creating a massive wave of ice that filled the entire arena in an instant, freezing over the other students before they could summon up their shrouds. It was an overwhelming victory. She wasn't even out of her seat for more than a minute total.

"How much shroud did that cost you?" Caeden asked softly.

"About a third, so almost a thousand." She whispered back.

Caeden nodded. He could have guessed. That was the most ice Caeden had ever seen her use at once. The speed of it was incredible. He hadn't expected how fast she could bring out a technique of that size. Of course, it wouldn't have worked as well out of the controlled conditions of the arena, where everyone had to start at the same time.

Several matches went by before Erik was finally called. When he was, both Caeden and Lily looked at him with concern. He was in the same match as Ander, along with a couple of the Sun Seats who came in with him. It all felt more than a little suspicious.

"I'll be fine." Erik waved them off. "If it gets too crazy, I'll just surrender."

Caeden wasn't sure it would be that simple.